Family owned by
wilderness professionals
who built this from the ground up.
When a family designates Bonaventure as their representative, they are placing their most sacred moment in the hands of people who have devoted their lives to these wild places. Our team includes former National Park rangers, a soil scientist and mountaineer, an 18-year editorial professional and wilderness expedition leader, and a former NPS operations director. We carry every ceremony as if it were our own.
National Park Ceremony
We fell in love in the National Parks.
We keep coming back.
These photos were taken during an actual ash scattering ceremony trip. Not a vacation — a ceremony. We brought our whole family.
That is who we are. We are Sarah-Marie and Joe, and we have a growing family of eight. We met in the National Parks. We fell in love in these wild places. We built our lives around them — and now, with our children strapped to our backs and riding in strollers along the boardwalks, we return to honor the families who trust us with the most sacred moment of their lives.
There is no team of strangers here. No call center. No one who will hand off your loved one to someone they've never met. When you choose Bonaventure, you are choosing us — our family, our hands, our hearts — in the places we know better than anywhere on earth.
in the Parks
destinations
every ceremony
Meet the Family
You're Trusting
Click on any team member to read their full story. These are not just credentials — they are lives built around the places where your loved one will rest.
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Sarah-Marie Sherbon
Sarah-Marie led wilderness hikes at Yellowstone through thermal features, river crossings, and bear country, managed 50-person backcountry expeditions at Isle Royale, and oversaw staff and guest experience at Mt. Rainier. Before the parks she organized events for H&R Block, Garmin, Hallmark, and the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia — in-gallery ballets, private Monet exhibitions, banquets for royalty. She founded a veterans program that reached 3 million monthly readers.
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Joe Sherbon
An active-duty Park Ranger and scientist — aquatics, fisheries, soil science, ornithology trained under America's foremost ornithologist. He has served at Yellowstone and Custer State Park, explored cave systems, tracked bear kills through remote backcountry, and hiked hundreds of miles of trails few visitors ever see. An accomplished mountaineer: full Tetons traverse, Devil's Tower, the backside of Mt. Rushmore, the Black Hills needle spires.
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Mark Hoduski
A Fulbright Scholar, published author, and multiple-time Teacher of the Year who has spent over forty years bringing American history to life. Former ranger at the Harry S. Truman Home, board member of the Truman Presidential Library, and invited resident at Mount Vernon and Monticello. His grandmother was bitten by a bear in Yellowstone — the family still loves that story.
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Brian Hoduski
Nearly 37 years with the National Park Service — park ranger, museum curator, resource manager, and interim park superintendent. Retired as chief of museum and archival services for Isle Royale, Keweenaw, and Pictured Rocks. Friends with Bess Truman. Lives on the shore of Lake Superior under the Northern Lights. Knows every plant on the trail by name.
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Tessa McGuire
$400M annual revenue. 2 million guests. 400 employees at Zion alone. Record-breaking sales at Mt. Rainier. Sol Duc at Olympic. Celebrity weddings in canyon and glacier settings. Search and Rescue operations alongside the NPS. Tribal relationships with the Quileute, Navajo, and Paiute Nations. Certified Northern Lights Guide in the Arctic Circle. Few people on earth have done what Tessa has done in America's wild places.
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Anna Strasburg
Published author with thousands of books in print. National public speaker who has moved audiences of thousands. Ran coast-to-coast across America. Summited Mt. Rainier. Certified sailboat captain who sails the Gulf Coast with her family. Based near Pensacola, she leads ceremonies with dolphin encounters and sunset settings that feel almost impossible to believe.
Life in the Parks
Every photograph here was taken by our family and team — in the parks where we lived, worked, guided, and performed ceremonies. No stock photos. No staged shoots. This is our life in these places, and it's the life we bring to every ceremony we perform.
Decades of Real Experience
Our credentials aren't titles on a page. They are years of early mornings, difficult terrain, and moments that demanded everything we had.
You know who we are. Now let us help you.
Ready to honor
your loved one?
Browse our destinations, learn how the process works, or simply reach out. We are here — with patience, honesty, and the kind of care that only comes from people who have given their lives to these places.
Sarah-Marie has spent years in America's most iconic landscapes. At Yellowstone, she led groups of up to 15 on full-day wilderness hikes through thermal features, river crossings, and bear country. At Isle Royale — one of the most remote parks in the country — she managed in-depth backcountry expeditions for groups of 50 or more. At Mt. Rainier, she oversaw staff and guest experience with the same meticulous care she brings to everything she touches.
Before the parks, she spent years in the corporate art world building extraordinary experiences for people who had seen everything. For H&R Block, Garmin, Hallmark, and Burns & McDonnell. A banquet for the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia. In-gallery ballets. Private exhibitions of Monet's works. She produced events for international dignitaries where the margin for error was zero and the standard was perfection.
She later founded a program bringing military veterans to National Parks and abroad to honor their service and aid in their healing. She conducted hundreds of veteran interviews, produced video tributes, and built lasting partnerships with Walmart, Wreaths Across America, Honor Flight, FASTPORT, and Hiring Our Heroes. Her writing reached 3 million readers monthly.
In Yellowstone, she once honored a woman named Marie — orphaned, deeply loved, with a gift for animals, especially wolves. At sunset above Lamar Valley, where the aspens blazed gold and the gorge dropped hundreds of feet to a roaring river, Sarah-Marie scattered her ashes. That night, under the Milky Way, wolves howled. They were welcoming Marie home.
What ties it all together for her is honoring others through telling their stories beautifully. Sarah-Marie believes everyone deserves a final chapter as vivid as the life they lived — and she has spent her career proving she knows how to write one.
Joe is a conservation park ranger and scientist. He came to the work the same way most great rangers do: not by choosing nature, but by being unable to choose anything else. He has served at Custer State Park and across America’s public lands, hiking hundreds of miles of backcountry trails that rarely appear on any map.
A scientist by training and instinct, his expertise spans aquatics, fisheries, and soil science — and he studied ornithology under the United States' foremost ornithologist, developing a passion for birds that has never left him. He has explored cave systems in the backcountry, scoped bear kills through remote backcountry, and developed the kind of environmental knowledge that only comes from being out there, season after season, in all conditions.
His mountaineering résumé is genuinely remarkable. The full Grand Tetons traverse — one of the most demanding routes in the country. The backside of Mt. Rushmore. Devil's Tower, multiple ascents. The needle spires of the Black Hills, multiple climbs. Mt. Rainier summit. He has also applied the same analytical rigor to the corporate world, driving operational efficiencies at scale.
But for all the summits and systems, Joe is, at his core, a kind and quietly extraordinary man. He is the person in the park who notices the lost child, finds the lost dog, returns the lost phone. Someone who pays attention in the way that very few people actually do. Off the trail, he is likely at the water's edge, perfecting a rock skip, or tracking down a mint chocolate chip ice cream cone.
Former Park Ranger Mark Hoduski is an incredible historian and one of the best storytellers in the country. From Mount Vernon to international memorials like Auschwitz, he is a beloved public speaker who makes history come alive.
His love of parks has been handed down through generations. His mother helped conserve them through the EPA. His brother became a park ranger. Mark became a park ranger. And his grandmother got bitten by a bear in Yellowstone — the family still loves that story.
A Fulbright Scholar, published author, and multiple-time Teacher of the Year, Mark has spent over forty years bringing American history to life. He served as a ranger at the Harry S. Truman Home and on the board of the Truman Presidential Library, and has been invited to reside at historical homes from George Washington's Mount Vernon to Thomas Jefferson's Monticello.
Mark is most alive under the trees or canoeing down a river. From hiking Yellowstone to the aspens in the Rockies, he's put in thousands of miles exploring our National Parks. He brings to Bonaventure the same gift he brings to every room he enters — the ability to make a moment feel like it matters, because it does.
Brian Hoduski spent nearly 37 years with the National Park Service as a park ranger, museum curator, resource manager, and interim park superintendent. He retired as the chief of museum and archival services for Isle Royale, Keweenaw, and Pictured Rocks — some of the most sacred natural places in the country.
Brian began his NPS career as a park ranger at the Harry S. Truman Home, where he became friends with Harry Truman's wife, Bess Truman. He is a wonderful resource for archaeological impacts and general park insight — nearly four decades of knowing how these places work from the inside.
He lives on the shore of Lake Superior, under the Northern Lights, and has helped keep places like Isle Royale beautiful for generations to come. Brian is a skilled botanist by hobby — the kind of person who knows every plant on the trail by name. When he walks into a forest, he is not a visitor. He is home.
She's the kind of person who makes you wonder why anyone settles for ordinary.
By 30, Tessa McGuire had already run one of the largest hospitality operations in the National Park system — $400 million in annual revenue, 2 million guests a year, a team of 400 at Zion alone. She broke sales records at Mt. Rainier, where she was the top-rated concession manager in the entire National Park system. She managed Sol Duc at Olympic, where guests soak in natural hot springs beneath a canopy of old-growth forest that has looked the same for a thousand years.
Then there were the weddings — celebrities who came to her when they wanted something no ballroom could offer: ceremonies against canyon walls, receptions beside glaciers, florals that stopped people mid-breath. She executed with a strategist's precision in environments where the wild doesn't forgive mistakes. She didn't make them.
Her credentials go further than most people expect. She is a Certified Environmental Geothermal Guide and a Certified Northern Lights Tour Guide who has led expeditions in the Arctic Circle. She has built deep relationships with the Quileute Tribe on the Olympic Peninsula, the Navajo Nation, and the Paiute Tribe. She has partnered with the National Park Service on Search and Rescue recovery operations.
Now, as Director of Strategic Partnerships at Bonaventure, she brings all of it — the operational rigor, the artist's sensibility, the hard-won reverence for sacred ground — to building the relationships that allow families across the country to access something truly extraordinary.
There is a quality to Anna that is difficult to put into words but impossible to miss. An energy. A warmth. An absolute refusal to let any story go untold or any moment pass without being fully felt.
She brings 3 years of National Parks experience alongside an extraordinary range of accomplishments beyond those borders. She is a published author with thousands of books in print. A national public speaker who has moved audiences of thousands. She ran coast-to-coast across America. She summited Mount Rainier. She is a certified sailboat captain who sails the Gulf Coast with her large family.
Based near Pensacola, Florida, Anna leads Gulf Coast ceremonies personally and on-site. These are not ceremonies happening from a distance — she is there, in person, in settings that feel almost impossible to believe: dolphins moving through the water at the moment of scattering, the Gulf turning gold and pink as the sun meets the horizon, a family standing together in a place of genuine beauty, feeling their loved one finally, peacefully home.
She carries into every ceremony the same conviction that carried her across an entire continent on foot. She is one of those rare people who makes everyone around her feel that what is happening right now — this moment, this life, this story — matters completely.
