Poling a canoe is a difficult thing to learn. It’s even more difficult to teach. We have a series of exercises and situations we run people through, but it takes some time before the lessons sink in and people start to get it. When it finally happens, the “a-ha” moment is visible. They stop fighting [...]

Peter Frost was a 2004 Wilderness Bushcraft Semester student at the Jack Mountain Bushcraft School. This amazing story really happened and illustrates the usefulness of getting out every day, if only for a little while. Tracking A Fisher This morning we were very fortunate. The conditions were ideal for tracking. Early last night, an inch [...]

We’re nearing the end of week 3 of the spring Wilderness Bushcraft Semester, and today we were out on the river with a cold north wind and driving rain challenging every paddle stroke as the group was learning to canoe. It took a lot out of us. This evening I made a dutch oven dinner [...]

I’m writing this on Sunday morning, May 5th, in the Guide Shack. It’s a clear blue sky outside and batteries of our off-grid solar power system were fully charged at 8 am. We’re one week into the spring Wilderness Bushcraft Semester course, and spring is just starting to get some momentum. The birdsong is loud [...]

If you listen to our podcast, read our blog, or spent any time with us at the field school, you’ve heard us talk about learning outdoor skills in context. I’ve been bouncing this idea around in my head a lot over the past months while running short programs for museums, schools and science centers. As [...]

You haven’t been hearing from us much lately. Now, with the spring Wilderness Bushcraft Semester just over a week away, I’ll explain why. I’ve been busy migrating our student workbooks and our assessment system from paper to digital. This means that starting this spring, students on the Wilderness Bushcraft Semester can document everything from their [...]

Recently I saw an advertisement for new rain gear from a large outdoor gear company. They chose to market this with the phrase “rain? what rain?” Seems straightforward enough, but it got me thinking about a certain trend in the outdoor industry. The idea is that the outdoors is a place where you go for [...]

We recommend people bring a watch when they attend field school programs. It’s a necessary piece of kit for a working guide and ensures you know what time it is so you can be on time. Get a watch with a barometer, which is a common feature among modern outdoor watches. This will help you [...]

We’re excited to announce the official partnership between the Jack Mountain Bushcraft School and the University of Maine at Presque Isle (UMPI). After a lot of legwork, we’re partnering up to offer direct credit for UMPI students, and to offer transfer credits to students from other universities. The paperwork has been signed, the approval agency [...]

Last week School Of The Forest partnered with the New Hampton School for their yearly “Project week”. New Hampton students pitch a lot of different potential ideas for the week, and then participate in whichever is selected. I had a great time running this program, and because New Hampton is a boarding school, getting to [...]

I just returned from a fantastic week on the land with my Cree friends David and Anna Bosum. I mention them by name, but there were many other people who worked and visited with us during the week. It’s such a unique experience, to be welcomed into their culture and learn about their life in [...]

After three cold and snowy weeks in the woods at and near the field school in northern Maine, I’ve got a few days with my family and to dry out my kit before heading north to Ouje-Bougoumou, Quebec for a week on the land with my friends David and Anna Bosum. We had a great [...]

In the first week of March School Of The Forest will be teaming up with the staff of New Hampton School in New Hampshire to teach a group of students outdoor living skills. The skills and topics covered were selected by the students, and it’s been really fun to see what catches their attention and [...]

If you’ve been looking for Bushcraft and outdoor programs for youth, you’ve probably seen the term “immersion” thrown around here and there. While it’s great to see more young people spending long periods of time in the outdoors, a lot of these programs don’t truly meet the standard we think of as an “immersion”. ” they [...]

I’m headed out for our winter term, which means 3 weeks in the woods for our Winter Woodsman course and the Boreal Snowshoe Expedition. Then I’ve got just a few days before leaving for northern Quebec to spend a week on the land with my old friends David and Anna Bosum. February is my favorite [...]

Although we’ll be adding to it (because no website is ever done, they’re always in process), we’ve got the skeleton of the 2019-2020 Yearlong Immersion Program (YIP) on the web. We’ve got a lot of details to add, but the dates, tuition and general idea for the program is on the YIP page. In a [...]

Having business liability insurance is one thing that sets the professionals apart from the hobbyists. Nowhere is this more true than in the bushcraft/survival/outdoor space. If you’re charging money for your programs or trips, you should carry a business liability policy. We get a lot of questions regarding where to find affordable insurance for bushcraft [...]

Our upcoming winter programs, The Winter Woodsman Course, The Boreal Snowshoe Expedition and our trip to northern Quebec for the Winter Living With Cree Hunters trip are all currently full. We’re no longer accepting registrations, but if you’re interested contact us to be placed on a waiting list.

Gina Beach is a former teacher, current world traveler (by bicycle) and all-around impressive and accomplished young woman. I had the good fortune of having her in the fall, 2018 Wilderness Bushcraft Semester course. She publishes a great blog and the Saturn Returns podcast, and she’s been posting podcast interviews she conducted with other people [...]

I’ve written before about the bushcraft and wilderness living skills we teach not existing in a vacuum. During a semester or other long-term course, these are practiced every day out of necessity and that helps students and instructors alike to really “own” them. What I see happening is that a lot of the time is when students [...]

Big crafting projects are important on our courses at Jack Mountain and School Of The Forest. Not only do students get to make a completely functional piece of kit that they’ll actively use during the course, but they start to understand something about what it means to live an outdoor life.  On a recent semester, [...]

Rules can be a drag. Oftentimes they make people feel policed. If the rules are handled poorly or ill defined, it can cause people to walk on egg shells and worry more about getting “caught” breaking them than actually following them for the reasons they were established in the first place.  Over the last few [...]

Paracord was and continues to be the go-to cord in bushcraft and survival circles, but I never use it on our courses or expeditions. Instead I use string from the commercial fishing industry; a braided nylon. You can’t take it apart and use the small, inside strings for different things, but it holds up better [...]

Hanging a pot over an open fire is a great way to cook outdoors. Over the years we’ve experimented with a wide variety of pot suspension systems and have arrived at four criteria by which to judge them. As we’re often cooking for and with groups of ten or more people, it’s important to note [...]

We’ve got 3 new courses running at the JMBS Folk School in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire in January: The JMBS Axemanship Course, Winter Survival in the North Woods, and The Art & Science of Fire. Each of them is a single day. They run on Saturdays in January (see the Master Calendar). I’ll be posting more [...]

I’ve been rereading some of Bill Riviere’s books lately and am reminded of why I hold his work in such high esteem. A registered Maine guide who worked on the Maine border patrol during World War 2, he was also a prolific writer. Here’s his take on throwing knives from Backcountry Camping: On TV and [...]

I took my daughter to a homeschool workshop at the Remick Museum in Tamworth, NH last Monday. The theme of the class was cooking on the hearth, or cooking on an open fire inside like they would have done in New Hampshire in the mid-1800s. It was a good experience with lots of dutch ovens [...]

I recently had dinner with a few friends, one of whom is an accomplished touring cyclist, and builds his own bikes. As the conversation turned to this particular passion of his, he mentioned that even with all his experience and working knowledge of the sport, he struggles to explain or teach it to others. This [...]

The Brushfire Rendezvous is on the calendar for Friday, October 11 to Sunday, October 13. I don’t have any details yet, but will be working them out. After talking to a few friends, we figured that 100,000 people was too many, so we’ll probably limit it to 40 or so. We’ll be running an introduction [...]

We’ve been discussing the possibility of having a small 3-day rendezvous based around bushcraft and traditional wilderness skills at the field school since 2010. But despite a lot of talk, we’ve never hosted the event. A few weeks ago I was talking with some friends about it again, and after an hour discussing the possibilities, [...]

I’m renewing my Maine Guide license this fall, and the rules have changed. Included in the process now is a digital fingerprinting and background check. I heard a rumor from a game warden that the process is a response to people with criminal sex-offender backgrounds taking young people in the woods. While I don’t like [...]

If you enjoy first person narratives of life on the trail, you might be interested in a book that I just put on the Kindle store on Amazon. It’s a selection of my canoe and snowshoe trip journals from Maine, Alaska and the Florida Everglades. Most of the essays are from the early days of [...]

A simple toolkit should be easy to maintain once you know a few basic pieces of information about the components of the kit. Habits that protect the edges of your tools, how to put a good edge on the tool when it starts to dull etc. Sometimes though a piece of gear fails, and needs [...]

We had several storms over the past few days at the field school, resulting in the loss of one of our canoes. With temperatures below freezing and winds gusting to 50 miles per hour, several canoes were blown off of the racks, and one hull was broken. In the photo above, you can see the [...]

We just wrapped-up the Autumn Woodsman course after a great week of bushcraft and camaraderie. The Autumn Woodsman was new this year as a cold-weather, no-snow weeklong course. We had a great group, achieved all of our intended learning outcomes and also had a bunch of laughs doing it. Participants spent the night in individual [...]

There’s a certain image that’s been created of the “bushcrafter” or “outdoor expert”. It usually involves a perception of this way of life as something difficult or nearly impossible to obtain for most people. It’s been cultivated by years of “survival” television and “man against nature” films, books and other media. Some of my favorite authors [...]

There are two new alumni sections on the Jack Mountain website: alumni programs and alumni appreciation. In the alumni programs section (under the Courses tab) is information on the Year 2 Program for alumni. It’s on the schedule for 2019 and consists of a 2-week canoe trip on the Allagash and the 2-week Primitive Wilderness [...]

In 2019 we’re changing the dates for the Wilderness Bushcraft Semester courses that have been on the web for a few months. After lots of discussions in the guide shack about how to provide the best courses with the fewest drawbacks, we’re shifting a few things around. The spring semester will run from April 28 [...]

There were hugs, handshakes and promises to keep in touch, but now the parking lot is empty and a group of people that came together nine weeks ago has gone their separate ways. They’re headed back to Alaska, to cycle across southern Europe, to explore West Virginia, to a winter job at a ski area [...]