JMB alumnus Doug Dickens is hosting a Prehistoric Pottery Workshop with Keith Grenoble at Flood Creek Farm in Southern Maryland. Keith Grenoble has been a product of the Back to the Land movement and developed close ties to Native communities from an early age. Keith started his journey by making stone tools represented in the [...]

We regularly get contacted by young people looking for advice regarding entering the bushcraft industry, which, after being in it full-time for the past 20 years, I can confidently say has changed dramatically during that time. When reality tv came along, all of a sudden the interest in esoteric outdoor skills went through the roof. [...]

Today was the official unveiling of the new Jack Mountain Bushcraft School Journeyman Certification Workbook, a 316 page tome written by Ben Spencer over the winter. It’s big, detailed and ambitious, and just in time for the beginning of our 20th year. It’s existence has been rumored for several weeks, but was not confirmed until [...]

As the next semester gets closer, we’ve been really putting the screws to the “self” aspect of our courses. Whether it’s “mental toughness” or being able to assess your progress without outside input. These aspects are helpful to the individual student. However, on a long course like one of our nine-week semesters, nobody can successfully play [...]

We’ve had numerous calls recently regarding our pending articulation agreement with the University Of Maine At Presque Isle (UMPI). We’re still working on the process and plan to have everything set up in time for the fall (’18) semester. We understand that people have deadlines and are doing all that we can to expedite the [...]

Flying to northern Maine is about to change. The airport in Presque Isle (PQI) has had daily flights to Boston for several years with PenAir. After a recent change, they are planning to discontinue the PenAir service to Boston and add daily flights on United Airlines from Presque Isle to Newark, NJ beginning on July [...]

I’m not sure whether I believe in magic, but I believe in magical moments. For me they are those moments on the trail where everything is good and seems as it should be and all is right with the world. It’s why I go back over and over, and have made a 20-year career out [...]

If you check out our Master Calendar, you’ll notice a change. Programs are now organized into terms, which are blocks of programs organized around seasonally-appropriate topics. For example, the 2019 Winter Term includes five weeks of winter programming. Each course can still be taken separately, but you can also take an entire term of programs, [...]

The Summer Woodsman course is almost full. As we’re out of open weeks during the summer to run another one, we’re introducing a new course: The Autumn Woodsman Course. We’ve been interested in offering seasonal variants of our popular weeklong woodsman course for a while, and this year we’re taking the leap. Next year (2019) [...]

Process Not Product is a familiar phrase at our school. We want to give people the tools to replicate what they do at the field school after they leave. If it were just about ending with a finished product, we might do things differently. But for us it’s about giving people the tools to create [...]

I know What It Takes To Get A Lot Of Views. I’m Just Not Interested In Doing It I’ve been blogging, shooting videos, podcasting, etc., for more than 15 years. In that time, I’ve learned about what makes a popular post. I think I know what it takes to go viral and get a bunch [...]

The vast majority of people who come across our blog will never attend our immersion programs. Regardless, we still want to help them achieve their goals. So here’s some curriculum from our programs that you can use at home. We have seven elements to our programs, one of which is the Self element. It isn’t [...]

Our long-term programs are mentally and emotionally challenging. We want people who attend to be aware of this, and to have the mental and emotional fortitude and maturity needed to be successful here. But this sounds like a platitude you’ve heard before, so let me explain a bit further. People attending our programs want and [...]

After a whole winter of tinkering with the design, we’re excited to announce our updated Yearlong Immersion Program. The old yearlong immersion program is now our Seasonal Immersion Program, consisting of a combination of our Wilderness Bushcraft Semester, Boreal Snowshoe Expedition and Wilderness Canoe Expedition Semester. This remains the foundation of the new yearlong immersion [...]

There is nothing like the Wilderness Canoe Expedition Semester available elsewhere. If you want to become proficient at living and traveling by canoe in the wilderness, the best path is to undergo a month on the river working as part of a team under the tutelage of experienced guides. There is simply no other way [...]

Following the trend of recent years, spots in our programs are filling earlier than ever. Here’s an update on what’s still available, in chronological order. Wilderness Bushcraft Semester, spring 2018 (April-June). 3 spots open. Bonaventure Canoe Expedition, Quebec (June). Full Summer Woodsman (July). 1 spot open. Wilderness Canoe Expedition Semester (July-August). 2 spots open. Wilderness [...]

There’s an article featuring Jack Mountain in the Bangor Daily News spring 2018 spring/summer special section outdoors magazine. The article, titled “The Survivor: Deep in the Maine woods, Tim Smith teaches others to survive in the wild”, gives a brief overview of what we do and has enough philosophical nuggets to make it interesting. The [...]

There’s always downtime on residential courses. Students and instructors need time to relax, work on academic homework, and process the experiences they’ve had so far. For some students, downtime is frustrating. They learn by doing and don’t want to stop. So along with improving our food systems on campus, we’ll be putting in two additions [...]

The dates are set for our March, 2019 trip with Cree hunters in northern Quebec; March 1-9. In past years we’ve gone in late January, but next year we’ve got a busy winter semester planned so we’re moving the trip to early March. Taking advantage of the longer days will be an added bonus. Those [...]

New Role: Authentic Marketing Instructor I did a phone interview a while back that the person said they were turning into an article. Then I forgot about it until yesterday, when I saw the article. I like how it turned out. The article is about authentic marketing for schools by an outfit that offers services [...]

Next weekend, March 9-11 (2018), the 26th annual Wilderness Paddlers Gathering will take place at the Hulbert Outdoor Center in Fairlee, Vermont. It is put on by Northern Wilderness Travelers Conferences, the same group that runs the Snow Walkers Rendezvous in the fall. I’ll be attending and putting on a workshop titled “The Moveable Feast [...]

We’ve decided on the route for the 2018 Wilderness Canoe Expedition Semester. We’re going with a classic that will follow the Northern Forest Canoe Trail across the crown of Maine. Starting on the Moose River near Jackman, we’ll paddle to Moosehead Lake, where we’ll turn north to Northeast Carry. We’ll carry across to the West [...]

Outdoor skills are frequently presented with a big barrier to entry in the form of price tags. Want to go hiking? Most online information you’ll find will start with advising you on the gear you need to buy first. The same ideas apply to most outdoor endeavors you might want to try your had at. Over [...]

Our culture is so used to ranking things, that it’s become entrenched in the mindset of most people (myself included). We want to know the “Best” way of doing things, and often desire a form of documentation to show that we’ve “progressed”, it’s almost as if learning and living in the outdoors was a video [...]

This discussion has come up a bunch recently, so I wanted to define some terms that I use regarding celebrity outdoorsman and professional outdoorsman. A professional outdoorsman is a person who makes their living guiding, teaching, and otherwise working outdoors. A celebrity outdoorsman is a person who is well known on social media, reality tv [...]

  At it’s simplest “Active learning” is learning by doing. On our semesters, student’s make their own canoe paddles, and that’s their first big woodcarving project. They have a basic set of tools and simple instructions on how to shape a paddle from a pine board. A lot of student’s struggle at first with what [...]

On January 19, 2018 I was interviewed by Gundy on The Big Wild radio show, heard all over the midwest on the radio and the world via their podcasts. We were the first interview on this episode of the show (and the podcast). To listen, go to their website at: http://www.podcastgarden.com/episode/the-big-wild-011918_121684 You can also download [...]

2018 marks our 19th year of multi-week snowshoe and toboggan expeditions. In a world where bushcraft is becoming more about the gear and knives and celebrity outdoorsmen, I’m thankful for winter expeditions. In the cold, living and traveling in the forest, the extraneous fluff falls away. What’s left is authentic and real. And that’s getting [...]

It’s 2018 and we’re finally retiring our old rotary phone. Our recent podcast (episode 30 featuring Sam Larson) was a turning point for our podcast. Prior to recording it, all of our podcasts had been recorded in person. As such geography was a huge factor in when we could record. For episode 30 we entered [...]

When folks think of living a self-reliant outdoor lifestyle, usually what’s envisioned is picturesque tent sites and all the things that go along with camping. However, that’s not the whole picture. A large part of living a sustainable lifestyle in the modern world is maintaining systems that provide renewable resources without damaging the land we live on. So [...]

I’ve been taking time out of each day this winter to snowshoe on some of the local trails. It’s good exercise and keeps the cabin fever at bay. It’s also where I’ve been doing most of my thinking about course curriculums for the upcoming year. Being out in the woods by yourself on a crisp [...]

Photo: Flooding a piece of cotton T-shirt with Ambroid glue and smearing it around with a dirty sock. Below are three stories about fixing canvas boats in the field. The moral of the stories is that you should know how to repair the craft you use. The more remote the trip, the better you should [...]

We’re bombarded with negativity and bad news in the modern world. So many alerts about all the deaths and evil and things to be afraid of. I’ve been moderating the information that gets attention from me for a while now, and I’m better off as a result. But I still read some news daily when [...]

The School Of The Forest now offers an email newsletter where you can stay abreast of everything going on with the Jack Mountain youth and teen program. You can sign up at the link below. Sign Up For SOTF Newsletter Here I’m looking forward to keeping in touch with you all, and keeping you in [...]

This past week I successfully passed the test to become a registered Maine sea kayak guide. It was the culmination of likely the longest testing process I’ve ever known. Let me explain. In 2000 I took and passed the written test to become a sea kayak guide. The Maine department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife [...]

Well, everyone, it seems like winter’s finally here. The last three days I’ve woken up, made a quick thermos of coffee and thrown on my snowshoes for a morning hike. During those hikes, I was reminded of the stark differences in the ecosystem from season to season. We’ve talked before on the podcast about how [...]

While I wrote up the course description for School Of The Forest’s Family Bushcraft Week, I couldn’t help but think of the families in the neighborhood I grew up in, and our yearly “backyard campout”. Once every summer, all the fathers, and their kids would pitch tents in the small common ground behind our homes [...]

Underlying every course we run at Jack Mountain and School Of The Forest are the principles of sustainable living, and building a lifestyle that is closer to the land. We talk about it in passing during courses, but when programs are running at the field school, students are living those principles every day. From composting, [...]

I think I can speak for everyone on the Jack Mountain team when I say we’re all passionate about the outdoors. That’s a broad statement and individually, each of us is drawn by different aspects of an outdoor lifestyle. Running School Of The Forest programs has let me see this same thing unfold with young [...]