Today we’d like to introduce you to Dakota Polivka.
Hi Dakota, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
I was born and raised in Omaha, Nebraska, and when I look at what I’m creating now, I can trace so much of it back to my childhood.
My parents nurtured my love for nature without ever really announcing that they were doing it. It was simply part of our family life. We spent years camping, gardening, riding bikes, and being outside together. Some of my strongest childhood memories are connected to the outdoors, and I think those experiences quietly taught me to notice the world around me. Nature wasn’t something separate that we had to seek out; it was woven into our everyday lives.
That connection followed me into adulthood. I studied Sustainability, Geology, and Art at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, which sounds like a slightly unusual combination until you know me. I have always been fascinated by the natural world, by creativity, and by the relationship people have with the places they call home. Before becoming a mother, I worked in environmental and conservation-focused roles, and I really believed that would be the primary way I contributed to those things.
Then I became a mom.
Motherhood shifted my understanding of time in a way I never expected. The days could feel incredibly long while the months disappeared. I wanted so badly to give my children a childhood filled with curiosity, nature, creativity, traditions, and meaningful time together, but I was also experiencing the mental load that comes with raising little kids.
I found myself constantly searching for things to do with them. I would open my phone on a Saturday morning, search for activities or places to go, save ten ideas, become overwhelmed by all of them, and sometimes end up doing none of them.
I realized I didn’t need more ideas.
I needed a plan.
I wanted someone to say, “This week, notice the birds. Read this book together. Make this recipe. Go explore this place. Try these few activities.”
So I started creating that for our own family.
I began organizing our year around the seasons and what was already happening outside our door. In spring, we might pay attention to worms, soil, buds, or bees. Summer brought strawberries, picnics, wildflowers, trains, and bugs. Fall naturally gave us apples, pumpkins, farms, and changing leaves. Winter invited us to notice birds, snow, light, rest, and warmth.
Each week had a theme, a place to explore, a handful of hands-on activities, something to cook together, a song, and a book.
It wasn’t meant to feel like school at home, and it wasn’t another list for parents to complete perfectly. It was meant to take some of the thinking off our plates and give us a gentle rhythm for being together.
That eventually became Wilder Seasons.
What started around our own kitchen table grew into a 52-week family guide to Omaha. I wanted families to rediscover the places around them and experience their city through their children’s eyes. A garden you have passed a hundred times feels completely different when you’re searching for bees with a toddler. A walk around your neighborhood can become an adventure when you’re looking for the first signs of spring.
After releasing the Omaha edition, something happened that I hadn’t fully expected: families began asking us to create Wilder Seasons for their communities, too.
What had started as something I made because I needed it as a mother was becoming something other families were telling me they needed, too.
That was the moment I began to realize Wilder Seasons might become bigger than the little book I had created around our kitchen table.
At its heart, though, it is still rooted in the same thing my parents gave me and that I hope to give my own children: a childhood spent noticing the world around you, being curious about where you live, and understanding that some of our most meaningful memories can come from the simplest days together.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
One of the biggest challenges has been building a business centered around presence and slowing down while living through one of the busiest seasons of my own life.
I’m raising two little boys while building Wilder Seasons, and there is definitely some irony in occasionally rushing everyone out the door while running a company whose entire philosophy is about slowing down and noticing things.
I’ve had to learn that I don’t have to perfectly embody the message in order to believe deeply in it.
For me, presence isn’t something I’ve mastered. It is something I continually return to.
There has also been a huge learning curve on the business side. I didn’t come from publishing. I wasn’t trained in printing, wholesale, inventory management, fulfillment, advertising, retail relationships, or book distribution. I had a background in environmental work and art and then suddenly found myself learning things like paper weights, bleed lines, freight shipments, wholesale margins, packaging, advertising platforms, and inventory projections.
There have been plenty of moments where I have thought, “I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing.”
And then I figure out the next thing.
We’ve dealt with printing delays, inventory challenges, mistakes, changing timelines, launches that required adjustments, and all of the normal uncertainty that comes with growing something quickly. I think entrepreneurship has taught me that there is rarely a point where you suddenly feel completely prepared. You usually learn by moving.
Another challenge has been trusting an idea before there was much evidence that it would work.
When I began Wilder Seasons, it was essentially a solution to my own problem. I didn’t know whether other families would understand it. I didn’t know whether people would buy a physical book when there were endless free activity ideas online.
But I believed there was a difference between having access to information and having something thoughtfully curated for you.
Parents don’t necessarily need another thousand ideas. Sometimes they need someone to narrow the world down a little and say, “Here are five lovely things you could do together this week.”
That belief has continued to guide us.
The other lesson has been learning not to equate growth with doing everything at once. There are so many things I want Wilder Seasons to become. I want to create more cities. I want to build more resources for families. I have a constant stream of ideas.
But I’m also learning that businesses, like families, have seasons.
Sometimes the best thing you can do is tend carefully to what is already growing rather than constantly planting something new.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
Wilder Seasons is a collection of seasonal family guidebooks designed to make meaningful time together easier.
Each guide follows families through an entire year, one week at a time. Every week has a seasonal theme along with hands-on activities, something to cook together, music, books, and an adventure or place to explore.
The idea is incredibly simple: instead of asking parents to continually come up with ways to make childhood magical, we give them a starting point.
One week might be about butterflies. Another might be trains, apples, birds, wildflowers, farms, or snow.
Families can use as much or as little of each week as they want. Maybe you do everything. Maybe you only read the book and take a walk. The goal isn’t completion.
It’s connection.
Our original books are city-specific, so families are also introduced to museums, gardens, trails, local businesses, nature centers, farms, libraries, and other places within their own communities. One of my favorite parts of creating those editions is finding places that families may have driven past for years without realizing what was there.
We’ve since expanded beyond Omaha into other Midwest communities, and our long-term hope is to continue bringing Wilder Seasons to more cities.
But families kept asking for books in places we hadn’t reached yet, and creating thoughtful local editions takes time.
That eventually led to our USA Edition.
The USA book takes families on a year-long journey through all 50 states, but it isn’t designed as a traditional travel guide. You don’t need to fly across the country to use it.
Instead, each state becomes inspiration.
A week inspired by Wyoming might invite your family to find a wide-open place with a big sky. Maine might inspire you to learn about forests and coastlines. Louisiana might lead you into food, music, wildlife, and culture.
The idea is to bring the states to wherever your family happens to live.
Part of the reason we created it was because I want my own children to grow up knowing and loving where they come from. I want them to understand the landscapes, traditions, wildlife, foods, music, and stories that make different parts of our country unique.
We also created a companion coloring journey through the United States, and I see all of these products as different ways of encouraging families to engage with the world around them together.
What makes Wilder Seasons different, I think, is that we aren’t trying to fill every minute of childhood.
We’re actually trying to do the opposite.
The books create enough structure that parents don’t have to spend their limited mental energy planning everything, while leaving plenty of room for children to lead.
If your child becomes completely obsessed with the worm you found during Worm Week and ignores everything else I suggested, I consider that a successful week.
Alright, so to wrap up, is there anything else you’d like to share with us?
One thing I would want people to know is that Wilder Seasons isn’t really about creating a picture-perfect childhood.
I think parents already feel enough pressure.
We’re surrounded by beautiful images of elaborate crafts, incredible vacations, themed sensory tables, perfectly packed lunches, immaculate homes, and endless lists of things we should be doing with our kids.
I don’t want Wilder Seasons to become another voice telling parents they’re falling behind.
I want it to feel like relief.
Your children’s childhood can be deeply meaningful without being extravagant.
You can bake muffins together.
You can go to the library.
You can watch a caterpillar in the garden.
You can learn the name of the bird outside your kitchen window.
You can spread a blanket underneath a tree and call it an adventure.
Some of the moments my boys have been most captivated by would look incredibly ordinary from the outside.
And maybe that’s the thing I keep learning through all of this: wonder isn’t something we need to manufacture for children.
They already have it.
Most of the time, they are the ones showing us where it is.
I’ve also been incredibly moved by the community that has grown around Wilder Seasons. So many other local business owners, bookstores, makers, mothers, educators, garden centers, and families have encouraged us, carried our books, shared our work, introduced us to other people, and simply believed in the idea.
Building this business has made me appreciate just how powerful local community can be.
And it has shaped what I hope Wilder Seasons becomes.
I don’t only want to sell books. I want to help create a culture where families feel more connected to their communities, to the natural world, and to one another.
The world is loud. Parenting can feel loud. Building a business can certainly feel loud.
But wonder is still here.
I’m learning alongside my children that sometimes we just have to slow down enough to notice it.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://wilderseasons.com
- Instagram: @wilder_seasons
- Facebook: Wilder Seasons
