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 [...]

We’ve changed the curriculum of our guide training course for 2010, and renamed it the Riverman Course It’s the first week of our 4-week Canoe Expedition Semester, and takes place in early May when the rivers are swollen and the bugs are still sleeping. This weeklong course prepares you for working as a professional guide [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

Is it better to know a little about hundreds of outdoor skills, or to know a lot about a few core skills? This is a heated debate, and the answer often depends on how you live your life. For the urban set, where bushcraft is a trivial pursuit, breadth wins you more kudos at skills [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

Knowledge comes from using information, not access to it. It’s an important distinction to be made in the era of the web and the unlimited amount of information available. Just because someone copies a bit of how-to information onto an online forum doesn’t mean they know something. I’m not trying to be elitist, but there [...]

There are many outdoor education programs available these days, but there are huge differences in content, educational philosophy, and curriculum between them. When we explain what we do to people with no concept of bushcraft, they often remark, “so it’s just like (insert name of national outdoor company here)”. We reply, “No. In fact the [...]

I heard from a friend last night who took one of our courses a few years ago.  He’s starting a bushcraft school in Canada and wanted to know if he could use our liability release and acknowledgement of risk forms.  I told him yes, as it’s my policy to let anyone who wants to use [...]

Wanted: A mentor who can help me create a way to provide scholarships for low-income youth. Goal: To set up a scholarship fund, foundation, or non-profit wing of Jack Mountain in order to provide remote canoe trips and bushcraft courses for low income rural middle and high school boys. Need: Help figuring out the process [...]

Drawing on the philosophies of bushcraft we’ve developed over a decade of field courses, the traditions of Maine Guides that go back generations, the Cree concept of miyupimaatisiium (translated as “being alive well”) and the Scandinavian idea of friluftsliv (translated as “open air life”), the following seven elements comprise the components of our programs. 1. [...]

Eating acorns is a hot topic these days as I’ve gotten several questions about it.  If you haven’t read it, check out this page for a great essay written by my friend Dan Fisher.  He explains how he does it, and i chime it at the end with a short blurb. To answer some recently-posed [...]

If you’re a regular reader or visitor to our site, you may have noticed the small “site by Aroocom” text at the bottom of each page.  No, we haven’t outsourced our site to a Siberian media conglomerate.  Since I’m on an 8-month sabbatical from teaching extended bushcraft courses, I’ve decided to offer my web consulting [...]

We’ve updated the information on our Yearlong Bushcraft Immersion Program for 2010.  Changes include the addition of a 2-week winter survival and travel course and that the course will begin with the fall semester instead of the spring.  Although our costs will go up with adding the winter course, we’re keeping the tuition the same. [...]

I hear from people regularly who are interested in making a move to the country and want to know how much land they need.  This question has also been the impetus for many discussions around the fire.  There is no right answer, as everything depends on the land and what you want to do with [...]

During a recent course we spent some time trout fishing.  When we were paddling across a remote lake I offered some of my lures to be trolled.  As I handed one of my treasured lures to a course participant, I told him the history of the lure, that I had bought it in 1981, that [...]

People stealing other’s content (text, photos, etc.) is common on the web, although that doesn’t make it alright or any less disrespectful.  Some large companies send threatening letters from lawyers to add a consequence for this act.  Our policy is to identify the site, say that it’s both uncool and illegal, and give them an [...]

I first read this story in the mid 1990’s.  It reminds me of a line from Edmund Ware Smith’s “The One-Eyed Poacher And The Maine Woods”, where he writes that the woodsmen in his stories “have their own idea of wealth, and it’s got nothing to do with money.” “A Micmac Looks At The Ways [...]

I’ve updated our blog with some new software, one result of which is that you can once again leave comments.  I’ve had them turned off for a few years, and updating the software and reactivating them is finally off the to-do list.

I spent Saturday canoeing the San Marcos river with my son and a friend.  The section we paddled was a narrow, gentle river  that wound its way past high sandstone banks, through cattle farms, and past some big houses.  There were enormous cypress trees, herons, red-tailed hawks and a bunch of turtles who were enjoying [...]

Our new online registration process is fully operational after a day of tinkering with it.  Instead of our old system where people had to print, fill out and mail a form, we’ve automated the process with an online form.  So the process will be faster, smoother and easier.  If it all seems like too much [...]

I’ve been rereading Calvin Rutstrum’s book The Wilderness Life and am enjoying it as much as the first time.  I think his insights on wilderness living are keen, and his years of experience are evident in his writings unlike some other popular writers.  (I really dislike Nessmuk, and will write about why at some point.) [...]