The Earth Skills Semester Program is a college level, field-based wilderness bushcraft semester course focusing on practical, hard skills. For 99% of human history they've been the core knowledge of our species. In many outdoor programs such hard skills take a backseat to the soft skills of awareness and team building, to the modern high-tech schools of wilderness skills, or to the philosophical and spiritual practices of new age belief systems. Not here. We focus on the tangible, practical hard skills that make up the tool kit of the professional guide and are the difference in a life outdoors.

"I would like to take some time to discuss just how wildly different the experience at Jack Mountain is from a normal college semester. Every night, at home and on trips, the students sleep in shelters they have built with their own hands. Exams are not necessary because everything is practiced daily, at least to the point of competency and often beyond. Students study botany and zoology using the local flora and fauna as the object of their studies, and because of the daily contact with them the students are able to identify a specimen by its Latin name at a glance. Manual skills such as axe and knife-work are put to use just about every day of the course, even on the weekends. Traveling by canoe on a river the students are placed in a situation where they must choose either to learn the correct way to pole the canoe or to give up and sit down on the bank of the river. The "middle ground" of simply attending class and trying to absorb the information through osmosis is not an option at Jack Mountain, and this is what makes the school and its students stand out miles above a traditional college. Personally, I can say that I learned much more in ten weeks than I have in the past three years at college."
                                                                - Russell Venditto, ESSP Fall 2007 (read more)

Fall Semester Overview

We're introducing a new format for the fall, 2009 Earth Skills Semester Program. The course will be divided into two 4-week blocks with a week off in the middle. Six days per week we'll be "on", with one day to rest, relax, or go to town.

During block 1, we introduce a variety of primitive and traditional wilderness living skills. There's time to work on them and develop a competent skill level, as well as pursue the other aspects of our curriculum. Block 1 can be taken as an individual course. A weekly overview is coming soon.

After a week to relax, explore the North Maine Woods, go on a solo, backpack through Baxter State Park and the northern AT, fast, or participate in other group or solo activities of interest, we reunite for block 2. During block 2 we use no matches, lighters, nylon tents, propane stoves, or other modern gear. For four weeks we live using only traditional skills such as lighting fires by friction, cooking over an open fire and carrying our gear in packs we make ourselves. While it will be a challenge, there's no other way to gain the experience with, and mastery of traditional bushcraft skills that can compare with living it. Block 2 is not available as a standalone course. A weekly overview is coming soon.

To get a more detailed picture of the program, you should check out our student handbook.

The 21 Point Jack Mountain Curriculum

Our educational program has been developed over ten years and twelve semester courses. It's designed as a cumulative sequence of learning experiences where the resulting outcome is greater than the sum of the parts. This is a much different approach than assembling a collection of random skills and activities and calling it a course. Our goal isn't just that a student is able to "do" a skill. Instead it's to develop their knowledge, attitude and physical skills into a cohesive whole.

Our warm-weather curriculum includes:

1. Wilderness Survival - Basic, intermediate and advanced survival.
2. Fire - Fire making with and without modern tools.
3. Shelter Construction - Building for survival, short-term and long-term stays.
4. Water - Acquisition And Purification.
5. Navigation - Barehand (using no modern tools), map and compass.
6. Canoeing - Paddling, poling, lining, portaging, and using traditional gear such as tumplines and wannigans.
7. Ropework And Knots - Making cord and rope and tying useful knots.
8. Clothing Science - Choosing and maintaining your clothing for the bush.
9. Outdoor Cooking - Stone ovens, pot suspension systems, primitive grilling, sourdough baking, reflector ovens, dutch ovens, etc.
10. Provisioning And Meal Planning For Trips - Choosing appropriate foods, determining amounts, packing, etc.
11. Outdoor Leadership - Becoming a professional outdoor leader, managing groups in the woods and on the water.
12. The Knife - Selection, safety, powerful and efficient use.
13. The Axe - Selection, safety, powerful and efficient use.
14. The Saw - Selection, safety, powerful and efficient use.
15. Trip Equipment - Use and maintenance of nylon and canvas tents, stoves, lanterns, tarps, canoes, paddles, etc.
16. Group Encampment - Safety, cleanliness, organization.
17. Sustainability - Composting, waste management, sanitation.
18. First Aid - Dealing with common injuries. Note: This is not a first aid course.
19. Lost Person - Finding a lost person in the bush.
20. First-Person Ecology - Studies of the natural world including weather (observational forecasting), plants (edible, medicinal, utilitarian and magical uses), mammals and their tracks, birds, fish, fungi, insects (with an emphasis on aquatic insects) and stars and the night sky.
21. Crafts - Building useful pieces of gear including a bow drill, a saw frame, a netting needle and net, a canoe paddle, campfire cooking rigs, burned spoons and bowls, animal calls, sleeping mats, pack frames and baskets.

Electives - In addition to our general curriculum, there are other aspects of the bush life that participants can explore if they're interested. These include primitive living (going without modern gear), primitive fishing, fly casting and fishing, and firearm safety and marksmanship. There are open hunting and fishing seasons during the program. If you want to hunt or fish, you'll need to get a Maine hunting and/or fishing license. They can be ordered online at Maine Department Of Inland Fisheries And Wildlife. If you've never held a hunting or bowhunting license, you'll need to take a hunter's safety course in order to get one. This is best done before you arrive so check with your state or province to learn more. We're very particular about not breaking any fish and game laws on our courses, so you'll need a license even if you just want to put a hook in the water one time.

Sustainability - There are also daily lessons on living a simple, sustainable, rural life. Building and using outdoor showers, composting toilets, solar and fireless cookers, food preservation and storage, organic gardening, and much more.

For more detail on these topics, see the Jack Mountain Bushcraft Student Handbook.

Intended Learning Outcomes

        Upon successful completion of the ESSP, students will:

1.  Demonstrate skill proficiency and extensive experience in a wide variety of bushcraft and primitive skills, including fire, shelter, outdoor cooking, tracking, observational weather forecasting, bowmaking and archery, carving, basketry, primitive pottery, cordage and natural bindings, navigation, and the use of the axe, saw, and knife.
2.  Demonstrate knowledge and skill in traditional canoe skills, including paddling, poling, safely running whitewater, portaging, and other related skills.
3.  Make a variety of pieces of traditional gear, including a long bow and pack basket.
4.  Have a working knowledge of basic, intermediate, and advanced wilderness survival.
5.  Assemble and maintain a tool kit with which they can make a variety of different crafts.
6.  Navigate by map and compass, and also by using barehand methods.
7.  Build a strong foundation of nature knowledge about the weather, birds, mammals and their tracks, fish, insects, the stars and constellations, and plants.
8.  Have a working knowledge of 100 edible, medicinal, and otherwise useful wild plants.
9.  Document daily progress with individual skills in their logbook.

Evaluation and Certification

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 of their marketing department and probably isn't transferable. None are recognized here. I've crossed paths with numerous people who were "certified" in one thing or another, but in the real world were incompetent, incapable of completing some of the most basic tasks. Thus certified doesn't necessarily mean qualified or competent. Neither does how many courses you've attended, regardless of the school or instructor. What you've accomplished and the experience you've accumulated does. We don't want to certify people. Instead, we seek provide training and field experience and let what they accomplish speak for itself. The way we do that is through our logbook and portfolio assessment system. It records what a student has accomplished instead of placing them in competition with their peers. Students keep a daily logbook during the program to record what they've done. These, along with crafts they've made, projects they've worked on, photographs they've taken, and everything else they've done during the program, are assembled into individual student portfolios.

The portfolio is a factual record what you've done. This way, if someone were to ask if you knew how to start a hand drill fire, instead of saying you took a course on how to do it you could volunteer your logbook and state that you've done it "X" number of times. In this era of people being over-certified and under-qualified, this type of assessment system offers a route back to reality.

Our Educational Philosophy

Knowledge is power, but knowledge is constructed, not received. It is built incrementally, over time. If teaching were simply telling, then anyone who excelled in a field would be an effective teacher of it. But this transmission model of teaching isn't effective for most learners. Standing in front of someone and telling them what they need to know isn't facilitating learning. Especially when you consider the differences between visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learning styles. We subscribe to the learning model of teaching, where the role of the teacher is to create situations where learning takes place. Students build upon their knowledge daily, and by the end of the experience they've accumulated a storehouse of information and experiences. But the instructor must also make it relevant. It's easy to scoff at friction fire since matches and lighters are so readily available. But remove them from the equation and it's instantly relevant, and the desire to learn the subtleties of the hand drill takes on renewed importance. Our students are actively learning, immersing themselves in the curriculum by necessity. An example of this is how we teach shelter building. You can learn something about a shelter by making one. You can learn more about it by sleeping in it. But to truly know that specific shelter, you need to spend four consecutive nights in it. In this way you're forced to deal with the consequences of shoddy construction or not paying attention to details. Maybe the first night is rough, but it teaches you what you need to do before the second night in order to shore it up and get some sleep. The second night is spent learning some of the subtleties that would make it more comfortable. The third night is fine-tuning it to your specifications, and the fourth night is enjoying the fruits of your labor. If you were to build the same shelter again, you could eliminate the learning curve because you'd know what to do from the outset. That's experiential education.

"Experiential education is the process of actively engaging students in an authentic experience that will have benefits and consequences. Students make discoveries and experiment with knowledge themselves instead of hearing or reading about the experiences of others. Students also reflect on their experiences, thus developing new skills, new attitudes, and new theories or ways of thinking."  (Kraft & Sakofs, 1988)

In addition to passing on traditional skills, we focus on using them to foster critical thinking, problem solving, creativity, curiosity, and a concern with ethical issues.

Summed up in a single word, our educational philosophy is this:  CAN.

Housing, Meals, College Credit and Other Information

Information on housing and meals, as well as other background information, is located on the Field School Programs Background Information page. College credit is available. For details visit the credit information page.

Get More Information - Videos, Photos And Student Work

To get a better idea of what takes place during the semester, check out these resources:

• Photo albums of past semesters
• Student testimonials
• Student papers, logbooks and field journals
• Slideshow
• Online videos - Jack Mountain Bushcraft Journal episodes 8-16 were shot as a video diary of the fall, 2007 semester course.

Also don't hesitate to contact us anytime with questions. The fall semester is a component of our Yearlong Wilderness Bushcraft Immersion Program.

"The benefits of this new awareness are real - I felt them that morning to their fullest when I awoke warm and refreshed, happy as I could ever be."

                                                                - Peter Frost, ESSP Winter 2004. From his journal after spending a winter night without a sleeping bag in a shelter he built and telling time by the moon to gauge how much firewood to use.

[ back to top ]

	Jack Mountain Bushcraft • Masardis, Maine • USA • Contact Info • Site Map
	Copyright © 1999-2009 Jack Mountain Bushcraft, LLC - All rights reserved.