This year we won’t be running a fall semester course for the first time in six years, as I decided a month ago that it was time for a sabbatical.  My apologies to all of you who applied only to have the course postponed for a year, but it was time for me to take [...]

I’m incommunicado no longer, and once again can join the conversation. Jack Mountain has a new phone number, and this one’s a keeper.  207-518-8804. We’re also changing our email to:   jmbushcraft@gmail.com The email change will be gradual, and we’ll still be using our old address for a year or two more. There’s a pile [...]

It’s been a fantastic summer and we had a lot of fun running a wide variety of programs. Yes northern Maine has had a lot of rain. But it led to people perfecting their wet-weather fire skills, and allowed me to run a bunch of whitewater that can usually only be run in early May. [...]

I got an email from my friend Stephen Marshall today about the launching of his new site, Backwoods Adventures (backwoodadventures.com) in Nova Scotia.  Stephen and I worked together a few summers ago and he’s doing great things with first nations people in the Maritimes.  I’m hopeing to get over there one of these days so [...]

This morning I’m wondering where the idea about surviving in the bush “with only a knife” came from?  If I could have only one tool for a trip of a 1-100 days, it would be a full-sized axe, not a knife.  The reason is that an axe makes a better knife than a knife makes [...]

Most survival advice available in the press is dubious at best, written by professional writers and not seasoned instructors with field experience.  Thankfully Outside Magazine decided to hire Tony Nester of Ancient Pathways to answer their  reader’s questions on their Survival Guru blog. Tony’s got two decades of experience teaching in the field, has written [...]

I came across this graphic on Keith Johnson’s Permaculture And Regenerative Design News blog.  Keith used it to support the idea that the production systems that sustain major urban areas lie far the urban boundary.  The term we use for this is displaced impact, and we’ve written about how it applies to minimum impact camping.  [...]

It’s looking like I’ll be trading our white, 15 passenger van, aka the white tube of misery, in for another vehicle later this month. The name was coined by Jeff Butler on our now-infamous roadtrip to Canoecopia a few years ago.  We were driving through Chicago on our way back from Madison, Wisconsin and were [...]

The book of poetry titled Pine Tree Ballads was published in 1902 and has some great pieces about the north woods of Maine.  The Knight Of The Spike-Sole Boots by Holman Day tells the story of a sport who tried to run the Hulling Machine on the East Branch of the Penobscot River.  I’ve run [...]

Our new podcast is coming together, and the first episode is live on the web.  There is a bit of work left to do getting everything set up and integrated. Note: In December, 2013 we moved our podcast to it’s current place on our own site.

This morning after dropping my son off at preschool I was walking down the stairs to the house and I heard a bunch of crows making a ruckus.  After looking towards the lake for a few moments, I spotted a shape in one of the white pines, about 20 feet from our deck.  It was [...]

I wrote up a document on helping people prepare for their field school course recently, and put it online with a link from our Registration page.  You can read it at: http://www.jackmtn.com/PDF/JMB_field_school_preparation.pdf The text is below. ———————————————————- ———————————————————- 1.    Food, meals and cooking 2.    Drinking Water 3.    Electricity 4.    Gear And Gear Lists 5.    Sleeping [...]

I’m back from the field school after a great spring semester.  The weather is perfect, the perennial edibles are coming up in force, and we’ve got an edible plants of early summer workshop tomorrow.  More to come, including thoughts about the spring semester, are coming soon.

We’re taking a resupply break at the field school today and made the trek to Presque Isle.  We just finished week 4 (of 6) of the spring semester with a trip on Mooseleuk Stream and the Aroostook River.  We did some fly fishing on the stream and I caught a beautiful 11″ wild brook trout.  [...]

There has been a lot of interest in simplifying and preparedness recently as a result of the economic circumstances many are facing.  Knowing how to take care of your family, even if the modern conveniences stop working for a while, is something at least one person in each household should know.  The good news is [...]

Things have been busy with a new baby and getting ready for the spring semester.  I’ve been working on a white ash bow, and today I cut the handle and thinned the stave using a draw knife and spoke shave. There’s a strip of open water along the lake shore a few feet wide, and [...]

I’ve been trading emails with Taj Forer for a few months, and last weekend we finally got together.  Taj is a photographer and one of the founders of Daylight Magazine.  We discussed a project he’s working on documenting traditional wilderness skills and made plans for him to join us for some of the spring bushcraft [...]

I was recently interviewed by Iain Haywood at ooh.com.  You can read the piece here.  In addition to some nice photos of Ernie Davis and David Bosum, I’m quoted on educational philosophy: “At its best, teaching should be invisible; a person who learns from a mediocre instructor will realize how talented their instructor is. The [...]

We get a lot of requests for work-study options for our programs, so we’re introducing one for summer, 2009. Duties include organic gardening, landscaping, cutting firewood and building an intimate relationship with the land. You’ll live in your own tent or a shelter you build. You’ll maintain an off-the-grid solar pv system, our composting system, [...]

On April 1st I’m giving a talk at the Goodwin Library in Farmington, NH, on preparedness, sustainability and using low-tech techniques to recession-proof your home and family. I’ll be discussing how to live gracefully without modern conveniences such as septic, running water, or electricity in the New England during all seasons.  Topics will range from [...]

Part 2 (of 2) of our Philosophy Of Bushcraft Video. Jack Mountain Bushcraft Journal – Episode 20. For a higher resolution version that combines parts 1 and 2, check it out at blip.tv.

Philosophy Of Bushcraft – Part 1. Jack Mountain Bushcraft Journal Episode 19. For a higher resolution version that combines part 1 and 2, go to our blip.tv channel.

Yesterday I received a dvd copy of a television show shot a year ago called I’ll Try Anything Once and featuring Touré and myself, with a guest appearance by Don Merchant.  I spent several days teaching Touré the skills of winter survival, culminating his 24-hour solo in the winter woods.  I hadn’t seen any footage [...]

I’ve been a fan of Bill Mason’s films and books for several decades.  He was a proponent of wood canvas canoes, canvas tents, and traditional skills of the bush.  I picked out a great quotation from his film Waterwalker the other night: You see things differently when you travel the way the native peoples did. [...]

Our semester course originally grew out of the desire to move past a skills-only paradigm to include the experience of living a simple outdoor life.  After ten years and 12 semester courses, I think we’ve been successful at introducing a new idea of outdoor education to the world that isn’t limited to just hard or [...]

If you haven’t seen it yet, check out the National Film Board Of Canada’s site.  They’ve put their archives online for free, so we’re able to watch a bunch of great films right on the web. To put this in perspective, about 15 years ago I heard about the film Cree Hunters Of Mistassini.  I [...]

I had the opportunity to do some reading and enjoy some spirited discussions on our recent trip to northern Quebec. One of the topics that kept coming up was the lack of decent terminology in english for the simple, outdoor lifestyle based on skill, simple tools and a relationship with the land and it’s resources. [...]

Over the weekend I learned that the article about our 2005 canoe trip on the Big Black River that Tom Haines wrote appeared in the book The Best Travel Writing 2006; True Stories From Around The World.  It originally ran in the travel section of The Boston Globe on June 12, 2005. You can get [...]

My friend and fellow bushcraft instructor David Cronenwett has a great new blog called A View From Aerie Mountain: Natural History, Bushcraft, Outdoor Survival, Grizzly Bears, Human Ecology, Montana And More.  David is an experienced instructor of outdoor living and has some keen insights into both outdoor life and people. His post titled Personas Among [...]

In the morning I’m heading north with a small group to Oujé-Bougoumou, Quebec, for 8 days of snowshoeing and winter living with my friend David Bosum.  I’m bringing a group with me to experience the Cree way of life and hospitality. I’ve taken several trips with David over the past decade, and all have been [...]

In addition to being the base for our programs, our Bushcraft And Sustainability Field School is also where we experiment with different technologies in order to achieve a simple, comfortable, rural life.  It’s a demonstration site, but not in the sense that we create alternative ways of doing things and then revert back to the [...]

Arctic explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson wrote that “adventure is a sign of incompetence.”  But if it isn’t for adventure, why do people do the things they do?  I’m with Stefansson on adventure.  It implies that you’re not prepared for what you face, which, in the case of living a life outdoors, should never be the case.  [...]

If you’re interested in keeping up with all the updates we put on the web, check out our FriendFeed page at: friendfeed.com/jmbushcraft It lists all the updates we make on the web, including this blog, photos, videos, Facebook updates, etc.  I’m going to put it on our site soon, but for the time being check [...]

We’re wrapping up week 1 of the Earth Skills Winter Program, and I’m getting all the gear assembled for our snowshoe trip next week.  We’ve had the coldest temperatures of the year so far, but it’s been a fun week anyway and we’ve covered a lot of ground.  Today I’m busy prepping and packing what [...]

The number of primitive skills and survival schools has swelled in the last few years, and while all schools are not created equal there are many opportunities to learn wilderness skills these days.  It’s important to be clear about what we do because it’s different than what’s available elsewhere.  Yes, we teach skills.  We’re among [...]

I got an email from Tim MacWelch of the Earth Connection School of Wilderness Survival And Ancient Skills in Virginia today.  They’re running a weekend primitive skills gathering this month, January 16-18.  From his email: Wolf Moon Camp – Primitive Skills Gathering – January 16-18 Earth Connection School of Wilderness Survival and Ancient Skills is [...]

We’re introducing a new format for the fall, 2009 Earth Skills Semester Program.  We’re breaking the course up into two blocks of four weeks each, with a week off in the middle.  And instead of working five days a week, we’ll be working six days a week.  With the practical exam at the end of [...]

We went out on a family tracking walk yesterday.  The snow was perfect and there were all sorts of tracks for my son to investigate.  It’s fun being outside with him and seeing the landscape through his eyes.  One of the neat things we can learn from children is the idea of vu-ja-de.  It’s the [...]