We just wrapped up the fall, 2020 Wilderness Bushcraft Semester. 50 is the number of the day, as it was our 50th long-term program, and this week I celebrated my 50th birthday. I always get nostalgic at the end of fall semesters. As I was walking through the woods from Moose Vegas to the Guide [...]

If we have learned anything from the pandemic, it’s that you’re on your own when things get tough. Unless you give a lot of money to politicians they don’t care whether you live or die. So this is a great time to start taking control of your self-reliance needs. In northern Maine we’re sure of [...]

I’ve been dragging my feet in making this decision, hoping there would be a vaccine or a change or something. But as people are trying to make travel plans for our February programs, it’s time. I’m officially cancelling the 2021 Winter Woodsman and Boreal Snowshoe Expedition due to the covid. I have been confident we’ve [...]

Hello everyone, it’s been a while. We’ve been pretty busy this year with our semester programs at Jack Mountain, as well as getting our southern Vermont campus set up for the FFP. Last weekend I took a break from the fall semester to run the first weekend of the friluftsliv program. For folks that don’t [...]

During the Wilderness Bushcraft Semester we do two-night solos where participants head into the forest alone with very minimal kit. For many people it isn’t easy to unplug from the modern world and be alone with themselves. We can get so distracted with life, the internet and everything that our minds are almost never where [...]

This morning we’re starting week four of the fall, 2020 Wilderness Bushcraft Semester. We spent last week camped on a nearby lake working on canoe skills. This week students will be building their second shelter and spending four consecutive nights in it. We’ll also be working on crafts such as building a bucksaw when you [...]

Yesterday people trickled into the field school. We enjoyed a campfire and conversations about past experiences, future plans, what they hope to get out of a few months in the woods, etc. This morning the real work starts. The particulars, where all the details matter. A group of future instructors honing their craft. Today it [...]

After 12 years of scheming to do so, I finally purchased the remaining 19 acres in the block of land at the field school. This gives us a block of 80 acres and about a half a mile of riverfront on the Aroostook river. Although this area is not being developed and is losing population, [...]

It’s been a long, hot summer, as well as a while since I’ve published anything on the web. Lots of changes have happened, and life looks a bit different than it did before starting the spring semester in early May. We had a busy summer of programs, running a Summer Woodsman, Advanced Boreal Summer Survival, [...]

The Friluftsliv Forest program that Tim and I talked about on this episode of the JMB Podcast is now open for registration. There are professional training programs where you can travel to and immerse yourself in the long-term experience of living, teaching, and guiding outdoors. We’ve been running long term immersion programs at Jack Mountain for [...]

Being on the trail is physically taxing, whether traveling by canoe, hiking or snowshoeing. Once it isn’t, the magic we as human beings find in the outdoors starts to fade away. I wrote most of this essay sitting at a remote campsite in the North Maine woods that we drive into for solos. We do [...]

We’re wrapping up week 5 of our spring semester today. After a late start to the course, we had a late start to spring as winter held on in northern Maine through mid-May. Then we had two days of spring weather. Then a five-day heatwave. And now it’s June. We had the field in Moose [...]

Over the last few months, we’ve been helping to build a research database for a friction fire study. If you’ve been following along with this process, either on our online network at Bushcraftschool.com, or on the School Of The Forest Podcast you’ve seen the basic outline of what our friend Richard is aiming for with [...]

Our next live video event is scheduled for Wednesday, 4/15/20, at 11 am eastern time. It is a live video event on BushcraftSchool.com – a virtual office hours for those people taking our online courses. If you’re a member of Bushcraftschool.com, click on the Events tab. If you’re not a member, it’s free to join. [...]

We’ll be doing our first live video event on BushcraftSchool.com – a virtual office hours for those people taking our online courses – on Friday, April 10th from 7-7:30pm EST. If you’re a member of Bushcraftschool.com, click on the Events tab. If you’re not a member, it’s free to join. This will be our first [...]

If you’re taking part in our online community at bushcraftschool.com, you likely saw our first youth track course about backyard botany. It’s the first in a series of programs that will guide young people (and adults too if they’re interested) through the basics of real-world, hands-on nature studies. Another set of those courses is going [...]

We’re finishing up the preparations for our next online course: Introduction to outdoor cooking (Skill 117), available for free in our online community at BushcraftSchool.com. The goal is to make you an efficient outdoor cook capable of feeding yourself under a variety of conditions, NOT to make you a professional cook or chef. This will [...]

I’m coining a phrase today and calling it The YouTube Effect. It’s about how watching experts do something makes us overconfident, but does not make us more skilled. I was listening to the Hidden Brain podcast, specifically the episode titled “Close Enough: The Lure Of Living Through Others.” One of the segments was based on [...]

A lot of families are stuck indoors these days, and parents are looking for interesting things to do with their kids. Here are two things you can do right now. First, watch the Local Living Video Project from our friends at Koviashuvik Local Living School. They are posting a series of videos on outdoor skills [...]

Have you joined our online community at BushcraftSchool.com yet? We’re currently live with our weather understanding and observational forecasting course and adding a lesson every day. We are also about to add a few more online courses. We’ve pushed our spring semester back a few weeks due to the virus, and as such should have [...]

I’ve been thinking about these last few weeks as “the worldwide solo”. The current pandemic is forcing people to spend time with themselves, and if there’s a good side to this situation, that time for self-reflection and introspection is it. All of our courses have a solo aspect, and it happens in two parts. First, [...]

We’re offering a free online course during the coronavirus shut down in our digital learning space at BushcraftSchool.com. It’s the same 30-day course we run during our semester programs. It’s a minimal time commitment, maybe 15 minutes per day, with the intended learning outcome that you will learn something useful about the weather and be [...]

As a safety precaution amid the ongoing expansion of the Coronavirus, the Wilderness Paddlers Gathering scheduled for this weekend in Vermont has been cancelled. As a result I’ll be staying home and working on a new pack basket mold.

We were recently written up in Outdoor Life magazine in an article by Tim MacWelch titled The 10 Best Survival Schools for Hunters and Anglers. It’s always nice to be listed amongst the industry leaders, especially when it’s in a magazine I used to read as a kid. Often articles of this sort are written [...]

We’re six weeks out from the start of the Wilderness Guide Training Semester. I’ve been busy making preparations all morning for clearing our road, fixing the roof on the cook shed and getting the stove pipe operational, etc. April is a tough month at the field school, so getting the details in order will help [...]

Last week school of the forest, the Vermont huts association, Addison Central Teens and The Catamount Trail Association partnered to bring seven kids out on a cross country skiing trip to one of the cabins that VT huts has made available to the public. Addison Central Teens provides a Teen Center and after-school alternatives that [...]

We had a recent cancellation for this spring’s Wilderness Guide Training Semester, resulting in an open spot now being available. If you’re interested, get in touch with us. The course starts in 8 weeks. We’ll be starting on snowshoes, canoeing 300 miles of northern Maine rivers, living on the trail, becoming an expert with an [...]

This summer we’ll be bringing back our canoe expedition, but with a slightly different approach. Now that we have a line up of other short canoe and outdoor living skill programs running during the summer, we wanted to make a long term, college-accredited program available to the younger generation. So starting this summer, we’ll be [...]

Are you interested in breaking up the week and want to learn more about survival and preparedness? Then come to Cornerstone Christian Academy in Ossipee, New Hampshire this Wednesday night from 6-7. I’ll be talking about the three-pronged approach to survival and answering audience questions on related topics. The talk is free, but the school [...]

We had another signup this week for our Winter Living With The Cree trip. That brings us up to eight people, two away from our trip max. If you’re interested in learning about life on the land in a northern boreal setting, from people who’ve been living it their whole lives, this is the trip [...]

We’ve added a new weeklong program coming in August with a focus on becoming more resilient in a changing world. The focus of the week is to pass along the systems and skills we’ve developed over the past 21 years that deal with living without infrastructure, as well as to spend a few hours of [...]

Our alumni are awesome. The latest public example of this will be airing on the Discovery Channel this Sunday. Ryan Holt, who often goes by his Appalachian Trail thru-hiker nickname Yukon (pictured above) will be on Naked & Afraid for the fourth time, where he’ll be spending 21 days alone, naked, but not afraid in [...]

With the launch of our online network and moving some of our courses online, we’ve had to rethink what the pieces of the curriculum puzzle are and how they fit together. Step one was designing a course catalog framework to put our programs into. Step two was redesigning our curriculum and website so that it [...]

One of my winter projects this year is to study for my tidewater fishing guide license. Currently, I am a registered Master Maine Guide licensed in the hunting, fishing, recreation and sea kayak categories. Each category has its own corresponding exam, and the master status is awarded after 10 years, with a minimum number of [...]

If you’re interested in wilderness canoe trips, traditional gear, remote travel, and spending a weekend around others who share your interests, you should attend the Wilderness Paddlers Gathering in Fairlee, Vermont. The 28th annual gathering is happing March 13-15. There are formal presentations and workshops, as well as a lot of informal discussions of trips, [...]

We’re going to start our weather observation and prediction course on BushcraftSchool.com soon. It will be our first course there, with many more to come. Here’s what you’ll need: A copy of Eric Sloane’s Weather Book. It’s a required text for our semester courses. A barometer of some sort. We recommend a watch with a barometer [...]

This has been a tough winter for scheduling and planning. With our family’s impending move, family commitments, parental responsibilities, etc., monkey wrenches keep being thrown into my efforts at scheduling. But while we can’t control what happens to us in this life, we can control how we respond. I’m responding by offering a variety of [...]

We’ve finalized the details for our 2020 trip to Ouje-bougoumou in northern Quebec to spend time with our Cree friends David and Anna Bosum. The trip will take place the first week of March, and while not a course in the traditional sense, participants gain some great insight into living on the land. On past [...]

In the December 2019 – January 2020 print issue of Field & Stream magazine I was interviewed by Matthew Every for a question and answer article about survival food, outdoor gear and few other topics. He asked about what I carry in my survival kit that might surprise other outdoorsmen. My answer: “Tang. It’s part [...]