Nature is buzzing around the field school. The yearly show put on by fireflies is in full swing. After dark there are thousands of them over the field, blinking on and off and looking like a galaxy of stars you can reach out and touch. Were my photography skills developed beyond point and click, I’d [...]

One of the guys in camp this week hit a moose with his car. He was coming up route 11 toward Masardis after dark and saw some moose on the side of the road. Luckily, he slowed way down to about 5 miles per hour before a moose stepped in front of his car. The [...]

This is my favorite photo from our May canoe trip on the Allagash.  I got up at 3:57 am in order to wake someone on the trip at 4, and the light was just coming over the ridge to the northeast of the pond.  It was cold, but I grabbed my camera and took a [...]

This morning we start our Bushman course.  The focus is on the primitive skills needed to live in the north woods during the warm weather months.  Primitive is occasionally used as a synonym for inferior, but a quick check of the dictionary will rectify that.  It is from the latin Primus, meaning the first of [...]

After a busy week we finished the Woodsman course yesterday. The weather was fantastic the whole week; one rainy morning, but otherwise sun and warm days with cool nights in the 40’s. We had a bunch of animals come through camp, from deer and moose to the snowshoe hare’s who are hopping around the field [...]

Another 15″ brook trout caught in camp tonight.  Roasting on a stick over the fire in front of the new reflector oven.  A great week so far!

We had a busy day yesterday working on fires, axe uses, wild edibles and campfire cooking.  A guy on the course caught his first trout on a fly rod – a 12″ brookie, in the river right in front of camp.  And on a dry fly, no less.  One of the teaching assistants was riding [...]

Today begins our series of week long summer programs with the Woodsman course.  It’s our general introductory course on all things bushcraft.  Last night we welcomed everyone to camp with a huge batch of sourdough biscuits cooked in our new, giant, reflector oven.  More on it later.  Today we’ll be working on using axes and [...]

We had the pleasure of Nick Gallop’s company on our river trip last month.  Nick has a school and blog in England called Skills For Wild Lives.  He’s also a skilled artist, craftsman, woodsman, riverman, photographer and potential infomercial pitchman (more on this later).  He’s writing up his trip journal on his blog complete with [...]

An axe gauge is a small tool with a triangular cut out used to measure the profile of an axe blade. Axes have different profiles for different jobs. For example, a splitting axe can be nearly triangular in shape, while a limbing axe has a much more narrow profile. Gauges were used to set and [...]

I have a hard time figuring out how to connect with people on social media sites. My quandary is whether to post things as me, Tim, or as my business, the Jack Mountain Bushcraft School. I want to be consistent. I want to not confuse people regarding who’s who and avoid creating a web-based split [...]

We made it back from the Allagash trip, finishing the spring Bushcraft Canoe Expedition Semester.  Overall the trip was fantastic, but it didn’t look that way at the beginning.  The first two days the black flies were terrible, but then it cooled off and they weren’t bad for this time of year.  The fishing was [...]

Phase 1 of the Bushcraft Canoe Expedition Semester is completed. It was a fantastic 9-day trip on the headwaters of the Aroostook, where we put in on Chase Pond and descended Munsungan Brook, crossed Munsungan Lake, carried around Munsungan Falls, descended Munsungan Stream, and paddled the Aroostook River back to the field school. We had [...]

It’s been a busy few days since arriving at the field school. Lots of cleaning, gear preparation, varnishing wannigans, canoe chairs, etc., but it’s finished and this morning we leave to paddle and pole the headwaters of the Aroostook river. We’ll be camping, fishing and canoeing back to the field school over the next week. [...]

If you have old outdoor books and magazines, I want you to join me in donating one (or more) of them to the troops.  Email me and I’ll pass along where to send them. Yesterday I received an email from a soldier serving in an infantry unit getting ready for a 12-month deployment to Afghanistan.  [...]

A reporter asked me a while ago why I thought survival TV shows have attracted such big audiences. I answered that if you filmed some gorillas in the wild, then showed that video to gorillas in a cage at the zoo, they’d be fascinated to see members of their species in their natural environment. If [...]

If you read the Jack Mountain Bushcraft Blog feed on the web, or if you get it delivered via email, I’d like to invite you to check it out on our site again. I’ve recently made some big changes to the layout, making it a hub for JMBS videos, podcasts and photos. My goal is [...]

In a few days, I’ll be there.  A river in northern Maine.  A remote campsite, only accessible by water.  But in those few remaining days, there’s lots of work to be done.  Today, it was varnishing a new dutch oven wannigan and canoe chair.  Tomorrow it will be putting several coats of shellac on my [...]

The updated requirements for the Journeyman certification program are live on the web. You can read them here.  I’m excited about the direction our certification programs are headed, and will be writing more about them in the coming weeks.

I’m adding a new photo digest here starting today.  I post lots of photos to our Flickr, Google+ and Facebook pages, but  those of you who only read the blog will now be able to check them out. You can see a full-size version of the image by clicking the title.  Let me know what [...]

After a few months as a stay at home dad I’m doing some spring cleaning this week.  Currently I’m on day 3 of a 7-day water fast.  This means only consuming water, not avoiding water.  So far this fast has been pleasant. A seven-day water fast is a requirement for our Expedition Instructor (XI) certification.  [...]

Ross Morgan wrote a great comment on a recent post about Spiller axes, including some history of revered Maine axes and how the Gransfors Bruks American felling axe design started in the woods of New England.  I’ve heard stories about how the Gransfors was patterned after a Maine axe, and wrote as much in the [...]

There’s an attitude I’ve seen a few times that warrants mention because it will stop a person from becoming at home in the natural world. That attitude is busyness. For some a foray into the forest is a non-stop to do list without a break between projects. For some the constant stream of activity is [...]

Now that our winter programs are completed, I’m turning my attention to the spring canoe expedition semester. The course lasts 28 days. The first 2 are spent in camp planning, provisioning, packing and preparing gear. Then it’s off to run the length of our home river, the Aroostook. We’ve got an optional leg of the [...]

3 week minimum. For Immersion program students, by immersion program students. There comes a point in a person’s bushcraft education where they need to be kicked out of the nest to do things on their own and gain a level of experience that is difficult to obtain during a formal course. Once a certain level [...]

After a lot of thought and discussions with students, we’re scrapping our current Journeyman Certification Program. Instead of being based on a 4-week summer field course, the Journeyman Certification will now be based on the Wilderness Bushcraft Semester in the fall. Like the XI (Expedition Instructor Certification), it will be comprised of benchmarks, minimum competencies [...]

After three weeks sleeping in sub-zero temperatures, we’re getting a warming trend. I had plenty of insulation (2 sleeping bags), so I haven’t been cold at night. I have, however, had to deal with frost. Living and sleeping in subzero temperatures is an exercise in moisture management. The moisture expelled by your skin ends up [...]

Check out the amazing program my friend Jeff Giallombardo is running at Nokomis High School in Newport, Maine (see below). It’s exciting to see bushcraft making inroads into the classroom. “Ultimate Outdoors” is a program recently developedat Nokomis Regional High School in an effort to better serve our “at risk”young adult students and our general [...]

Video on building a semi-permanent, group-sized dome shelter in the woods of northern Maine to be used as a lodge, wet-weather instruction area, heated space during cold weather, and as a dance club in the evenings.  

We’re adding two new certification programs to our list of courses to go along with the Journeyman course: the Expedition Instructor (XI) and Expedition Instructor Trainer (XIT). They exist as add-ons to our current yearlong immersion program. There are no extra courses that need to be taken, nor is there any extra tuition involved. There [...]

Our 18th bushcraft immersion semester program is finished and I’m enjoying some down time with family.  In addition to a busy schedule of courses, we added a hand pump well to the field school this year, as well as finished the exterior of the guide shack and built a student campsite at Moose Vegas. In [...]

For the past two years I’ve been under a television contract with the Animal Planet television network. I’ve shot two pilots, and just heard that the more recent of these will not be airing. It was a fun experience and an amazing learning opportunity, but one that involved a lot of waiting and relying on [...]

It’s official; the Jack Mountain Bushcraft School has been approved by the Veterans Administration to accept GI Bill benefits for our bushcraft and guide training immersion programs.  Our approval is as a vocational school.  More details coming soon.

Today was the first day of the Journeyman Program.  It’s new this year – a four week immersion course.  We had a great day building shelters,  lighting fires, cooking over the fire, etc.  The mosquitos in the Guide Shack are fierce tonight – someone left the door open today.  They’re too numerous to spend much [...]

My posts lately have been only to Twitter and Facebook because I’ve been so busy, and the days I’m not I’ve had family duty.  This is set to change, as we start our long term programs in a week (for 13 weeks) and we’ve got a dedicated study hall period in the evening where I’ll [...]

Making crooked knives beneath the Pyramid Of Doom I’ve been at the field school for several weeks, currently in the third straight week of courses. We ran the Woodsman course, then the Bushman, and now are smack in the middle of the Riverman. It’s been busy, with days starting at around 6 and lasting until [...]

I took a bit of time away from updating the blog to get ready for my recent speaking gig in Dallas and to work on my advanced diaper changing technique, but am back again.  My diaper changing duties are about to be put on hold as I’m packing for the trip from Texas to Maine [...]

I’m a member of a hate group. Not any longer, but I was for a few hours. Someone added me to one on Facebook. I wasn’t aware that someone else could add you to a group without your consent, but one day I received 14 email updates from this group which alerted me that I [...]

The registration deadline for our summer and fall courses recently passed. We’ve done a poor job of communicating what this actually means. You can still register for all of our courses as long as the Registration Status on our calendar is Open. We started this system of registration deadlines years ago so that we knew [...]