The dates for the fall and spring terms of our 2010-2011 yearlong immersion program have been set. The yearlong program includes the fall, winter and spring terms.

Fall Term: Wilderness Bushcraft Semester 8/22/10-10/23/10
– Immediately following the fall term is our practical exam, which lasts several days.

Winter Term: Winter Bushcraft Intensive 1/9/11 – 1/22/11

Spring Term: Canoe Expedition 5/1/11 – 5/28/11

Each of these can also be taken as standalone courses.

TV survival shows are about hardships and risk. With background music to set the mood, the feeling of jeopardy hangs heavily over the host as s/he negotiates within an inch of his/her life. The danger makes it sexy.

In the real world, bushcraft is much more about heritage and tradition rather than risk. The old masters I know never rush, never worry, and never have adventures. They just live their lives outdoors.

We’re adding a tuition financing and payment plan for our long term programs. All the details aren’t set yet, but will be in a few weeks. It’s part of our plan to make our programs available to anyone who has a strong interest in bushcraft and living a simple, outdoor life.

Last summer I found an old magazine a friend had left at my place. It was the summer, 2004 issue of Outdoor Canada magazine, and on the last page was a short article titled “Homage” by Gary Ball. In it he gives his list of the perfect qualities a guide should posess. I think he comes pretty close.

There are those who can hunt, fish and otherwise live off the land in the northern wilds all on their own. And then there are those who can’t. Therein lies the major distinction between guide and client. That and the fact that the client gets to choose the guide, while the guide only rarely has a choice of client. The perfect guide, of course, is much more than that, although it would be easier to nail wood smoke to a hunt camp wall than to develop an all-embracing job description. But if we could conjure up the perfect guide, what qualities should he possess? Consider the following.

• A skillful hunter, angler, stalker, marksman, game caller, butcher and skinner.
• Able to navigate the wilderness by instinct alone.
• A master of all forms of transport, from canoe and bass boat to all-terrain vehicle and four-by-four to horseback and dog team.
• Able to survive on bark and twigs – and make them taste good.
• A peerless forecaster, and reader of how the weather affects fish and game.
• Able to identify, by spoor and call, every wild creature in the region.
• A skilled entertainer, a character who can make clients laugh about a swamped canoe, an elusive trophy or a bush pilot who forgot to pick them up.
• Able to provide, from his tiny day pack, any gear the client left at home.
• Able to swallow a client’s jokes, tall tales and excuses.
• Able to identify any plant, then describe its uses in Aboriginal medicine, cooking and folklore.
• Able to read a client’s mind, to ensure that every moment in the field is as good as, or better than, what he or she had hoped for.
• And, finally, the perfect guide is tough enough to turn around and do it all over again.

Books on outdoor adventure can be read in the warm, dry, comfortable surroundings of the home. They entertain, but when finished they seldom change the reader.

Actual outdoor experience and wilderness travel is characterized by bad weather, bugs, difficulty and exhaustion. Their impacts are felt throughout life, changing the person.

Without the difficulty, there can be no accomplishment. It’s the difficulty that precedes the change.

Northern Maine’s St. John River is the premier wilderness trip in the US east of the Mississippi. This year we’re running it May 10-17.

The natives called it Wallastook, or “Beautiful River”. It’s the largest river in Atlantic Canada, but starts from a series of small ponds deep in the woods of northern Maine, this unobtrusive stream grows as it flows north to the Canadian border, widening as numerous streams and river branches empty into it. By the time it passes Allagash Village it is large, powerful, and dramatic. Unlike its tributary the Allagash River, there are no large lakes at its headwaters. This makes it very responsive to rain, and also quite low in the summer. Because of this characteristic, we run it early, while the river is still swelled with spring runoff.

In years gone by, the river was reached by traveling up the North Branch of the Penobscot and through a small canal just north of Big Bog that led to Fifth St. John Pond. The canal has since been overgrown by Alders, but the river remains pristine. The St. John is the only drainage in Maine to have Muskellunge (or Muskie), the coveted game fish that’s been described as “an alligator with fins”. There is also good trout fishing along the river, primarily in holes not large enough to support Muskie, and at the mouths of streams. Wildlife is a common sight along the river, as I’ve seen bears, moose, deer, coyotes, bald eagles, osprey, beavers, muskrat, and other critters going about their daily business. Another possible sight are the northern lights, which frequently light up the sky with amazing displays of shimmering light and color.

The flora of the area consists of enormous white pines, spruces, firs, and cedars along the riverbanks, with hardwoods on the ridges and higher country.

Excitement builds throughout the trip like in a good novel. There are numerous short, easy rapids and lots of quickwater. In the second half of the trip, we navigate Basford Rips and Big Black Rapids, and in the last few miles we descend Big Rapids as a thrilling climax to the trip.

* Big Black Rapids are a mile long, and although usually rated class II, they can be Class III at high water.
* Big rapids are two miles of class III whitewater, and can be more difficult at high water. They are the heaviest water we see, but since they lie at the very end of the trip we have the option of taking out above them. A mile below Big Rapids is the Dickey bridge, the usual takeout.
* Basford Rips lies above the Big Black rapids, and consists of two short rapids. I mention it here only because I have seen several people get hung up there on the same rock, which lurks low in the water and is difficult to see.

The run from Baker Lake to the Dickey Bridge is 104 miles long, with no dams, towns or carries.

The 2010 trip is part of our Bushcraft Canoe Expedition Semester. There are several spots open for people to just join us for the trip. We’ll put in at Baker Lake and take our time covering the 104 miles to Dickey. Challenging whitewater and the cold water of early May add to the experience. The nights are cool, but this means no bugs.

If you’re looking for a great trip in early May, consider joining us.

Thinking about taking a semester off from college and spending it in the wilderness? If so, compare the different approaches of our program versus the large, corporate wilderness education companies. If you’re looking for modern, high-tech outdoor education with programs on backpacking and mountaineering, then check them out. But if you’re interested in building a personal connection with the land and learning the traditional skills people have used to live in the wilderness since the last ice age, we might be a better fit. Compare for yourself:



Many more people are interested in the corporate approach, and it’s great that there are companies that run college semester programs that focus on it. We’re not interested in working with the masses, just those few who are looking to break away from the herd.

We’ve changed the curriculum of our guide training course for 2010, and renamed it the Riverman Course It’s the first week of our 4-week Canoe Expedition Semester, and takes place in early May when the rivers are swollen and the bugs are still sleeping.

This weeklong course prepares you for working as a professional guide and is crash course in canoeing and traditional camping. Our spot on the Aroostook River in Masardis is an outstanding place to learn the traditional arts of the canoe as practiced by Maine Guides for hundreds of years. Within seven miles of the field school we’ve got 5 different rivers of varying difficulty, as well as 18-mile long Squapan Lake. The canoe gods were smiling when they made it.

We’ll spend the week working on two different but related curriculums. First, you’ll learn and refine the skills of paddling, poling and lining canoes on increasingly challenging water. You’ll explore this beautiful area and learn the personalities of it’s waterways. The second curriculum focuses on the management and leadership of a group and the skills of keeping them comfortable. This isn’t a theoretical course on leadership like what is commonly offered through outdoor clubs; instead it’s a focused on the crucial skills that make or break a trip taught by professional, working guides. We’ll cover navigation with a map and compass, what do do if someone in your party gets lost, how to plan, pack and prepare meals over an open fire, trip equipment and how to use, care for and maintain it, and how to light a fire under any conditions. Learn to stand in a canoe, pole up and down rapids, cook over an open fire, read the river to determine safe passages and gain the most useful asset a guide can have; experience.

Participants will learn to:

* Plan, prepare, provision, pack, and guide a wilderness trip
* Efficiently paddle a loaded canoe
* Pole and snub a canoe
* Set-up and line a canoe through rapids
* Tie useful and appropriate knots
* Use an axe, knife, and saw safely and effectively
* Sharpen their axe and knife
* Light a fire in dry or wet weather
* Cook and bake over an open fire
* Navigate with a map and compass
* Take decisive action in case a member of their group gets lost
* Tie a tumpline onto a wanigan and a canoe for ease of carrying
* Bake with sourdough
* Safely manage a group in whitewater
* Set up tents and tarps

Course Schedule

Sunday: Arrive between 4 and 6 and set up camp. We’ll meet, have dinner and discuss the week.

Monday: We’ll start the week on the big water of Squapan Lake, learning the basics of poling and teaching such paddling strokes as the knifing J and pitch stroke for efficient forward motion.

Tuesday: We’ll add the moving water component on the Aroostook River. You’ll build on what you’ve already learned, then learn the way of the river and how it controls the boat. You’ll learn to work with this elemental force, poling upstream and snubbing down. We’ll also have a several mile float from the Masardis Trading Post back to the field school, stopping on the way to work on controlling the boat in Island Rips.

Wednesday: We’ll add in the skills of maneuvering on a smaller stream as we float down the Blackwater River and St. Croix Stream. The challenges here are narrow passages, beaver dams, strainers, and more. You’ll be challenged, but you’ll be ready for it as a result of what we’ve already accomplished.

Thursday: Thursday morning we’ll cover trip preparation and planning. We’ll go through the checklists we’ve developed, plan the meals, pack the gear, then head into the North Maine Woods where we’ll set up camp along the Big Machias River. We’ll work on poling in the river and camp for the night.

Friday: We’ll be up early and on the water for the long float back to town. It will take us most of the day to paddle and pole through the many rips and rapids of this lively waterway. Along the way you’ll see the beautiful scenery of this seldom-paddled north woods gem. When we get back to town we’ll head over to Blackwater Outfitters, where a room for the night and a hot shower are included in the tuition. After getting cleaned up we’ll have dinner together (not included in the tuition), then say our farewells before turning in for the night.

2010 Course Info:
• Dates: 5/2-5/8
• Maximum Size: 10
• Tuition: $850
• Minimum Age: 18

I’m headed back to Canoecopia in March for a presentation on wilderness survival for paddlers titled “How To Avoid Becoming One With Nature Through The Composting Process.” As such I wanted to be clear about what you won’t hear in my survival presentations:

1. Long, drawn out discussion of equipment; kit is secondary, knowledge is primary.

2. Acronyms that are supposed to explain it all.

3. Cute variations of the word survival (ex. thrival).

4. Proclaiming that the skills I teach are universal and will apply anywhere. They won’t.

5. Dogmatic or spiritual approaches to outdoor living.

The focus is on practicality, reality, and honesty. For a review and information on what’s in my presentations, check out Bryan Hansel’s Nessmucking blog.

I read an article from the Dallas Morning News on December 6th titled “Global Impositioning Systems; Is GPS technology actually harming our sense of direction?” by Alex Hutchinson. While I’ve often heard of people having no sense of direction, and have met a few that can get lost driving to the grocery store, I didn’t know it was a studied neurological phenomenon. It is, and it’s called either Developmental Topographical Disorientation or Topographagnosia.

After reading the article I looked online and found several sites devoted to researching and documenting Topographagnosia, most notably gettinglost.ca. From their site:

We are a cognitive neuroscience research laboratory dedicated to investigate the individuals’ inability to orient in an environment, a condition that is commonly known as topographical disorientation or topographagnosia… If you get lost easily and want to find out more about your lack of orientation skills, please explore this website. You will find useful information about how people orient and the research that we have done so far on this topic. Also, you may want to join our forum and meet other people with orientation issues similar to yours. Please visit our page “Test Your Skills” in order to have a complete assessment of your orientation skills. Your contribution is fundamental to our discovering more about this problem and learning how we can help everyone to find their way.

Having taught navigation professionally, both modern and barehand, for over ten years, I’ve noticed a greater reliance on gadgets with the passage of time. While I’ve thought about the reliance on navigational technology as a crutch, I didn’t know it could have a negative impact on spatail awareness and the ability to navigate. But after reading the article and more on the web, they make a convincing case. The quote that most stands out from the article is ”

Our brains determine how we navigate, but our navigational efforts also shape our brains.”

The forum on the Jack Mounatin Bushcraft Network (our online social network) has been increasingly active lately. Someone recently posted a question about natural alternatives to insulin:

What happens if you are Insulin dependent and end up in a survival situation without Insulin. Is there anything you can do? Are there any natural forms of Insulin you can seek out in a real pinch?

I was a wilderness emergency medical technician for 7 years, but there was nothing about this in the training. Does anyone have any ideas, other than consult a physician?

Is it better to know a little about hundreds of outdoor skills, or to know a lot about a few core skills? This is a heated debate, and the answer often depends on how you live your life. For the urban set, where bushcraft is a trivial pursuit, breadth wins you more kudos at skills gatherings.

For those who spend their life outdoors, whether as professional guides or in some other capacity, depth is more important. It’s been much more important to me as both a guide and an instructor.

With a shallow level of understanding, only the most cursory knowledge is known and it isn’t tested. You may discuss it, but you don’t own it. When you practice it, you follow the rules.

With a deep level of knowledge you own it. You’ve used it countless times. You’re familiar enough with the topic that you start getting creative with it, innovating or at least altering how you do it to meet your current needs.

This is the difference between learning how to light a fire on a weekend course and living with fire as your primary tool for several months.

The best short course, in my opinion, would focus on fire, tool safety and getting an adequate night’s sleep. When one knows these topics well, the others come much more easily.

First learn to be self-sufficient and safe, then expand out.

We do quite a bit of knifemaking (crooked knives, mostly) in our longer courses. In trying to keep things as simple as possible, we use the campfire or woodstove to anneal the blades, and an open fire to temper them as well. We’ve got a coal forge with a hand crank blower, but we’re always working to simplify the process, and this is a significant investment.

I’ve been watching a youtube channel called GreenPowerScience where they have a lot of great videos on simple green technology. They do a lot with large fresnel lenses, using them to cook, make steam engines, etc. They use big lenses mounted into wooden frames.

I was thinking about using one for is a solar forge for knifemaking/blacksmithing.

Check out this video:

I don’t know the exact temps needed of any of the specifics, but with a big enough lens it could definitely be done. And in the end it would be much cheaper than a coal or gas forge; no blowers, no fuel, no moving pieces. I think it will be a fun research project for this year.

Has anyone ever thought about/tried this?

As part of the online course we’re running titled “Becoming A Bushcraft Instructor”, we’re currently reading the book “Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind” by Guy Claxton. We’ve been enjoying many thoughtful discussions on teaching and learning and how they apply to bushcraft and the outdoors. This gem of a passage is from near the end of the book (p. 215) on the two curriculums that every school teaches, and reinforces our longstanding premise that there is much more to teaching bushcraft than simply being proficient at the skills.

In any school or college, there is not one curriculum but two. The first we might call the content curriculum: it is the body of knowledge and know-how that people are there to learn – sums, French, philosophy, dentistry, whatever. Both students and teachers are clear about what the subject is and how progress is to be gauged. If this were the only curriculum, teachers would be free to use whatever means they could to make learning easier, quicker, more pleasant and more successful. But it isn’t. Underneath every concern with content lies another curriculum, less visible but just as vital – the learning curriculum – which is teaching students about learning itself: what it is; how to do it; what counts as effective of appropriate ways to learn; what they, the students, are like as learners; what they’re good at and what they are not.

I was discussing bushcraft on Saturday and trying to explain it to someone whose life experience has been all in urban areas. In discussing life at our field school, I explained that it was just like life anywhere else, except without the infrastructure. I thought about this for a while after the conversation ended, and the more I thought, the more I liked it as an explanation. In bushcraft, we do the same things we do in town, but we do it with either improvised infrastructure (fire cranes, shelters, bough beds, etc.) or with no infrastructure at all (running water, central heat, etc.). It teaches you to find creative solutions to problems and make them yourself. But it doesn’t change what you do in your daily life. You still, eat, sleep, laugh, interact with others, etc. It just eliminates the interceding layer of infrastructure that cuts us off from the world around us.

Our first online course, titled “Becoming A Bushcraft Instructor,”, has been a great experience thus far. We’ve had some thoughtful discussions about our first book, Hare Brain Tortoise Mind, which examines how the brain processes information. I’ve been learning a lot from the discussion. As a sample, below is a post from Russ Venditto on the learning process and how it translates to bushcraft. Enjoy, and if you want to join us check our our online network at http://jackmtn.ning.com/:

“It is by logic we prove; it is by intuition we discover.”

I’d say that learning about a concept, or that having gone over information in d-mode — even multiple times — isn’t enough to fully understand a subject. This goes for science, math, literature, or anything, really, but since we’re looking at this from a bushcraft instructor’s point of view, here are my thoughts. Throughout this whole chapter, I kept thinking about the manual skills involved in a bushcraft course: use of an axe, use of small hand tools, and firemaking methods, to be specific. It is very important to have a grasp of the theory behind these skills. Giving Tommy an axe and saying “here, figure out how to use this” could be disastrous. Far better to brief him on the axe, on safety, angle of attack, proper kinesthetic technique, and so on, than to leave him to his own devices. BUT…

But because the student has been told how to do something, he or she is not magically gifted with the ability to do said something. There needs to be a learning period, in which the student has to discover how to apply the information that has just been passed on. “Here’s a spokeshave, this is how you use it” is great; the instructor shows the student the motions used to shave wood with this wonderful tool, and the student has an idea of how to use the tool. He feels confident that he can reproduce what the instructor has just done… until he tries to handle the spokeshave and suddenly realizes that it is a LOT harder than it looks. At first, that is. After some time — or after much time, depending on the person — using a spokeshave becomes second nature, something that now magically IS as easy as it looks.

The same magical transformation applies to firemaking (as it does to every other discipline, I’d imagine)… when learning it for the first time, you are shown and told what to do, in small steps. The first three dozen times you try to make a coal with a hand drill, you get a ton of smoke, but no fire. Then one day, on your forty-third attempt, a coal appears. How?

I would guess that what is happening here is that while d-mode is telling you that you are failing at your task, the undermind is storing all of the information gathered during your attempts. Over time, you develop an intuition on how this whole hand drill thing works. Your undermind goes on evaluating and sorting this information — this works, that doesn’t — the entire time you are working at the project, and also while you are NOT at work. You have a much more complete understanding of the skills required of a hand drill on your thirtieth attempt than you did on your third, even if you still have not produced a coal.

The quote applies becuase at first we learn the skills, the theory, that which can be verbalized, as Claxton says. That which CANNOT be verbalized — all of the intricacies and idiosyncrasies involved in the physical process — have to be learned through doing, and over time, we develop an “intuition” on the topic, be it axemanship or field botany. I think this is why a focus on “process, not product” is so effective.

Simple food, simple shelter, simple transportation, simple tools, simple gear. A simple, rich, rewarding life.

We’re offering an early registration discount for 2010. If you register and pay in full for a 2010 course or trip by January 15th you can take 10% off the tuition. This includes our long term programs. It could save you a cool $1050 off our yearlong program; enough for a new canoe, a wall tent and wood stove, or 105 Mora knives!

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, provisioning, and in every other aspect of running a bushcraft school. The good news is that while we’re adding this feature, we’re not increasing the tuition for the program.

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 day trips to nearby lakes and rivers that steadily increase in difficulty, culminating in a run down the Big Machias River.

We’ll be working with large freight canoes, learning to pole, paddle and line them both tandem and solo.

After a short break, we’ll leave on an 8-day, 105 mile trip on the grandaddy of Maine canoe trips: the remote St. John River. We’ll be camping along the river as we paddle the rapids, explore the history, and live the timeless bush life.

When we get back to the field school, the Aroostook River will be starting to warm up and the native brook trout will be getting active. We’ll spend 3 days on instruction and field experience with all types of fishing. There’s a strong emphasis on fly fishing, but there is also instruction covering spinning and primitive methods. We also spend time fishing the surrounding streams, rivers and lakes, adding valuable field experience and providing delicious fish dinners.

Then we’ll head for the Allagash for a final week of camping, fishing, exploring and fine tuning the many lessons of the experience. The trip takes place during some of the peak fishing of the year, and we’ll take advantage of it. We’ll fish in spots that aren’t well-known and that get little fishing pressure. We’ll pole most of the way down the river, and discuss the history, both natural and human, of this beautiful region.

The whole experience takes place before the black flies and mosquitos come out for the year, during the high waters of May.

It includes a season pass to the North Maine Woods, so you could spend the rest of the summer and fall exploring, camping, and seeing the country.

There’s also an option to join us in June for a whitewater trip on Quebec’s Bonaventure River, which has 85 miles of white water as it rushes to the sea, at a reduced cost.

When the course is over, you’ll have learned the way of the river, how to plan and provision an extended trip, how to manage a group of people safely on a remote river, and how to deftly control a fully-loaded freight canoe. You’ll know how to cook delicious meals over an open fire, how to run an efficient and clean camp, and how to tell fishing stories that rival the seasoned raconteur. You’ll have four weeks of immersion into the lifestyle, mentoring in the skills, and experience in the bush. You’ll have an experience that will stay with you for the rest of your life.

Also, if you’re interested in the guiding profession, this experience will go a long way toward teaching you the craft and skills needed to excel. There’s no other program like it, anywhere, at any cost.

Space is limited to 10 spots. The 2010 dates are May 2-29, and the tuition is $3000. There’s a discount if you bring your own boat, and also if you register and pay before January 15th.

For more information about the program, go to the Bushcaft Canoe Expedition Program information page.

There’s an idea about competing that winning is everything. It isn’t. I like to compete because it pushes me. Physically, it teaches me how much more is in the tank when the needle is hovering on “E”. As a business owner, it keeps me thinking about how to do it better and to create something new that’s useful.

Few things in business are winner-takes-all. In the ten years since founding Jack Mountain Bushcraft, I’ve seen a lot of outdoor businesses come and go. Often the realities of outdoor entrepreneurship don’t match up with the daydreams of how great it would be to do what you like for a job. Regardless of how it looks, it isn’t an easy way to make a living. But even though it’s often challenging, I routinely send business to my competitors when I have scheduling conflicts, when our courses are full, or when I think they would be a better fit for a student.

I was discussing this recently and someone asked if it didn’t hurt my business to help my competitors. I didn’t answer right away, because I had to think about it. While I don’t remember the exact words, what I said was something along the lines of others don’t have to fail for my company to succeed.

Bushcraft and traditional outdoor skills is a growing field in North America. Ten years ago when I explained our semester programs to people they looked at me like I had three heads. It’s because they had never heard of the concept. When I help out another business I know I’m also helping my own. The more visible bushcraft becomes, the more interest there will be. It’s pretty simple. These days awareness of bushcraft and traditional outdoor skills is much greater, making it easier for me to explain what we do at Jack Mountain.

I read a great piece in the September, 2009 edition of Competitor Magazine. It’s one of the free, exercise-oriented magazines that are regionally focused and given away at gyms. It was an interview with Chris Phelan of Garland, Texas, about his 45-year love affair with running and competing. The last question he was asked was, “What makes you a competitor?”

His answer:

“I’m a competitor because I have a unique perspective toward the people in front of me and behind me during a race. I can’t win without someone losing, and I can’t lose without someone winning. The way I see it, the people in front of me are urging me to catch up and the people behind me are cheering me forward. Being a competitor includes others.”

Being a business owner, I’m a competitor. And like Mr. Phelan said, being a competitor, whether in sport or business, includes others.

When most people think of the northeast corner of North America, they think of the huge urban area stretching from Washington DC to Boston. They think there’s no wild country left, and that the west is the place to be. The map they think of looks like this:

View Larger Map

But look a bit further north and you end up in northern Maine, home to the largest uninhabited forested area in the US outside of Alaska. Cross the border to the east and you’re in New Brunswick, similar landscape, similar low population, lots of bush. Cross the northern border and you’re in Quebec, which is larger than Alaska with most of the population along the St. Lawrence river and huge expanses of bush in the interior. This map looks like this:

View Larger Map

Thousands of square miles of rivers, lakes and wild country, most of it traversable by canoe and snowshoe. That’s why we’re based in Maine.

I’ve never looked the part. Most people never do. We’re TBH (trained by hollywood) that people who do certain things should look a certain way. After all, that’s how they look in the movies. But it’s a big lie.

My high school soccer coach was adamant about people not using their appearance to stand out. He told us that everyone on the team was to wear the same uniform, with no alterations, so that we all looked the same. He went on to say that if you want to make a name for yourself, to stand out, you’ll do it with your actions, not your appearance.

That lesson has stuck with me over the years. As people try to draw more attention to themselves than ever before by being outrageous or in your face, there are still a few who let their actions do the talking. This goes against the popular culture that says to in order to be yourself, you need to embrace a certain look, and the look is what matters. As usual in matters of popular culture, I’m forced to throw down the BS card. But then again, I’m not trying to persuade you to buy something.

The reason it’s so popular is because it’s a commodity and can be bought. It doesn’t take any work. To become the real thing takes time, effort and commitment, none of which can be bought or sold.

Back in my hockey days, there were often players who had all the latest gear and looked the part perfectly. But when they got on the ice, they didn’t measure up. These days, with bushcraft and primitive skills, any gathering of interested people can quickly turn into a discussion on who has the best gear. Or if you go to a rendezvous and someone is wearing all buckskin, people begin to oooh and aaahh over them. Once again, though, it has little bearing on their skills or abilities.

In 1988 a good friend of mine played on the US olympic hockey team. When he returned home, we were playing pick-up hockey and I noticed that his gear looked different. All of the logos had been removed or blotted out. When I asked him about it, he said that the olympic rules stated that they could only show so many advertising logos, and the rest had to be removed or covered over. Since that day, I’ve been removing logos and unwanted advertising from my clothing and equipment. I don’t want to be a walking billboard, no matter how cool advertisers make it seem to be part of the group.

So as our culture goes ever deeper into celebrity worship and valuing superficial aspects of a person’s appearance, and with people try to look the part harder than ever, I’ll continue to hold true to the values that were instilled in me as a young man. It’s not how you look, it’s what you do.

As the director at Jack Mountain, I want everyone considering our programs to know that we’re not selling the look. We’re offering an opportunity to become the real thing.

As a father, this is an attitude I’m working to instill in my son, and in a few years, my daughter. It’s difficult to go against popular culture, but parenting has never been easy. Wish me luck.

I just finished Tony Nester’s new book The Modern Hunter-Gatherer; A Practical Guide To Living Off The Land. If you don’t like reading book reviews, here’s the abbreviated version; It’s great, get a copy, read it twice.

As the title suggests, it’s a primer for those looking to supplement their diet with wild fish, game and edible wild plants. Unlike the countless books available on hunting and fishing, the focus of this book is for the person looking to for food, not sport.

Most of the information in print and on the web dealing with this topic is, in my opinion, complete crap. It is usually either cribbed from fifty-year-old military manuals, or is the product of people with maximal imaginations and minimal field experience. In the first chapter there are sections on “The Challenge Of Living Off The Land” and “The Realities Of Living Off The Land” that put all of the often repeated-fallacies to bed. I’ve discussed parts of what is covered in these two sections hundreds of times, although never as well thought out as Tony has written, and am excited to finally have a reference on the topic I can point people to.

The remainder of the book is practical advice on hunting, fishing, trapping and foraging for edible wild plants. There’s nothing fancy about his approach, and thats what makes it so refreshing and useful. Instead of diagramming 50 traps, he covers three; one of which you won’t find in any other book in print, and no other survival manual that I’ve seen, which is one of my personal favorites; a log deadfall from the boreal forest.

Tony is an experienced instructor who is well-respected by his peers, and this comes through in the book by not filling page after page with facts and trivia in order to impress the reader with how much he knows. Instead, he writes what is necessary for the reader to understand the topic. As anyone who has tried to learn how to do something from a book will attest, more details often make it harder to pick up. While there is a three-section appendix with lots of details, the text isn’t bogged-down with extraneous minutia. The material is clearly written with the beginner in mind, but even the seasoned outdoors-person will pick up tips and tricks Tony has distilled from his two decades of teaching survival courses.

My only reservation about the book is a photo of an improvised fishing rig (on page 46) made with a soda can. After a vast amount of field research with this technique, I’ve found that the fish bite better when the can used is a 16 oz. can of the cheapest beer available.

All in all, it’s a great book and will become a required text at the Jack Mountain Bushcraft School. If you’re interested in what it really takes to subsist in the bush for an extended period, get a copy and read it five times.

Link to the book on Amazon

Link to the book on Tony’s website, Ancient Pathways Outdoor Survival School

From the back cover:

Have you ever wondered how to walk into the wilderness and harvest your own food? Are you interested in integrating healthy, wild plants into your diet while reducing food costs? Do you want to learn the time-tested methods for living off the land in case you become stranded in the wilds or face an emergency where the grocery shelves are empty?

In his fourth book, survival instructor Tony Nester delves into practical methods that he has applied on extended survival courses over the past twenty years showing the best techniques for beginning and advanced students of wilderness living. This innovative book illustrates, with detailed photos, the essential methods for harvesting, preserving, and cooking small game, fish, edible plants, and how to reduce your dependence on “the system.”

Recapture the excitement of wandering on the land unencumbered while depending on nature’s resources and the skill in your hands.

You will learn how to:
– Realistically obtain wild foods from the land as a beginning hunter-gatherer.
– Select a survival firearm for hunting and why small game is the answer to feeding yourself in the wilds.
– Put together a low-tech but quality fishing kit for catching easy-to-obtain panfish
- Carve, set and utilize traps that actually work in a survival situation and can keep your family fed in a long-term emergency.
– Make delicious jerky and preserve meat the old-fashioned way.
– Harvest and prepare edible plants found in your own neighborhood.

Our educational system has become increasingly abstract over the last hundred years.  Instead of instruction in sensory development and hands-on skills, we focus almost exclusively on the intellectual and the abstract.  Much of this is the result of the influence of Jean Piaget and his stage theory of cognitive development from the 1920’s.  He viewed abstract intellectual thought as a higher-order process of the mind, and his influence resulted in schools moving away from sensory intelligence and focusing solely on abstract intellectualism.  But was he right, and was this a good move? I don’t think so. It’s led to us becoming a soceity of thinkers and debaters, but not doers. Which is why we’re developing the idea of bushcraft education which views sensory intelligence, or know-how, as equally important as debate and explanation.

This is a clay image of the sensory homunculus from the British Museum Of Natural History.  The exaggerated size of the hands, lips, etc., exist because it’s a model representing how much of the brain is used to process information from those parts of the body.  From the image we can determine that a much larger part of the brain is devoted to the hands than, say, the knee cap.  But our education system focuses almost exclusively on the abstract capabilities of the brain, while ignoring the hands except for writing, using scissors, and other classroom-appropriate activities.

Developing a model that includes both rigorous intellectual work and hands-on learning underlies all of our long-term programs at Jack Mountain.  The forests and waterways of Maine are our educational laboratory, and while we haven’t written much about it, we’ve had great successes in understanding the learning process and designing learning programs that include both the head and hands.

If you’re interested in learning more about our ideas on education, join our free online course starting November 21st.   More information is available on our online network.