Today we begin the Wilderness Bushcraft Semester, our 59th long-term immersion program. One of the things I did with the few days of rest between programs was to go through a bunch of old photos on a few hard drives, going back as far as the fall, 2004 Wilderness Bushcraft Semester course. That was the year I ditched the film camera and got my first digital point and shoot camera. It was fun to see the people, the locations and the trips from courses past. I’m reminded that we now have students who were not yet born when we started running semester programs. It’s a project I’ve been working on for some time; cataloging and organizing all the Jack Mountain photos from the past 24 years. You can expect to see some of them here in the coming weeks.

Week 1 of a semester is always a blur. There are so many things to cover as people transition to living outside before they get into the routine. So this morning I’m enjoying a coffee as my space, and my brain, is quiet. All that quiet is about to change.

The weather in northern Maine continues to swing wildly, and after two days in the 90s we’re back to the 40s. But as everyone I have talked to has said, we need the rain. It’s a good thing because we’re set to get a week of it.

The picture above was from last fall (2022), paddling across a series of ponds deep in the North Maine Woods.