Jack Mountain Bushcraft Blog

Reflector Oven Baking

We do a lot of sourdough baking in the reflector oven when on remote trips.  It’s a great piece of low-tech, high-skill equipment that is worthless in the hands of someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing, but priceless in the hands of someone who does.  The best way to become proficient with it is [...]

Nutshimit is a word and concept from the Innu.  Previously known by the name given to them by the French, Montagnais, they inhabit a huge, sparsely populated region of Quebec and Labrador. For many Innu, life in the village is marked by idleness and a sense of loss and alienation, in strong contrast to being [...]

I’ve been thinking for several years about putting together an expedition-style course for young men where we’d spend three or four weeks in the north woods canoeing and living outdoors.  It would be a similar, although less rigorous, curriculum that we use in our college semester programs, with a focus on academic subjects such as [...]

I love to explore new places.  I’ve covered a lot of northern Maine in my canoe over the last decade, and I’ve still only scratched the surface.  Sometimes I find those special spots where no one goes, the fishing is good and there’s a beautiful place to camp.  Other times I’m hauling over beaver dams [...]

Early spring is the season of travel on remote northern rivers. Swelled with snowmelt, a canoe is able to travel where the water is too low during the summer. This is one of my favorite spots in Maine, seldom visited, far from any logging road and a long way from town or a paved road. [...]

Something we emphasize on our courses is to know yourself and how you deal with different stresses that come into play on extended trips or even when you’re just working around camp. One of the most important deals with hydration; how much water YOU need and what happens when you don’t get enough. This is [...]

When I was a kid I knew the company I wanted to work for. I knew what my job would be and the things I’d do. But I couldn’t get hired by that company because it didn’t exist. I had to build it. Here’s a timeline of some of the highlights of that journey. 1995. [...]

I haven’t been blogging much lately, as I’ve been a busy dad as well as working on a lot of the behind the scenes aspects of our 2010 season. But I have been adding content to our various outposts on the web, and this post will tell you where they are. 1. We’ve got a [...]

Connectivity

With the rise of the web and people being constantly connected, I’m concerned about the future of really experiencing things. These days I see so many people constantly tweeting, shooting video, and documenting their experiences, especially outdoor experiences, that I wonder if there’s any authentic experience taking place or if the whole thing exists just [...]

The dates for the fall and spring terms of our 2010-2011 yearlong immersion program have been set. The yearlong program includes the fall, winter and spring terms. Fall Term: Wilderness Bushcraft Semester 8/22/10-10/23/10 – Immediately following the fall term is our practical exam, which lasts several days. Winter Term: Winter Bushcraft Intensive 1/9/11 – 1/22/11 [...]

TV survival shows are about hardships and risk. With background music to set the mood, the feeling of jeopardy hangs heavily over the host as s/he negotiates within an inch of his/her life. The danger makes it sexy. In the real world, bushcraft is much more about heritage and tradition rather than risk. The old [...]

We’re adding a tuition financing and payment plan for our long term programs. All the details aren’t set yet, but will be in a few weeks. It’s part of our plan to make our programs available to anyone who has a strong interest in bushcraft and living a simple, outdoor life.

Difficulty Precedes Change

Books on outdoor adventure can be read in the warm, dry, comfortable surroundings of the home. They entertain, but when finished they seldom change the reader. Actual outdoor experience and wilderness travel is characterized by bad weather, bugs, difficulty and exhaustion. Their impacts are felt throughout life, changing the person. Without the difficulty, there can [...]

Northern Maine’s St. John River is the premier wilderness trip in the US east of the Mississippi. This year we’re running it May 10-17. The natives called it Wallastook, or “Beautiful River”. It’s the largest river in Atlantic Canada, but starts from a series of small ponds deep in the woods of northern Maine, this [...]

Thinking about taking a semester off from college and spending it in the wilderness? If so, compare the different approaches of our program versus the large, corporate wilderness education companies. If you’re looking for modern, high-tech outdoor education with programs on backpacking and mountaineering, then check them out. But if you’re interested in building a [...]

I’m headed back to Canoecopia in March for a presentation on wilderness survival for paddlers titled “How To Avoid Becoming One With Nature Through The Composting Process.” As such I wanted to be clear about what you won’t hear in my survival presentations: 1. Long, drawn out discussion of equipment; kit is secondary, knowledge is [...]

No Sense Of Direction

I read an article from the Dallas Morning News on December 6th titled “Global Impositioning Systems; Is GPS technology actually harming our sense of direction?” by Alex Hutchinson. While I’ve often heard of people having no sense of direction, and have met a few that can get lost driving to the grocery store, I didn’t [...]

The forum on the Jack Mounatin Bushcraft Network (our online social network) has been increasingly active lately. Someone recently posted a question about natural alternatives to insulin: What happens if you are Insulin dependent and end up in a survival situation without Insulin. Is there anything you can do? Are there any natural forms of [...]

Solar Powered Forge

We do quite a bit of knifemaking (crooked knives, mostly) in our longer courses. In trying to keep things as simple as possible, we use the campfire or woodstove to anneal the blades, and an open fire to temper them as well. We’ve got a coal forge with a hand crank blower, but we’re always [...]

I was discussing bushcraft on Saturday and trying to explain it to someone whose life experience has been all in urban areas. In discussing life at our field school, I explained that it was just like life anywhere else, except without the infrastructure. I thought about this for a while after the conversation ended, and [...]

Our first online course, titled “Becoming A Bushcraft Instructor,”, has been a great experience thus far. We’ve had some thoughtful discussions about our first book, Hare Brain Tortoise Mind, which examines how the brain processes information. I’ve been learning a lot from the discussion. As a sample, below is a post from Russ Venditto on [...]

We’re offering an early registration discount for 2010. If you register and pay in full for a 2010 course or trip by January 15th you can take 10% off the tuition. This includes our long term programs. It could save you a cool $1050 off our yearlong program; enough for a new canoe, a wall [...]

There’s an idea about competing that winning is everything. It isn’t. I like to compete because it pushes me. Physically, it teaches me how much more is in the tank when the needle is hovering on “E”. As a business owner, it keeps me thinking about how to do it better and to create something [...]

The Wild Northeast

When most people think of the northeast corner of North America, they think of the huge urban area stretching from Washington DC to Boston. They think there’s no wild country left, and that the west is the place to be. The map they think of looks like this: View Larger Map But look a bit [...]

Our educational system has become increasingly abstract over the last hundred years.  Instead of instruction in sensory development and hands-on skills, we focus almost exclusively on the intellectual and the abstract.  Much of this is the result of the influence of Jean Piaget and his stage theory of cognitive development from the 1920’s.  He viewed [...]

This is a selection from my upcoming book “Bush Cookery: Outdoor Cooking Secrets From A Professional Guide”. You should never leave food, even small bits of it, around your camp.  To do so is to bring animals into camp, and ultimately habituate them to human food.  There’s an old saying that a fed bear is [...]

Our yearlong immersion program is a combination of field school and home school; hands-on hard skills and more traditional academic work focusing on ideas and scholarship. We’ve decided to open the home school portion up to anyone who is interested for free.  It scales well, requires only an internet connection and a library card (and [...]

As discussed on online courses page, we’re ready to start our new online course series. The online courses represent the academic component of our yearlong course. We’re sharing it with anyone who wants to participate. It’s not a replacement for hands-on training in hard skills. It’s a complement for such training, resulting in a deeper [...]

Another new course for 2010, the Bushman course is an intensive exploration of primitive bushcraft skills. The word primitive is derived from the latin root primus, which means first or original. We’ll focus on original skills, those that don’t require specialized kit or other gear. Nature is our gear store. Knowledge makes it accessible. This [...]

I just got the fall, 2009 Maine Wilderness Guides Organization newsletter.  It has the previously mentioned write-up on Jack Mountain, and also included this great little story. One morning a husband returns after several hours of fishing and decides to take a nap. Although not familiar with the lake, the wife decides to take the [...]

Start Something Today

172 years ago today (October 22nd, 1837), Henry David Thoreau started keeping a daily journal.  It was a pretty simple act, but he stuck with it and the result is that people around the world continue to talk about his writing and ideas.  Start something today.  Who knows how far it will go?

We’re introducing several new week-long courses in 2010, the first of which is the Woodsman course. It’s a comprehensive introduction to bushcraft and wilderness survival in the northern forest, and will serve as the basic course for our week-long programs. Topics will include: * Wilderness Survival 101 * Introduction To Bushcraft * Fire Making: The [...]

Starting next year we’ll be partnering with Blackwater Outfitters to offer lodging options for our programs. Owner Dick Cullins is a friend and first-rate hunting guide, and his cabins are comfortably furnished with hot showers and soft beds. They’re located just down the road in Masardis. For those interested in attending a course but don’t [...]

We’re officially changing the name of our flagship course. The Earth Skills Semester Program is now The Wilderness Bushcraft Semester. The content of the course will remain the same. The reason for the name change is to make it more descriptive of what is taught and to eliminate any ambiguity caused by the term earth [...]

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