It’s been a fantastic summer and we had a lot of fun running a wide variety of programs. Yes northern Maine has had a lot of rain. But it led to people perfecting their wet-weather fire skills, and allowed me to run a bunch of whitewater that can usually only be run in early May. [...]

I got an email from my friend Stephen Marshall today about the launching of his new site, Backwoods Adventures (backwoodadventures.com) in Nova Scotia.  Stephen and I worked together a few summers ago and he’s doing great things with first nations people in the Maritimes.  I’m hopeing to get over there one of these days so [...]

This morning I’m wondering where the idea about surviving in the bush “with only a knife” came from?  If I could have only one tool for a trip of a 1-100 days, it would be a full-sized axe, not a knife.  The reason is that an axe makes a better knife than a knife makes [...]

Most survival advice available in the press is dubious at best, written by professional writers and not seasoned instructors with field experience.  Thankfully Outside Magazine decided to hire Tony Nester of Ancient Pathways to answer their  reader’s questions on their Survival Guru blog. Tony’s got two decades of experience teaching in the field, has written [...]

I came across this graphic on Keith Johnson’s Permaculture And Regenerative Design News blog.  Keith used it to support the idea that the production systems that sustain major urban areas lie far the urban boundary.  The term we use for this is displaced impact, and we’ve written about how it applies to minimum impact camping.  [...]

It’s looking like I’ll be trading our white, 15 passenger van, aka the white tube of misery, in for another vehicle later this month. The name was coined by Jeff Butler on our now-infamous roadtrip to Canoecopia a few years ago.  We were driving through Chicago on our way back from Madison, Wisconsin and were [...]

The cord I’ve been using for a decade is finally available online. I got tired of paying the high prices for paracord in the 1990’s and switched to using commercial fishing twine. It’s tough and much cheaper than paracord. The place where I get it recently added an online store. To check out the cord, [...]

The book of poetry titled Pine Tree Ballads was published in 1902 and has some great pieces about the north woods of Maine.  The Knight Of The Spike-Sole Boots by Holman Day tells the story of a sport who tried to run the Hulling Machine on the East Branch of the Penobscot River.  I’ve run [...]

Our new podcast is coming together, and the first episode is live on the web.  There is a bit of work left to do getting everything set up and integrated. Note: In December, 2013 we moved our podcast to it’s current place on our own site.

This morning after dropping my son off at preschool I was walking down the stairs to the house and I heard a bunch of crows making a ruckus.  After looking towards the lake for a few moments, I spotted a shape in one of the white pines, about 20 feet from our deck.  It was [...]

I wrote up a document on helping people prepare for their field school course recently, and put it online with a link from our Registration page.  You can read it at: http://www.jackmtn.com/PDF/JMB_field_school_preparation.pdf The text is below. ———————————————————- ———————————————————- 1.    Food, meals and cooking 2.    Drinking Water 3.    Electricity 4.    Gear And Gear Lists 5.    Sleeping [...]

I’m back from the field school after a great spring semester.  The weather is perfect, the perennial edibles are coming up in force, and we’ve got an edible plants of early summer workshop tomorrow.  More to come, including thoughts about the spring semester, are coming soon.

We’re taking a resupply break at the field school today and made the trek to Presque Isle.  We just finished week 4 (of 6) of the spring semester with a trip on Mooseleuk Stream and the Aroostook River.  We did some fly fishing on the stream and I caught a beautiful 11″ wild brook trout.  [...]

There has been a lot of interest in simplifying and preparedness recently as a result of the economic circumstances many are facing.  Knowing how to take care of your family, even if the modern conveniences stop working for a while, is something at least one person in each household should know.  The good news is [...]

Things have been busy with a new baby and getting ready for the spring semester.  I’ve been working on a white ash bow, and today I cut the handle and thinned the stave using a draw knife and spoke shave. There’s a strip of open water along the lake shore a few feet wide, and [...]

I’ve been trading emails with Taj Forer for a few months, and last weekend we finally got together.  Taj is a photographer and one of the founders of Daylight Magazine.  We discussed a project he’s working on documenting traditional wilderness skills and made plans for him to join us for some of the spring bushcraft [...]

I was recently interviewed by Iain Haywood at ooh.com.  You can read the piece here.  In addition to some nice photos of Ernie Davis and David Bosum, I’m quoted on educational philosophy: “At its best, teaching should be invisible; a person who learns from a mediocre instructor will realize how talented their instructor is. The [...]

We get a lot of requests for work-study options for our programs, so we’re introducing one for summer, 2009. Duties include organic gardening, landscaping, cutting firewood and building an intimate relationship with the land. You’ll live in your own tent or a shelter you build. You’ll maintain an off-the-grid solar pv system, our composting system, [...]

On April 1st I’m giving a talk at the Goodwin Library in Farmington, NH, on preparedness, sustainability and using low-tech techniques to recession-proof your home and family. I’ll be discussing how to live gracefully without modern conveniences such as septic, running water, or electricity in the New England during all seasons.  Topics will range from [...]

Part 2 (of 2) of our Philosophy Of Bushcraft Video. Jack Mountain Bushcraft Journal – Episode 20. For a higher resolution version that combines parts 1 and 2, check it out at blip.tv.

Philosophy Of Bushcraft – Part 1. Jack Mountain Bushcraft Journal Episode 19. For a higher resolution version that combines part 1 and 2, go to our blip.tv channel.

Yesterday I received a dvd copy of a television show shot a year ago called I’ll Try Anything Once and featuring Touré and myself, with a guest appearance by Don Merchant.  I spent several days teaching Touré the skills of winter survival, culminating his 24-hour solo in the winter woods.  I hadn’t seen any footage [...]

I’ve been a fan of Bill Mason’s films and books for several decades.  He was a proponent of wood canvas canoes, canvas tents, and traditional skills of the bush.  I picked out a great quotation from his film Waterwalker the other night: You see things differently when you travel the way the native peoples did. [...]

Our semester course originally grew out of the desire to move past a skills-only paradigm to include the experience of living a simple outdoor life.  After ten years and 12 semester courses, I think we’ve been successful at introducing a new idea of outdoor education to the world that isn’t limited to just hard or [...]

If you haven’t seen it yet, check out the National Film Board Of Canada’s site.  They’ve put their archives online for free, so we’re able to watch a bunch of great films right on the web. To put this in perspective, about 15 years ago I heard about the film Cree Hunters Of Mistassini.  I [...]

I had the opportunity to do some reading and enjoy some spirited discussions on our recent trip to northern Quebec. One of the topics that kept coming up was the lack of decent terminology in english for the simple, outdoor lifestyle based on skill, simple tools and a relationship with the land and it’s resources. [...]

Over the weekend I learned that the article about our 2005 canoe trip on the Big Black River that Tom Haines wrote appeared in the book The Best Travel Writing 2006; True Stories From Around The World.  It originally ran in the travel section of The Boston Globe on June 12, 2005. You can get [...]

Our recent trip to northern Quebec was fantastic.  We had amazing weather, good company, great food, and more than enough laughter for our 8-days in the bush.  I had the good fortune to have Ben McNutt, Lisa Fenton, Matt Upson and Steven Hanton from Woodsmoke, a bushcraft and wilderness survival school in the UK, on [...]

My friend and fellow bushcraft instructor David Cronenwett has a great new blog called A View From Aerie Mountain: Natural History, Bushcraft, Outdoor Survival, Grizzly Bears, Human Ecology, Montana And More.  David is an experienced instructor of outdoor living and has some keen insights into both outdoor life and people. His post titled Personas Among [...]

In the morning I’m heading north with a small group to Oujé-Bougoumou, Quebec, for 8 days of snowshoeing and winter living with my friend David Bosum.  I’m bringing a group with me to experience the Cree way of life and hospitality. I’ve taken several trips with David over the past decade, and all have been [...]

In addition to being the base for our programs, our Bushcraft And Sustainability Field School is also where we experiment with different technologies in order to achieve a simple, comfortable, rural life.  It’s a demonstration site, but not in the sense that we create alternative ways of doing things and then revert back to the [...]

Arctic explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson wrote that “adventure is a sign of incompetence.”  But if it isn’t for adventure, why do people do the things they do?  I’m with Stefansson on adventure.  It implies that you’re not prepared for what you face, which, in the case of living a life outdoors, should never be the case.  [...]

Friluftsliv (pronounced: free-looft-sleev) literally means “free-air-life”, and is translated by Roger and Sarah Isberg for their book as “simple life.”  Originally written in Swedish,  it was published and reprinted three times there before being expanded and translated to English. Here’s an explanation of the term by Roger from the introduction; It defines the philosophy and [...]

If you’re interested in keeping up with all the updates we put on the web, check out our FriendFeed page at: friendfeed.com/jmbushcraft It lists all the updates we make on the web, including this blog, photos, videos, Facebook updates, etc.  I’m going to put it on our site soon, but for the time being check [...]

In the February issue of Men’s Fitness we’re featured in an article titled “Surviving The Elements” (“When Tragedy Strikes” in the print edition) by Jesse Huffman.  We offer some survival advice to hikers and snowshoers. Read the article here.

We’re wrapping up week 1 of the Earth Skills Winter Program, and I’m getting all the gear assembled for our snowshoe trip next week.  We’ve had the coldest temperatures of the year so far, but it’s been a fun week anyway and we’ve covered a lot of ground.  Today I’m busy prepping and packing what [...]

The number of primitive skills and survival schools has swelled in the last few years, and while all schools are not created equal there are many opportunities to learn wilderness skills these days.  It’s important to be clear about what we do because it’s different than what’s available elsewhere.  Yes, we teach skills.  We’re among [...]

I got an email from Tim MacWelch of the Earth Connection School of Wilderness Survival And Ancient Skills in Virginia today.  They’re running a weekend primitive skills gathering this month, January 16-18.  From his email: Wolf Moon Camp – Primitive Skills Gathering – January 16-18 Earth Connection School of Wilderness Survival and Ancient Skills is [...]

We’re introducing a new format for the fall, 2009 Earth Skills Semester Program.  We’re breaking the course up into two blocks of four weeks each, with a week off in the middle.  And instead of working five days a week, we’ll be working six days a week.  With the practical exam at the end of [...]

We went out on a family tracking walk yesterday.  The snow was perfect and there were all sorts of tracks for my son to investigate.  It’s fun being outside with him and seeing the landscape through his eyes.  One of the neat things we can learn from children is the idea of vu-ja-de.  It’s the [...]

There’s a lot of information about bushcraft on the web, but much of it is focused around equipment and celebrities, not knowledge and experience.  If you’re just getting started, here are seven things to keep in mind. 1.  It’s not about the gear.  We did alright for 99% of human history without all the latest [...]

My friend David Cronenwett is the co-owner of the Wilderness Arts Institute in Montana, an experienced bushcraft instructor and a professional naturalist.  He sent me this essay he wrote about a winter survival exercise that became a wilderness survival episode last winter in Montana’s Bob Marshall Wilderness.  It’s a good read and there are lessons [...]

In preparing for our programs I always tell people to bring enough sleeping bag.  If you know you can get 8 or ten hours of warm, comfortable sleep at night most situations are tolerable.  My good friend and semester course alumnus, Sean Fagan, recently sent me a note about his experience with us in northern [...]

Our 2009 calendar is complete and you can view it here.  I’m putting it all on Google Calendar, and have it embedded at the bottom of the page.  We’ve got a bunch of new programs, including a week of making pack baskets, bows and canoe paddles along with staying in a nearby resort.  We’ve also [...]

I just finished reading Tom Jamrog’s blog post reviewing the Snow Walkers Rendezvous in November.  He’s got several videos in the post, including the tour of the tents and part one of Allan Brown’s torching of a canvas tent.  It’s definitely worth the read.  If it’s difficult for you to get to Vermont in November, [...]

I’ve got the updated details on the 2009 yearlong (7 months to be specific) immersion program online. The price has come way down and there is a discount for bringing your own canoe.  We’re accepting applications until April 1st and will only take ten people.  Full details are available at jackmtn.com/esyear.html.

We put up a blog for the participants of our semester programs last spring, and a big part of a spring logbook was recently posted. So if you want to find out more of what goes on in our programs, you can check it out at The Bushcraft Experience.

Below is the 21-point curriculum for our spring, 2009 Bushcraft Canoe Expedition Semester. Wilderness Survival – Basic, intermediate and advanced survival. Fire – Fire making with and without modern tools. Shelter Construction – Building for survival, short-term and long-term stays. Water – Acquisition And Purification. Navigation – Barehand (using no modern tools), map and compass. [...]

We’re redesigning our spring semester for 2009. The new format will be a 6-week program with most of the time spent traveling through the bush of northern Maine. There are 5 phases to the program, each of which can be taken as an individual course. Phase 1: Weeklong bushcraft and guide training immersion course. Phase [...]

We use steel axes and knives on a daily basis in our programs, and I’ve been asked several times how this meshes with the primitive skills movement.  My answer has two parts.  First, I believe that in order to progress to the skill level where a tool such as an axe or knife is no [...]

The major updates to our site are done, and everything seems to be working.  If you come across a problem, please let us know.

Many of our web pages are out of date.  Our menus are out of date.  Our calendar is in need of an upgrade.  All of this is coming in the next two weeks.  I’ve been working with new menu software and am almost ready to go live.  So if you’ve been frustrated by our website [...]

December 16-20 is the annual Maine Wilderness Guides Organization winter guide training course, and I’ll be working with Kevin Slater of Mahoosuc Guide Service again this year to put it on. It’s a great opportunity for those who are new to winter living and guiding to get some experience in the bush and learn about [...]

We’re got two new programs for ESSP alumni coming in 2009. The first is a practicum, where people gather at our Bushcraft And Sustainability Field School for a week (or two) to get back in touch with the bush life. It’s an opportunity to spend some unstructured time working on subjects of interest, prepare for [...]

I love to research and travel on the old canoe routes that were the highways before the vast northern forests of Maine had a single logging road.  A few years ago I picked up a copy of a book called “The Indian Canoe Routes Of Maine” by David S. Cook, which described many of these [...]

We’re adding a new member to our team – The University Of Maine at Presque Isle.  We’ll be actively collaborating with UMPI beginning in 2009 and are excited about the opportunities this presents.  It’s a great opportunity for college students seeking to include buscraft as part of their studies.  More at the UMPI Recreation and [...]

I had a great time at the Snow Walkers’ Rendezvous in Vermont, both meeting up with old friends and making some new ones. My workshop on using an axe and lighting wet-weather fires was well attended, and the food was outstanding as it always is at the Hulbert Outdoor Center. I also attended an informative [...]

A question I get asked on a regular basis, and one I wish would just go away, is what I think about the TV survival shows.  Usually, the person asking likes one show and doesn’t like another, and is willing to support their hero to no end.  Having spent the last few years with no [...]

Tomorrow I’m headed to Fairlee, Vermont for the Snow Walkers’ Rendezvous at the Hulbert Outdoor Center.  The focus of the event is on traditional winter travel skills of the north.  I’ll be running workshops on axemanship and fire building, but as is the case with all rendezvous or gathering-type events where I run workshops, I’d [...]

Jack Mountain was featured in an article titled Extreme Survival Schools by Scott Bowen that hit the web on October 15. From the article; “The instructors at Jack Mountain Bushcraft can teach you everything from how to live happily in the woods with nothing but a knife, to proper snow-shoeing techniques, to the art of [...]

We wrapped up our 12 semester program over the weekend, and I’m back in NH for a short while.  It was the first semester run entirely at our 41-acre Bushcraft And Sustainability Field School in Masardis, Maine, and the new location added immensely to the experience.  The beautiful, clear waters of the Aroostook River, the [...]

This photo is looking upstream on the Aroostook river.  Our Bushcraft & Sustainability Field School is on the right.  I loved this photo because of the light on the basket and canoe.

When the tail end of hurricane Kyle swung through Aroostook County and dumped several inches of rain it brought all the rivers up to their spring flood stage in two days.  We took advantage of this and went exploring on some of the nearby rivers. With each passing week I learn more about the area [...]

This month (October) Jack Mountain is featured in an article titled “Could You Handle An Emergency?” by Michelle Crouch.  The article deals with how to handle a variety of emergencies.  Our short blurb focuses on what to do if attacked by a black bear when hiking.  For those who want the short answer, it’s to [...]

Friend and Maine Guide Shawn McNutt has been posting his journal and photos of a fall, 2006 canoe guide training course we ran on the Allagash on his blog Guide Spot.  It’s great to read his perspectives on the trip, and his photos really bring out the natural beauty of the waterway. You can read [...]

We’re putting together a busy schedule of short courses for this fall, winter and spring, and we’ve got a great new venue where they’ll be offered; the Ossipee Mountain Grange.  As part of our ongoing partnership with sustainability organization GALA, they’ll be hosting our workshop series in their new building.  The first scheduled workshop is [...]

Week 5 of the 10-week Earth Skills Semester Program is finished.  It’s been a great semester, and our new ground ere in Aroostook County has been flat-out amazing.  Last week I saw a lynx sneaking around camp, and I’ve been enjoying all the other wildlife we’ve seen.  In addition to the bald eagles, osprey, kestrels, [...]

We spent the week on a remote, northern Maine lake learning the arts of canoe paddling and poling.  Cooking every meal over the open fire, watching the bald eagles fly over the lake and land in the white pines, listening to the songs of the loons who would sit in the water off the point [...]

Week one of the fall semester is completed, and next week we’ll be in the bush camping on some remote lakes.  It will be an introduction to the traditional skills of canoeing and the grace of living in the bush. This past week we identified and used numerous wild food plants, as well as a [...]

In the morning I’m off to begin the 10-week fall Earth Skills Semester Program. It looks like there will be no internet access at our place after all, so I’ll be away from the blog and email for a while. If you want to get in touch with me, the best way is by phone [...]

I spent the last two weeks in Masardis with a friend putting up our new cabin.  The day before we started working on it I found a few large moose tracks under what became the center of the building, so I’ve been referring to it as the Moose Track Lodge.  It’s the next stage in [...]

From an interview with Wade Davis in the April, 2008 issue of Discover magazine. True or not, it’s a great story. During the 1950s the Canadian government forced the Inuit into settlements. A family from Arctic Bay told me this fantastic story of their grandfather who refused to go. The family, fearful for his life, [...]

We’re organizing a yearly trip for alumni of our bushcraft semester courses.  Our goal is to create avenues for continuing education and group learning.  The 2009 trip is still in the planning stages, but will likely take place on the Penobscot and Allagash rivers and be 2-3 weeks long. More of a practicum than a [...]

I was at the library in town tonight and found out that there was an article in the local paper about a recent edible and medicinal plant walk I ran. It’s in the July 17th edition of the Granite State News in the Home and Garden section. Titled “Finding edible plants and medicines in your [...]

Knowing we’d be far from the power lines this past semester, and knowing I’d want something to use as a generator to charge camera/camcorder/cell phone batteries, I bought a Freeplay Weza before the start of the course. I’ve had great luck with one of their other products, a hand-cranked LED lantern, and the way the [...]

One of the challenges of an extended stay in the bush during the warm (no snow or ice) seasons is planning meals that don’t require refrigeration. Of course, there is always the option of storing food in a cooler with store-bought ice, but this is a hassle as well as being expensive. There is also [...]

Times are tough, and they’re getting tougher. Gas prices keep going up, as do the costs for basic necessities. Many people are being squeezed. But what can they do? First, they can learn how to take care of themselves and their families. A good survival course can go a long way toward this goal of [...]

I’m inconvenienced by modern conveniences much of the time. They break, they suck up money, and when their full cost and upkeep is taken into account, they don’t seem make my life much more convenient. I like pumping and carrying water more than I like dealing with tempermental plumbing systems. I like composting toilets more [...]

Longer canoe trips, those of the mulit-week and mulit-watershed sort, have intrigued me for some time, but there has always been the problem of long carries. Not everyone who participates in our programs is fit enough to carry an 80 or 100 pound boat several miles. So to facilitate these types of experiences, I just [...]

We’re in the August issue of Men’s Journal with a write-up of our northern Quebec canoe and bushcraft trip with the Cree. Jesse Huffman wrote about some wilderness trips for August, including our trip, a course with BOSS, and trips with Outward Bound and NOLS in the Adventure section of the magazine. Included is a [...]

The 2008 fall bushcraft semester will be our 12th semester course, and the first one to run from start to finish at our new location in northern Maine on the banks of the Aroostook river. We’ve put together a schedule that takes advantage of our new location, with lots of time spent living and traveling [...]

We’re running a bushcraft canoe expedition in northern Quebec with native Cree guides again this year. It’s an amazing experience traveling with David Bosum, his wife Anna, and Lawrence Capissit, our other guide from 2007. Canoeing the historic waterways of their people and learning how they have lived off the land for thousands of years [...]

As the result of numerous requests for a small bushcraft kit of core components that people can bring to our courses, we’ve partnered with Ben’s Backwoods and put together a bushcraft kit of the most useful items. It consists of a Mora knife (you choose whether you want a wood or plastic handle), metal pot [...]

After 8 weeks living at our bush camp, I’m back for a short while enjoying creature comforts such as bug screens and electricity.  It was a great spring, and there is lots of work left to do there, but things are coming along well.  Look for more posts soon about our recent experiences.

I’ve had a lot of campfire discussions with friends, students and interns since I last had the ability to post without driving an hour.  Living outdoors for an extended period of time (in the last seven weeks I’ve spent four nights inside, on two separate trips to NH to see my family) not only hardens [...]

If you’re interested in some of our fall workshops, I’ve got our fall semester broken down into weeks and on our schedule as of today.  No, we don’t have internet in Masardis yet, but I took a trip into the Presque Isle library and have been working on it for a few hours.  The fall [...]

Last night I went through and updated each page of our website with our new address and phone number.  This morning I realized that I had written the new address on a previous blog post incorrectly.  That’s since been corrected.  Sorry for any confusion.

We wrapped up the spring Earth Skills Semester Program last week.  We finished out the course with ten days on the Allagash river, which was a great culmination to our time together.  We saw a bunch of wildlife and caught a bunch of trout on the flyrod, but nothing of significant size. Our other big [...]

At the beginning of this semester course I picked up a sun oven. They’re simple to operate, use no fuel or electricity, and can be used all day whenever the sun is shining. I figured I’d try out a commercial model before building a bigger one. It’s been a great acquisition and I won’t run [...]

I’m back for a day to pick up more gear. After a week in our new camp in Masardis, I’m completely in love with the location. We spent the week building permanent shelters, exploring the area, and exploring the river. We’ve got a new mailing address and a new phone number if you want to [...]

We’re off to our new base camp in Masardis, Maine tomorrow.  I hope to get the internet hooked up in a few weeks, but until then I won’t be posting, answering email, or doing anything else web-related.  If you need to get in touch with me, leave a message on our answering machine. Today we [...]

I’m featured along with Survivorman Les Stroud in an article titled “Getting Out Alive; Survival experts show pilots what to do when the propeller stops spinning” by Marc C. Lee. Although written for pilots who find themselves alone after ditching their airplane, it’s a good primer for most survival situations. You can read the article [...]

I saw an ad for a college today and in the photo they had as their centerpiece was a student in a lecture hall looking toward the front and acting interested. That’s a negative for me. I remember sitting through a bunch of lectures, some great, some not, but what I took away from the [...]

I’ve been diligently at work writing up my ideas and plans for the Jack Mountain Bushcraft University, and have been getting feedback from our alumni about the process. The general plan is to take the academic components we’ve developed over ten semester programs and put them online for anyone, anywhere, to use. We’re putting together [...]

It was a busy day yesterday. We baked some potatoes in the sun oven, baked some sourdough biscuits in the reflector oven, waterlined and shellaced a canoe, made fish spears, caught a bunch of fish with them, built a tripod for smoking them, filleted them and smoked them as the sun sank over the horizon. [...]

I do a lot of dutch oven cooking, but I don’t like the legs on them because I usually either hang it from a tripod or support it with fire irons. But I love the lids on the camp ovens because they have the lip that will hold coals. So I’ve been thinking about sawing [...]

I’ve taken a wide variety of wilderness medical courses around the northeast. In 2000, I took a winter medicine and rescue course at the AMC center in Pinkham Notch at the base of Mount Washington. It was a two-day course, and on many nights they have slide show presentations for the people staying there. The [...]

Last summer I guided a trip to northern Quebec where we spent a week with Cree guides David Bosum and Lawrence Capissit. They were born in the bush and have spent their lives living off of the country there. One day one of guys on the trip was asking David some questions about winter trips. [...]

This morning I saw five bald eagles over Rust Pond.  They come through each year as the ice starts to go out.  It’s a big deal because for the rest of the year I never see them around here.  I think they move further north.  There is a certain way they fly that is unique, [...]

Yesterday afternoon everybody carved a bucksaw frame. It’s a great project in that it teaches safe and precise knife skills. We build them with no nails or wooden pegs, so that friction is all that holds it together. To accomplish this the carving and fitting needs to be close to exact. If someone does a [...]

Yesterday afternoon the temperature was near 60 degrees (F), a big change from a week ago. Each morning I hear more birds singing, and the trees are getting ready to bud. Spring is almost here. One aspect of our programs that we don’t talk much about is the fact that students live outdoors in shelters [...]

After pressing a specimen of Lycopodium, we spent most of yesterday morning on navigation.  We introduced the compass, then built a compass from the sun which we maintained all day.  We rounded out the morning by making hand-spun rope, then having everyone make their own rope using a rope-spinner. The afternoon began with a sharpening [...]

“Having done is worth more than having read, having watched, or knowing how.” I was thinking about experiential learning yesterday when the line above came to me. I think it will be our slogan for 2008. We live in the era where information is everywhere. But we should never confuse familiarity with understanding or experience. [...]

Today we start week 2 of our spring bushcraft semester course.  The weather is warming up nicely, but there is still a lot of snow on the ground.  We scraped a few deer hides over the weekend, and in the next day or so we’ll have all of them scraped and hung up to dry.  [...]

In the current (April, 2008) issue of AMC Outdoors magazine, there’s a great little article by Christopher Collier about canoe poling titled Pole Position where I’m quoted several times. There’s also mention of Don Merchant and Pole And Paddle Canoe. Read the article here.

Yesterday we rebuilt the sauna, and today we’ll start scraping deer hides so as to make buckskin.  Below is one of my favorite quotes from Sigurd Olson. The bush is a complex of many joys — companionship on the trail, the thrills of exploration, the impact of silence, vastness, and infinity, the good feeling of [...]

Our first day of the spring bushcraft semester course was marked by a wide range of weather. We went from still air, to snowy whiteout, to sleet, to rain, as the temperature warmed through the day. In the afternoon we went into the bush to familiarize everyone with the area. On our way out, we [...]

It’s day one of the spring Earth Skills Semester Program. Everyone’s here, and this morning we hit the ground running. There is still 36″ of snow in the bush, but since the shelters have raised beds we’re able to make it work without too much discomfort. Spring came to Wolfeboro yesterday, with warm temperatures and [...]

When I was a kid I remember being at a small airfield with my dad. As we walked past the planes, he explained to me how they were built. We stopped in front of one plane and he told me that this one didn’t come from a factory; It had been built by the owner. [...]

Our new sourdough cookbook is finished and back from the publisher. It has all the sourdough recipes we use on our trips, as well as recipes for simple baking powder breads, easy pie crusts, bannock, and more. Unlike other sourdough cookbooks, our recipes have no perishable ingredients that you probably won’t have with you on [...]

I had a professor in graduate school who said that we decide how the world works by the time we’re two and a half years old, and we spend the rest of our lives justifying and defending that idea. It’s a concept that keeps coming up and makes me think about what I believe and [...]

You’ve managed to find our home on the web, but what can you do here? Here are some ideas. 1. Get information on our programs and check our Schedule to find out when they run. 2. Read the latest news and events right here on our blog. We’ve written more than 275 posts, so you [...]

I’m back from Masardis, having done most of the legwork needed to move our programs there.  I was also able to witness how much snow they’ve got on the ground.  My guess is somewhere between three and four feet on the ground, plus another ten inches that fell while I was there.  So because of [...]

I’m heading up to Masardis today to start getting things ready for the spring semester.  I’ll be away from the blog for a while until I get internet access set up.

We had a great day working on pack baskets yesterday.  Usually I have people gather the materials with which to carve their skids from the surrounding woods.  But due to the deep snow and difficulty of getting around without snowshoes, I made these before the course started.  It saved a lot of time, and the [...]

Two more inches of snow overnight, and it’s really coming down this morning.  We’re close to breaking the snowfall record set in 1873-74, and this will get us closer. We’re running a pack basket course this weekend.  In these courses we use molds to make sure the shape of the basket is pleasing.  To ensure [...]

I recently rewrote the section of our student handbook that explains how we assess student work in our yearlong and semester programs. That rewrite is below: Assessment: Logbook and Portfolio There are no certifications in bushcraft, wilderness survival or primitive skills that are accepted universally. If any school offers a certification, it’s likely a result [...]

We filled our last general intern position for 2008 today.  Thanks to everyone who contacted us about them.  We’ll still have a few summer homesteading internships available to semester course graduates, so if you want more information on them please let us know.

We’ve got a variety of canoe trips planned for this spring.  While they will be part of our spring Earth Skills Semester Program, there will be a few open spots for each of them if you’re interested in coming along.  Trips we’ve got planned include the Aroostook River, the St. John River, a whitewater paddling [...]

I’ve got a group of scouts coming out this afternoon for a mammal tracking exercise.  With the snow conditions being what they are (two inches of ice on top of three feet of snow), there won’t be any clear prints or patterns to see.  When people are moving along on the crust of the ice, [...]

This morning we’ll be wrapping up the filming and everyone will be on their way. It’s been a great time and we’ve had a lot of fun, but it has kept me pretty busy. If you’ve called or emailed in the past week, I’ll be getting back to you tonight. The show, I’ll Try Anything [...]

A friend sent me this link to an interview with Michael Pollan titled “Don’t Eat Anything That Won’t Rot.” It’s about the present and future of food, and is an interesting read if you’re interested in where your food comes from and why there are so many fragmented foods these days. From the introduction to [...]

The weather shifted yesterday, with an inch of so of rain falling in the afternoon.  The front came through last night, and now we’ve got sun along with high winds rushing to fill in the low pressure system as it moves out over the Atlantic.  I haven’t been into the woods yet this morning, but [...]

We had another busy day filming yesterday. We started in the morning ice fishing out on the lake. It was dead for a while, then we caught a nice bass. Afterwards we were back in the woods. I went into the woods off of the trail at one point and sunk into the snow up [...]

A busy day yesterday working on the hands-on, nuts and bolts of winter survival.  It was a beautiful sunny day with temperatures in the 40’s – a welcome change from the snow and ice we’ve received lately.  Today we’ll be looking at more traditional skills and lore of the bush, identifying many of the trees [...]

I had a great day yesterday with the director of the tv show that’s here filming this week. We scouted the locations I had in mind for the shoot, then took a ride around to get some shots of the area. It’s tough walking in the woods, as there is 3.5 feet of snow with [...]

I’ve been working on several book projects this winter, and the first one is our new student handbook. I’ve put together a bunch of the student resources we’ve developed over the last ten years in our semester programs and expanded on them, resulting in a study guide for our semester programs that would also be [...]

Over the weekend I read Paddle And Portage: From Moosehead Lake To The Aroostook River, Maine by Thomas Sedgwick Steele on Google Books. It’s an 1880 account of traveling the route named in the title, which goes right by our new place in Masardis. I’ve always loved old books, especially if I’ve traveled over the [...]

Next week a tv crew will be here shooting a show called I’ll Try Anything Once. The host, a New York journalist named Touré, and I will be together in the woods for the week, along with a small camera crew. I don’t have a lot of details, but we’re sure to have a good [...]

Building on the nature study post from yesterday, I wanted to add one of my favorite links; Observations Of A Naturalist by Boyd Shaffer. It features illustrated articles (illustrated by Boyd) about nature by a man who knows it well. I studied the field botany of southcentral Alaska in Boyd’s class at Kenai Peninsula College [...]

A friend emailed me about Naturalist Jim Conrad’s site Backyard Nature, part of his push to improve environmental education by offering free nature study courses online. There’s also a public phenology database where you can record nature information you observe. It’s a great resource for learning about the world around you, as well as sharing [...]

Black Spruce Journals; Tales Of Canoe Tripping In The Maine Woods, The Boreal Spruce Forests Of Northern Canada, And The Barren Grounds by Steward Coffin is a collection of canoe trip journals of the author’s journeys from the late 1950’s to the mid 1990’s. It’s a dangerous book to read on during a snowy February.  [...]

There’s a short piece on us in the February/March edition of Portland Magazine. They think pretty highly of our naturalist skills.  From the article: “Follow the paddle whirlpools of America’s greatest naturalist online at www.jackmtn.com”

I was speaking with someone on the phone about our residential programs this morning, and as a result of the conversation I wanted to clarify some points about our long-term programs. Our Earth Skills Semester Programs and the Yearlong Immersion Program are made up of seven different courses that combine together to build a cohesive [...]

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about putting together an online university of sorts comprised of the academic aspects of bushcraft to complement the hands-on work of our yearlong immersion program. Yesterday I spent half an hour sketching out ideas on it, and will likely be sharing them here in the coming weeks. Then this [...]

I’ve been thinking about writing a review for Paul Stamets’s book Mycelium Running since I read it last fall. It’s an amazing book about fungi, which most people think are simply mushrooms. The reality, as put forth in the book, is that fungi are the internet of the natural world; communicating over long distances and [...]

A friend sent me the link to a cool firelighting gadget that works by collecting the sun’s rays with a parabolic reflector. A fire by this method can be accomplished several different ways, but I haven’t seen a handheld, commercial model until now. It looks cool and costs $13. Check it out here.

I’m a vocal critic of the lack of sustainability in outdoor education and recreation. I’ve said numerous times that minimum impact is really displaced impact, in that the impact is considerable but is not felt in the area where people recreate. Northland College has addressed the problem. They’ve put together a web page about their [...]

As part of our ongoing program development, we’re adding a summer homesteading internship to our lineup of courses.  It will provide serious students an opportunity to work on their bushcraft skills amongst a small community of learners while at the same time learning to live simply off the land.  Work will revolve around farming and [...]

I spend a lot of time thinking about the teaching process in preparation for our courses. Years of doing so have led me to believe that there are many things that can be learned, but not directly taught. An example of this took place the other night when some of the participants in our winter [...]

We just finished a four-day (2-day weekend, 2-day advanced) winter wilderness survival course culminating with some of the participants spending the night out with no sleeping bags in shelters they built themselves. Over four days we had a wide range of weather, from below zero (F) temperatures to driving rain and slush to whiteout conditions. [...]

I’ve been elected to the board of directors of GALA, which stands for Global Awareness, Local Action. It’s a local organization focusing on sustainability and local issues. We’ve worked together for the past year by offering sustainability workshops on such topics as composting, raised bed gardens, winemaking, local edible and medicinal plants, and more. The [...]

We’ve added two week-long courses to our schedule this spring. Titled Spring Bushcraft Intensive 1 and 2, they are the first two weeks of our Spring Earth Skills Semester Program, but can be taken as standalone courses. In the first week, students will start from scratch to build a shelter of their own to live [...]

Aside from this being a powerful and moving biography, the documentary Little Dieter Needs To Fly is a fascinating look at survival psychology. From the DVD: As a young boy, Dieter Dengler watched as Allied places destroyed his village; from that instant, he knew he wanted to fly. At 18, he moved to America, enlisted [...]

We’ve had a recent schedule change for June. A private workshop we had scheduled was cancelled, and as a result we’re running the 5-day version of our Advanced Summer Survival Course June 23-27, immediately following our Summer Survival Weekend Course that runs June 21-22.  If you plan on coming bring a fly rod if you’ve [...]

I bought a $100 axe head this past week. I’m guessing that sounds expensive to you, because it did to me at first. It’s an unused, 3.25 lb Emerson & Stevens, made in Oakland, Maine in 1942. The thing about axes is that they’re not making them like they used to. Before the days of [...]

We’ve put together a general intern position for this year. There is a heavy emphasis on organic gardening and food production, as well as general work. Details below. Positions Available: There is one position left for 2008. About: Interns will live on site or nearby, and will have several duties including gardening, shooting video, and [...]

In planning the spring Earth Skills Semester Program, as well as how we’ll accomplish certain tasks at our new base camp in Masardis, the issue of a way to generate electricity to charge camera and video camera batteries and run a laptop has been in the back of my mind for a while. Since we [...]

We’ve finalized the dates for our canoeing and bushcraft trip to northern Quebec with Cree guide David Bosum. We’ll meet in Ouje Bougoumou on the afternoon/evening of Saturday, August 9th, and start our trip the morning of the 10th. We’ll be back the night of the 16th and leave on the 17th. There will be [...]

I came across a great trip journal of two guys who paddled-poled-sailed solo canoes 400 miles along an old route from the St. Lawrence River, across Quebec, New Brunswick and Maine to the Atlantic Ocean in Penobscot Bay. It’s a great story of an amazing journey. Read it here. From their description: Welcome to my [...]

This spring’s Earth Skills Semester Program will be somewhat different from those we’ve run in the past.  Because it will be the first one we’re running at our new base camp in Masardis, Maine, we’ll be making and building a lot of camp projects throughout the course.  We’ll also be building numerous bush structures to [...]

Open To Outcome; A Practical Guide For Facilitating And Teaching Experiential Reflection  offers some simple, practical tools that are relevant to outdoor education. A brief survey of everyone you know will most likely reveal that among the top five moments of learning in their lives, at least four did not take place in the classroom. [...]

After speaking with several people I’ve decided to not restrict our online network just to alumni, but rather to open it to friends as well. So if you’re interested, you can register here or go to http://jackmtn.ning.com. You can post photos, videos, a blog, and more, as well as network with other likeminded individuals about [...]

It’s official. Yesterday we closed on our new property in Masardis, Maine. It’s an amazing area in the middle of Aroostook County, and our land borders the Aroostook river. Everyone here is excited about it, and we’ve got big plans for both the land and the future of Jack Mountain. But there is a lot [...]

I noticed a grain split on the toe of one of my snowshoes yesterday, so to repair it I wrapped some string around it using a whip to hold it tight. The only string I had handy was hot pink, so I spent the afternoon wearing the amazing technicolor snowshoe. I saw a bunch of [...]

“In the woods you must expect to pay a certain price in discomfort for a very real and very deep pleasure.  Wet, heat, cold, hunger, thirst, difficult travel, insects, hard beds, aching muscles–all these at one time or another will be your portion.  If you are of the class that cannot have a good time [...]

I don’t care about the opinion of gurus, celebrities or famous people. I think that people’s devotion to them is a disease. I’ve heard it referred to as celebrititus. Because someone is famous doesn’t mean they’re skilled in the bush, or as a bushcraft instructor, or good at anything else. I’ve met a few famous [...]

I saw a documentary yesterday called America’s Stone Age Explorers which examined the evidence behind the various theories on the peopling of the Americas. It is the first bit I’ve seen in the mainstream media to challenge the Clovis first theory – the one we were all taught in school about the land bridge at [...]

To help people keep in touch with friends they met during their course with us, facilitate trip planning, story-telling, and just general networking, we’ve put together an alumni network site. With regard to trip planning, I know of one canoe trip taking place this spring in Wisconsin where there’s an invitation to our alumni. So [...]

Even thought the days are still short and the snow is piled deep over the garden, it won’t be long before it’s time to start seedlings in preparation for the growing season. I’m putting in several fruit trees this year, as well as expanding the number of edible perennials we grow. GALA is putting together [...]

I’ve got a book from 1972 called The Walk Of The Conscious Ants, by Taylor Morris, that tells the true story of a college professor and his students who decided that instead of taking a semester of regular courses, they would walk from their school in southwestern New Hampshire to Nova Scotia. It’s an interesting [...]

Mungo took a bunch of photos last November when Mors Kochanski was here running a workshop. He’s got 6 pages of them posted at flickr. You can see them here, and read Mungo’s blog (and thank him for posting them all) at Mungo Says Bah.

I saw this track on the dirt road the other day when it was above freezing. I had to think about it for a bit before I realized what it was. Any ideas?  It’s the imprint of ice creepers, things people put on the bottom of their boots to grip ice, so they don’t slip [...]

Following the advice of a longtime friend who knows more about these topics than I do, I’m changing the blog’s title to: MDG : The Jack Mountain Bushcraft Blog The reason for the change lies in his explanation of search engines and how they work.  The look and content of the MDG will remain the [...]

Another in our series of notable quotations. I first came across Richard Nelson’s books while living in Alaska. This quotation is interesting from the perspective of anthropology, as well as for learning the skills of another culture which is common in bushcraft. Different cultures don’t just do some things differently – often they see and [...]

Half an inch of rain is falling around here today.  Everything is already damp from all the snow that has melted over the past several days, and now with this soaking rain the resulting conditions are some of the most difficult for fire-lighting.  You need dry wood to light a fire.  The problem is finding [...]

I just finished a book called Caribou Hunter; A Song Of A Vanished Innu Life. It was transcribed by Serge Bouchard in 1971 from interviews he had with Mathieu Mestokosho, an Innu who lived his life in northeastern Quebec. The Innu lived in the region from Lac St. Jean to Labrador and have also been [...]

Teaching is a process. My son is learning how to skate, and it’s challenging for me as his teacher. I have no memory of learning how to skate as I learned at age 3, the same age he’s at now. For me to teach him, I can’t rely on personal experience because I’ve known how [...]

We’re hiring college students to work as campus representatives. Interested? Call or email us. How It Works: We mail them some posters and they put them up where they think interested people might see them. The campus representative (CR) keeps a log of where they put the posters and emails it to us. The CR [...]

I’ve thought a lot about what it takes to become proficient at bushcraft and a competent guide. Obviously, it takes a lot of hands-on instruction and a lot of time spent in the bush doing it. But it also takes a lot of rigorous study. The natural world is not something that can be learned [...]

The 2007 Maine Wilderness Guides Organization winter guide training course was a great success. Cold weather, lots of snow, and a beautiful remote camp allowed us to cover a wide variety of topics applicable to guiding during the snow season. Kevin Slater brought two of his dog teams which he taught everyone about, and we [...]

There are a lot of bushcraft sites and blogs these days, and I think it’s great.  People are making all sorts of stuff out of local materials and working with their hands to solve problems.  A downside of making lots of items but not using them is that they don’t know if the things they [...]

We’ve gotten about 2 feet of snow over the last four days.  It ended late last night, so the better part of the morning will be spend digging out, then packing down some trails with snowshoes.  Snow depths of over two feet necessitate a snowshoe that gives adequate flotation.  This is determined by the moisture [...]

The holidays are finally over, as is our family month on the road.  There’s a lot to do around here, and a lot of good resources and experiences to share, so it’s time to get on with it.  A new feature of the blog is quotations from some of the outdoor books I’ve read over [...]

I just got back from 12 days on the road visiting relatives, and I’m out the door again tonight to help teach the Maine Wilderness Guides Organization winter guide training course. It runs today (Wednesday) through Saturday and takes place at Mahoosuc Guide Service and in the surrounding mountains. It’s been a busy month.

Yesterday we got our first snowstorm of the year – 10 inches of dry powder. Tomorrow I’m going out tracking in the morning, looking to see who’s been moving since the snow fell. Tracking in fresh snow is one of the joys of living in the north. Shoveling it is one of the curses. We’ve [...]

It’s several weeks after the end of our fall semester program, and all the written work for the college credit option is in. I’ll be posting some of it here, starting with Russ Venditto’s final paper. It’s a .pdf file, and you can get it by clicking here. I’ve added a section to our Bushcraft [...]

After the semester ended and the two workshops with Mors Kochanski, I took a few days to catch up on some much-needed rest.  But we were back at it yesterday with a winemaking workshop instructed by my good friend Shayne White.  He covered necessary equipment and techniques for making wine inexpensively at home, and even [...]

It’s the last full day or our semester course, and we’ve been fortunate to have Mors Kochanski visiting with us and sharing his insights into the work everyone has done. Beyond the obvious benefits gleaned from him sharing his knowledge and experience, his humor around the campfire is always a treat. We’ve also been shooting [...]

To finish their pack baskets, folks have decided to make custom leather harnesses out of bark tanned leather. We didn’t tan it ourselves, but students are sizing it and using copper rivets to fasten the strip ends together. We had discussed using the braintanned hides everyone now has, but the thicker, full-grain leather is more [...]

We make family trips to the library once a week. Last week I got a book called Over The Mountains; An Aerial View Of Geology by Michael Collier. It’s a book of aerial photographs that are stunningly beautiful. The accompanying text explains the geologic features of the photographs. From the introduction: “With this book, I’d [...]

As part of our ongoing series of sustainability workshops, we’ve scheduled a winemaking workshop for Sunday, November 11. My old friend Shayne White will be here walking us through the process of making your own wine at home with simple ingredients, as well as talking about the equipment you need to get started. There’s also [...]

This is the last weekend of this fall’s Earth Skills Semester Program, so it wasn’t much of a break. Everyone is busy working on projects, from scraping a moose hide to weaving pack baskets to tillering bows, as well as putting together our video from week nine. It will remain busy right up through Friday, [...]

A friend of mine shot a moose a few days ago and he’s giving us the hide to tan. I’m meeting him this morning at the town docks as he lives on the other side of Lake Winnepesaukee. The temperature is in the 30’s (just above freezing in Celcius) so I bet it will be [...]

Yesterday everyone sized their pounded ash strips and carved their skids, so today we’ll start weaving the baskets.  Actually weaving the basket doesn’t take as long as getting and preparing the materials, so we should have some baskets near finished by this afternoon.  They’ll have to dry overnight and be tightened, but the bulk of [...]

We had a great weekend at the wilderness first aid course sponsored by the Maine Wilderness Guides Organization. The course took place at Mahoosuc Guide Service, and we all stayed in their new Mahoosuc Mountain Lodge. A wilderness first aid or wilderness first responder course is a great complement to the bushcraft and guide training [...]

This morning we worked with map and compass for several hours. A student from last fall’s semester program joined us. She’s preparing to take the Maine Guide exam, and is studying a lot navigation skills and theory. After a half hour, everyone could orient the map and plot a course with their bearings exact. It’s [...]

Today we’re still pounding ash for pack baskets. It’s a big job, and historically marks a low point of morale for semester students because it’s so labor intensive and takes some time. To counteract this we sometimes hire a clown to come and make balloon animals on-site while eveyone is pounding. Spirits haven’t dipped low [...]

Our upcoming bushcraft courses with Mors Kochanski are now officially full.  Hopefully Mors will be back out this way next year, or the year after.

I got a call recently from a writer with Outside Magazine looking for information on Bear Grylls and his show Man Vs. Wild for their November issue. (The article just came out and I didn’t make the cut.) I worked as the survival expert on the Alaskan Mountain Range episode of the show. Since another [...]

Pepe the porcupine is no longer with us – he’s alive and well about 10 miles from here.  In a daring nighttime abduction, some of the ESSP folks caught him in a trash can and drove him far enough away so he probably won’t find his way back.  Everyone had gotten a little attached to [...]

In late June, Pepe the porcupine walked out of the woods and started hanging around our field. He was a baby then, and has literally grown up while eating the clover and vegetables we grow. At the beginning of the fall semester, the students were interested in watching him as he lounged around, seemingly oblivious [...]

Our latest video, Jack Mountain Bushcraft Journal 13: Earth Skills Semester Program Week 6, is live on our video page. It’s also on our Youtube channel and will be on our Blip.tv channel before too long. This video follows us on our canoe trip on the St. Croix river along the border of Maine and [...]