Spring Mountain Wellness

04/13/2026

Spring Mountain Wellness is an experiment in care, rooted in land and built through solidarity.

On roughly 500 acres of mountain forest, we are slowly creating a refuge for rest, recovery, and collective resilience, shaped by mutual aid, stewardship, and the belief that care should not be scarce.

We aim to provide not only a retreat from the world, but also, a resource within it. A space for peer respite, skill-sharing, building and dreaming more caring futures together, and healing; where communities can gather, burn out and exhaustion can soften, and new possibilities take root.

We believe resilience is something we build together, and we know the land can hold us while we learn to hold each other.

This labor of love is being built slowly, collectively, and with intention. Every single donation helps sustain the land, support infrastructure, and keep this space accessible to those who need it most.

If this vision resonates with you, we invite you to be part of it.

Donate directly at tinyurl.com/SMWdonate, or scan the QR code!

Visit us at springmountainwellness.org to learn more about seeking a low-to-no-cost respite stay, or booking retreat space for your organization, network, mutual aid group, etc. If you’d like to be more involved, or have questions, please email us at [email protected]—we’d love to hear from you!

Together, we are building a place for refuge, renewal, and shared futures. 🌿💚

Spring Mountain Wellness nurtures a culture of well-being and skills related to holistic health, land stewardship, community resilience, and the creative arts.

02/10/2026

💛 UPDATE & STILL URGENT PLEA + GRATITUDE FROM THE MOUNTAIN 💛

Dear friends,

We are overwhelmed with gratitude.

Because of you, your donations, your shares, your prayers, your messages, we have raised most of what we need to meet this month’s crisis. Your support helped us secure a bulldozer, clear the road, and ensure our people are no longer trapped on the mountain. That alone is a miracle we will never forget.

From the bottom of our hearts: thank you. You showed up when it mattered most. 🫶

‼️We are still $3,000 short of our mortgage, with just 3 days to spare.‼️

For those just seeing this:

Spring Mountain Wellness was cut off by back-to-back extreme winter storms, leaving an impassable amount of snow and ice for nearly 2 weeks, sheltering elders and community members with chronic medical needs and nowhere else to go. Our caretakers stayed, kept everyone warm and fed, and held this sanctuary together through the storm, because this is what we exist to do. Yet this cut off much of our usual means of income to keep our crisis refuge alive.

Now, we are SO CLOSE.

‼️We are still $3,000 short of our mortgage, with just 3 days to spare.‼️

This place is more than land and buildings. It’s a refuge. A home. A living, breathing community that has held so many through their hardest seasons. We are determined to keep Spring Mountain alive, not just for those here now, but for everyone who will need this sanctuary in the future.

If you’ve already given, thank you. Truly.
If you’re able to give again, or make a monthly pledge in any amount, or give for the first time, this FINAL PUSH could make ALL the difference.

🙏 HELP US CLOSE THE GAP 👇

ActionNetwork: https://actionnetwork.org/fundraising/help-sustain-crisis-refuge-for-our-community

GiveButter: https://givebutter.com/ezTprS

PayPal: [email protected]

And if you can’t give, please share! Every share expands this circle of care.

We are still here. We are still holding the mountain. And with your help, we will keep this sanctuary standing, for all who need it.

With so much love, hope, and gratitude,
Spring Mountain Wellness Community

02/05/2026

‼️URGENT HELP NEEDED‼️

Dear Friends,

Spring Mountain Wellness is facing an emergency, and we need your help right now.

For 10 days, our campus has been trapped under heavy snow and ice. Roads are blocked, but everyone on the mountain is safe and cared for. Our caretakers—chopping wood, preparing meals, checking in constantly—are helping to ensure everyone is warm, fed, and connected.

We are not helpless. We are the help, and we will continue to be.

Eight guests remain, including elders, those with chronic medical conditions, and people with nowhere else to go. This is exactly why Spring Mountain exists: a healing sanctuary in nature where people are welcomed with care, connection, and dignity.

We sustain this work through retreats, workshops, and short-term stays, which fund our programming for people in crisis, at no cost to those who cannot bear it.

But this month, the storms have cut off nearly all income, and our mortgage is due in less than two weeks. Without your support, we risk losing the land, the buildings, and the ongoing work that keeps this refuge alive.

This skeleton crew that has committed to keeping the sanctuary alive through the long throes of winter is already preparing for spring, when our campus can comfortably fit dozens and begin implementing infrastructural changes to ensure that no future season is as brutal as this one.

This mountain is a light in the dark, warmth in the cold, and a home for those with nowhere else to go. With your help, we can continue providing care, safety, and community; not just surviving the storm, but thriving through it, and any challenges that come our way.

YOU CAN HELP sustain this community with a generous one-time contribution, or a monthly pledge; everything helps us continue to help others!

🙏 DONATE NOW 👇👇👇

ActionNetwork: https://actionnetwork.org/fundraising/help-sustain-crisis-refuge-for-our-community

GiveButter: https://givebutter.com/ezTprS

PayPal: [email protected]
Venmo:

📣 Share widely! Every gift, every share, every heart in this circle keeps this sanctuary standing.

Thank you for helping us keep this refuge alive for the people who need it most.

In love and gratitude,
The Spring Mountain Wellness Community

02/02/2026

🌿 2026 Retreats at Wellspring – Lowgap, NC 🌿
Limited to 15 participants per class. Profits support Spring Mountain Wellness.

✨ Upcoming Retreats:
• March 20-22: Burnout Retreat with Bugz
• May 1-3: Burnout Retreat with Forrest Tracy Chalmers
• May 9-10: Digestive Vitality with Forrest Chalmers
• Sept 18-20: Distress, Insomnia, and Anxiety with Forrest Chalmers
• Sept 25-27: Burnout Retreat with Forrest Chalmers

📌 Spaces are limited – register now to secure your spot!

Scroll to retreats. Each event has its own registration link! Link in first comment .

12/31/2025

As the year comes to a close, we'd like to share with you some reflections on the past three seasons of Spring Mountain Wellness. Thank you for taking this stroll through the woods with us.

All of the following updates have been made possible by your donations. Our gratitude is just about as tall as this mountain.

This past summer, we embarked on a journey to build sanctuary, respite, and refuge as Spring Mountain Wellness in Lowgap, North Carolina. Our small, all-volunteer board and team of volunteers dreamed of stewarding a place where people could rest, heal, connect with one another, seek their solitude, and temporarily stabilize after personal crisis, displacement, grief, or other hardships.

We jumped in the deep-end of these spring waters headfirst. From the moment we were first able to offer respite and refuge to people, we flung our doors open. Since the summer, we've been able to provide nearly 1000 nights of warm, safe refuge (person per bed per night) for people who would have had no housing or precarious housing. Nearly 3000 delicious (and nutritious) meals prepared to the specifications of a range of dietary needs and, just as importantly, preferences of the palette and the heart. Countless loads of clean laundry, countless miles of forest strolled, and facilities made accessible for people with a variety of physical needs. We’ve had people ranging in age from single digits to their 70s this year arrive either seeking respite or refuge, volunteering, leading projects, getting back on their feet, dreaming with us, making art, or some combination of the above and countless others supporting us from afar.

Some people who started this project were seeking a safe place themselves. Some people who arrived here seeking a safe place are now leading the efforts to take care of each other, new faces, and the land.

Some highlights:

Summer: We formally became a 501(c)3. We opened our doors to the first few people seeking respite, refuge, and sanctuary. The children’s room, library, and free store received loads of love, attention, and donations. We began the slow process of cleaning out cabins and restoring them to welcome many.

Fall: We hosted our first burnout retreat as Spring Mountain Wellness – a weekend program that helps us understand what's actually happening in our bodies and nervous systems while approaching and experiencing burnout and learn practical skills for prevention and early intervention. We looked at burnout as a physiological process, not a personal failing. And we learned… that we’re really burnt out! And we built a sauna!

Winter: The first snow fell. A small crew of us spent and are spending the holidays together, here on the mountain, taking care of one another the best we can through a time that is joyous for some and heavy for others – but always lighter when we hold it together.

All year round: Cakes were baked, people slept in warm beds, clothing and food and shelter were provided for those who needed them. Maps were drawn, poems were penned, lists were made, facilities were tended to and improved, and long hours were spent on the porch, gazing out into the forest and telling stories.

We’ve burnt the candle at both ends to prepare for the long winter ahead and every month is a scramble. In 2026, we’re looking forward to implementing arts programming, reintroducing the herbalist-in-residence program, hosting retreats for groups and organizations near and far, and keeping our doors open for those who seek a safe, quiet place to land for awhile.

Please do consider making a small, recurring monthly donation to help us keep our doors open through the winter so we can really thrive in the spring. Here: https://actionnetwork.org/fundraising/help-sustain-crisis-refuge-for-our-community

Just $5-10 monthly helps immensely. We’re stronger together and every little bit truly helps. Our nonprofit board is 100% volunteer, and we currently have no paid employees. This is a labor of love and a beginning. With each small recurring donation, we inch closer to maintaining this mountain, this forest, this sanctuary for months and years to come. We can't do it alone. We don't want to do it alone. We want to do this together. Please do consider chipping in as a recurring donor if you can.

Reach out to us at [email protected] or [email protected] if you’d like to:

- consider us for your next personal or organizational retreat
- explore a work-trade experience on the mountain (construction, groundskeeping, food cultivation, skillshare, and more)
- collaborate on respite and refuge for people experiencing personal crisis
- make an in-kind donation of winter supplies, cleaning supplies, shelf-stable food, and more
- stop by and wander the trails, say hello to the mountain, and see if the mountain says anything back to you

We cannot wait to see more of y’all in 2026!

Take care, give care,

Spring Mountain Wellness

12/06/2025

The first real dusting of snow just settled on Wellspring Mountain, and it feels like the land is taking a deep breath before winter. ❄️✨

Spring Mountain Wellness is ready for the holidays. There’s soup on the stove, wood being stacked, cabins being readied, and quiet corners set aside for people who need to rest, reset, or figure out their next steps. This place has already been a soft landing for folks with nowhere else to go, and we’re doing everything we can to keep it that way through the cold months ahead.

But we can’t do it alone.

If you believe in keeping refuge real and accessible, in making sure people have somewhere warm and welcoming to land when life falls apart, please consider supporting Spring Mountain Wellness today. Your donation helps us keep the lights on, the heat running, the mortgage paid, and the doors open to those who need it most this winter.

💚 Donate here: https://givebutter.com/ezTprS

If you’re part of an aligned group or organization – mutual aid crew, healer collective, grassroots nonprofit, study group, artist or spiritual community – another powerful way to support this place is to bring your people here. Booking retreats, trainings, or planning time on the mountain helps sustain the refuge while giving your folks space to reconnect, dream, and organize.

🏕️ Interested in booking a retreat or group gathering? Reach out to us at [email protected]

If you can’t give or book right now, a share or a kind word goes a long way.

From the mountain, with fresh snow and a lot of gratitude: thank you for helping us keep this refuge alive. 🌲🕯️

11/23/2025

At Spring Mountain Wellness, we believe that true healing isn’t one-size-fits-all. We’re a community-centered wellness space dedicated to holistic care, support, and accessible healing practices for everyone who walks through our doors.

Your support keeps us thriving and allows us to expand our programs, reach more people, and sustain a space where healing isn’t a privilege, it’s a right.

Donate today and be part of our community of care. Every contribution, big or small, makes a real difference. 👇👇

11/23/2025

Lots of hope and hospitality here on the mountain! Please consider donating to our labor of love, compassion, and kindness. https://givebutter.com/ezTprS

11/06/2025

There’s a place in the mountains where people come when they’ve run out of options. A place that doesn’t ask for proof or paperwork. Just: “What do you need? Are you hungry? Do you want to rest?”

That place is Wellspring Mountain, and Spring Mountain Wellness’ mission is to keep it thriving and there for those in need.

It’s been held together this year by community care and stubborn love, the kind that keeps showing up even when resources are thin. The kind that believes we can build safety for one another when the world doesn’t.

Through floods, burnout, loss, and housing insecurity, people have found their way here. Eight so far this year. Every one of them needed a landing place. Every one of them found warmth, food, and quiet here, without cost or condition.

Now the refuge itself needs care. The mortgage and winter costs have come due, and we need to raise $10,000 by December 15 to keep the doors open through the season.

This isn’t just about a building. It’s about preserving a piece of living community infrastructure; a space that exists outside the market, where people can recover and remember what solidarity feels like.

If you’ve ever believed in community care, in sanctuary, in the idea that we can take care of each other when systems fail, this is one small, tangible way to make that real.

Every dollar helps keep someone warm, fed, and safe this winter. Every share brings the story to one more person who might want to help hold the refuge too.

Please give today! 👉 https://givebutter.com/ezTprS

10/25/2025

It’s been a full and beautiful season up on Wellspring Mountain. Our crew has been putting in long days tending the land, repairing and improving the facilities, and slowly shaping this place into a refuge for collective healing. So far, eight people who had nowhere else to go have found safety and rest here; a reminder of why this work matters.

Spring Mountain Wellness exists to offer a place of recovery, grounding, and reconnection, for those coming out of crisis, for community members in need of respite, and for those who need to breathe and mend.

We’re now preparing to host our first community wellness retreats — gatherings focused on care, skill-sharing, and reconnection with land and one another.

To keep this refuge open and thriving, we need your support. Every dollar goes directly toward caring for the land, maintaining the facilities, and providing safe space for those who seek shelter and rest here.

If you believe in creating spaces of care and sanctuary outside the systems that harm us, please consider contributing or sharing our call for support.

Together, we’re growing something healing here.

Your contribution matters 👉 https://actionnetwork.org/fundraising/help-sustain-crisis-refuge-for-our-community/

09/07/2025

🌱 About Us

For the past ten years, Wellspring Mountain has been quietly nurtured by a small crew of caretakers. Together, we’ve seeded and tended native medicinal plants, maintained trails, and shaped spaces where learners, healers, and artists can connect with the land.

Wellspring Mountain has been home to the Eclectic School of Herbal Medicine, where students learned clinical herbalism, practiced in a teaching clinic, and worked in a medicine-making lab.

But Wellspring Mountain is more than land stewardship. It is becoming a place of refuge, healing, and resilience, a home for collective care when everything falls apart. Now, Spring Mountain Wellness is expanding this vision into a refuge and resilience hub for our community.

🫶 Our Vision

✨ Crisis Refuge & Peer Respite
Safe shelter, meals, herbal medicine, and trauma-informed peer support for anyone in disaster or mental health crisis.

✨ Workshops & Trainings
Community trainings in community resilience, disaster response, crisis care, healing, creative arts, and more. Building the skills and capacity we need for the next storm, fire, or crisis, and for the overall thriving of our communities.

✨ Retreats & Gatherings
Space for organizations, healers, and movements to step away from burnout, reconnect with the land, and return with renewed strength.

This is infrastructure for survival. Wellspring Mountain exists so our most vulnerable neighbors, and our communities as a whole, have somewhere to turn when life unravels.

🌿 But here’s the truth: this work is bigger than the skeleton crew that has sustained it for the last decade. To thrive, to fufill this mission, Spring Mountain Wellness needs all of us. From caring for infrastructure and meeting access needs, to fairly compensating healers and keeping the doors open 24/7, many hands make light work.

📞 Phone: 743-241-6310
📧 Email: [email protected]
🌐 Website: springmountainwellness.org
📍 Location: Lowgap, NC

Join the weave that holds us together. Support Wellspring Mountain: https://actionnetwork.org/fundraising/help-sustain-crisis-refuge-for-our-community/