Hello everybody, my name’s Christopher Russell, and I’m running the rebooted School Of The Forest program here at Jack Mountain Bushcraft School. School Of The Forest is a Wolfeboro, New Hampshire based youth outdoors program, focusing on self-reliance and resiliency in the outdoors for kids and teens. 

Registration is open, so we thought we’d give you a little background about the program and what we hope to do with it. The program has been around in different iterations for a long time, but never really got off the ground. During my semester at Jack Mountain, on an overcast and rainy day I was looking for something to do. When Tim walked out of the guide shack and asked if anyone wanted to come mark out the trails of the property with him I jumped at the offer. During that hour and a half of walking the trails and hammering colored blazes onto trees, Tim mentioned School Of The Forest and his desire to get it running again.

I’d been looking into similar youth programs to work for, and the idea started to germinate in my head. This would be an opportunity to teach youth about the outdoors, along with all the skills I’d learned over the semester, and the philosophies of outdoor living. The six months between courses were spent letting those ideas bounce around in my head, and dreaming up courses I’d like to run. Some of those are starting to see the light of day, and over the next few days we’ll be filling you in with all we’ve got on the calendar so far, as well as the thing’s we’d like to do in the future.  Excited to have you along.