Welcome to the Jack Mountain Bushcraft Blog. Since 2006 we’ve been blogging about bushcraft, education, expedition leadership and the woods life. You can view the archives by category or by date under the Archives tab in the menu at the top of the page.
Navigation is becoming a lost art. I don’t mean that people can’t find their way around – but the art and science of doing it without a cell phone and gps or map app is becoming a rarity. Rarer still is the ability to navigate from sun, the stars, and those things in the natural [...]
The Changing Of The Seasons We’ve had some challenging weather lately but this past weekend feels like we turned the corner into spring. Today looks to be another sunny, warm day in Aroostook county, and I’m grateful for it. Today begins week four of the spring, 2026 Wilderness Bushcraft Semester. This morning we’ll start on [...]
We’re in the middle of week 3 of the spring, 2026 Wilderness Bushcraft Semester and I’m always amazed at the relativity of how we experience time. We’ve all engaged in things that didn’t excite us, during which time seemed to crawl by. I can recall being a kid in school, watching the second and minute [...]
Last week we kicked off our 27th year with the start of long term program number 68; the spring 2026 Wilderness Bushcraft Semester at the field school. We’re approaching spring this week, but early April is still winter in Aroostook county, Maine. For week one we had torrential downpours, snow flurries, several nights with temperatures [...]
Track 1: Professional Development through the Journeyman Certification Track 2: Student Defined Inquiry (SDI), an independent research study on topic chosen by the student The Wilderness Bushcraft Semester is not a show and tell type of program where information is presented and students passively scribble about it in a notebook. The course is long in [...]
We don’t have any ticks at our field school in northern Maine. Traditionally, we’ve been quite a bit north of the tick line, below which they live. However, a few hours south the Maine coast is overrun with ticks. The bad news is that they are slowly moving north. The good news is that our [...]
New Course: Advanced Whitewater Canoe Poling & Paddling This year we’re offering something new; a dedicated whitewater canoe poling and paddling class. The second week in June is usually our week to canoe the Bonaventure river in Quebec, but neither we or anyone else wants to be crossing the border right now. So we’re pivoting [...]
In 2026 we are making a big push to simplify what we teach into a consistent, coherent curriculum. In the past, we’ve offered our Wilderness Bushcraft Semester, then had short segments of the curriculum as seperate, stand-alone courses. This year, we’re streamlining the curriculum, but opening up the course to allow people to join us [...]
An Ongoing Research Project And The State Of The Archives In 2026. In 1996 I first met Mors Kochanski when I took a course at his place in Alberta. As anyone who knew him will attest, he was a lover of books and a voracious reader. During the course I asked him if he were [...]
A few years ago we ran the backend of our courses in Google Classroom and used Google Docs for all of our documentation. Over the past year we’ve moved away from Google Classroom and now use Mighty Networks (the software behind our private online community at BushcraftSchool.com) to manage the courses, and this winter I’m [...]
In the native lore I’ve read over the years, I’ve come across numerous mentions of the tiny people who live in the forest that white people (modern westerners) can’t see. I’ve talked to one person who, by his own account, has seen them. I’ve also always been interested in the ritual use of psychoactive substances [...]
New evidence is pushing back the date of humans making fire to 400,000 years before present. This is different from humans using fire, and is specifically linked to making it. From the article: In a study published today in the journal Nature, a team of researchers claims to have discovered the earliest evidence of fire-making [...]
In the summer of 1995 I Participated in a 4-week primitive living experiment in Alaska. We built shelters, did a lot of rock-boiling in log troughs, ate a bunch of wild foods and lived in shelters we built. It was an amazing learning experience that is still paying dividends in my personal and professional life. [...]
It’s officially the off season, and I’ve been in Austin, Texas for a little over a week. For the past few years I’ve spent a month or two in Austin with family each winter. I take a few seats out of the van and put in a cot, load it up with some camping gear [...]
The parking lot is empty, the people have gone, and all that’s left is the cleanup. Year 26 and long-term program number 67 are finished. And not a moment too soon, as there’s a bit of snow coming in tomorrow night. I’ve been going since the beginning of April, and now the season is finally [...]
When projects last a long time, they often get things added to them that weren’t part of the initial plan. The longer a thing lasts, the more complex it can become. Last spring I received a message from a person who was interested in coming out for a course, but mentioned that in looking through [...]
For years people have asked me if there are decent axes and knives available locally. I can finally say yes. The Gateway Trading Post in Ashland, Maine is 6.5 miles from the field school campus on the way to Ashland. They carry Snow & Neally Axes and Mora Knives. They also carry a variety of [...]
During the summer courses we braintanned two deer hides and made red osier dogwood and spruce root baskets. Here is a photo of one person’s work, with the basket full of summer wildflowers, herbs and berries. The hides were ones I had scraped a few years ago, so we just did the braining and softening. [...]
Although I haven’t been active online, it has been a busy summer at the field school. We had a solid canoe guide training course with great water levels on the Allagash, followed by week-long summer woodsman 1 and 2 classes. And now we’re a day away from starting the fall Wilderness Bushcraft Semester, our 67th [...]
It’s been a few months since I written or recorded anything. Life at the field school has been busy with the spring Wilderness Bushcraft Semester followed immediately by the Professional Canoe Guide Training Course. I found that my day to day life and work took up all my time, and I was feeling like a [...]
Week one of our 9-week semester is all about making people self-sufficient. We spend a lot of time workong on fire, cooking over the fire, using an axe to get wood for the fire, sanitation, and settling into the woods life. We also spend a lot of time on the academic side of the course, [...]
We received an inch of fresh snow overnight. In planning for it yesterday, we worked on our introduction to mammal studies and first thing this morning we will be covering our introduction to tracking. A fresh inch of snow over a frozen ground is pretty close to as good as it gets in this part [...]
The beginning of a bushcraft semester is always marked by a settling in period. Everyone is learning our systems, getting settled with food and shelter, and digging into both the hands-on and academic instruction. It takes time. By the end of last summer I was pretty burned out with media, social media, shooting video, etc. [...]
Today marks the start of the spring, 2025 Wilderness Bushcraft Semester, and the 2025 edition of the Expedition Instructor (XI) training program. This is our 65th long-term immersion program. I can see them all in my mind’s eye, stretched out over the past 26 years. For arrival day yesterday, mother nature decided to roll out [...]
The last few winters I have taken some time away from the web and the website around the holidays. This year I extended it through the whole month of January. It was good to take a break and reboot, but now I’m ready to jump back in. Taking time away gives me the perspective to [...]
“Imagine after being exhausted at the end of a hard day, you are coming home to this [long silence]. In the little remaining daylight he cannot possibly return to his main hut, his only recourse is to fix this one.” – Werner Herzog from Happy People The trapper then commences to put his small cabin back [...]
I was a boy when I received my first pair of snowshoes, a wood-framed, rawhide-laced (the rawhide was traditionally made from moose hide and known as babiche, pronounced “bab-eesh”) pair made in Maine that took me on countless boyhood journeys through the winter woods. Since then, I’ve snowshoed all over Maine, New Hampshire, New Brunswick, [...]
I read this article on the moving magnetic north pole this morning and I thought it would be interesting to anyone who uses a magnetic compass to navigate. I don’t know what the changes on local declination are as a result, but will be interested to find out. It seems that the older barehand navigation [...]
Beginning in 2025, we’re adding a 2-day Wilderness First Aid course to the curriculum of the 9-week Wilderness Bushcraft Semester. This will allow WBS students who are interested in testing for their registered Maine guide licence to do so without having to chase down an outside first aid and cpr class. It also will give [...]
We’ve done really well over the years when it comes to publicity based on being listed in the top ten bushcraft or survival schools in the USA. It used to be magazines, now it’s blogs and online influencers. And they are all full of shit. This isn’t me being sour grapes because we were dissed. [...]
On our long-term programs, we are working to train participants to be self-sufficient. Both in camp and when we’re out on the trail, we do this by traveling solo together. The idea here is that we expect everyone to pull their own weight, police their own gear, plan and prepare their own meals, have their [...]
We’ve had a lot of inquiries about the Expedition Instructor program lately. It is our 6-month immersion that combines all of our professional training programs into a cohesive whole. And as we just wrapped up the field school season, I’ve finally had time to dive in and update the web site with the new information. [...]
We’ve got some announcements about programs coming out as we’re just about finished planning the 2025 season. We are excited to announce our first course by women, for women: the Women’s Bushcraft & Canoe 3-Week Immersion. Created and taught by Tessa and Sam (see photo), both of whom are longtime Jack Mountain Bushcraft School instructors. [...]
We just finished up the Maine Guide Medic program, our first wilderness first responder program ever at the field school. Two weeks ago we finished the Wilderness Bushcraft Semester, our 63rd long-term immersion program. It has been a busy year, with field school programs beginning when the snow pulled back in April and going straight [...]
It’s getting close to the end of the fall, 2024, Wilderness Bushcraft Semester, and I had a nature day. It was cold (in the 20’s) this morning. On my way down the hill, I saw a bunch of turkeys and a deer. We ran through our day on the course, then I cleaned up the [...]
We’re finishing up week six of the Wilderness Bushcraft Semester, and tomorrow morning we’re headed to the Allagash for our second trip of the course. We’ll be putting in at Indian Stream and paddling to Allagash Village. We’re in a midsummer weather pattern with a lot of thunderstorms in the afternoon, so that might be [...]
I get asked regularly (it happened twice over this past weekend) where my interest in bushcraft began. I feel like I have told the story hundreds of times, but in case you’re new here, here it is. I grew up on a small lake in rural New Hampshire. That’s a photo taken on the lake [...]
Maybe you’ve read Dick Proenneke’s books, or maybe you’ve seen his video “Alone In The Wilderness”. He built a cabin in Twin Lakes, Alaska, when he was in his early 50’s, and lived there until his 90’s. Wrote a book, published a video after he passed, and was generally an inspiration to a bunch of [...]
We’re into week 3 of the summer 2024 Wilderness Bushcraft Semester and things are humming along. Last week we started canoe paddles and everyone has been diligently working away on them with hand tools. Water levels in the river are dropping to summer lows, limiting the moving water canoeing options nearby, but we’ve been out [...]
We’re in the middle of week one on the summer, 2024 Wilderness Bushcraft Semester and we’ve got a heat wave sitting over us. We’ve begun our coursework on understanding the weather and are currently looking at the impacts of weather on human behavior and energy levels. Yesterday the temperature was around 95 degrees F. Today [...]
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