Wolf Journey Index by Chris Chisholm - Earth Skills Curriculum for the Naturalist, Tracker, Herbalist, Scout, Primitive Hunter, Stone Age Artisan and Permaculture Pioneer

Wolf Journey is available free online, although donations to the WOLF Foundation - Max Davis Scholarships for earth skills education are requested with the suggested amount of $1.00 per chapter or set of recordings you utilize, with checks payable to the WOLF Foundation, c/o Scott A. Davis, CPA, 103 E Holly #401, Bellingham, WA 98225, or by calling us at 425-248-0253 with your visa or mastercard. An alternative way to contribute is to become a WOLF Booster. Books and other resources which you will need for successful completion of field exercises throughout Wolf Journey can be purchased through our camp store once it is up and running. In the meantime, we recommend purchasing through Tom & Renee Elpel's wonderful online Granny's Country Store or simply email them at orders@grannysstore.com or call 406-287-3605 to order.

We offer this book series as a Correspondence Course, and as part of our Fall-Spring Class Series plus our Summer Training Camps and Cooperative Intensive Programs, but if you would like an instructor from your own area to guide you while studying these skills, we recommend clicking on PrimitiveSkillsLinks.Com to find an earth skills specialist near you who can personally review your field exercises and journaling work. Other schools and outdoor instructors who would like to use this curriculum for their own classes, mentoring, etc, are free to do so. We would appreciate donations, or having your students donate, to the WOLF Foundation as described above. As a supplement to (or instead of) completing the Wolf Journey book series, we also recommend signing up for the Kamana Naturalist Training Program through the Wilderness Awareness School which inspired many of our own field exercises. They can offer academic credit, and they specialize in correspondence mentoring no matter where a student is located.

The Magic of Wolf Journey - A Comprehensive Earth Skills Curriculum, with Artwork, Stories & Songs

Now Available Online: Field Exercises for the Naturalist, Tracker, and Herbalist; Transcript Guide for Students

Soon to be Posted: Policy Manual for Teachers; Trails of the Scout, Hunter, Artisan, and Permaculture Pioneer

Wolf Journey is a comprehensive earth skills curriculum written by Chris Chisholm, and it includes inspirational artwork, stories and songs by Chris and his favorite environmental artists. This book series offers a way for modern people to feel comfortable rediscovering skills of the naturalist, tracker, herbalist, scout, stone age artisan, hunter-gatherer, and permaculture pioneer.

Students learn experientially through Wolf Journey. Each chapter begins with captivating songs and stories from the authors' experience, as a way of introducing the chapter themes. All chapters contain four field exercises plus a summary exercise which guide students in the development of their earth skills, and each part of the series contains 4 chapters.

As students walk through the first two parts of the series, they move deeper and deeper into the skills of nature awareness, moving from general knowledge of the naturalist, into profound knowledge of the tracker. These skills of nature awareness are prerequisites for the next parts of the book series, where students consider the effects of harvesting plants and animals for herbalism, scouting, primitive living, survial and pioneering.

Now begin your journey by finding your secret place in Chapter One, where you will carry out your field exercises throughout the book series. Notice how you will begin to walk more and more intimately within the landscape each time you visit. Great joy, grief, boredom, peace, rush, and wisdom will come, and I encourage you to live these experiences fully.

As you can probably guess, your experience will be richest is you progress in order through Chapters 1-4 before doing anything else. After that, it's fine to jump to whichever book you want to focus on, but again, first try to compete the chapters in order, since they build one atop the other, and if you don't your experience with a chapter might remain superficial. These are the subjects for Part One - Trail of the Naturalist:

Chapter 1: Find your secret place study site and learn to journal as a naturalist.

Chapter 2: Assess your fears, then determine real hazards in nature.

Chapter 3: Develop sensory awareness by practicing wide angle vision, expanded hearing, and other skills.

Chapter 4: Learn to sketch as a naturalist, and journal a poisonous plant in your study site.

Tracking is my personal area of expertise, since this is what I studied most after being introduced to earth skills in the early 1990s. And I have found that in every area of outdoor study - herbalism, scouting, survival, primitive living, etc. - that "it all comes back to tracking." For instance, if you can find a perfect rock to use as a bowl, you don't have to spend a week making one that holds water. Think of anything: if you can find it, you save much time and some aggravation in learning to make it.

In order to track, you have to "know your place," learn the hazards, develop heightened senses, and be able to remember (record) findings accurately. That's why Part One comes first in the series, followed by Part Two - Trail of the Tracker, since if you can track, you can do anything else with greater ease. These are the subjects of Part Two:

Chapter 5: Track the wildlife in your own home and learn to track yourself.

Chapter 6: Learn to imitate the actions of animals in order to move invisibly through nature.

Chapter 7: Study prints and sign of a mammal you want to journal in your study site.

Chapter 8: Hear the waves of communication in your study site and journal a bird.

Now, a tracker won't be a great tracker until s/he becomes intimate with the plant world, and an herbalist wouldn't be the best of herbalists without understanding the role which the animal kingdom plays in plant life. I put Part Three - Trail of the Herbalist not only to delay a student's work with plants until s/he understands the effect that work will have on the animal world, but also to help trackers get to the next level, the level of the scout. Scouts are jacks of all trades - not only expert trackers - but also knowledgeable about healing methods.

So, while Part Three is designed to lay a foundation from which an herbalist can grow, it is also placed third in the series to prepare scouts for Part Four. For those who wish to become accomplished herbalists, it is also designed whereby the field exercises can be repeated over and over with species upon species of the plant kingdom, until a student can truly consider him or herself an herbalist. These are subjects of Part Three:

Chapter 9: Complete a native plant restoration project and journal a native plant.

Chapter 10: Journal an experience working with a medicinal plant to harvest, properly store, and propogate.

Chapter 11: Receive an introduction to fire by friction, make fire using all-natural materials, and boil water for an exercise of health.

Chapter 12: Harvest and prepare a wild edible plant using primitive cooking methods.

Now that a student has learned to slow down and truly feel the natural world from field exercises in Part One, then discovered a world of wildlife all around and learned to move "invisibly" in nature through field exercises in Part Two, then finally stopped in Part Three to look outside of themselves in an effort to caretake "all our relations" through work with the plant world, s/he is ready to explore the life of a scout.

Everyone will have loads of fun with BPart Four - Trail of the Ancient Scout, but only those with unquestioned morals should specialize in this area. Advanced scouts can move in and out of situations completely unnoticed, can learn everything about the nature of people around them, and uses those skills to help all his or her relations without any self-serving wish. I know - it sounds idealistic to say the least - but that's the goal of the scout. So, enjoy these fun exericises in Part Four, then move on unless you are ready to repeat the exercises over and over in service of the earth and humanity:

Chapter 13: Gain an attitude of "thrival" and take a test of navigation.

Chapter 14: Develop a mind-over-matter attitude to get in shape on land and in water.

Chapter 15: Build and emergency shelter and learn other means for warmth and comfort in nature.

Chapter 16: Work with natural fibers to make cordage and a carrying apparatus.

You may have noticed that "survival" is a main theme in Part Four. It is, because a scout must endure all hardship, by learning to enjoy it, before being of any use to his or her people. Again, a scout is a jack-of-all-trades, so when an herbal specialist is present to tend to the health needs of his or her people, the scout fades into another area of service; when an expert artisan is present to craft goods that the people need, the scout lays down his or her tools and fades into that background; when the best hunter is present, the scout fades away from tracking the wildlife and focuses back where he or she is needed.

But a scout does need to know how to hunt when no one else specializes in that; s/he does need to know how to craft goods from plant materials and animal carcasses, etc. So, not only should those who wish to specialize in skills of the scout repeat the field exercises in Book Four as well as the first three books, but s/he should continue on into the following books in order to gain those critical skills.

I place Part Five - Trail of the Stone Age Artisan next, in a stratigic location. I had to put it before Skills of the Hunter-Gatherer because I don't want anyone to go out there and hunt, then not know how to honor an animal once it's been harvested. So this book aims to utilize the animal parts which are wasted in our consumer society, and turn those building blocks into crafts needed for primitive living. By the time you are done with Part Five, you can begin to hunt with the confidence that you will never waste any animal life - nor plant life - again. Here are the subjects covered in Part Five - Trail of the Stone Age Artisan:

Chapter 17: Get an animal hide from a local ranch or taxidermy in order to make raw hide and make a variety of crafts.

Chapter 18: Get animal insides from a local butcher in order to make tools, gut cordage, and other craftwork from them.

Chapter 19: Get another animal hide and learn to "tan" it naturally into a pair of moccosins or other clothing item.

Chapter 20: Gather a variety of minerals in order to make a set of knives, and celebrate your progress through Wolf Journey with some earth skills games.

But of course, these skills of the stone age artisan cannot be gained without first learning the resources in one's place as Part One guides you to do. Nor can these skills be gained without first learning to track - in order to find the raw materials you need, and in order to hunt down animals which are key to surviving and thriving - as Part Two guides you to learn. These stone age skills also cannot be gained without knowing all the plant resources available to you - in particular, the trees, and it takes all of Part Three and Part Four to do that.

You may have noticed that Part Four guides you to utilize the gifts of the trees in order to build the most critical of tools like cordage, shelter, etc. Part Four is also critical for the stone age artisan because in order to successfully hunt and gather resources, it takes an ability to navigate over large distances and therefore survive any condition to reach those resources. For example, an outcrop of prized obsidian stone may be a hundred miles away, or a run of salmon might come up once a year into a distant inland lake once every autumn, or a land-locked tribe might need to trek to the ocean for salt and other goods found there.

After all the previous preparation, you are ready to honorably harvest animals from the wild. Here are the subjects covered in Part Six - Trail of the Hunter-Gatherer:

Chapter 21: Get a sheep or other animal to butcher, learn to preserve its meat, and honor it by repeating crafts from Part Five.

Chapter 22: Make primitive fishing gear, and honor harvested fish by letting none go to waste.

Chapter 23: Make non-lethal dead-falls and snares using all-natural materials.

Chapter 24: Make a self-bow and arrow, practice modern archery at a local range, get your hunting education certificate, and honor horvested animals by letting none go to waste.

After completing Part Six, through your experience outdoors and with the help of mass information which you easily accessed through today's technology, you really do know nature to the point that you would have by age 14 if you had grown up in pre-agricultural times. But we live in the modern world, where the very existence of humans threatens the environmental health of the planet. We were the cause of the mass extinction of mega-fauna 10,000 years ago due to the perfection we attained while hunter-gatherers.

Now, we have been causing the extinction of myriad creatures great and small - possibly including ourselves - through mass development over the past couple centuries, to mass industrialization now which is catastrophically warming the planet. But not to fear: the field of "permaculture" has a solution. This theory and lifestyle of appropriate living is explained in Part Seven, but I want to pass on here a message from the most recent "star" in the evironmental movement - Ri - who wrote Last Child in the Woods. At a speech he gave in Seattle in May, 2007 which I attended he pointed out that:

The youth of today are a new generation. We're no longer dealing with cynical Generation Xers who are children of hippies who kept telling everyone that they "already tried changing the world" and it didn't work. And it didn't: the military-industrial complex, as President Eisenhower warned us, became even more powerful, waged more wars, and polluted at great rates. But now, due to climate change, even these powers are making changes, because we are now mandated by the environment to create a new world, and it is the youth of today, the new generation, who will build it.

Now that you have gained the best kind of foundation for understanding the natural world, it is you who can best go out and cultivate the environment in a way that benefits nature as well as humans. I can't emphasize that enough: those who don't know nature to the profundity you now do are taking huge risks, no matter how good their intentions may be, when making environmental policy. Part Seven of Wolf Journey is a guide to help you step back into the world in a way which makes your footprints on the earth as balanced as possible. Here are the subjects covered in Part Seven - Trail of the Permaculture Pioneer:

Chapter 25: Research the theory of permaculture, make a design for the landscape around you, and begin to participate in community activism.

Chapter 26 Research appropriate farming and forestry practices, and cultivate gardens in your windows and outdoors.

Chapter 27: Research energy technologies to plan for the best home heating, cooling, and transportation methods which are appropriate in your area.

Chapter 28: Research the most efficient economic interaction you can have with your community, such as bringing food from your farm to market.

Part Eight of Wolf Journey is our Handbook for Students & Teachers. It aims to help you succeed with your studies, and it is also our policy manual for guiding outdoor educational programs. It is my goal that the new earth skills field catch up to the professionalism attained over the past couple decades in its related outdoor and environmental fields. We must catch up before anyone gets seriously injured, and in order for our work to be accepted by mainstream society - the place we most need to effect outside of ourselves.T

he subjects covered in Wolf Journey Part Eight - Handbook for Students & Teachers include a glossary of terms, checklists for outings, student transcripts,

Index to Wolf Journey

• Introduction to Part Four - Trail of the Ancient Scout to be posted asap.
• Chapter 13: Attitude & Orienteering to be posted asap.
• Chapter 14: Navigating Air & Water to be posted asap.
• Chapter 15: Shelter and its Impact to be posted asap.
• Chapter 16: Stone Age Artisanry to be posted asap.

• Introduction to Part Five - Trail of the Stone Age Artisan to be posted asap.
• Chapter 17: Hides & Hairs to be posted asap.
• Chapter 18: Skeletons & Viscera to be posted asap.
• Chapter 19: Tanning & Clothing to be posted asap.
• Chapter 20: Knapping & Playing to be posted asap.

• Introduction to Part Six - Trail of the Hunter-Gatherer to be posted asap.
• Chapter 21: Butchering to be posted asap.
• Chapter 22: Fishing to be posted asap.
• Chapter 23: Trapping to be posted asap.
• Chapter 24: Hunting to be posted asap.

• Introduction to Part Seven - Trail of the Permaculture Pioneer to be posted asap.
• Chapter 25: Philosphy & Activism to be posted asap.
• Chapter 26: Farming & Forestry to be posted asap.
• Chapter 27: Appropriate Technologies to be posted asap.
• Chapter 28: Community Economics to be posted asap.

We offer this book series as a Correspondence Course, and as part of our Fall-Spring Class Series plus our Summer Training Camps and Cooperative Intensive Programs, but if you would like an instructor from your own area to guide you while studying these skills, we recommend clicking on PrimitiveSkillsLinks.Com to find an earth skills specialist near you who can personally review your field exercises and journaling work, which you can keep track of on your Student Transcripts. Other schools and outdoor instructors who would like to use this curriculum for their own classes, mentoring, etc, are free to do so. We would appreciate donations, or having your students donate, to the WOLF Foundation as described above. As a supplement to (or instead of) completing the Wolf Journey book series, we also recommend signing up for the Kamana Naturalist Training Program through the Wilderness Awareness School which inspired many of our own field exercises. They can offer academic credit, and they specialize in correspondence mentoring no matter where a student is located.

Supplemental Guest Essays

Blog & Forum for Staff, Students & Campers

Directions: Email us whatever you like and we will post it as soon as we get a chance to review the content. Topics may include, but are not limited to: Comments on the website; Your experience at Wolf Camp; Things you experienced out in nature; Questions related to the practice of earth skills; Messages you have for people you met at Wolf Camp programs; Etc.

Come Meet Us

Click for a link to the Fall-Spring Class Series descriptions. All classes run from 6-9 p.m. including a pot-luck dinner. Classes take place at the new Wolf Camp home office at 1313 A 2nd St. in historic downtown Snohomish. Please park on "E" Street as there is no parking right around our home office. Costs vary, so see class descriptions for details.

SATRUDAY, MAY 16th, 2009: ALL ALUMNI & NEW FAMILIES who have already registered for this summer are invited to a Wolf Booster Breakfast Social from 9:00-10:00 a.m. at the Wolf Camp Home Office, 1313 2nd St. in Snohomish, before the WOLF Foundation board meeting which runs from 10:00-Noon (also open to Wolf Boosters which is simply $25 for a single Alpha Membership, and $50 for a Pack Membership with all revenues supporting our Max Davis Scholarships program). Feel free to bring a healthy brunch item if you like!

Upcoming Events sponsored by Wolf Camp at the non-profit Tim Noah Thumbnail Theater in historic downtown Snohomish:

OPEN MIC LIVES every Friday: 7:30 sign-ups, 8:00 music, comedy and poems. Suggested donations are $5 for audience members, $2 for performers.

SWIL KANIM begins his Every First or Second Saturday performances on June 5th at 7:30 p.m. You can sponsor a show for $50 per month, or just show up and conribute a donation when he passes the hat! Swil Kanim is a violin virtuoso and inspirational storyteller who has contributed immeasurably to the spiritual sustenance of Wolf Camp since its inception.

Wolf Journey
Curriculum Index

Summer Day Camps
OVERNIGHT YOUTH CAMPS
1 - 6 instructor - camper ratios
with the best STAFF possible!
Programs for Schools & Groups

Mission & News • Apply
Wolf Journey Curriculum
Art & Music • More Fun Stuff
Resources-Schools-Links
Scholarships/Giving

School Year Class Series
ADULT TRAINING CAMPS
RESIDENTIAL INTENSIVES:
teaching tracking, herbalism,
primitive skills & permaculture

....

The Magic of Wolf Journey - A Comprehensive Earth Skills Curriculum, with Artwork, Stories & Songs

Index to Wolf Journey

Supplemental Guest Essays

Blog & Forum for Staff, Students & Campers

Come Meet Us

Wolf Journey Curriculum Index

Summer Day Camps OVERNIGHT YOUTH CAMPS 1 - 6 instructor - camper ratios with the best STAFF possible! Programs for Schools & Groups

Mission & News • Apply Wolf Journey Curriculum Art & Music • More Fun Stuff Resources-Schools-Links Scholarships/Giving

School Year Class Series ADULT TRAINING CAMPS RESIDENTIAL INTENSIVES: teaching tracking, herbalism, primitive skills & permaculture

....

The Magic of Wolf Journey - A Comprehensive Earth Skills Curriculum, with Artwork, Stories & Songs

Index to Wolf Journey

Supplemental Guest Essays

Blog & Forum for Staff, Students & Campers

Come Meet Us

Wolf Journey
Curriculum Index

Summer Day Camps
OVERNIGHT YOUTH CAMPS
1 - 6 instructor - camper ratios
with the best STAFF possible!
Programs for Schools & Groups

Mission & News • Apply
Wolf Journey Curriculum
Art & Music • More Fun Stuff
Resources-Schools-Links
Scholarships/Giving

School Year Class Series
ADULT TRAINING CAMPS
RESIDENTIAL INTENSIVES:
teaching tracking, herbalism,
primitive skills & permaculture