We’re getting closer to the end of our first Friluftsliv Forest Program in southern Vermont. It’s been a great experience, and we’re already getting signups for this year’s session. This got me thinking about the differences between a long-term residential program like our nine-week guide training and bushcraft semesters at Jack Mountain and the once-a-month [...]

As of yesterday both of our family bushcraft weeks this summer are full. It’s great to be able to provide an outdoor experience that families can take part in together, and due to the current pandemic we’re limiting the course to four families per week. If you’d like to sign up for the waiting list [...]

This minidocumentary walks through the 2020-2021 Friluftsliv Forest Program students’ experience as they prepare for, and participate in their “halfway point” culminating exercise. Students on the FFP take part in a winter overnight, with only a fire and shelter they’ve built to stay warm. This experience shows the students how far they’ve come over the [...]

We had another signup for the inaugural family bushcraft week at the SOTF campus in southern Vermont. That brings the course registration to half its maximum, so if you’re interested in spending a family vacation learning outdoor skills, cooking over a campfire, and sleeping under the stars, register soon. We’ve cut the maximum number of [...]

We’re about halfway through the initial Friluftsliv Forest Program at our campus in southern Vermont, and it’s been going really well. Students are building the skills and systems they’ll need for our two-week canoe expedition in July. Next session they’ll be participating in their “frozen 24”  exercise, where they use their knowledge of fire and [...]

Looking for something a little different for your family vacation? School Of The Forest is excited to bring back this old favorite from the Jack Mountain folk school. This new iteration will take place at the SOTF campus in Southern VT

We’re back after a long break for our semester programs.  Sorry for the wait, but we’re glad to be back.   You can listen to the podcast at this link, or download it on any major podcast app. In this episode, I’m joined by Nick Daniel of Dartmouth-Hitchcock in New Hampshire. Nick has taught AWLS [...]

Hello everyone, it’s been a while. We’ve been pretty busy this year with our semester programs at Jack Mountain, as well as getting our southern Vermont campus set up for the FFP. Last weekend I took a break from the fall semester to run the first weekend of the friluftsliv program. For folks that don’t [...]

The Friluftsliv Forest program that Tim and I talked about on this episode of the JMB Podcast is now open for registration. There are professional training programs where you can travel to and immerse yourself in the long-term experience of living, teaching, and guiding outdoors. We’ve been running long term immersion programs at Jack Mountain for [...]

Being on the trail is physically taxing, whether traveling by canoe, hiking or snowshoeing. Once it isn’t, the magic we as human beings find in the outdoors starts to fade away. I wrote most of this essay sitting at a remote campsite in the North Maine woods that we drive into for solos. We do [...]

If you’re taking part in our online community at bushcraftschool.com, you likely saw our first youth track course about backyard botany. It’s the first in a series of programs that will guide young people (and adults too if they’re interested) through the basics of real-world, hands-on nature studies. Another set of those courses is going [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

As we roll into July, School Of The Forest programs are off to a great start.  Yesterday was the first day of our program at The Libby Museum in the lakes region of New Hampshire. This program is run in partnership with GALA, a local non-profit that focuses on building more self-reliant local communities. This [...]

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) [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

1/6/16: Build Your Own Shave Horse Short courses, useful skills. For a small investment in time and money, become more self-reliant.   For the first Self-Reliance Workshop of 2016, taking place January 6th, we’ll be offering a build-your-own shave horse class. Also known as a draw shave, it’s a bench vise where pressure from your feet [...]

This past weekend our group fleshed and scraped a lot of deer hides. We also brained a bunch, and started pulling them, but were overtaken by dark before we got any soft. Brain tanning courses are all about time management. We’re trying to squeeze a bunch of stuff into a short period of time. We [...]

December 6-12 we’re running our Winter Woodsman course, followed immediately by the Frozen 48 Winter Survival Challenge. The Winter Woodsman is our introduction to winter. We cover the particulars of living out in the winter, from clothing and tools to fire and shelter, as well as cover the traditional gear and techniques that make living [...]

Next weekend we’re running a course on braintanning, where we’ll take raw (ie. bloody, and stinky) deer hides, and through a process that’s older than civilization, turn them into beautiful, chamois-like braintan buckskin. If you want to learn it, there are still open spots. I want to share how we keep people safe from Lyme [...]

We’ve updated the requirements for our Journeyman Guide And Bushcraft Instructor certification for the current semester. Some of the additions include an expanded section on knots and their applications, formal trip planning, and a 4-day water fast. You can get more information on the Journeyman certification on our site (link). You can also download the requirements [...]

After lots of discussion and staring at maps, we’ve decided on the route for this summer’s 4-week Wilderness Canoe Expedition Semester. We’ll be running the Allagash from Chamberlain bridge to Allagash Village. Then we’ll rest and resupply at the field school for 2 days before hiking with minimal gear in Baxter state park for four [...]

This weekend we’re running our Winter Survival Weekend Course at the folk school in New Hampshire. It’s a short course designed to teach the fundamentals of living in the winter woods. We’ve been running it for more than a decade, and I think that it has provided a basic skill set to a lot of [...]

Last week we ran our first program of 2015; the Winter Woodsman course. In summing up the experience, it was cold. Really cold. -50F (with wind chill, -25 in still air at night) cold. While those temperatures aren’t unheard of on winter expeditions, the Winter Woodsman is an introductory course in living out in the [...]

We’ve got the overview for the spring, 2015 Wilderness Bushcraft Semester, our 30th long-term course, published.  We’re making some changes, mostly in the form of going back to the roots of the program and doing more traveling.  Some of the changes are included below, but you can read them all on the Wilderness Bushcraft Semester [...]

If you’re interested in learning how to live, work and play in the boreal forest in the bitter cold of winter, we created the Winter Woodsman course just for you. Part survival course, part bushcraft, part winter guide training, the goal is make you feel comfortable and at home in the winter wilderness with a [...]

Our next School of the Forest is scheduled for November 15th. We’ll get started at 10am as usual but we won’t be wrapping up at 2 o’clock this time around; we’ll be sleeping in the shelters we build! Staying the night isn’t mandatory, but it will be fun! Cost will be the standard thirty dollars [...]

The Frozen 48 is a winter survival challenge where participants head into the boreal forest of northern Maine for 48 hours with minimal gear. It’s not easy. Many people have done a night in the winter woods without a tent or sleeping bag. It’s the second night that gets you. That’s where training, skill and [...]

Although the nights are just starting to get cool we’ve been thinking about snow and ice and planning our winter schedule. Below is a preview of the programs we’re offering. Additionally, we’ll be offering the Winter Craftsman course in November where you can make your own mukluks and toboggan, bend and lace snowshoes, and more. [...]

The beautiful weather of mid-August has arrived! My two week summer break between the end of the Wilderness Canoe Expedition Semester and the beginning of the Wilderness Bushcraft Semester beginning August 24th has been filled with family time, but also a few folk school programs. Last Thursday, as part of the self reliance workshop series [...]

We’re three weeks into the spring semester. It was a challenging start, with our road being covered with several feet of snow and us unable to drive in for the first two weeks. It meant a lot of trips hauling gear in on sleds for the 3/4 of a mile to the paved road. Also, [...]

This weekend we begin our 26th semester program. Today I’m packing up the truck and canoe trailer. Tonight I’ll be watching my kids perform in a play, and tomorrow I’ll be heading to the field school. It will be a challenging beginning to the course because the dirt road in from the pavement is still [...]

Our summer calendar for 2014 is much different than in years past due to moving the 4-week Wilderness Canoe Expedition Semester from May to July-August. Because of this move, I’ll be out on the river during the period we usually run several week-long summer programs. As a result, the summer programs have been scaled back. [...]

I’m cancelling the School Of The Forest class, scheduled for Saturday, March 15th. Even though the most recent storm didn’t drop the predicted ten inches of snow, there’s still too much of it to run an effective class. The combination of nowhere to park (because of snow), inability to get to the outhouses without snowshoes, [...]

We’re running the February School Of The Forest class on Saturday, February first. We’ve added the class handouts to the SOTF page. Click on course date from the yellow box on the left to download a pdf about that day. For the February first class, you can also get the information sheet by clicking this [...]

Just ten days until our 2-week Boreal Snowshoe Expedition. We’ll be taking to the woods of Aroostook County, Maine and traveling by snowshoe and hauling our gear on toboggans along the frozen waterways. Home will be several woodstove-outfitted canvas tents. This year we’ll be joined for a few days by guest instructor and my old [...]

Our 4-week canoe expedition this summer will be very physically challenging. I’ve got six months to train for it, and I need to accomplish two things. First, I need to get stronger. I need to add muscle to my upper body, with an emphasis on my shoulders; they’re what gets sore after a week of [...]

I wrote a while back that I was changing the format of the Wilderness Canoe Expedition Semester, our four-week Maine canoe expedition. I’ve felt for a long time that there needed to be more of a challenge involved. This year, there will be plenty of challenge. The Route We’ll be making a giant (about 270 [...]

This year we’re partnering with GALA ( a local non-profit) to offer a monthly workshop series on self-reliance. Workshops run the second Wednesday of every month and are $15. More information is our Self Reliance Workshop page. The upcoming workshops are: 1/8 – Traditional Winter Gear, Snowshoes And Snowshoeing 2/12 – Soap Making 101 3/12 [...]

We’re adding a new, monthly kids program starting in January.  It’s called The School Of The Forest, and is designed for kids ages 8 and older.  It will take place at the folk school in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, on Saturday per month.  The first date will be January 4th.  You can read more about it [...]

Over the weekend we began our 24th semester course. We’ve got a big group, a new cooking pavilion, an expanded fleet of canoes (new 20′ Old Town XL Tripper) and a fresh coat of spar varnish on the paddles. There’s been talk of purchasing a giant neon sign in order for Moose Vegas (our student [...]

I’ll be announcing some changes to our programs over the next few days, the first of which is the Wilderness Canoe Expedition Semester. I’ve been talking with alumni and thinking about how it is different from the the canoe instruction and experience during the Wilderness Bushcraft Semester. The main question I’ve been asking is if [...]

We’ve received several calls regarding questions about food and meals on field school courses recently. Our goal is to have no surprises for people when they arrive, but there is a lot of information to digest and while we’re working to simplify it, it isn’t always the easiest to find. I’m posting this information to [...]

Today we’re running the third of three wild food walks, and will be heading to a nearby wetland at the top of its drainage to harvest cattails and other wetland species. The walks have been a lot of fun, and we’re right in the thick of the foraging season. I’ve spent several afternoons with my [...]

I’ve set the time and location for the first of our 3-part edible wild plant workshop series.  Session 1 (June 30) will run from 12-3 and will meet at 267 Camp School Road in Wolfeboro, NH. Plan to arrive between 11:30 and 12:00. We will be exploring the nearby woods and fields.  If your main [...]

The general route for our spring canoe expedition is set.  We’ll spend the bulk of the month on the Aroostook drainage.  We’ll be doing a good deal of upriver work, both poling and lining, to visit a few of my favorite spots.   Our second trip in on the Allagash, where we’ll be poling up [...]

On Wednesday, February 27th we’re running a short course on winter bushcraft for kids (ages 6-12) and parents in Wolfeboro, NH.  The tuition is $25 per family, which can include 2 adults and multiple kids. I’m planning on running the program from 1:30-4:00 pm. We’ll be focusing on lighting fires, snowshoe use and making bindings, [...]

As of February 14th, our 2013-2014 yearlong bushcraft immersion program and the fall wilderness bushcraft semester are both full.  Although it grows a bit every year, this is the earliest we’ve ever filled; more than 6-months in advance!  We will still accept applications for the waiting list in case their are cancellations.  If you’re thinking [...]

Trip Journal 1/31/13 – Squapan Lake, Maine This morning it was warm and raining, with a strong wind out of the south. At about one pm, the wind began to shift, moving to the southwest and eventually to the west. As this was happening, it began to get cold again. A cold front was blowing [...]

Trip Journal 1/30/13 Tentbound. Squapan Lake, Aroostook County, Maine. After the cold of our first 8 days in the woods, we enjoyed a beautiful walk hauling laden toboggans down the western arm of Squapan Lake. The sleds chattered behind us with minimal effort, a huge difference from hauling them up the hill from the field [...]

January 23, 2013; Day five of our Winter Bushcraft And Snowshoe Expedition Intensive. The weather has been cold; we haven’t seen positive temperatures in four days. The last two nights, the temperatures have been colder than 35 degrees below zero, and colder than -55 with the wind chill. We’ve got two 8-sided, 12′ diameter Ungava [...]

I’m headed to the Snow Walker’s Rendezvous in Vermont November 9-11. If you’ve never been and you’re interested in non-mechanized winter travel and living out in the winter, you should check it out. I’ll be teaching workshops on axemanship, ropemaking, and making low-tech crooked knives, like the one Little Justin is holding in the above [...]

This past weekend we wrapped up our 21st long-term immersion program. When we started in August I had big plans about blogging every day, but the realities of field school life intervened and I only posted twice during the course. There were lots of great moments, from the weasel who lived under my tent and [...]

There’s a grace that comes with experience when form follows function. Simplicity is the goal. The more experienced one becomes, the less work is needed to complete a specific task. This is accomplished by eliminating the unnecessary. When using an axe to procure raw materials for basic needs from the forest, the more skilled and [...]

I woke up before dawn and watched the sun rise over Squapan ridge this morning. We’ve had a bunch of hot and humid weather, but a cold front came through yesterday afternoon and the overnight temperature was in the low 40’s. This morning the sky is clear and there a hint of autumn in the [...]

Yesterday we started our 21st bushcraft semester course, our 11th since relocating our immersion programs to the field school in Masardis, Maine. It’s significant because now we’ve run more of them here than at our old base in New Hampshire. It’s also the first semester course where we’ve been able to accept the GI Bill [...]

We’re halfway through our Family Bushcraft Course, and so far it’s been a great week.  We’ve got a big group (20), which means that so far this week we’ve served over 100 meals out of the dutch oven.  I’m glad we’ve got a few large ones, and this experience may result in me pulling the [...]

We made it back from the Allagash trip, finishing the spring Bushcraft Canoe Expedition Semester.  Overall the trip was fantastic, but it didn’t look that way at the beginning.  The first two days the black flies were terrible, but then it cooled off and they weren’t bad for this time of year.  The fishing was [...]

Phase 1 of the Bushcraft Canoe Expedition Semester is completed. It was a fantastic 9-day trip on the headwaters of the Aroostook, where we put in on Chase Pond and descended Munsungan Brook, crossed Munsungan Lake, carried around Munsungan Falls, descended Munsungan Stream, and paddled the Aroostook River back to the field school. We had [...]

It’s been a busy few days since arriving at the field school. Lots of cleaning, gear preparation, varnishing wannigans, canoe chairs, etc., but it’s finished and this morning we leave to paddle and pole the headwaters of the Aroostook river. We’ll be camping, fishing and canoeing back to the field school over the next week. [...]

In a few days, I’ll be there.  A river in northern Maine.  A remote campsite, only accessible by water.  But in those few remaining days, there’s lots of work to be done.  Today, it was varnishing a new dutch oven wannigan and canoe chair.  Tomorrow it will be putting several coats of shellac on my [...]

Now that our winter programs are completed, I’m turning my attention to the spring canoe expedition semester. The course lasts 28 days. The first 2 are spent in camp planning, provisioning, packing and preparing gear. Then it’s off to run the length of our home river, the Aroostook. We’ve got an optional leg of the [...]

After studying the manual and talking with the Veterans Administration, I’m up to speed with the registration procedures for the GI Bill. It’s a simple, 3-step process. Step 1: Fill out the registration form on our site. Step 2: Email us a copy of your certificate of eligibility (sometimes called letter of eligibility). Step 3: [...]

I recently announced that we were changing our summer course lineup.  The new, revised summer lineup is now posted on our Calendar.  It includes: Woodsman Course – 6/10 – 6/16 Bushman Course – 6/17 – 6/23 Riverman Course – 6/24 – 6/30 Teen Bushcraft & Survival Course – 7/8 – 7/14 Family Bushcraft & Survival [...]

3 week minimum. For Immersion program students, by immersion program students. There comes a point in a person’s bushcraft education where they need to be kicked out of the nest to do things on their own and gain a level of experience that is difficult to obtain during a formal course. Once a certain level [...]

After a lot of thought and discussions with students, we’re scrapping our current Journeyman Certification Program. Instead of being based on a 4-week summer field course, the Journeyman Certification will now be based on the Wilderness Bushcraft Semester in the fall. Like the XI (Expedition Instructor Certification), it will be comprised of benchmarks, minimum competencies [...]

We’re down to one available spot for January’s Winter Bushcraft Immersion course.  The course runs from January 8-21 at our field school in Masardis, Maine, and students have the opportunity to earn 5 undergraduate credits. It’s definitely not a beginner’s course, as camp is roughly a mile snowshoe in from the road.  We’ll be camped [...]

Today was the first day of the Journeyman Program.  It’s new this year – a four week immersion course.  We had a great day building shelters,  lighting fires, cooking over the fire, etc.  The mosquitos in the Guide Shack are fierce tonight – someone left the door open today.  They’re too numerous to spend much [...]

From very early on, it was clear that bipedal locomotion was not going to be fast enough to keep pace with the hustle and bustle lifestyle of our hunter/gatherer ancestors. The desire to effortlessly transport heaping hunks of mastodon, to swiftly reach the local flint quarry, or to fulfill the need for a tranquil cardio [...]

Part of the Journeyman Program will be a remote canoe trip.  We’ll be poling and lining upstream to a remote lake, where the loons will sing us to sleep at night.  Then we’ll take a week heading down-river getting back to the field school.  Along the way we’ll be fishing, camping, and living outdoors. Classroom [...]

At the request of one of our students I’m updating our college curriculum and creating a course catalog for our immersion programs.  This first section is our field ecology and natural history curriculum. Economic Field Botany (3 credits) – Edible, medicinal and other useful plants of Maine and surrounding territories. Aided by an instructor, students [...]

Shaping  a crooked knife One component of our new Journeyman Bushcraft Instructor And Wilderness Guide Certification Program is the craft benchmarks I’ve written about before.  Below is the list of crafts and how many of them need to be completed in order to successfully complete the program.  All of the crafts below are taught during [...]

One of the new aspects we’re building into our Journeyman Certification Course are skill and craft benchmarks. It’s great to learn how to make new things. But, to attain even a basic skill level with them, they have to be completed a number of times. For example, on some of our courses students learn how [...]

A new way to pay for courses at Jack Mountain:  Students can now use Americorps vouchers to help with tuition. Check out our Scholarships & Tuition Discounts page for more info.

Third in our series of course profiles in the Outlander course. The Outlander is the first of our new Challenge Course series. Designed for experienced people who want to test themselves in a realistic situation but also have the safety that traveling as a group provides, our challenge courses will push well beyond the comfort [...]

Second in our series of course profiles is our Bushman Course. The Bushman Course picks up where the Woodsman leaves off and runs the following week, making them available to be taken together. The focus here is on creating what you need from the natural materials available. We’ll still use a few simple tools for [...]

First in our series of course profiles is our Woodsman Course. The Woodsman course is a comprehensive introduction to all that we do at the Jack Mountain Bushcraft School and is a good first course for someone new to bushcraft and survival. It’s designed to teach you the most important and practical skills of bushcraft [...]

A few people who read this blog have seen some of our courses on the web, but as changes are made each year, the ideas that our longtime readers have about our courses may no longer be accurate.  In order to eliminate this uncertainty, I’m going to be posting some information about our courses here [...]

We’ve finished the first four and a half weeks of the Wilderness Bushcraft Semester, and have the second half remaining after our short break.  Highlights have included canoeing the Devil’s Elbow and the Aroostook River, building and living in shelters, cooking all of our meals over an open fire, most of them in a dutch [...]

Week 1 of the 2010 Wilderness Bushcraft Semester is in the record books.  We spent time eating a lot of wild foods, poling and paddling canoes, building shelters, lighting fires, cooking over the fires we lit, making crooked knives on the campfire, learning about off-grid solar technology, studying the weather, and much, much more.  Busy [...]

We use the logbook to track the individual progression of each student. However, there are some skills where a demonstration of the skill set is necessary for competence. You can either complete a task safely and efficiently, or you can’t. The practical exam process is about having a minimum skill level necessary to be able [...]

After a lot of thought, I’ve decided that this fall will be our last fall semester for a few years.  While they’ve been very successful and have been a life-changing experience for our students, they are also a difficult period of separation for my family.  While this has been challenging for my wife and I [...]

I’ve been thinking for several years about putting together an expedition-style course for young men where we’d spend three or four weeks in the north woods canoeing and living outdoors.  It would be a similar, although less rigorous, curriculum that we use in our college semester programs, with a focus on academic subjects such as [...]

There are many features that make our yearlong bushcraft immersion program unique, and to read about them you should check out the yearlong page as the purpose of this post is to list a few of the perks that go along with taking the yearlong, but aren’t a part of it. Yearlong program graduates have [...]

We’re adding an internship component to the yearlong program. As you know, the program begins with the fall semester course, continues with the winter intensive and finishes with the spring expedition. We’re adding a summer internship where students learn the business end of bushcraft, how we run weeklong courses, etc. They’ll get experience teaching, organizing, [...]

What would the ultimate Maine canoe, bushcraft, fishing and outdoor living program look like? We’ve thought about this for ten years and the 2010 4-week canoe expedition program comes pretty close. It begins with our Riverman course, a week of solid instruction in canoeing, guide training and practical camping and outdoor living. Daily lessons with [...]

I wrote up a document on helping people prepare for their field school course recently, and put it online with a link from our Registration page.  You can read it at: http://www.jackmtn.com/PDF/JMB_field_school_preparation.pdf The text is below. ———————————————————- ———————————————————- 1.    Food, meals and cooking 2.    Drinking Water 3.    Electricity 4.    Gear And Gear Lists 5.    Sleeping [...]

We’re wrapping up week 1 of the Earth Skills Winter Program, and I’m getting all the gear assembled for our snowshoe trip next week.  We’ve had the coldest temperatures of the year so far, but it’s been a fun week anyway and we’ve covered a lot of ground.  Today I’m busy prepping and packing what [...]

The number of primitive skills and survival schools has swelled in the last few years, and while all schools are not created equal there are many opportunities to learn wilderness skills these days.  It’s important to be clear about what we do because it’s different than what’s available elsewhere.  Yes, we teach skills.  We’re among [...]

We’re introducing a new format for the fall, 2009 Earth Skills Semester Program.  We’re breaking the course up into two blocks of four weeks each, with a week off in the middle.  And instead of working five days a week, we’ll be working six days a week.  With the practical exam at the end of [...]

We put up a blog for the participants of our semester programs last spring, and a big part of a spring logbook was recently posted. So if you want to find out more of what goes on in our programs, you can check it out at The Bushcraft Experience.

We’re redesigning our spring semester for 2009. The new format will be a 6-week program with most of the time spent traveling through the bush of northern Maine. There are 5 phases to the program, each of which can be taken as an individual course. Phase 1: Weeklong bushcraft and guide training immersion course. Phase [...]

We’re adding a new member to our team – The University Of Maine at Presque Isle.  We’ll be actively collaborating with UMPI beginning in 2009 and are excited about the opportunities this presents.  It’s a great opportunity for college students seeking to include buscraft as part of their studies.  More at the UMPI Recreation and [...]

We wrapped up our 12 semester program over the weekend, and I’m back in NH for a short while.  It was the first semester run entirely at our 41-acre Bushcraft And Sustainability Field School in Masardis, Maine, and the new location added immensely to the experience.  The beautiful, clear waters of the Aroostook River, the [...]

This photo is looking upstream on the Aroostook river.  Our Bushcraft & Sustainability Field School is on the right.  I loved this photo because of the light on the basket and canoe.

When the tail end of hurricane Kyle swung through Aroostook County and dumped several inches of rain it brought all the rivers up to their spring flood stage in two days.  We took advantage of this and went exploring on some of the nearby rivers. With each passing week I learn more about the area [...]

Friend and Maine Guide Shawn McNutt has been posting his journal and photos of a fall, 2006 canoe guide training course we ran on the Allagash on his blog Guide Spot.  It’s great to read his perspectives on the trip, and his photos really bring out the natural beauty of the waterway. You can read [...]

Week 5 of the 10-week Earth Skills Semester Program is finished.  It’s been a great semester, and our new ground ere in Aroostook County has been flat-out amazing.  Last week I saw a lynx sneaking around camp, and I’ve been enjoying all the other wildlife we’ve seen.  In addition to the bald eagles, osprey, kestrels, [...]

We spent the week on a remote, northern Maine lake learning the arts of canoe paddling and poling.  Cooking every meal over the open fire, watching the bald eagles fly over the lake and land in the white pines, listening to the songs of the loons who would sit in the water off the point [...]

Week one of the fall semester is completed, and next week we’ll be in the bush camping on some remote lakes.  It will be an introduction to the traditional skills of canoeing and the grace of living in the bush. This past week we identified and used numerous wild food plants, as well as a [...]

We’re organizing a yearly trip for alumni of our bushcraft semester courses.  Our goal is to create avenues for continuing education and group learning.  The 2009 trip is still in the planning stages, but will likely take place on the Penobscot and Allagash rivers and be 2-3 weeks long. More of a practicum than a [...]

The 2008 fall bushcraft semester will be our 12th semester course, and the first one to run from start to finish at our new location in northern Maine on the banks of the Aroostook river. We’ve put together a schedule that takes advantage of our new location, with lots of time spent living and traveling [...]

We wrapped up the spring Earth Skills Semester Program last week.  We finished out the course with ten days on the Allagash river, which was a great culmination to our time together.  We saw a bunch of wildlife and caught a bunch of trout on the flyrod, but nothing of significant size. Our other big [...]

It was a busy day yesterday. We baked some potatoes in the sun oven, baked some sourdough biscuits in the reflector oven, waterlined and shellaced a canoe, made fish spears, caught a bunch of fish with them, built a tripod for smoking them, filleted them and smoked them as the sun sank over the horizon. [...]

Yesterday afternoon everybody carved a bucksaw frame. It’s a great project in that it teaches safe and precise knife skills. We build them with no nails or wooden pegs, so that friction is all that holds it together. To accomplish this the carving and fitting needs to be close to exact. If someone does a [...]

After pressing a specimen of Lycopodium, we spent most of yesterday morning on navigation.  We introduced the compass, then built a compass from the sun which we maintained all day.  We rounded out the morning by making hand-spun rope, then having everyone make their own rope using a rope-spinner. The afternoon began with a sharpening [...]

Today we start week 2 of our spring bushcraft semester course.  The weather is warming up nicely, but there is still a lot of snow on the ground.  We scraped a few deer hides over the weekend, and in the next day or so we’ll have all of them scraped and hung up to dry.  [...]

Yesterday we rebuilt the sauna, and today we’ll start scraping deer hides so as to make buckskin.  Below is one of my favorite quotes from Sigurd Olson. The bush is a complex of many joys — companionship on the trail, the thrills of exploration, the impact of silence, vastness, and infinity, the good feeling of [...]

Our first day of the spring bushcraft semester course was marked by a wide range of weather. We went from still air, to snowy whiteout, to sleet, to rain, as the temperature warmed through the day. In the afternoon we went into the bush to familiarize everyone with the area. On our way out, we [...]

It’s day one of the spring Earth Skills Semester Program. Everyone’s here, and this morning we hit the ground running. There is still 36″ of snow in the bush, but since the shelters have raised beds we’re able to make it work without too much discomfort. Spring came to Wolfeboro yesterday, with warm temperatures and [...]

When I was a kid I remember being at a small airfield with my dad. As we walked past the planes, he explained to me how they were built. We stopped in front of one plane and he told me that this one didn’t come from a factory; It had been built by the owner. [...]

I recently rewrote the section of our student handbook that explains how we assess student work in our yearlong and semester programs. That rewrite is below: Assessment: Logbook and Portfolio There are no certifications in bushcraft, wilderness survival or primitive skills that are accepted universally. If any school offers a certification, it’s likely a result [...]

It’s several weeks after the end of our fall semester program, and all the written work for the college credit option is in. I’ll be posting some of it here, starting with Russ Venditto’s final paper. It’s a .pdf file, and you can get it by clicking here. I’ve added a section to our Bushcraft [...]

This is the last weekend of this fall’s Earth Skills Semester Program, so it wasn’t much of a break. Everyone is busy working on projects, from scraping a moose hide to weaving pack baskets to tillering bows, as well as putting together our video from week nine. It will remain busy right up through Friday, [...]

In 2008 we’re officially adding a homesteading and organic gardening component to our programs. it’s nothing new; for ten semester programs, our students have played an active role in living sustainably on the land. But now we’re making it a formal part of the semester experience. Students will have garden space to grow some of [...]

We had a great day poling on the upper Saco river yesterday. We were joined by writer/photographer Christopher Percy Collier, who was working on a magazine story about canoe poling. From the put-in we poled upstream for several mies. It was slow going as the river was running at 175 cubic feet per second, which [...]

Today we’re off to pole and fish the upper Saco river. The weather is supposed to be beautiful, and although brisk, the water will still be warm enough for a midday swim. I’m bringing my fly rod and the video camera, so hopefully we’ll shoot some footage that will make it into this week’s Bushcraft [...]

We spent the entire day yesterday exploring the woods and looking for plants and mushrooms to identify and collect, as well as tracks to cast and scat to examine.  Our travels led us a few miles into the woods, around an old beaver pond, along a stream, and through a variety of habitats.  We found [...]

Today marks the start of week 4 of the Earth Skills Semester Program. This week we’ll be working on a new shelter, finishing our braintanned buckskins, and roughing out longbows. We’ll also spend a day poling and fly fishing a nearby river, and continuing with our studies of the natural world. Yesterday morning we put [...]

We had a busy first day of the fall semester building shelters and going over our routines. We shot some time-lapse video of building a shelter as a group, but we haven’t watched it yet to see if it was any good. It was a long, hot day in the sun but we got all [...]

After weeks of preparation, today we start the tenth semester course that we’ve run. I’ll write a summary at the end of the day to keep our readers informed as to what we do. And we’ve got a video intern, so expect to see a bunch of footage of the course available on the web [...]

We completed the Earth Skills Summer Program, and it was a great success. We covered a lot of material, had a lot of fun, and only had to endure one knife cut which took place the first day. Like all extended courses, there were low points, like the bow that broke during floor tillering and [...]

Tomorrow morning marks the beginning of the Earth Skills Summer Program. I’ve been busy getting things ready with the help of Paul Sveum, who arrived after finishing the academic year at Northland College in Wisconsin. Paul took the ESSP two years ago and came back last year as an TA and instructor. This year he’ll [...]

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.

We just completed week 9 of the Earth Skills Semester Program. Most of the week was devoted to making bows out of locally-harvested white ash. In the past we’ve always reverse-wrapped the bowstrings, but this year we made Flemish strings where only the ends are reverse-wrapped. It worked out well because you can adjust the [...]

It’s been a few weeks, but I’ve finally added some new photos in the 2006 ESSP photo gallery to show you some of the things we’ve been up to lately, including tanning hides, foraging at the seacoast, and making bows. Let me know what you think of them.

The date and time for our Earth Skills Symposium has been set. It will be on November 4th from 10 AM until 1 PM at our home base; 267 Camp School Road in Wolfeboro. The symposium is the final event of the Earth Skills Semester Program where students present their research and put their work [...]

The ESSP students spent the second half of this week making wide-limbed flat bows out of white ash staves I harvested last year. They’re coming along amazingly well. If you’re interested in making your first bow, you should read Tim Baker’s article titled Your First Wooden Bow. You should probably also read everything else Tim [...]

Our semester students are working on debris shelters today. Although effective in certain conditions, the debris shelter is often promoted as the do all, end all of shelters. While I teach and have used them successfully on many occasions, I wholeheartedly disagree with it being the most important shelter. It isn’t practical to build in [...]

We had a great day at the coast yesterday gathering wild foods, identifying plants and tracking on sandy beach at low tide. We covered the basics of pattern and clear-print tracking, then experimented with pressure releases and tracking games for several hours before our beach was retaken by the sea as the tide came in. [...]

We finished braintanning yesterday, and overnight about half an inch of rain fell. So this morning we’ll be working on wet weather fire-lighting, then spending the morning reviewing. After lunch we’re off to a nearby cattail swamp to forage for the roots, gather hand drill stalks, and maybe even make a doll out of cattail [...]

Today we start braintanning deer hides, or using brains to dress and soften the hides resulting in a chamois-like finished product. Each year I get a bunch of hides from a friend and fellow guide who butchers deer for hunters. The hides we’ll be working on today were fleshed and mostly dehaired last fall, then [...]

We’re back from our survival trip to the White Mountains and the students are carving canoe paddles. They’re excited to work on the larger crafts and it’s a good thing, because in the next few weeks they’re going to make brown ash pack baskets, bows and arrows, and braintanned buckskin in addition to the paddles. [...]

We arrived at the trail head in middle of the White Mountain National Forest in the middle of the day and walked in on a trail for several miles before turning off into the bush. We waded through thick brush before it opened into a wetland, where our feet sank into the boggy mix of [...]

This morning we begin the major activity for the week; a three-day walk in the mountains with limited gear. My gear will include an axe, a knife, a small piece of plastic, a small metal pot, a pocket-sized first aid kit and the clothes I’m wearing. The students will have a similar gear. Our goal [...]

Teaching is tiring. Learning is even more so. Teaching can be practiced until it becomes an art. After years of doing it you occasionally get thrown by a student’s question, but for the most part you get better the more you do it (this refers to teaching, not content knowledge). Learning is the act of [...]

Yesterday we unpacked and dried out a bunch of gear from the Allagash trip and cut the base logs for our new sauna. The students felled several trees with an axe, then sectioned them with a cross cut saw. It’t great to watch their expertise with these tools increase exponentially. We also covered general map [...]

This morning marks the beginning of week 5 of the ESSP. This week we’re focusing on advanced navigation and foraging, so we’ll take a trip to the seacoast and spend an afternoon in a nearby swamp digging cattails. While we were on the Allagash our sauna stove arrived, made by my good friend Don Kevilus [...]

We had a great trip on the Allagash marked by warm weather and low water levels. Picking up two people on our drive north, we arrived at the bridge at the south end of Chamberlain Lake in the late afternoon, then loaded up the boats for the short paddle to Boy Scout campsite. Our party [...]

Last night the ESSP students and I attended a talk given by Tom Wessels, the author of Reading the Forested Landscape and other books. The talk focused on reading and understanding the history of the woods of New England for signs of farming and logging. Having heard him speak before I was prepared for the [...]

Yesterday we started with one match fires since we had rain overnight. Skill and confidence levels have dramatically improved and everyone was either able to successfully start a fire or self-diagnose what went wrong. With our focus on the process, not the product, this is a complete success because they understood what was happening and [...]

Yesterday we spent the morning planning the meals for our upcoming Allagash trip. We’ve had a flurry of phone calls and the size of the group has swelled to 10 people. Then we were out on the water practicing canoe strokes, poling, and learning a flat water rescue technique. After lunch we started on knots [...]

Yesterday morning the ESSP students carved bow drill sets and learned several ways of attaching the spindle to the string. We discussed the science behind friction firelighting, then everyone worked on perfecting their drilling form while breaking in the new sets. Then we moved onto percussion-based firelighting using flint and steel before working with more [...]

The ESSP students and I had a busy day yesterday doing axework, working on friction fires, one-match fires, and going on a 3-hour plantwalk. The long-term shelters were finished, and last night we had a campfire and baked some sourdough biscuits in the stone oven. Everyone is excited to get out into the canoes today, [...]

Similar to past classes, I’ve set up a separate photo gallery for the 2006 Earth Skills Semester Program at www.jackmtn.com/gallery/essp2006. After the first two days we’ve got 14 photos, with lots more to come. Stay tuned.

Today was day 1 of our 10-week Earth Skills Semester Program. Each student is building a permanent shelter to use as a home base for the duration of the course. We’re building them to be large and comfortable one-person shelters with a raised bed, some storage space, and a small changing area. The design has [...]