Spring is in the air, and with it is a strong desire to finish the canoe mold I’ve been working on all winter. I was over working on it yesterday, attaching the metal bands to the mold. The metal bands serve two roles in the canoe building process. First, they’re the same width as the [...]
Jack Mountain Bushcraft Blog
I was out the other night and snapped this photo of the crescent moon low on the western horizon. The colors were amazing, as you can see. The weather here is warming up today, so there won’t be many more nights I can walk out on the ice without going for an unplanned swim. As [...]
There’s an interesting article out today on how nuthatches pay attention to the calls of chickadees, specifically the alarm calls. The token naysayer at the end of the article has concerns that it isn’t the specific call other birds react to, but rather the intensity of whatever call is made. Read the whole article here.
I shut down the comments on the Moose Dung Gazette a while back. I realize this can be frustrating to our readers, and that comments often make a blog more readable and entertaining, but this is the second installment of the Moose Dung Gazette. The first MDG was up for several years but was hacked [...]
After spending another week in New Brunswick, this time running a winter bushcraft course with some of the troops from the Canadian infantry school at Gagetown, I made it home just in time for the St. Patrick’s day storm. We got another 8 inches of snow and ice, but storms this time of year don’t [...]
I’m back from my trip to New Brunswick and had a great time. In addition to running several bushcraft and winter survival courses I was able to see a semester student from two years ago and explore the bush with my good friend Jeff Butler of Northwoods Survival, who was my host for the entire [...]
I’m headed out first thing in the morning to New Brunswick for 12 days, where I’ll be running several winter bushcraft and survival courses with Jeff Butler at Northwoods Survival. My departure was put back a day due to the blizzard we had yesterday, but I’m told the highways are clear so the truck is [...]
I was tracking some coyotes and deer on the other side of the snowmobile trail today when I heard the crows give an agitated call that was different from their usual conversations. I was trying to tell if the track in front of me was a turkey that had been snowed on or something else [...]
Last week I put together a slideshow from some of our photos taken during courses and on trips over the years. It uses the cool, Ken Burns style of having the picture move on the screen. Yesterday I put it on the web. Check it out here. It’s a 32 MB Quicktime file.
Our outdoor cooking workshop yesterday went well and I ate the best lunch I’ve had in a long time. We made sourdough biscuits in the reflector oven and pan fried some fish. We also covered hanging a pot over a fire versus propping it up from below and the related benefits and negatives of each [...]
I’m running a small outdoor cooking workshop today for some friends who are fishing guides in the area. We’re just going to cook lunch and bake some sourdough biscuits in front of the campfire, but it will be enjoyable as all such meals are. We’ve had a stretch of cold weather which has been wonderful, [...]
I’ve posted our 2007 schedule, both on the web and as a .pdf file. It includes those sections of our semester programs that are open enrollment. If you have any questions let me know.
It’s been a long break from the Moose Dung Gazette but I’m finally back. I had planned on starting back up last week, but suffered technical difficulties in the form of computer failure. Thankfully I had all my files backed up on an external hard drive. That being said, if you’ve emailed me in the [...]
I picked up a copy of the newly-published “New Hampshire Gardener’s Companion” last week at our local bookstore, The Country Bookseller. I’d heard about the book a few months ago and have been looking forward to reading it. It’s part of a series of state-specific gardening books written with the climate, soil and general conditions [...]
A friend sent me this article on the human sense of smell. It discusses the results of a study from the University of California, Berkeley where a group of undergraduates crawled through a field following a scent trail while blindfolded and wearing sound-muffling headphones. Read it here. It turns out our sense of smell is [...]
Yesterday I started working on the canoe mold I’ve been thinking and talking about for years under the expert tutelage and in the shop of Don Merchant of Pole and Paddle Canoe. When canoe builders switched to using canvas to cover their boats instead of birch bark, and as the process became industrialized, people started [...]
By now many people have heard the sad story of James Kim, who became snowbound in his vehicle with his family in southwest Oregon after taking a wrong turn. After being stranded for days, Mr. Kim set out on foot to find the nearest town. While his family was eventually rescued, he was not. His [...]
Even though it has warmed up a little since last week’s cold spell there’s a thin layer of ice on the pond this morning. The forecast is for it to be a warm week, but the water is still cooling off as the nights have been cold and days are short. Today I’ll be working [...]
We had our first snow of the year last night, a dusting of about an inch to brighten things up. The front came through late, and as a result the winds are high and blowing the snow around. I’m busy getting prepared for our Winter Survival Weekend Course which begins tomorrow. My preparations include cutting [...]
I just posted an annotated bushcraft and Earth skills education bibliography on our web site. It’s a 19 page .pdf file and includes my picks for the twenty most important books. Give it a read here.
We’re introducing some new projects along with our yearlong bushcraft and Earth skills program, most notably building a twenty-foot wood canvas canoe and making crooked knives with our new coal forge. In December I’m getting together with Don Merchant of Pole and Paddle Canoe to build a mold for a 20-foot wood canvas canoe. The [...]
I’ve been busy writing up the curriculum for our new yearlong program. I’ve got the first draft of the annotated bibliography done, and it came out to 19 pages. Included is my opinion of the 20 most important books on bushcraft and traditional wilderness skills, which I’ll be posting here over the next few days. [...]
Along with the new yearlong Earth skills and bushcraft immersion program, 2007 will mark the beginning of our work/trade position in videography. We do a lot of interesting things around here, as well as visit a bunch of beautiful places regularly. I’d like to start recording both on video, then sharing that video on the [...]
Beginning in 2007, the Earth Skills Semester Program will be expanded into a yearlong experience consisting of 25-30 intensive weeks per year, with the interim periods spent reading, writing and researching. The yearlong program won’t be replacing our semester programs. Instead, it will be connecting them into a deeper, more complete learning program. Overlap between [...]
Today I heard from a friend who’s an avid trapper around Norway, Maine. She wrote me the following: We caught a 12″ brook trout in a 220 Conibear on the brook that borders our property. We have never fished it because we knew there weren’t any trout in it! We’ve lived here 21 years! I [...]
The weather has been rainy and unseasonably warm around here lately. A good friend of mine cuts deer during hunting season, and since most of the hunters don’t want the hides he saves them for me. I usually just put them in the barn and they freeze overnight, but it’s been so warm that my [...]
Now that I’ve had some time to reflect on the recent semester course, I’ve been thinking about what we’ve accomplished with the semester program over the years and have been focusing on how to make the experience better. The result of this is the creation of our new yearlong bushcraft and Earth skills education immersion [...]
I had a great time at the Snow Walker’s Rendezvous as always. My workshop on emergency snowshoes and bindings was a success, and I met a bunch of interesting people and learned some new things. Following the rendezvous I drove north to visit my brother who has recently moved to Montreal. It’s a beautiful city, [...]
This weekend at the Snow Walker’s Rendezvous in Vermont I’ll be running a workshop on making emergency and improvised snowshoes and bindings. I’m planning on making several styles of snowshoes and demonstrating a simple binding made from a single piece of cord. If you haven’t been to this event put on by the Hulbert Outdoor [...]
I just posted the last batch of photos from this year’s Earth Skills Semester Program, which ended on Saturday. We’re planning some exciting changes for next year, expanding the program into a year-long experience. More about that soon. For now, enjoy the photos.
Yesterday, as they were packing up their things and preparing to move on, one of the students mentioned something that stuck with me overnight. He was talking about the simplicity of our humanure composting system, and exclaimed, “I can’t believe that we didn’t flush anything for the past ten weeks. This system is so simple [...]
Thursday morning and two days until the Earth Skills Symposium. It’s a raw, rainy morning, and the only critters I’ve heard are the rain calls of the blue jays. Except for the beeches and oaks, who sometime keep their leaves through the winter, all the leaves are down. Today we work on finishing final projects [...]
We’re in the middle of week 10, our final week in the fall Earth Skills Semester Program. Students are working diligently on bushcraft projects such as brown ash pack baskets and lacing snowshoes, as well as preparing for the symposium. It’s a great time because everyone knows the routine and things move quickly and efficiently. [...]
This coming weekend is our town’s annual ski and skate sale, where you can pick up used skis very inexpensively. For those of you live in snow country and want to make a winter sled for hauling gear in the bush, you can do so without having to boil and bend wood for a toboggan. [...]
I just heard from my friends Kevin and Polly at Mahoosuc Guide Service. They’ll be offering a winter guide training course December 14-17 in the Lake Umbagog area. It will be offered through the Maine Wilderness Guides Organization. From the MWGO website: This workshop is designed to cover the skills needed to safely guide in [...]
The topic of alcohol stoves comes up from time to time in winter survival and bushcraft workshops. This simple homemade alcohol stove comes from the newsletter of the Inuit Sled Dog International, and is especially useful north of the treeline.
I’ll be presenting at the Snow Walker’s Rendezvous at Hulbert Outdoor Center in Vermont again this year. The rendezvous takes place November 10-12 and is a great opportunity to learn from people who spend most, or all, of the winter in the northern bush. David and Anna Bosum, from the Cree community of Oujé-Bougoumou, Quebec, [...]
Our semester students are working on debris shelters today. Although effective in certain conditions, the debris shelter is often promoted as the do all, end all of shelters. While I teach and have used them successfully on many occasions, I wholeheartedly disagree with it being the most important shelter. It isn’t practical to build in [...]
We had a great day at the coast yesterday gathering wild foods, identifying plants and tracking on sandy beach at low tide. We covered the basics of pattern and clear-print tracking, then experimented with pressure releases and tracking games for several hours before our beach was retaken by the sea as the tide came in. [...]
Braintanning takes a significant amount of physical labor for the scraping process, let alone pulling or staking the hide as it goes from damp to dry. I’m reminded of this aspect of tanning each year during tanning workshops when I hear talk of sore muscles and blisters. At the end of the day yesterday all [...]