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 [...]

This certificate came in the mail yesterday. I am at once honored, flattered and humbled. To have your work recognized by your peers is a great feeling. To have your work recognized by your mentor is something else entirely. It says on the certificate that I am recognized as a peer, but in my opinion [...]

After 20 years we’re changing the format of the Boreal Snowshoe Expedition to a combination advanced winter skills course and a weeklong expedition, and finishing with the frozen 24 winter survival challenge. We’ll still be out on the land the entire time, but we will be base camped for the first week working on specific [...]

We started an online network this past summer. Officially it’s BushcraftSchool.com, The Jack Mountain Bushcraft School Online Network And Digital Learning Academy. It’s sort of like a private facebook group, but without someone tracking everything you do, spamming you with ads, and without the angry political divisiveness that has come to signify social media. I’ll [...]

This weekend is the Snowwalkers Rendezvous in Fairlee VT, an event put on by the Northen Wilderness Travelers Conferences. I’ve spent the last week getting ready.  I’ll be presenting on open fire cooking, as well as running a workshop on burn spoon carving. There’s a lot of great presentations and workshops on the schedule for [...]

I’ve been busy with family stuff since returning home from the field school. Nothing bad, but it takes me a bit of time to get caught up. Now I’m caught up and am finally getting back into the office. I’ve got a lot of updates and announcements coming, including an update to the Boreal Snowshoe [...]

Long-term program number 48 is finished, as is an autumn poling trip on the St. Croix river. After a long time away, I’m home with all that it means. Family, dog, wifi, hot showers, an indoor kitchen, etc. Part of living without these things for much of the year is the incredible appreciation I have [...]

We’ve got a lot of talent coming to the Brushfire Rendezvous next weekend. I’ve put together a tentative schedule, but everything can change depending on peoples’ interests and the skills people bring to share. There are still a few spots available, so if you haven’t registered, there’s still time. We’re finishing week 9 of our [...]

This post was originally posted on the JMB Blog on October 14, 2009. It has been edited and updated, and is more true now than it was then. By the time you graduate from high school you’ve spent twelve years being indoctrinated into the ways of our culture. You know a bit of trivia about [...]

It’s week three of the semester, and students have started their first big project; making canoe paddles. This project is usually the first big test of patience for students during the semester. Up till now, they’ve built up a sense of working wood with small projects like netting needles, carving bowdrill sets, etc. Those are [...]

We’ve been back in camp for a little over a week now for the fall semester. Since I’ve been here, and gotten settled in I’ve watched the wildlife on the property settle right in with us. Living with the land isn’t just about what we take and use from it, it’s also about getting to [...]

During the Wilderness Bushcraft Semester students document their journey into the world of learning to live close to the land. There are a variety of workbooks they create, as well as a daily logbook of the experience. All of this is kept in a google docs folder, and their progress is marked by a checklist. [...]

It’s that time of year in northern Maine where the bushes are loaded with ripe fruit. Wherever you look there are cherries, berries and apples weighing down the branches on which they grow. For the next six weeks, the season of bounty in the county, we’ll be feasting on wild foods, learning about them as [...]

I’ve worked hard for and waited a long time to be about to say this. We’re all set up with the University of Maine at Presque Isle. Credits for courses, financial aid & more. Read more on the UMPI website or on the Jack Mountain website.

  On a recent overnight on trail for the 2019 “Riverman” program, I got to thinking about how great food always tastes in the bush, and mentally waxing philosophical about why that is. There are obvious factors, like working physically hard all day and building up and appetite, or that it’s just a pavlovian effect [...]

Life at the field school is a chance to see what living with low infrastructure looks like in practice. This provides students with an opportunity to get insight into our systems and how, when they’re managed well, life is pretty easy. However, those systems require careful management in order to function properly. The property is [...]

I’m happy to announce that we’ve just awarded three new Journeyman Certifications. Congratulations to Anthony Damiano, Max Lawrence and Jeremy Marcotte. It requires a mountain of work, dedication and documentation to achieve the Journeyman Certification. Each of these men have done the work. You have earned our respect and the certification that goes along with [...]

I’ve been adding information to the Brushfire Rendezous page. Coming in October (10/11-10/13), Brushfire is a 3-day rendezvous celebrating a life close to the land in northern Maine. Not an instructional course, it will be more of gathering of like minds and shared interests. I’ve changed the pricing structure to $45 for the 3 days [...]

While we were out on our final trip of the spring semester the Jack Mountain Bushcraft Podcast passed a big milestone; 100,000 downloads. I’m not one to study the statistics or demographics and stress over getting more listeners. I never have been. But I’m excited that so many people are interested in what we’re doing. [...]

In order to work with our new tablet-based digital assessment system, we’re adding a tablet that can run Google Docs (or a similar phone with an external keyboard) to the gear list for our long-term programs. We’re also adding a personal battery that can be charged via usb to keep your device charged. While we [...]

We just finished the spring 2019 semester, and it’s good to be back home for a spell before we jump into the summer programming at Jack Mountain and School Of The Forest. The semester was a challenging one for students. Spring in northern Maine is a tough time to be on the land. It’s cold [...]

It’s been a busy nine weeks, but now the parking lot is empty and the field school is quiet. Our 47th long-term program and the first half of our 21st year are complete. A few thoughts about the semester: The new digital assessment system worked amazingly well. Based in Google Docs, students were able to [...]

As of today the Riverman course in July is full. We still have a few spots left for the summer woodsman and fall Wilderness Bushcraft Semester course, but they won’t last long. Our big news is that we will no longer be running folk school programs at our location in New Hampshire as we’re selling [...]