JMB Podcast 128 | Why Learn Bushcraft? What’s The Point?

On episode 128 of the JMB Podcast, Jesse and Tim discuss some big-picture ideas about why you might be interested in learning bushcraft, and what you do with it when you learn it. Ultimately it’s about being resilient and connecting with the land and our ancestors. It is a lifestyle that resonates with a deep […]

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Welcome to the Jack Mountain Bush craft podcast
Episode 128.
Welcome to the Jack Mountain Bush craft podcast.
With your host, Jack Mountain Bush craft school
founder and Master Main guide, Tim Smith. I'm
your host, Tim Smith. I'm a registered master
main guide, and have been a full time

(00:22):
outdoor instructor and guide since founding the Jack
Mountain Bush craft. School in 19 99. We
help people become more skilled, more knowledgeable, more
experienced and more confident in the natural world
through our Bush k guide training semester programs
and multi week canoe and Snows
expeditions.
You can check out the show notes to
all of our podcasts through at blog dot

(00:42):
jack mt n dot com. If you're interested
in learning more about our college accredited and
Gi I bill approved programs
Visit the Jack Mountain Bush craft school on
the web at jack mt n dot com.
And check out our online network and digital
Learning Academy at bush craft school dot com.
Hello, and welcome back to the jack mountain

(01:03):
Bush craft podcast. I'm your host, Tim Smith.
I'm here with Jesse G. How's it going
today, jeff?? It's going good. Good. It is
Thursday,
July eleventh we're recording this,
Let's last night, we had the wren of
a hurricane come through
and
dumped a couple inches of rain on. We

(01:23):
were supposed to get an
of frame today, so we made the executive
decision to cancel class for the day on
week 4 of the Wilderness Bush craftsman. Semester,
cancel class on Thursday and then make Saturday,
a class day, figured we would be more,
productive when we're not battling inches and inches
of rain, but what always seems to happen

(01:45):
whenever we cancel class based on the weather,
the weather changes.
So it's still very cloudy and overcast, but
that extra inch of rain that we were
supposed to get today has not materialized yet.
So it's mid morning.
It's probably gonna come tomorrow. Yeah. Now it'll
come tomorrow and ruin our plans

(02:06):
but it did we did lose
power this morning, like this whole our whole
road. I don't know. I haven't been out.
Away from here. So everybody lost
electricity. So we're doing this old school podcast
style like they used to do podcasts in
the 18 hundreds. So we've got a certain
ke lamp that we're using to
illuminate our digital recording studio.

(02:29):
We're sitting in large, high backed V or
arm chairs. Yes. And wearing smoking pipes, And
I'm wearing a smoking jacket and a top
hat. You too.
Yeah
I'm
Yeah. But 1 of the beautiful things about
kind of living the
lifestyle off the grid lifestyle even though the
the... H hq. The headquarters here at the

(02:50):
field school is on the grid is we're
totally set up to be
off the grid. So you know, if you
lose power, it's no big deal. We've got
water.
We can't lose our water system here. We've
got hand pump wells. We've got compost toilet
out houses. We've got a variety of ways
to cook. So we made
made a nice pot of tea on the

(03:11):
alcohols stove. So, you know, 1 of the
nice things about having those levels of resiliency
built into your systems is like, who cares
if the powers out. Stove Who cares. Yeah.
I I don't care.
Just a little bit of
of current events here for for our audience
out there in Podcast land,

(03:32):
coming up a week from now,
July nineteenth to 21,
in Columbia Maine, the ninth annual
puck brush primitive gathering.
If you are interested in bush craft, primitive
skills
traditional
survival
ancestral skills hand handcrafted. You should put this

(03:54):
event on your,
on your radar, and you should make every
attempt to get out there. I still haven't
ever made it to 1 of these,
just because we always seem to be busy
during the weeks that they have it in
the summer, but the pretty good friend of
mine, Tim Be has been involved with this
event since the get go and real talented

(04:15):
guide teaches the canoe polling stuff down there.
So you should make every attempt to get
there. We're gonna put a link to it
in the
show notes,
but you can visit their website. Where is
their website on here?
It's on the back.
Just Google it. Butter brush, primitive gathering. Yeah.
Puck brush primitive gathering. It's only 25 bucks

(04:36):
for the weekend. That's crazy. Only 25 bucks
the weekend and that includes camping. And they
cost 25 dollars for the weekend. Yeah. Anymore.
They've got this
a tent set where they're making food all
the time and getting... So you can purchase
food when you're there, so you don't even
have to pack a ton of food to
go.
Down there. Columbia main, way down east, not

(04:56):
too far from Mach Maine.
So if you're familiar with the the main
coast, the down east main coast, in that
general region. But
great people, you should go.
Other current events,
we're near the tail end of we week
4 of the
summer 20 24 Wilderness Bush craft semester.

(05:17):
And due to all the recent rain we
had, we went out at, just posted the
video this morning, but we went out and
had a great day on the water a
couple of days go coming down a local
stream, and it's like spring high water.
The biggest difference between now and spring is
everything's in flour.
The grasses are all super tall choking off
some of the more narrow waterways.

(05:38):
And we have, you know, some nice little
fun wilderness helpers with us in the form
of deer flies and horse flies to make
sure that we're covered up. Love those guys.
You And just... I keep getting bit by
these horse flies and then, you know, you
you don't feel it and then they're biting
you, and then you slap them, and it's,
like like half a pint of blood in
your hand and all over your leg, and

(05:59):
you know it's your blood, not their blood.
They're pretty rugged. They're pretty they're pretty rough
right now. And it's always seems like hotter
it gets, like... The more there's, like a
heat wave or real hot weather. Like the
deer flies are just worse than.
Wedding and itching. Yeah. Yeah. Welcome to Northern
Maine. If you're not freezing your itching. Yeah.

(06:21):
So so we've got that going for us.
Wedding but the current course, the folks on
this course. They're pretty much crushing it. Like,
we're way ahead of schedule.
People are really putting in the hours and
and, you know, knocking out the crafts, knocking
out the academic work, knocking out the skills.
So
yeah. Kudos to them. They're they're. They're doing

(06:42):
great. As a as a group too, you
know, everybody's kind of bringing...
Everybody's energy is bringing everybody else along. With
them. So they've got a great kind of
group energy and super proud of them. So
let's transition right into our topic for the
day and and
you know, what's the point of of studying
traditional skill sets, studying traditional cultures,

(07:05):
studying Bush craft and the the terms change
the skill set hasn't changed since probably the
paleo era, but every couple of years, the
terms change because they get cooperative by the
marketers.
You know,
1 year bush craft was this new thing
and then a couple years later. They had
700 dollar bush craft pants. For sale. So,

(07:26):
like, yeah. That's what happens.
And that usually is what pre changing of
the terminology.
But, you know, what is the point? It's
Wait. So you won't be releasing a limited
edition, Jack Mounted bush.
The trousers.
Pretty funny. We have a thing a couple
of years ago.
I won't name the cup company, because, I
mean, they're... You know, they're... If you've spent
700 bucks in a pair pants, they're probably

(07:48):
pretty good. But we we had the Jack
Mountain
expedition... Winter expedition trousers,
and they were for sale, and it was
just... You know, I often... I run pretty
hot temperature wise, so I'll just go get
a real crack be 4 dollars pair of
sweat pants, and those are my winter expedition.
Trousers. All wear wind pants over them,

(08:09):
but, you know, that's that was the
the the Jack mountain and expedition trousers are
for sale. Right. At, like Martin's,
other surplus places around the world
right now. Nice. But, yeah. The... So... But
but to stick to our point yes, what
is the what is the what is the
point? What is
yes. So we had a couple of thought

(08:31):
things that we had thought of. So 1
was the aspect of resilience and practical skills.
Yeah.
Example, case and point today with
losing
electricity.
If your
systems,
your life's systems, if you will, are built
around not having outside inputs to make them

(08:51):
run.
You're just that much more resilient. They're you're
that much more self reliance. So today,
we lost... Or this whole area lost electricity.
But, like, our toilet and sanitation system doesn't
require
elect electricity or running water. You know, we
made a big pot of tea on a
little camp stove of alcohol stove doesn't require

(09:11):
electricity or, you know, outside stuff. So you're
just that idea about having
being that much more
resilient. That's 1 offs shoot of kinda living
that lifestyle. Absolutely I'm gonna go make a
fire later, get a hot shower going.
Can do some laundry, and I'm not gonna
need electricity for any of that. Yeah. It's
great. Or, you know, even if it's... An

(09:32):
electricity isn't necessarily bad. Maybe you generate it
on... We do that here. Solar panels and
whatnot, keeping the
keeping the phones and other devices
chugging alarm,
you know, batteries, charging batteries, all those things,
but but that
type of lifestyle makes you that much more.
Mh.
Resilient.

(09:53):
Absolutely.
Yeah. The next point that we had was
kind of the phyllis philosophical reasons for doing
this stuff.
So I'll make the claim. You guys have
heard about the the 1 percent, and usually
they're pointing in the finger. It's, like, super
rich people and billionaires, But Mh I'll make
the claim that chronological
our modern culture... We're 1 percent... We are

(10:14):
the 1 percent. So if we look at
the hip ministry of of humans on the
planet.
It goes back a long way. When I
was a kid, I remember being in school
and them teaching us that it was only
just a couple of thousand years years ago,
when we emerge from caves, all wearing leopard
print sing and, like, which you still wear,
which I still do wear. And I'm not
gonna... Years

(10:34):
I'm gonna say that I wear because I
look good in it. Like, I don't know
if I make that thing look good or
it makes me look good, but we look
good together.
Since then, they've pushed back the dates of
anatomical modern humans, I think currently, we're somewhere
around 350000
years ago, that the people who lived then,

(10:55):
same as us. Right? If they knew our
language, their brains were the same size, like,
just same as us. If we knew each
other's language, we'd probably just chat about what's
going on, and they lived a vastly different
lifestyle. And I think as,
archaeology becomes more
what's the word I'm looking for? Not skilled,
but

(11:16):
technologically competent. I think that date is gonna
be pushed back for they're and further and
further. It's just harder to find. The longer
you go back into the past, the harder
is to find the evidence.
Mh. Further But so we've been walking around
for that long,
you know, 1 percent of 350000
years is 3500
years.
So if we went back 3500 years, that

(11:38):
was basically when I was a little kid
what they taught us when we emerged from
the caves.
So it's drastically different in in a few
short years, and I'll make the claim that
there been 3 huge. There's probably in a
lot more than... 3, but what come to
mind for to me is 3 enormous changes
in how people live their lives.
The first 1,

(11:59):
maybe it happened somewhere between 9 and 5000
years ago and that was the rise of
agriculture, you know, before that, the evidence
leads us to believe that we were mostly
hunter gather slash fishing cultures
that agriculture dramatically changed how people lived on
the planet I'm gonna say the second 1
is the industrial

(12:19):
revolution. So 17, 16 to 1800 somewhere in
there. People went from living on small subs
systems farms and other people living further out,
probably still hunted and trapped or kept herd.
For most of their food and their lifestyle.
That was a huge change going the, you
know, the in the
agriculture, than the industrial revolution for And the
third big 1 that we're still in the

(12:41):
infancy of was the Rise of the Internet.
Like, that's for dramatically changed how people have
lived. And I think that you know, we're
0 point 00001
percent of humans that have ever walked the...
Planet based on that timeline,
live life like we do. So that makes
us, like, you know, probably much more we're

(13:02):
much more elite than the 1 percent
let me adjust my mono.
Yeah. But if you think about that, like,
we are connected therefore from over 99 percent
of our existence and what we've have evolved
doing.
Agreed wholeheartedly. I think if, you know if
you went back if either was went back
in our family line and met somebody from

(13:22):
200 generations ago and just sat how to
sit down. Like, let's have tea. First of
all, they'd go nuts because they probably never
had caffeine, but just more.
But, you know, like... And just interview them,
hey, what what's important to you? What... Mh.
1 of the best things in your life,
you know, and it would probably be community,
family,
a real visceral contact with the natural world.

(13:43):
And then, you know, if you ask somebody...
If I ask you, you know, right now
living in 20 24, it would probably be
the same thing, but we're so disconnected from
those. From the basics. Yeah. And I think
that that has led to a lot of
modern people feeling
incredibly alienate
and
kind of...
There there's this term species loneliness. Have you

(14:03):
ever heard of that? No. So it's this
idea that humanity as a species because we
have
separated ourselves so far from the rest of
nature. We... As species have have this loneliness
whereas, like, the rest the trees and the
animals that
exist in their wild state have continued to
be a part of the

(14:23):
ecosystems that they evolved in.
I'm not sure what you're getting at, but
I've fed so many bugs
off of my body in the last, like,
a couple of weeks that I don't I
don't really feel disconnect. Okay. We feel, like,
you know, my Dna is now a part
of those deer lies horse lies mosquitoes black
flies, no C.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you... You're read be
linking with the with the food web there.

(14:45):
Totally.
III get where you're going though, and I
think... Yeah. Yeah. It's probably true That that,
you know, even though
the
the promise of the Internet age is, like,
we're connected out to the global Yeah you
know, But I think the result... The actual
result is that we're disconnected from
everybody local to us, and we've never actually

(15:07):
connected to anybody, you that's not local to
us. So it's Yeah. It seems like a
big bait and switch, the whole
Internet community thing. Yeah. There's the promise of
total connection, but then most people's actual experience
of it is feeling surprisingly disconnected. Yeah. And
I think along with that comes with this
sense of kind of nature literacy people don't

(15:28):
know
even the names of the the birds, plants,
trees,
fungi,
rocks around them, and
it's like, not knowing your Abc abc's. Right?
So I tell the folks on, like, the
9 week semester courses,
we're gonna be intensely studying all these things
but, ultimately, if we grew up in, like,

(15:49):
a traditional culture, a land based culture, everything
that we're gonna learn here, including all the
advanced stuff, you would have learned by the
time you were, like, 7 or 8 years
old as a little kid. Mh.
So... Yeah. Like, I'll make the claim pretty
regular that the the people walking the planet
today
are the dumbest people that have ever walked
the planet with regards to

(16:11):
natural history with regards to
looking at the night sky and knowing the
the lore of the night sky with regards
to knowing the plants in your region with
regards to the tracks with regards to really
everything regard the natural world. Mh. And I
don't think that we're dumb per s than
people in the past. Modern people, we have
a lot of hub risks as a cold

(16:31):
where we think that every other
previous
generation of humanity was just, like, an imperfect
attempt to try to be us here at
the top of the technological
Pyramid, which I definitely
definitely don't believe is the case.
Yeah. I kinda disagree with you that word
dumb. I think that where we've directed our
intelligence to be hyper specialized. Right? So people

(16:52):
are really smart, but on a very narrow
band of of things. And I think that
most people
historically and pre historically
were more of generalist. And that's kind of
something that I've kept through throughout my life
is this
huge curiosity to have a general
skill set and knowledge of of a wide
variety of things to be able to you

(17:13):
know, be able to cook and find food
in the forest and be able to paddle
a canoe. Like, this kind of general general
skill set is what is often lacking. Let
me qualify the dumbest general attention because I
think... Yeah, that did sound kind of bad.
How about...
I think all people have the same potential
for knowledge and intelligence. Yeah. Where... And it's...

(17:33):
I think it's usually culturally
chosen, where the culture chooses to direct that.
Mh. It's So if the culture says, you
know, we... We're not interested in knowing every
plant that grows in your yard and the
people of eden it or used it for
medicine in the past.
Then people probably won't value that and and
won't learn it. And I think that's where
we're at, whereas,

(17:54):
you know,
we have
a culture that values
you know, in modern American culture, we value
money. So if it can't make your money,
it can't be that valuable. So I think
that's what I meant. When I said, we're
the dumbest. The least knowledgeable about the natural
history and things that you can't translate directly
into money. Yeah. When and basic existence skills.

(18:16):
Right?
Yeah. If you live your life with all
you've got is a smartphone and a credit
card, you can basically get it. If you
got enough and like, in the account, Like,
yeah. I have your food delivered. To have
anything you need delivered. You know, you just...
That's that's all you need whereas compare compare
a modern b person in, you know, in
a high rise, 1 of the larger urban
areas with, you know, a Stone age hunter

(18:38):
back in the day,
basically, there's, like 700 middle men in the
modern world that's gonna be yeah focused on
getting you everything you need. And if you
were dropped off somewhere and and maybe this
is a benefit of some of kind of
reality Tv shows where modern people get to
go that. Have that experience, and they're always
like, man, that was really hard or I
get a quit This is too much. Yeah.

(18:59):
And as,
you know, our our modern techno technological
civilization
gets more more to that state where you
don't need to do anything. You could literally
stay in a high rise apartment like you're
saying, work on your computer online, order all
your food from Uber eats, some you don't
have to do the dishes or crook or
even have a body. What was the movie

(19:20):
about the...
Wizards Wall, like, all the humans were like
a spear
spaceship just... And they couldn't even walk. They're
we like floating around totally.
Yeah. So it's kinda like, you don't have.
To do any of the human things,
but then
are you are you really a human at
that point? Like, tough to tell. Yeah.

(19:40):
So I bringing it back to the outdoor
skills, bush craft,
ancestral skills.
You know, we don't need to
forage mushrooms
or
light fires in order to survive anymore.
Maybe if you're out and out in the
wilderness, you do, but
you can get live an entire lifetime. You

(20:00):
can probably even be happy without doing any
of the stuff that we
have dedicated our lives too.
But
you can do it by choice, and
I think that both of us
believe that
doing it by choice
is gonna have some huge benefits. There's a
real reason.
Yeah. Absolutely.

(20:21):
For me, personally, it's like, I just wouldn't
wanna live any other way. Like, I I
like... Yeah. I I find it personally pleasurable.
I get bored. If I'm just sitting around,
I get crazy board, and and, you know,
I wanna move my body. I wanna be
out, like, pushing a canoe around in the
water. I wanna be dragging a sled with
snow shoes. I wanna be exploring the landscape
and breathe in the clean air and physically

(20:42):
exercising. Yeah. The too much idle to me
is, like, Oh, it's it's awful. I I
really don't like it. Yeah. And there's all
those studies out of Japan, like, with the
forest bathing stuff are you heard of that?
The, I... Heard the term, but I don't
know much about it. I mean, it's just
kind of a scientific
validation that literally being outside in the forest
heals you. It makes you healthier. It

(21:03):
can help fight off disease and everything. And
I I feel that in a subjective sense,
like, the more time I spend outside, the
more I feel a sense of well being
and I feel physically healthier, mentally healthier,
emotionally healthier,
just by being out there and
I I think it's just like, the benefits
that come from doing basic human stuff.

(21:26):
Yeah. Agreed that
maybe we weren't
supposed to just be staring at smartphones and
ordering probably not. And and at
and it seems like the people that that's
all they do. They they don't seem to
be that overly happy. Obviously,
subjective
anecdotal evidence there, but, you know, that an

(21:48):
that sort of disconnect we have. I think
that's at least a part of it, Yeah.
Yeah. Absolutely.
But other, you know, other philosophical reasons for
for...
Engaging in that sort of lifestyle.
For me, the older I get, it just...
I don't know if any other is even

(22:08):
an option. It's the only life you've ever
the only life I've ever known.
Yeah. So maybe we can move on a
little bit to, like, the bay the vocation,
the career,
the professional side of this. I think people
might be curious about that. Yeah. You've been
doing this for a long ass time. Yeah.
Full time
this is... Year 25.

(22:28):
Yeah. Yeah. It's... I'm in year 1 of
doing this professionally. So, well, I think it's
interesting to hear the 2... Perspectives, you know,
lit totally.
And things have definitely changed a lot since
I started doing this. And and to be
honest, like, I'm definitely not current.
I don't really know who's in this industry
and and what they're doing.
Because

(22:49):
again, like, I don't I don't leave Artist
very often.
So it's kinda cool being up here. You
know, we stick this part of the Us
as part of Maine, Rooster county sticks up
into Canada, we're surrounded by Canada on 3
sides. So I don't even really consider myself
that I live in America. When people ask
me, I'm like, I I live in the
county, you know, I don't live America. If
I gotta go to America, I gotta go

(23:10):
all the way down south Bang or. And
once I get sell through too, then I'm
down in America, but up here at it's
the county. So I even say if I'm
going down there. I'm like, yeah I'm going
down south to America, or I'm going to
South America.
So... And I haven't been to South America
in a while.
So...

(23:30):
Getting back to our topic. Yeah
I'm wondering what has
kept you with doing this for 25 years?
That's a good question. Have you made it
work and and why have you stuck with
it? I think for me, like, when we

(23:51):
started doing this,
if you don't, here's the quick version of
the story,
I... After finishing an undergraduate degree,
bought a 500 travel trailer, move to Alaska
spent a year there, washing windows with a
friend of mine, going fish and doing a
lot of stuff.
Realized I wanna live early, but I didn't
wanna keep watching windows

(24:11):
or nothing or pound nails or anything. Nothing.
There's anything wrong with that. It just was...
I wasn't super interested in it. So went
back to school, got a master's degree education,
was able to do that for, like,
hardly any money we're and, like, I think,
13 months, it took me back then. I
don't know what it is now. It would
probably be dramatically different. And then when I
finished that, young single, no dependence, Ted Met

(24:32):
in
couple of guys that were very
influential on me.
Main guide named, Raymond Reit was a huge
mentor to me, and then, Canadian, some of
you guys have heard of Morris Ka.
And both of these 2 gentlemen had
spent... Made a career working outside, kinda doing
what I wanted to do
guiding trips, teaching courses and things. So I

(24:54):
said, yeah. Maybe I'll try that for a
year and then get my regular job. And
now it's kinda 25 years later, and I
probably couldn't get
fine to.
Very short resume. Yeah. Very short resume.
But the thing that really allowed us to
do it full time.
My friend Dan And I were teaching courses
and running trips together for a year

(25:15):
and then we decided to... We came up
with the idea for the long course to
do a semester course. And then
you're like you and I were talking about
earlier before we hit the record button,
Jesse, the the beauty of the long... Running
longer programs is that you just have to
kind of fewer people each year interested in
order to make a living at it, and
that was what allowed me to make and

(25:36):
living at it and then
you know, over time. It it
grew... That's grown a little bit every year,
and that's,
you know, luckily for luckily for me, has
given me that. Kinda longevity in this business.
That's great. Yeah. I don't have a whole
lot of regrets about it. So

(25:56):
and I still enjoy getting up and doing
it every day, and I think if you
can do that and, you know, do it
with a smile on. That's great. Yeah. I
think that for me starting my business, it's
that that quality of life is 1 of
the big milk motivator, the flexibility to, you
know, plan canoe trips into my year and
to be able to spend significant amount of
time outside.
And the freedom to,

(26:16):
you know, come up for with an idea
for my own course, something that I would
wanna take and then put that into the
world and see, oh, people are into this,
and I genuinely have something to contribute. It
feels like I can have a concrete impact
even if it's pretty small, but if I
can, you know, get small numbers of people
to feel more
connected to nature and to their human nature,

(26:39):
bring a little bit more joy and happiness
into the world, than I think that that's
a beautiful
vocation, beautiful career to to pursue. Yeah. I
think so too. Yeah. And I'm based in
the city at the moment like, I give
my classes outside of the city,
but I think that there is this interesting
position of being
kind of in the heart of the beast,

(27:00):
and, like bringing people from that world that,
you know, probably work... A lot of people
at work office jobs and very urban lifestyle,
bringing them outside
of
that world that they know and being kind
of a an ambassador and
introducing them to
the the Woods life and the skills of

(27:20):
outdoors Bush craft and all of this.
Yeah. A lot of modern people because they
maybe weren't raised
rural,
it's scary. It's an unknown, And I've I
always Thought that knowledge is an antidote to
fear.
Right? Just like action is an antidote to
anxiety knowledge is an antidote to fear. So
Know if we can,
learn something, take an action, then we're getting

(27:42):
rid of both fear and anxiety. Which is...
Yeah. That's... If you can do that for
some. So. That's great. And especially if it's
not gonna... You know, you're not you're not
going to a doctor and getting pharmaceutical drugs
to achieve that end, you're just going and
experiencing the natural world. And it sounds kind
of a little bit fu food, but really,
if you go back to that 99 percent
of our ancestors live in certain way we

(28:04):
live differently.
Maybe we try to reintroduce them to that
more human life ways, and and it really
resonates with people. K Absolutely. And as as
an instructor, like, obviously, we have to have
certain skill set to do this stuff, but
I often think that
we're... We are kinda setting people up so
that nature can do the teaching.

(28:24):
Right? Getting people into the forest to experience
it's, the seasons, the weather, the plants and
animals,
that's really the the content that does it's
a lot of the teaching end it's our
job to basically create situations where people can
be in a a state that's
could help them learn and not just have,

(28:46):
you know, an adverse experience of freezing their
butt off or burning themselves or being totally...
Costed by horse sliding. Yeah. Oh wait. That's
that's my experience. Yeah.
There's a old kind of,
very
popular saying an outdoor education was let the
mountain speak for themselves. Yep. So, yeah, You

(29:06):
get the people out there,
and show them a few things so they
can beat they're comfortably and feel safe. And
then when they have that experience, then, you
know, the mountains or the woods or the
ocean or whatever you're interested. Acting with can
speak for itself, and I think there's there's
a lot of power there.
Yeah.
1 of my favorite lines
acting my good friend, Ben Mc from the

(29:28):
Uk. I think it was 2009.
It might have been 2008, but we're riding
in my old horrible dodge van across Northern
Quebec. We were on our way up to
U j. And we were having a similar
discussion. We were having
you know, what's the point? You know, what
do you what do you... And I think
we were phrasing it on that discussion like,
okay. So you spent a significant amount of

(29:49):
time and energy studying Bush craft or traditional
skills or or whatever you wanna call it.
What do you do with it? What's the
point? Why bother?
And he had the line
that it allows you to experience
even just for 1 moment,
what it actually means to be a human
being.
And obviously, this is what 15 years later

(30:10):
in that line. Still resonates to me still
think like, wow. That, like, he nailed it
right on the head there,
because I do think that's you know, that's
it. I don't think in our modern world,
we're not asked to be human beings so
much. We're asked to be consumers. We're asked,
to be, you know,
customers where asked to be this. We're asked

(30:30):
to be that, but not about
looking at the entirety of the human experience
and and experiencing that. Touching that. Like, that's
sort of outside the realm of what the
modern world asks us to be. We are
animals and our nervous systems evolved over hundreds
of that thousands of years to expect a
certain type of stimulus that we no longer
get. So no wonder people are depressed. Yeah.

(30:51):
Thousands I make the claim though that we
didn't evolve from Apes. We're still apes. Oh,
yeah.
What we have a cell phone today?
Apes self phones. Yeah. Yeah. That's a we're
kinda dangerous because of that. Yep. Yeah.
Anyway.
We got anything else that worthwhile discuss here
today or...
It's beautiful work. It is beautiful work.

(31:14):
And
I also said to you
before we were recording,
you said, why do you keep doing it?
And I was like, well, nobody else would
hire me at this point.
If you work for yourself long enough, you're
unemployment.
So there's that. There's that.
Well, thank you for, joining us on this

(31:35):
exploration down the philosophical rabbit hole. Yep.
And
we'll hit you back again soon with another
1. Have a great day. Take care.
You have been listening to the Jack Mountain

(31:56):
Bush craft podcast.
For more information on our professional wilderness
training programs that are college accredited and Gi
bill approved, visit us on the web at
JACKMTN
dot com.