I’ve been busy writing up the curriculum for our new yearlong program.  I’ve got the first draft of the annotated bibliography done, and it came out to 19 pages.  Included is my opinion of the 20 most important books on bushcraft and traditional wilderness skills, which I’ll be posting here over the next few days.  [...]

Along with the new yearlong Earth skills and bushcraft immersion program, 2007 will mark the beginning of our work/trade position in videography. We do a lot of interesting things around here, as well as visit a bunch of beautiful places regularly. I’d like to start recording both on video, then sharing that video on the [...]

Beginning in 2007, the Earth Skills Semester Program will be expanded into a yearlong experience consisting of 25-30 intensive weeks per year, with the interim periods spent reading, writing and researching. The yearlong program won’t be replacing our semester programs. Instead, it will be connecting them into a deeper, more complete learning program. Overlap between [...]

Today I heard from a friend who’s an avid trapper around Norway, Maine. She wrote me the following: We caught a 12″ brook trout in a 220 Conibear on the brook that borders our property. We have never fished it because we knew there weren’t any trout in it! We’ve lived here 21 years! I [...]

This fall on our bushcraft and guide training trip on the Allagash we had two people with us from Scotland. We did a fair bit of fly fishing, and I watched with great interest one our Scottish friends Spey cast. I had read about it but had never seen it before. He showed me a [...]

The weather has been rainy and unseasonably warm around here lately. A good friend of mine cuts deer during hunting season, and since most of the hunters don’t want the hides he saves them for me. I usually just put them in the barn and they freeze overnight, but it’s been so warm that my [...]

Now that I’ve had some time to reflect on the recent semester course, I’ve been thinking about what we’ve accomplished with the semester program over the years and have been focusing on how to make the experience better. The result of this is the creation of our new yearlong bushcraft and Earth skills education immersion [...]

I had a great time at the Snow Walker’s Rendezvous as always.  My workshop on emergency snowshoes and bindings was a success, and I met a bunch of interesting people and learned some new things. Following the rendezvous I drove north to visit my brother who has recently moved to Montreal.  It’s a beautiful city, [...]

Last month my friend Tony Nester of Arizona took writer Jonathan Green out on a knife-only outing. Today Jonathan’s article appears in the Escapes section of the New York Times. I liked the article because it touches on Tony’s motivation for teaching and his appreciation for both the land and the skills of those who [...]

This weekend at the Snow Walker’s Rendezvous in Vermont I’ll be running a workshop on making emergency and improvised snowshoes and bindings.  I’m planning on making several styles of snowshoes and demonstrating a simple binding made from a single piece of cord.  If you haven’t been to this event put on by the Hulbert Outdoor [...]

I just posted the last batch of photos from this year’s Earth Skills Semester Program, which ended on Saturday.  We’re planning some exciting changes for next year, expanding the program into a year-long experience.  More about that soon.  For now, enjoy the photos.

Yesterday, as they were packing up their things and preparing to move on, one of the students mentioned something that stuck with me overnight. He was talking about the simplicity of our humanure composting system, and exclaimed, “I can’t believe that we didn’t flush anything for the past ten weeks. This system is so simple [...]

Thursday morning and two days until the Earth Skills Symposium. It’s a raw, rainy morning, and the only critters I’ve heard are the rain calls of the blue jays. Except for the beeches and oaks, who sometime keep their leaves through the winter, all the leaves are down. Today we work on finishing final projects [...]

We’re in the middle of week 10, our final week in the fall Earth Skills Semester Program. Students are working diligently on bushcraft projects such as brown ash pack baskets and lacing snowshoes, as well as preparing for the symposium. It’s a great time because everyone knows the routine and things move quickly and efficiently. [...]