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 [...]

We had a fantastic week canoeing the Bonaventure river in Quebec. The upper river was very low, but thanks to an overnight rain the water level came up and was pretty close to perfect. Although we came close a few times, our crew didn’t dump any boats. I’ve got a bunch of videos to edit, [...]

After wrapping up the 2024 Wilderness Canoe Expedition Semester (WCES) a few days ago and a few days of rest and office work, I’m getting gear and a menu ready for next week’s trip to Quebec to run the Bonaventure River. I’ve been up there a few times, and it’s a real stunner of a [...]

I heard from an old friend and fellow Maine guide last night. He is reading The Last Guide by Ron Corbett, a book about the last of the old-time fishing guides in Algonquin Park in Ontario. He was taken with the author’s ideas on the motivation to be a guide. Seen from a different perspective, [...]

It was a challenging four weeks, but we’ve come to the end of the 2024 Wilderness Canoe Expedition Semester. We covered a lot of miles, passed on the traditions of Maine Guide expedition canoeing, watched people grow, watched friendships flourish, and had a lot of cheap laughs in beautiful places along the waterways of northern [...]

My gear is packed, the van is gassed up, and in a few hours we’re headed out on the river for the rest of the month. The plan is to canoe two different river systems, increasing the challenges as the skill and experience level of the group progresses. We will have one resupply day to [...]

The seventh day of May is a personal holiday for me in remembrance of an amazing day in the life of a rural kid. Some of the details are lost to the past, but let me tell you what I remember. It was 1983 in rural New Hampshire, I was in the sixth grade, and [...]

We had a great 40-mile trip on a nearby river over the past three days. The water was high and cold, the rapids were fast, and the fish were biting. I caught the native (not stocked) 13-inch trout above at one of our campsites, and it made for great eating after slow-roasting it next to [...]

Yesterday they opened a new VA medical clinic in Presque Isle. The new facility replaces the old clinic in Caribou and features modern facilities. The new facility will be a significant benefit to the veterans we work with. From the article at thecounty.me: The 7,500-square-foot facility at 732 Main St. replaces the VA outpatient clinic [...]

I’ve been busy getting ready for our first field school program of the year. In The week and a half that I’ve been home, I went from getting vehicles stuck in the snow to bare ground. A lot of water has moved across the landscape. I only had to clear two trees from the road [...]

I recently vacated Texas and made the jump for home in Aroostook County, Maine. We have a 15 passenger van for getting people onto canoe trips, hauling trailers, etc. Last fall I took out a bunch of seats, put a cot in the back, and lived like a king while traveling. #vanlife I took it [...]

An evening camp scene from our first night on the Rio Grande lower canyons trip. It was a big stone beach that backed up to a small field, and only a few miles from the put-in. We had great sunset light here, as well as room to spread out. Because the water contained a lot [...]

Recently I joined up with two almuni in west Texas to canoe the 83-mile lower canyons of the Rio Grande river. We put in at Heath Canyon Ranch near La Linda, and paddled/poled/dragged 83 miles downriver to Dryden Crossing. It was a hard trip, marked by low water levels and headwinds, but the scenery was [...]

I was off the grid for a while recently, came home to finish some documentation for an ongoing project, and had to do some research on outfitters in Maine. Several had listed themselves as the “premier” outfitter in Maine. What does this mean? I don’t begrudge anyone for a bit of self-promotion; it comes with [...]

I’m en route to west Texas to rendezvous with a few old friends. We’re going to meet at Monahans Sandhills State Park (where one of our party is the honcho), spend the night discussing tales of derring-do around a fire, then get up and head south to the border. The put-in for the trip through [...]

We’ve had a bunch of registrations recently and I wanted to let people know where we are with regard to available spots in our spring, summer and fall immersion programs for 2024. 2 Spots Remaining. Spring Wilderness Canoe Expedition Semester (4-weeks) 2 Spots Remaining. Summer Wilderness Bushcraft Semester (9-weeks) 4 Spots Remaining. Fall Wilderness Bushcraft [...]

I have updated my contact info our our Contact page. As time has gone by, the phone has become less and less useful to me. Spam texts, spam calls, dealing with Google Voice, etc., have all made it a less-than-pleasant experience. More like an annoyance. So in a bid for simplification and to avoid the [...]

It can be expensive to buy all the gear you need to participate in outdoor activities, especially when you’re starting from scratch. If you’re coming to the field school, you can rent most of the camping gear needed to participate. This is a great option for those coming for a few days to a few [...]

I’m adding a stop on my trip north after the Rio Grande trip in March; A Buffalo river trip in Arkansas in April. In 2008 we had a student on a semester course who lived off the grid near the Buffalo river in Arkansas. When we were out on the Allagash he told me several [...]

I don’t like to comment on gear until I’ve had it for a few years and used it hard. And I am wary of gear reviews on the internet. Now, after several hard years of use, I’m ready to spill the beans on something I bring with me on all trips. (Note: I don’t get [...]

We are (slightly) changing the Wilderness Canoe Expedition Semester for 2024. First, we’re adding a new subtitle to reflect what the course is, the Maine Guide Traditional Canoe Expedition Leadership 4-Week Training Course. I considered changing the course name, but we’ve been running this program for a lot of years, and changing the title would [...]

It’s been ten years since Brian Kevin’s article The Survivors, about military veterans attending the Wilderness Bushcraft Semester, was published in DownEast Magazine. Of all the media coverage we’ve had over the years, this article is my favorite. The author came and camped with us, got to know the people he was writing about, and [...]

Recently someone asked me if I had ever paddled the Big Black river. It is a major tributary to the St. John, flowing in across the border from Quebec. It joins the St. John just below the appropriately-named Big Black Rapids. I told them not only had I been down it, but it was written [...]

I learned a new term yesterday for something we have been doing for five years. The term is Daylight Drive, and it is used to describe an off-grid solar power system that doesn’t include batteries. When you are charging off of our solar panels at the field school, we recommend that you bring your own [...]

We’re currently in the planning stages of a canoe trip through the Lower Canyons of the Rio Grande river along the Texas/Mexico border. A few friends did this several years ago, and I’m really excited about it. We’ve got dates on the calendar for mid-March, and we’re currently looking at shuttles, prepping gear, etc. I [...]

You can follow us on the Fediverse at: @blog.jackmtn.com@blog.jackmtn.com I’m not usually one to prognosticate about the future of the web, but I am often thinking about how to make our stuff available to our audience, and to give good advice to our students and those just starting out running a business. For years I [...]

I just read The Compost Toilet Handbook by Joseph Jenkins. If you are coming to the field school you shoulld read it because this is the dry toilet system we’ve been using since 1996. I still recommend that teacher read the humanure handbook as well, but this book separates out the how-to information from the [...]

The JMBS pot system is designed to be functional and economical. The biggest item lacking is a properly-sized bowl for eating out of that nests with the rest of the kit, because the 6-inch pie tins, while they work great as pot lids, are not sized well for use as an eating bowl for an [...]

When I first met Mors Kochanski in 1996 he showed those of us on the course his collection of books. He had a lot of them. At the time he had been teaching a course for the University of Alberta for 25 years or so, had written extensively, and was a lifelong student of everything [...]

The woods are white now, covered in snow. Watching the changing moods, the changing light of the natural world has been one of my lifelong passions. I work to become a better photographer in order to share what I see, but the images my eyes see are often not well-represented with what my camera sees. [...]

It has snowed off and on for the last five days, and as I’m writing this it is -6 degrees F and there is 8 inches of fresh snow on the ground. Winter has definitely arrived, and I’m getting excited for winter programs in February. This photo was taken a while back, showing a line [...]

Learning how to wash your clothing by hand with limited or no infrastructure, such as when on a long expedition or living off the grid for a length of time, is a useful skill to learn. It is one we are adding to our long-term programs because as the years go by, fewer and fewer [...]

Maybe the rest of the world is catching on. Here’s a link to an article about the use of human urine as fertilizer to contribute to food security: phys.org. From the article, :”Urine contains nitrogen and phosphorus, two essential nutrients for plant growth. Urine can thus serve as an almost cost-free and locally available nutrient [...]

Many of our alunmi have become Registered Maine Guides. A guide license is necessary in Maine to receive any form of payment for your services in the field. It is a state license which is granted at the end of a testing process. In recent years students on long courses have tried to get all [...]

The USDA recently updated it’s hardiness zone map with data from the last few years, and northern Maine is getting warmer. On the older maps, Masardis was zone 3B. On the updated map, we’re zone 4A. It’s an indicator of changing times. It also opens us up to a wider variety of perennials we can [...]

It has been cold and snowy in Aroostook County this week for the Autumn Woodsman course. We’re past the halfway mark on the course, and thus far we have covered a lot of ground, including axemanship, fire making and management, fire by friction, navigation, hot tents and stoves, woodstove lighting and management, and a bunch [...]