This Friday and Saturday, April 27-28th, we’re going to be braintanning the deer hides I’ve stored over the winter. We’ll get the hides scraped on Friday, and, weather permitting, pull them on Saturday. For more on braintanning, check out this link.

The ice went out on the pond yesterday.  After the torrential rains, we’re having a stretch of nice weather.  Today is supposed to be around 80 degrees, which will melt some of pile of snow that slid off the roof of the barn.  I’ve got some blueberry bushes, strawberries, grapes and asparagus to get in [...]

Something we discuss in great detail in our courses is the difference between minimum impact camping and displaced impact camping. Modern camping practices are far from minimum impact; things such as rare metals and petroleum products put a huge burden on our planet. But since the effects of their processing and production aren’t usually visible [...]

I’ve added a bushcraft day camp to our summer schedule after rearranging a private workshop to create the time. The camp is for 4th-6th graders and takes place August 6-10. More information is available on our web site.

I spent yesterday re-canvassing one of our 20′ wooden canoes with the help of Ray Reitze. We had to put tacks into three new ribs and make sure they were clinched before stretching the canvas. I had hoped to have some warm weather in order to move the boat outside and apply the filler, but [...]

I was recently given a 2.5 pint capacity Kelly Kettle. If you’ve never heard of a Kelly Kettle, it’s a device made from aluminum used for quickly boiling water using a small fire that burns in the open center of the kettle that is surrounded by a hollow jacket that holds water. Yesterday a friend [...]

Spring is in the air, and with it is a strong desire to finish the canoe mold I’ve been working on all winter.  I was over working on it yesterday, attaching the metal bands to the mold.  The metal bands serve two roles in the canoe building process.  First, they’re the same width as the [...]

I was out the other night and snapped this photo of the crescent moon low on the western horizon. The colors were amazing, as you can see. The weather here is warming up today, so there won’t be many more nights I can walk out on the ice without going for an unplanned swim. As [...]

There’s an interesting article out today on how nuthatches pay attention to the calls of chickadees, specifically the alarm calls. The token naysayer at the end of the article has concerns that it isn’t the specific call other birds react to, but rather the intensity of whatever call is made. Read the whole article here.

I shut down the comments on the Moose Dung Gazette a while back. I realize this can be frustrating to our readers, and that comments often make a blog more readable and entertaining, but this is the second installment of the Moose Dung Gazette. The first MDG was up for several years but was hacked [...]

Lee Valley Tools is a woodworking product supplier who offers reprints of classic books. One I recently picked up is their “Chain Saw and Crosscut Saw Training Course”, a reprint of a US Forest Service publication. It’s a great complement to some of the books on axes in our bibliography. I like it because it [...]

I’ve wanted a water-cooled, slow rpm grindstone for years to touch up old axe heads I pick up at junk, antique, and used tool stores. The good ones cost way more than I’m willing to invest, and the cheap ones don’t have the water bath and they spin too quickly. But while in New Brunswick [...]

After spending another week in New Brunswick, this time running a winter bushcraft course with some of the troops from the Canadian infantry school at Gagetown, I made it home just in time for the St. Patrick’s day storm.  We got another 8 inches of snow and ice, but storms this time of year don’t [...]

I’m back from my trip to New Brunswick and had a great time. In addition to running several bushcraft and winter survival courses I was able to see a semester student from two years ago and explore the bush with my good friend Jeff Butler of Northwoods Survival, who was my host for the entire [...]

I’m headed out first thing in the morning to New Brunswick for 12 days, where I’ll be running several winter bushcraft and survival courses with Jeff Butler at Northwoods Survival. My departure was put back a day due to the blizzard we had yesterday, but I’m told the highways are clear so the truck is [...]

I was tracking some coyotes and deer on the other side of the snowmobile trail today when I heard the crows give an agitated call that was different from their usual conversations.  I was trying to tell if the track in front of me was a turkey that had been snowed on or something else [...]

Last week I put together a slideshow from some of our photos taken during courses and on trips over the years. It uses the cool, Ken Burns style of having the picture move on the screen. Yesterday I put it on the web. Check it out here. It’s a 32 MB Quicktime file.

Our outdoor cooking workshop yesterday went well and I ate the best lunch I’ve had in a long time.  We made sourdough biscuits in the reflector oven and pan fried some fish.  We also covered hanging a pot over a fire versus propping it up from below and the related benefits and negatives of each [...]

I’m running a small outdoor cooking workshop today for some friends who are fishing guides in the area.  We’re just going to cook lunch and bake some sourdough biscuits in front of the campfire, but it will be enjoyable as all such meals are. We’ve had a stretch of cold weather which has been wonderful, [...]

I’ve posted our 2007 schedule, both on the web and as a .pdf file. It includes those sections of our semester programs that are open enrollment. If you have any questions let me know.

It’s been a long break from the Moose Dung Gazette but I’m finally back.  I had planned on starting back up last week, but suffered technical difficulties in the form of computer failure. Thankfully I had all my files backed up on an external hard drive. That being said, if you’ve emailed me in the [...]

I picked up a copy of the newly-published “New Hampshire Gardener’s Companion” last week at our local bookstore, The Country Bookseller.  I’d heard about the book a few months ago and have been looking forward to reading it.  It’s part of a series of state-specific gardening books written with the climate, soil and general conditions [...]

A friend sent me this article on the human sense of smell. It discusses the results of a study from the University of California, Berkeley where a group of undergraduates crawled through a field following a scent trail while blindfolded and wearing sound-muffling headphones. Read it here. It turns out our sense of smell is [...]

Yesterday I started working on the canoe mold I’ve been thinking and talking about for years under the expert tutelage and in the shop of Don Merchant of Pole and Paddle Canoe. When canoe builders switched to using canvas to cover their boats instead of birch bark, and as the process became industrialized, people started [...]

By now many people have heard the sad story of James Kim, who became snowbound in his vehicle with his family in southwest Oregon after taking a wrong turn. After being stranded for days, Mr. Kim set out on foot to find the nearest town. While his family was eventually rescued, he was not. His [...]

Even though it has warmed up a little since last week’s cold spell there’s a thin layer of ice on the pond this morning. The forecast is for it to be a warm week, but the water is still cooling off as the nights have been cold and days are short. Today I’ll be working [...]

We had our first snow of the year last night, a dusting of about an inch to brighten things up. The front came through late, and as a result the winds are high and blowing the snow around. I’m busy getting prepared for our Winter Survival Weekend Course which begins tomorrow. My preparations include cutting [...]

I just posted an annotated bushcraft and Earth skills education bibliography on our web site. It’s a 19 page .pdf file and includes my picks for the twenty most important books. Give it a read here.

We’re introducing some new projects along with our yearlong bushcraft and Earth skills program, most notably building a twenty-foot wood canvas canoe and making crooked knives with our new coal forge. In December I’m getting together with Don Merchant of Pole and Paddle Canoe to build a mold for a 20-foot wood canvas canoe. The [...]

I’ve been busy writing up the curriculum for our new yearlong program.  I’ve got the first draft of the annotated bibliography done, and it came out to 19 pages.  Included is my opinion of the 20 most important books on bushcraft and traditional wilderness skills, which I’ll be posting here over the next few days.  [...]

Along with the new yearlong Earth skills and bushcraft immersion program, 2007 will mark the beginning of our work/trade position in videography. We do a lot of interesting things around here, as well as visit a bunch of beautiful places regularly. I’d like to start recording both on video, then sharing that video on the [...]

Beginning in 2007, the Earth Skills Semester Program will be expanded into a yearlong experience consisting of 25-30 intensive weeks per year, with the interim periods spent reading, writing and researching. The yearlong program won’t be replacing our semester programs. Instead, it will be connecting them into a deeper, more complete learning program. Overlap between [...]

Today I heard from a friend who’s an avid trapper around Norway, Maine. She wrote me the following: We caught a 12″ brook trout in a 220 Conibear on the brook that borders our property. We have never fished it because we knew there weren’t any trout in it! We’ve lived here 21 years! I [...]

This fall on our bushcraft and guide training trip on the Allagash we had two people with us from Scotland. We did a fair bit of fly fishing, and I watched with great interest one our Scottish friends Spey cast. I had read about it but had never seen it before. He showed me a [...]

The weather has been rainy and unseasonably warm around here lately. A good friend of mine cuts deer during hunting season, and since most of the hunters don’t want the hides he saves them for me. I usually just put them in the barn and they freeze overnight, but it’s been so warm that my [...]

Now that I’ve had some time to reflect on the recent semester course, I’ve been thinking about what we’ve accomplished with the semester program over the years and have been focusing on how to make the experience better. The result of this is the creation of our new yearlong bushcraft and Earth skills education immersion [...]

I had a great time at the Snow Walker’s Rendezvous as always.  My workshop on emergency snowshoes and bindings was a success, and I met a bunch of interesting people and learned some new things. Following the rendezvous I drove north to visit my brother who has recently moved to Montreal.  It’s a beautiful city, [...]

Last month my friend Tony Nester of Arizona took writer Jonathan Green out on a knife-only outing. Today Jonathan’s article appears in the Escapes section of the New York Times. I liked the article because it touches on Tony’s motivation for teaching and his appreciation for both the land and the skills of those who [...]

This weekend at the Snow Walker’s Rendezvous in Vermont I’ll be running a workshop on making emergency and improvised snowshoes and bindings.  I’m planning on making several styles of snowshoes and demonstrating a simple binding made from a single piece of cord.  If you haven’t been to this event put on by the Hulbert Outdoor [...]

I just posted the last batch of photos from this year’s Earth Skills Semester Program, which ended on Saturday.  We’re planning some exciting changes for next year, expanding the program into a year-long experience.  More about that soon.  For now, enjoy the photos.

Yesterday, as they were packing up their things and preparing to move on, one of the students mentioned something that stuck with me overnight. He was talking about the simplicity of our humanure composting system, and exclaimed, “I can’t believe that we didn’t flush anything for the past ten weeks. This system is so simple [...]

Thursday morning and two days until the Earth Skills Symposium. It’s a raw, rainy morning, and the only critters I’ve heard are the rain calls of the blue jays. Except for the beeches and oaks, who sometime keep their leaves through the winter, all the leaves are down. Today we work on finishing final projects [...]

We’re in the middle of week 10, our final week in the fall Earth Skills Semester Program. Students are working diligently on bushcraft projects such as brown ash pack baskets and lacing snowshoes, as well as preparing for the symposium. It’s a great time because everyone knows the routine and things move quickly and efficiently. [...]

This coming weekend is our town’s annual ski and skate sale, where you can pick up used skis very inexpensively. For those of you live in snow country and want to make a winter sled for hauling gear in the bush, you can do so without having to boil and bend wood for a toboggan. [...]

I just heard from my friends Kevin and Polly at Mahoosuc Guide Service. They’ll be offering a winter guide training course December 14-17 in the Lake Umbagog area. It will be offered through the Maine Wilderness Guides Organization. From the MWGO website: This workshop is designed to cover the skills needed to safely guide in [...]

We just completed week 9 of the Earth Skills Semester Program. Most of the week was devoted to making bows out of locally-harvested white ash. In the past we’ve always reverse-wrapped the bowstrings, but this year we made Flemish strings where only the ends are reverse-wrapped. It worked out well because you can adjust the [...]

The topic of alcohol stoves comes up from time to time in winter survival and bushcraft workshops. This simple homemade alcohol stove comes from the newsletter of the Inuit Sled Dog International, and is especially useful north of the treeline.

It’s been a few weeks, but I’ve finally added some new photos in the 2006 ESSP photo gallery to show you some of the things we’ve been up to lately, including tanning hides, foraging at the seacoast, and making bows. Let me know what you think of them.

I’ll be presenting at the Snow Walker’s Rendezvous at Hulbert Outdoor Center in Vermont again this year. The rendezvous takes place November 10-12 and is a great opportunity to learn from people who spend most, or all, of the winter in the northern bush. David and Anna Bosum, from the Cree community of Oujé-Bougoumou, Quebec, [...]

The date and time for our Earth Skills Symposium has been set. It will be on November 4th from 10 AM until 1 PM at our home base; 267 Camp School Road in Wolfeboro. The symposium is the final event of the Earth Skills Semester Program where students present their research and put their work [...]

The ESSP students spent the second half of this week making wide-limbed flat bows out of white ash staves I harvested last year. They’re coming along amazingly well. If you’re interested in making your first bow, you should read Tim Baker’s article titled Your First Wooden Bow. You should probably also read everything else Tim [...]

Based on a recommendation from friend and fellow Maine Guide Bud Farwell, I recently got my hands on a copy of “The One-Eyed Poacher and the Maine Woods” by Edmund Ware Smith through inter-library loan. Since it arrived I’ve been reading with delight the stories about Thomas Jefferson Coongate, the infamous one-eyed poacher. He’s a [...]

Our semester students are working on debris shelters today. Although effective in certain conditions, the debris shelter is often promoted as the do all, end all of shelters. While I teach and have used them successfully on many occasions, I wholeheartedly disagree with it being the most important shelter. It isn’t practical to build in [...]

We had a great day at the coast yesterday gathering wild foods, identifying plants and tracking on sandy beach at low tide. We covered the basics of pattern and clear-print tracking, then experimented with pressure releases and tracking games for several hours before our beach was retaken by the sea as the tide came in. [...]

We finished braintanning yesterday, and overnight about half an inch of rain fell. So this morning we’ll be working on wet weather fire-lighting, then spending the morning reviewing. After lunch we’re off to a nearby cattail swamp to forage for the roots, gather hand drill stalks, and maybe even make a doll out of cattail [...]

Braintanning takes a significant amount of physical labor for the scraping process, let alone pulling or staking the hide as it goes from damp to dry. I’m reminded of this aspect of tanning each year during tanning workshops when I hear talk of sore muscles and blisters. At the end of the day yesterday all [...]

Today we start braintanning deer hides, or using brains to dress and soften the hides resulting in a chamois-like finished product. Each year I get a bunch of hides from a friend and fellow guide who butchers deer for hunters. The hides we’ll be working on today were fleshed and mostly dehaired last fall, then [...]

Yesterday I received the latest issue of “The North Texan”, the alumni magazine from the University of North Texas where I recieved my M.Ed. It features an article on Jack Mountain and our bushcraft, wilderness survival and earth skills education programs titled Educator In The Wilderness.

We’re back from our survival trip to the White Mountains and the students are carving canoe paddles. They’re excited to work on the larger crafts and it’s a good thing, because in the next few weeks they’re going to make brown ash pack baskets, bows and arrows, and braintanned buckskin in addition to the paddles. [...]

We arrived at the trail head in middle of the White Mountain National Forest in the middle of the day and walked in on a trail for several miles before turning off into the bush. We waded through thick brush before it opened into a wetland, where our feet sank into the boggy mix of [...]

This morning we begin the major activity for the week; a three-day walk in the mountains with limited gear. My gear will include an axe, a knife, a small piece of plastic, a small metal pot, a pocket-sized first aid kit and the clothes I’m wearing. The students will have a similar gear. Our goal [...]

Teaching is tiring. Learning is even more so. Teaching can be practiced until it becomes an art. After years of doing it you occasionally get thrown by a student’s question, but for the most part you get better the more you do it (this refers to teaching, not content knowledge). Learning is the act of [...]

We’ve finalized the information on prices and dates for the Winter Bushcraft and Survival courses taking place with Jeff Butler of Northwoods Survival in New Brunswick in February. Information on the courses is located here.

Yesterday we unpacked and dried out a bunch of gear from the Allagash trip and cut the base logs for our new sauna. The students felled several trees with an axe, then sectioned them with a cross cut saw. It’t great to watch their expertise with these tools increase exponentially. We also covered general map [...]

My friend and colleague David Cronenwett of Montana emailed me with a link to an article about the incomparable Mors Kochanski and his philosophy of outdoor education, or what he prefers to call “tangible education”. It’s a short article, and you can read it here.

This morning marks the beginning of week 5 of the ESSP. This week we’re focusing on advanced navigation and foraging, so we’ll take a trip to the seacoast and spend an afternoon in a nearby swamp digging cattails. While we were on the Allagash our sauna stove arrived, made by my good friend Don Kevilus [...]

We had a great trip on the Allagash marked by warm weather and low water levels. Picking up two people on our drive north, we arrived at the bridge at the south end of Chamberlain Lake in the late afternoon, then loaded up the boats for the short paddle to Boy Scout campsite. Our party [...]

We’re off in the morning on our 12-day Allagash canoe trip. Packing is done and most of the gear is loaded. Everyone is excited and it’s sure to be a great trip.

Group size for our 12-day bushcraft and guide training canoe trip on the Allagash river has swelled to 11. In addition to the students who will be here for the entire semester, we’ve got people coming from Canada, Scotland, and even Japan for the trip. It’s pretty exciting, but planning and prepping for the group [...]

Last night the ESSP students and I attended a talk given by Tom Wessels, the author of Reading the Forested Landscape and other books. The talk focused on reading and understanding the history of the woods of New England for signs of farming and logging. Having heard him speak before I was prepared for the [...]

Yesterday we started with one match fires since we had rain overnight. Skill and confidence levels have dramatically improved and everyone was either able to successfully start a fire or self-diagnose what went wrong. With our focus on the process, not the product, this is a complete success because they understood what was happening and [...]

Yesterday we spent the morning planning the meals for our upcoming Allagash trip. We’ve had a flurry of phone calls and the size of the group has swelled to 10 people. Then we were out on the water practicing canoe strokes, poling, and learning a flat water rescue technique. After lunch we started on knots [...]

Last night we had rain, and on every wet morning we start with one match fires. This morning was no different. The ESSP students have made amazing progress with this in the short time we’ve been together. We moved onto making cordgage by hand, then making rope with spinners, and finally making rope with a [...]

The wood around the eye of an axe can get brittle and the head can get loose. To solve the problem of a loose head, some authors have advised to soak it in water to swell the wood. But when it dries out, the head is loose again, and more brittle, often more than when [...]

We had lot of rain come through over the weekend, which will be good for the lettuce planted last week. It will also put some water into the Allagash for our trip next week. Lastly, it will help with the bumper crop of mushrooms that are growing in the surrounding woods. We’ll be spending several [...]

Do you know much about where you live? Can you answer 30 questions about your knowledge of place and home from www.biohabit.org? Give it a try.

Yesterday morning the ESSP students carved bow drill sets and learned several ways of attaching the spindle to the string. We discussed the science behind friction firelighting, then everyone worked on perfecting their drilling form while breaking in the new sets. Then we moved onto percussion-based firelighting using flint and steel before working with more [...]

The ESSP students and I had a busy day yesterday doing axework, working on friction fires, one-match fires, and going on a 3-hour plantwalk. The long-term shelters were finished, and last night we had a campfire and baked some sourdough biscuits in the stone oven. Everyone is excited to get out into the canoes today, [...]

Similar to past classes, I’ve set up a separate photo gallery for the 2006 Earth Skills Semester Program at www.jackmtn.com/gallery/essp2006. After the first two days we’ve got 14 photos, with lots more to come. Stay tuned.

Today was day 1 of our 10-week Earth Skills Semester Program. Each student is building a permanent shelter to use as a home base for the duration of the course. We’re building them to be large and comfortable one-person shelters with a raised bed, some storage space, and a small changing area. The design has [...]

In preparation for the semester class I spent yesterday cutting dead wood and making the bases for several shelter frames. I used an axe to fell the tress, all dead, and a saw to cut them to length. Using a saw instead of an axe to section trees I can get more useable wood since [...]

There are several large wilderness survival schools that have big reputations and have hundreds of people participate in workshops each year. We’re not one of them. Instead we serve a small number of people each year and really get to know them, since I see this as a vital step in learning how best to [...]

This summer marks the 11th year I’ve been composting human manure, or humanure, by a process outlined in The Humanure Handbook. It’s a simple system, with the only inputs being sawdust and hay, that has worked flawlessly for our school and home. To mark the anniversary, I’m reposting the original book review I wrote about [...]

In preparing for the Earth Skills Semester Program, I’ve updated and rewritten much of our nature study curriculum, including updating the lists of birds, plants, and mammals that are in this area. I’ll be posting the updated lists as they’re written, starting with a list of birds seen in and around Rust Pond.

The Beech trees have begun dropping their nuts in the nearby woods, creating a glut of food in the local bush economy. A favorite of black bears, who have been known to climb the trees for better access, the nuts are good to eat and have also been pressed to extract an oil that was [...]

Today I reposted a bunch of blog entries that were lost when our site got hacked. I also added a “Past Favorites” section with links to the posts that have been the most commented about. If you have a post you’d like to see listed there let me know.

Yesterday I received my copy of “The Forager’s Harvest” by Samuel Thayer, subtitled “A Guide To Identifying, Harvesting, and Preparing Edible Wild Plants.” I spent most of the evening reading it and examining the many photos. My opinion is that it is as good or better than the best books on wild edible plants. The [...]

Last week I went on a solo canoe/fishing trip to Allagash Lake and Allagash stream. I put in on Allagash Stream above the lake, where it’s narrow and winding. There wasn’t a lot of water so I poled the entire way to the deadwater above the lake. As I was coming around a corner I [...]

There are endless discussions as to what makes a good knife. Everyone has their opinion, and some people seem to be willing to defend theirs for hours. I’ve found that knives are kind of like dogs – everyone thinks that their dog is the greatest, and no matter how bad or poorly behaved it is [...]

Becoming competent at lighting fires with a hand drill or bow drill takes time, sweat and blisters. But it can be done. There’s a difference between trying to get a coal and trying to master the techniques. Decide what your goals are before you proceed. If you want to get a coal, then drill until [...]

If you work as a guide or teach wilderness survival for any length of time, someone, or more often lots of people, are going to ask your opinion of those individuals who have elevated themselves to celebrity status in this type of work. I duck these questions and avoid these types of conversations, if only [...]

Yesterday a friend stopped by who had just come into possession of a bunch of blackberries. She was thinking about making a pie with them, but was put off by the idea of making a pie crust. She’s not alone. Making pie crusts ranks up there with public speaking on people’s list of fears. I [...]

The Earth Skills Semester Program starts next week, and I’ve been busy getting prepared. This morning I put a coat of varnish on four canoe paddles, set up a new composting bin, and laid out where several new shelters will go. I’ve also rewritten our nature knowledge curriculum and have included common species of plants, [...]

I was in western Massachusetts this past weekend working with Frank Grindrod and a group of youngsters for a shelter-building class. They were focusing on debris shelters, building them during the day and sleeping in them that night. It was a warm, overcast day, with the sky foretelling the coming rain. With this type of [...]

We’ve got our new blog up and running, but it will take a few days to get it set up and customized.

Right after I left on my recent trip to Alaska our site was hacked and all 140 of my blog posts, stretching back several years were deleted. As such I’m looking into alternative methods of blogging since the previous software package obviously wasn’t secure enough. As soon as I get something up and running I’ll [...]

Yesterday I did some weeding in the vegetable garden and enjoyed mid-July in New Hampshire by picking and eating raspberries, blueberries, and juneberries I’ve got growing. Today I’m off to Valdez, Alaska, where for two weeks I’ll be working as a consultant for a Discovery Channel tv show on survival. It’s been about five years [...]

The summer issue of Natural New England arrived yesterday, containing the article on canoe poling I previously blogged about as well as an essay I wrote about a 10-day snowshoe trip without a sleeping bag I took in 2002. I’m pretty excited as it’s the first article with my byline to appear in a magazine.

Today is the first day of our bushcraft day camp pilot program. I’ve worked exclusively with college students and adults in the past, so it’s sure to be exciting. Today we’ll be focusing on the five stages of fire, fire ecology and several ignition strategies. We’ll also study the edible and medicinal wild plants of [...]

I had a great trip yesterday poling on the crystal-clear upper Saco river, running downstream from the bridge on River Street in Bartlett to the bridge at River Road in Conway. The 12 mile trip took me just under 4 hours. Except for the extreme lower portion of the trip where the bottom gets sandy, [...]

I’ve always enjoyed fishing. I fished every inch of the small New Hampshire town where I grew up, as well as surrounding areas that were within biking distance. When my friends began getting their driver’s licenses, I was incredibly excited because now all of the rivers and lakes around the state were within reach. It [...]

Yesterday I sent out our final email newsletter. We ran it for a number of years, but with the growth of spam and the associated hassles we’re going to focus on this blog and the associated RSS feed. If people want to read what we’re up to we’re only a click away.

Our town has a big July 4th celebration every year with a parade, a brass band by the town docks, and fireworks at dusk. Our family participated in all of the festivities and had a great time. There is a small bookstore in town and my wife and I know the owner and some of [...]

Yesterday morning I was able to get away for a few hours of canoeing and fishing on the Bearcamp river. I was up and out the door early and spent a few pleasant hours poling upstream from where I put in, then drifting and fishing my way back down. When I got home I finished [...]