The Wilderness and Wellness Podcast · Ron Waline

Ruby Pinyuh-Derovan: Intuitive Wilderness Guide

·1 hr 15 min·4 clips

A 12-year-old trip on Point Reyes became the first time Ruby felt “totally at home in my own home.”

1. The Wilderness and Wellness Podcast centers on Ruby Pinyuh-Derovan’s path from childhood nature connection to wilderness guiding. 2. Host Ron Walleen interviews Ruby Pinyuh-Derovan, who describes herself through Marin County, the Coast Miwok homelands, and years of teaching surf and leading students. 3. The episode asks how childhood access to land, mentors, and wild places shaped Ruby’s adult work with young people. 4. Ruby describes growing up in Marin County with oak-studded hillsides, redwood ravines, school gardens, and long walks with her parents. 5. She remembers her grandfather’s forest in Washington State, where his horticulture and attention to plants helped shape her love of the plant world. 6. She also recalls a swallowtail butterfly caterpillar on fennel, saying the smell and the slow movement of the caterpillar stayed in her memory. 7. Ron and Ruby compare childhood encounters with snakes, caterpillars, the ocean, and the different ways young people respond to unknown beings. 8. Ruby says she could go outdoors 365 days a year, though intense rainstorms happened, and she notes that wildfire smoke was not the same problem when she was growing up. 9. She says the ocean became central when she was 13 or 14 and learned to surf for an eighth-grade project. 10. Ruby describes a third-grade trip along the Eel River, where she picked raspberries, played in the river, and told her mother she would do that work for the rest of her life. 11. A Point Reyes backpacking trip with young women became the first time she felt “totally at home in my own home.” 12. She says that group celebrated “moon time,” talked about first periods, and sat in circle while listening to the waves on the coast. 13. Ruby says a leader tucked a note into her journal that said, “you were made for this stuff,” and recommended a scholarship-funded trip in the Sierra. 14. In the Sierra Nevada, she felt high in the clouds, on granite, and in crystalline mountain lakes, while also feeling homesick for the ocean. 15. She says a leader told her there was “a lot of work to be done building bridges” between wilderness and ordinary life. 16. Ruby explains that the bridge meant carrying the feeling of the mountains home, rather than treating wild places and daily life as separate worlds. 17. Ruby says solo surf sessions are a personal relationship with the ocean, while group backpacking trips feel like work she does with younger people. 18. The conversation is reflective and relational, with Ron offering stories, questions, and examples while Ruby answers with detailed memories and concrete places. 19. People who value mentorship, outdoor education, and nature-based coming-of-age stories would likely connect with this episode. 20. People looking for fast-paced debate or technical gear talk may skip it.

As heard by us

A grounded portrait of place, mentorship, and becoming.

Ruby Pinyuh-Derovan's conversation with Ron Walleen traces how place, work, and steady mentorship shaped her life. She describes growing up in Marin County, among oak-studded hillsides and redwood ravines, with an early habit of looking under rocks and digging in the dirt.

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Why you'd press play

For a slow, grounded look at how place, nature, and community shape a life.

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