“The Wild Knows the Way”: Lindsay Cray on Healing Land, People, and Stories

I first reached out to Lindsay Cray for insights on Rochester’s Lower Falls Gorge while working on an article for The Conservationist. What began as a conversation about geology and ecology quickly deepened into something more profound. Cray’s relationship to the gorge, and to the land itself, isn’t just observational. It’s alive. Reciprocal.

“If you’re feeling any kind of way,” she told me, “you can go to the gorge and let it hold you. That water is ancient. It carries big energy—the kind that can transform the heaviness we all carry sometimes. The gorge isn’t just a landscape; it’s a living force.”

Cray, a Licensed Mental Health Counselor and Certified Clinical Adventure Therapist, helps others tune into that force, not as a romantic escape from life’s challenges but as a partner in healing. For decades she has worked at the intersection of mental health, community building, and ecological restoration, weaving them into a single philosophy: reconnection.

“People need to reconnect—with the land, with themselves, and with each other.”

But Cray’s insights run deeper than any credential. They reflect an understanding that what she teaches, agency, balance, relationality, is ancient wisdom practiced by Indigenous cultures for centuries.

Quoting her colleague, author and Two-Spirit advocate Shawn Kalanv (Raven), she reflects:

“Long before Western intellectuals coined ‘humanism,’ Indigenous nations were embodying it. Women chose whether to be warriors or wives. They selected partners, evaluated cohabitation, and could end a marriage simply by placing a man’s belongings outside. That’s agency. That’s balance. That’s leadership.”

“These weren’t radical ideas,” she says, echoing Kalanv’s words. “They were ways of being. Colonial systems erased that wisdom and then repackaged it as progress. Even now, modern humanist movements rarely acknowledge the Indigenous roots of relational, communal, and egalitarian values. If we want to lead with integrity, we have to tell the whole truth.”

Cray honors those truths in her work, both subtly and directly. At retreats like Wild Woman (coming September 2025), participants engage in immersive experiences that blend traditional ecological knowledge, feminine psychotherapy, and ecopsychology.

“It’s about reconnecting with the wild within you—the part of you that remembers your worth.”

Her passion for environmental education is not about transferring knowledge so much as sparking transformation.

“I love blowing people’s minds,” she says with a smile. “Watching them try new things and realize what they’re capable of, that’s why I teach.”

At wilderness survival classes she once taught across Rochester—from RIT to Rochester Brainery—students learned to build fires, find food, and navigate home. But they also learned resilience, mindfulness, and patience through their relationship with the land.

“By the end, people are lit up with excitement. They’ve discovered not just survival skills but something about themselves.”

These moments, she explains, are less about survival than stepping beyond comfort zones and growing.

“Nature is the perfect partner for that. It asks us to show up, to stay present, and it rewards us with perspective.”

Cray’s understanding of healing has been shaped as much by her travels as her practice.

“It’s hard to pick a favorite place,” she admits. “I lived in Puerto Rico for six years, and it felt like home. I learned the language, met people who became family. The island is called the Island of Enchantment for a reason.”

Her global journeys only deepened her sense of wonder.

“In Colombia, I met some of the kindest people you’ll ever find. Spain—it’s the culture and architecture. Italy has this raw passion. Australia has a wildness that’s electric. Every place is unique.”

Before returning to Rochester, she and her husband, Nick Brown, spent a year in California’s Central Valley working for a land trust. She served as education and volunteer director; he stewarded 15,000 acres. Together they launched programs, most notably one for adjudicated youth that paired hands-on environmental work with deep inquiry.

“That program is still going,” she says. “Leaving was hard, but my husband’s health couldn’t handle the pollution. We realized once we got back to Rochester, no one would hire us to do this kind of work. So we decided to create it ourselves.”

Thus, Earthworks Institute was born—a first-of-its-kind nonprofit in Rochester, built on outdoor experiential learning.

Over two decades, Cray has pioneered progressive nature-based therapies, including Trybe Ecotherapy in 2020, a county-funded pilot that helps military veterans heal trauma by restoring balance across cognitive, emotional, and physical states.

Her early career included a National Science Foundation fellowship and participation in the 2009 UN Climate Conference. Today, as a consultant and counselor, she bridges disciplines, psychotherapy, environmental education, and nonprofit leadership, to help individuals and communities heal.

Born and raised in Rochester, Cray remembers roaming woods off Empire Boulevard as a child. Coming back years later, she sees both progress and loss.

“We sit on the southern shores of Lake Ontario—one of the world’s largest freshwater bodies. There’s huge potential for eco-tourism here. But fences and signs won’t protect these places. If we want to preserve them, we need people to feel a sense of stewardship, not just management.”

Fluent in Spanish, trained as a Wilderness First Responder, and experienced in grant writing and nonprofit leadership, Cray moves fluidly across worlds. Her vision is ambitious but clear: a Rochester where neighborhoods see the land as part of their identity.

“Healing ourselves and healing the earth aren’t two separate tasks,” she says. “They’re the same work.”

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