Urban Outdoor Skills, La Cañada Flintridge

For Urban Outdoor Skills staff Pascal Baudar and Mia Wasilevich, living sustainably is more than just talk. Baudar has been sourcing his own food since his childhood in Belgium, and Wasilevich—a self-taught chef—lives off her own urban garden. Together they run Urban Outdoor Skills, teaching their students self-reliance through classes where they pickle and can their own foods or make organic soaps from wild aromatic plants. Underlying every session is a bounty of expertise in foraging from the surrounding mountain wilderness: nettles and yucca become piquant sauces, seeds become breads and crackers, and flowers become wood-sprite birthday cakes.