Picaflor Mentoring, LLC is a nature-based guiding service based in the red clay canyons and majestic mountains of Southwest Colorado. We offer individual mentoring as well as group offerings and custom wilderness trips. At our core, we help people discover and amplify deeper intimacy with The World, companioning them on their journey to ecological and soul rooted belonging and participation.
Emma Duke is a cultural pollinator working at the intersections of soil and soul. She is a wilderness guide, soul spark mentor, gardener, and lover of the wild and beautiful. She lives with her pup, Juniper, and her two mustangs, Mesa and Lupe, on Indigenous lands in Southwest Colorado.
EDUCATION | TRAININGS
New Mexico Highlands University, Masters of Clinical Social Work with a focus on rural and tribal communities - graduation spring 2026
Animas Valley Institute, Apprentice & Soul Guide in training (Soulcraft Initiation and Apprenticeship Program)
2022 - present
Gestalt Equine Institute of the Rockies, 2024 - present
(two year training in equine therapy)
Natural Horsemanship Mentorship with Michele Bell
2024 - present
Animas Valley Institute, Wild Mind Guide Training Program
2021 - 2024
Her Mystery School, studies of the Feminine Initiation Path with Jumana Sophia
2018 - 2019
Family Constellation & Mindfulness Mentorship with Lexi Delgado
2018 - 2019
The Journey to Completion, a Nine-Month Shadow Work and Deep Imagination Study with Norma Burton
2017 - 2018
Wilderness First Responder
2018 - present
BA Psychology, University of Colorado Boulder
2013
Sustainability and Environmental Action, School for International Training, Australia
2012
Permaculture Design Certificate, Punta Mona Education Center
2011
WORK EXPERIENCE
Picaflor Mentoring, Founder and Guide, 2021 - present
This Naked Mind, Freelance Writer, 2017 - 2023
Open Sky Wilderness Therapy, Senior Guide, 2020 - 2022
Inner Guide Expeditions, Wilderness Guide, 2018 - 2020
Her Mystery School, Assistant, 2017 - 2018
Seat of the Soul Institute, Program Director, 2017
Basalt Mountain Gardens, Edible Landscape Design, 2015 - 2017
Aspen T.R.E.E., Environmental Educator, 2015 - 2016
Thorne Nature Experience, Environmental Educator, 2014
Three Leaf Farm, Farmer, 2013 - 2015
A little more about me…
Greetings ~
I grew up straddling the edge where the cultivated meets the wild, nested on the flanks of the Roaring Fork River with mama Mount Sopris soaring high above, in the company of mules, donkeys, raven, bear, aspen, spruce, willow, dogs, pigs, goats, chickens, and my human family. Being a creature engulfed in the languages of enchantment and animacy from early on, I have been enraptured with the world in an almost dizzying way since I can remember.
My love for this world has been expressed through tending webs of relationships with people and plants professionally for over 15 years. I am a wilderness guide and facilitator—of both the outer and inner terrain—as well as a seasoned farmer and gardener. My life takes shape around a deep interest in how we might practice life-enhancing culture on the individual and collective levels.
I am currently in the midst of a long arc apprenticeship with the Animas Valley Institute as a trainee in their Soulcraft Apprenticeship and Initiation Program (SAIP) as well as their Wild Mind Training Program, where I am learning the craft of soul initiation guiding and nature-based healing and wholing. I am also learning the ways of Natural Horsemanship, deepening into a lifelong collaboration with our equine kin, and holding the possibility that my two baby horses may be my co-guides in this work someday.
I attempt to live my life as an offering, an active practice of honoring and tending and feeding this animate and mysterious world. The one right under our feet. The one shimmering through the eyes of your pet, your lover and your enemy. The one beckoning to you through longing and heartbreak, dreams and nightmares, grief and praise. The one that dominant culture diminishes and hides. The one that’s knocking at our psyche’s door to awaken something significant, and particular, through each of us.
I’ll meet you there, in this remembering.
In devotion,
Emma
MENTORS | INSPIRATIONS
I am fortunate to walk in a long line of movers and shakers, and to have contact with many people who deeply inspire me, challenge me, and help me grow.
Huge gratitude to:
Bill Plotkin and Geneen Marie Haugen for encouraging my dreaming, expanding my thinking, and for the gift of having real elders in my life.
Palika Benton for all your holding, poking, prodding, loving and guidance over the years.
Lexi Alma for your fierce guidance over the years, humbling me, challenging me, uplifting me.
Jumana Sophia for your devotion to the feminine ways.
Martín Prechtel for helping me remember how to court and feed the Holy Wild and my own Indigenous Soul, and for the continued inspiration of your love of horses.
Martin Shaw for your stories and sharp wisdom for these times.
Clarissa Pinkola Estes for your courageous voice on the creative fire, and for speaking to us women directly through story and myth.
And to so many other poets, writers, and teachers who have greatly influenced my worldview, including:
Mary Oliver, William Stafford, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Lyla June, adrienne marie brown, David Whyte, Francis Weller, Linda Hogan, Joanna Macy, Joy Harjo, Gary Snyder, Dacher Keltner, Sharon Blackie, David Abram, Andreas Weber, James Hillman, Nicholas Triolo, Laura Blakeman, Julian Norris, Peter Fonken, Nate Bacon, Hafiz, Rainer Maria Rilke, Stephen Foster, Meredith Little, Pattiann Rogers, David Orr, and more…!