“Never seem more learned than the people you are with. Wear your learning like a pocket watch and keep it hidden. Do not pull it out to count the hours, but give the time when you are asked.” – Lord Chesterfield
No one likes a know-it-all. Most people don’t even like a know-it-some. Is there anything more annoying when you’re trying to learn something new than someone skilled jumping in and saying, “It’s easy, do it like this!” I’ve heard countless hours of unwanted “helpful advice” given to students over the years. Usually it has been more of a distraction than an aid.
An important skill for the new guide or bushcraft instructor is learning to keep your mouth shut. Offer advice when requested, but know how to keep quiet and stay out of the way so people can learn.
It’s tax day today. I’ve spent a considerable amount of time over the past few weeks working on ours. I always find it a little odd to have a year’s worth of work represented by numbers on a piece of paper or in a computer program. Obviously they tell a very small part of the story, but ultimately businesses need to make money to stay in business.
Which brings me for my thought for the day in honor of tax day, a quote I read a while back from Dean Kamen. He’s the inventor of the Segway and numerous other things. I’ve had the good fortune to work with some people from his company on multiple occasions and it was a lot of fun juxtaposing the old-time ways of the woods with modern engineering. Anyway, years ago I read an article where he was quoted as saying:
Making a profit is a result of running a good business, not the purpose.
It’s stuck with me since reading it. I think the purpose of the Jack Mountain Bushcraft School is to provide educational opportunities and experiences unavailable anywhere else. When we do it well, we make a profit. But profit is the result, not the purpose.
These two quotations from “The Art Of Outdoor Living” jumped out at me because what they say about experiential education and a realistic assessment of skill through a practical exam apply directly to our new Journeyman Bushcraft Instructor & Wilderness Guide Certification Program. Scroll to the bottom for full bibliographic information.
“The training and preparation in this program should be in the form of actual living experience through wilderness trips, out-post camping, and such other related experiences and projects as may be planned by the various instructors and camp leaders, to provide necessary experience and practice.
A further purpose of the training should be to develop abilities that permit the youthful persons to perform their tasks as naturally as possible, as though this is what they do all the time in daily living in the open. There should be NO emphasis upon skill acquirement for “test” purposes only. The true purpose is to learn and acquire skills and abilities that become a natural way of one’s doing things.”
Art Of Outdoor Living, p. 19
“Their (practical exam staff) prime purpose is to enable the candidates to demonstrate that their knowledge and skill is sound and secure. In short, that the candidate can capably and safely conduct himself or herself in a wilderness environment and care for others as well. The ultimate criterion is: Could the candidate handle the mechanics of planing and leading a trip safely and efficiently? Such a standard of accomplishment is implicit in the word “Guide”.
The demonstration of skill and wilderness “know-how” should NOT be viewed as a perfunctory test before a mentor, but as an honest, straight-forward opportunity to show someone that one is truly capable, knowledgeable, and resourceful in the ways of the woods and wilderness travel.”
Art Of Outdoor Living, p. 39
From: Whiting, Robert M., Ed. The Art Of Outdoor Living: Basic Junior Maine Guide Text. Gardiner, ME: Maine Camp Director’s Association, 1977. It’s a great book if you can find a copy.
You learn to write by writing. It’s a truism, but what makes it a truism is that it’s true. The only way to learn to write is to force yourself to produce a certain number of words on a regular basis.
– William Zinsser, from “On Writing”, p.49.
Is there anything you could switch writing with in this quotation and have it no longer be true? Is there any other way to learn than by doing?
I have learned more about fungi from Paul Stamets‘s book Mycelium Running (Amazon.com link) than any other resource. While other books on mushrooms are often great field guides for identifying individual species, Stamets’s book has helped me to understand the ecology and relationships of mushrooms. I still have a long way to go, but I feel like I understand the basics after years of being ignorant.
Along with the education provided on the topic, Stamets also provides insight into his journey and where he is today. Like many successful people, it wasn’t a straight path; there were disappointments along the way.
Over the years, I have learned the value of attempting that which seems unlikely to succeed. Several times, I thought I had failed only to have the mycelium surge and fruit later. My failures oftentimes become my successes. But with every “failure,” if I have paid attention, I hone my skills and sensitivity to the mycelium’s needs. Hence, another of my mottos: Every failure is the price of tuition I have paid to learn a new lesson.
– Paul Stamets, from Mycelium Running, p. 122.
This quotation jumped out at me the first time I read the book. I have attempted several things that were unlikely to succeed over the years. Some succeeded, some didn’t, but I wouldn’t label any of them a failure. The last line above really resonates with me; Every failure is the price of tuition I have paid to learn a new lesson.
One of my all-time favorite books is Elliott Merrick’s True North. It is his journal of a year spent in Labrador in the late 1920′s when he journeyed upriver to the height of land and learned to live off the country with the trappers. I’ll eventually get to writing a review of it, but I’ve read it so many times it’s difficult to be remotely objective.
There are many great quotations in the book, such as this one from October 18th where he talks about wasting food:
We never waste a crumb of food, for in the woods some natural superstition whispers, “If you waste today, the gods are watching and you will starve tomorrow.”
My experience running 16 bushcraft and wilderness semester courses has taught me the value of taking a time-out from modern life and living more simply. I’ve seen the positive effect the experience has had on course participants. I know the effects it has had on me. Some of these include:
- Separating needs from wants. Living a low-tech existence helps to isolate what is needed to simply live.
- Eliminating the extraneous.
- Disengaging from being wired in order to meet yourself. Many in our modern world move from one distraction to another (internet to tv, for example), without ever pulling the plug and getting some time off. When you’re lying in a shelter that you made yourself in the forest, or even in a tent beyond the reach of cell coverage, such distractions are gone and you’re forced to deal with yourself.
- Learning to meet your basic needs with no infrastructure. How to provide for yourself the things that you need such as shelter, heat, water, and cooked food.
In his chapter on Economy in Walden, Henry Thoreau wrote:
It would be some advantage to live a primitive and frontier life, though in the midst of an outward civilization, if only to learn what are the gross necessaries of life and what methods have been taken to obtain them; or even to look over the old daybooks of the merchants, to see what it was that men most commonly bought at the stores, what they stored, that is, what are the grossest groceries. For the improvements of ages have had but little influence on the essential laws of man’s existence: as our skeletons, probably, are not to be distinguished from those of our ancestors.
Ultimately it’s not about going back to living in the forest; it’s about moving forward with the wisdom of the past in mind, taking into account the ancient aphorism that was carved into the temple of Apollo in Delphi in ancient Greece; “Know Thyself.”
This quotation from the introduction to The Book Of Five Rings discusses what Zen is. The Zen of bushcraft, then, is doing something so many times that doing it becomes second nature.
“In Zen first comes the technique, practiced so many times that it is forgotten. Then you begin to use it. It is when you do not think about it anymore that you do it so well. Zen is no more than that. But it is reaching that state that the training is all about. The professional dancer who makes it look easy has trained constantly and endured great pain. The tennis pro who flies around the court, making impossible shots, does so not because of any superhuman qualities but because he has practiced and practiced, as the dancer has, until the movements are internalized. There is no longer any conscious direction in the movement. When you marvel at the way someone whips up a dinner for ten on short notice, or the way someone makes an impromptu speech, you are marveling at the same thing – the approach, the confidence, the naturalness of the behavior. There was no time to prepare, no time to think, no time to hesitate. There you are. Zen.
- The Book Of Five Rings, Introduction, p. xxv
I was looking through an old notebook from the fall, 2007 Wilderness Bushcraft Semester course last night and I found a quotation I wrote down spoken by Mors Kochanski when he was here for the final week. It was November 1st, 2007, and we were up late discussing the role of bushcraft and wilderness survival with the semester students. The discussion focused on the breadth of skills and knowledge held by indigenous people and how poorly educated most people today are with regard to anything practical. Then Mors said:
“This is not wilderness survival. It’s fundamental knowledge of what it means to be an educated human.”
Self-reliance isn’t high on the list of what our culture determines to be fundamental knowledge of what it means to be an educated human. Thankfully there are still guys like Mors carrying the torch.
Read a great post by Jeff Butler of Northwoods Survival on their Facebook page.
What is interesting and what is essential? This is a very important questions especially for people who spend a lot of time in the bush. At NWS we look at it this way: The ability to make fire by friction = interesting. The ability to make fire under any weather conditions with a match = essential. Learning how to flint knap a cutting edge = interesting. Learning how to use a quality knife = essential.
