We’re starting week four of the fall Wilderness Bushcraft Semester today, and I’ve been receiving a bunch of messages about the schedule for 2027. So in planning for 2027, it’s a good time to talk about the experiment that was 2026. This year we decided to run three, back-to-back Wilderness Bushcraft Semester courses. The plan was to fold the multiweek canoe expedition into the semester to make what we offer simpler. Now we’re in the middle of our third semester, and I can say it didn’t work as planned. In a nutshell, we ran into a time crunch on each of the semesters. There just isn’t enough time to do it all in 9 weeks. The result of the experiment is that we didn’t spend as much time out on the rivers as we would have liked. The emphasis went to completeing the course requirements for the journeyman certification. I’m happy with how it all worked out, especially opening up the semester to allow people to come in for a week or more, but in planning 2027 a change is in order.

Here’s the change; we’re bringing back the standalone canoe expedition, although with a major change; it will be an advanced class not open to beginners. Running the rivers of northern Maine during the cold, high waters of spring is something I look forward to each year. And over the years I’ve learned that there just isn’t enough time to teach someone new how to do it safely and well between when the ice melts and we want to be out on the river. The best time to learn the basics is in the summer or early fall, when the water is lower and the temperatures are much warmer. This gives us the ability to run some more challenging spring water and to plan more aggressively. As with all of our extended canoe trips of the last decade, we will be operating under the “travelling solo, together” philosophy, with the stated goals being to build the skills, confidence and experience for solo travel and professional guiding. I’ll be posting more about this course soon.

Other than the big change to the spring, the summer and fall semesters will be similar to years past. From the potential student’s perspective, what to take away from this is that the Wilderness Bushcraft Semester is a great place to learn the basic canoe skills of paddling, poling, lining, etc., but the more advanced experiences take place during the canoe course in the spring.

We’ve had our first frost in the county, the leaves are starting to turn, and fall is on its way.