I was first introduced to primitive survival skills during my early teens by Ricardo Sierra, my mentor and founder of Hawk Circle Wilderness Programs and director of the Earth Mentoring Institute. I attended Hawk Circle summer camp in upstate New York every summer throughout my teens. In time, I eventually became an instructor at the camp. In 1997, when the organization grew into a year round non-profit, I was promoted to head instructor. As such, I oversaw and assisted in the design and implemnation of the new programs and facility improvements. After three years, I became assistant director and shared the responsibility of training program staff as well as designing and facilitating the summer camp.

Between summer camp sessions, I co-led two month residential Instructor Training Programs. These unique immersion experiences provided an in depth and hands-on experience for college age students interested in Outdoor Leadership and wilderness survival skills. After working with these programs for several years, I expanded into leading specialized weekend workshops for adults that covered topics such as Primitive Fire Making, Advanced Shelter Construction and Hide Tanning. Since many campers and students only spent a few weeks or months with us, they often found it hard to practice their skills and expand their knowledge when they went back home. This subsequently led to the creation of a ten-month primitive skill home study correspondence course. It was designed to provide support, training and inspiration for students who wished to work towards mastery at their own pace and location.

Frequently, our organization responded to requests for bringing customized programs to out-of-state schools and colleges. These engagements helped me to adapt and consolidate traditional teachings for conventional classroom environments. These programs took on other forms as well, often I assisted in presentations and demonstrations for festivals, pow wows and TV media. These diverse experiences at the earth mentoring institute (EMI) gave me a well rounded out look on the variety of ways primitive skills could be integrated and taught.

Personal Philosophy

Throughout my years at EMI I was mentored not only in the skills of survival but also in the finer skills of teaching and reading group psychology and dynamics. The core of my work focoused on summer programs which consisted of three solid months of back-to-back two-week sessions. These summer camps were the same experiences that had originally inspired me and many of the staff members in our youth to learn primitive skills. This instilled a personal committment to creating a powerful and authentic experience that mirrored the traditions from our original adventures. Our staff created a full sensory experience for teens that gave them a chance to live in nature, function as a community and learn the ancient skills of survival while also gaining the essential skills of communication, tolerance, respect and compassion.

Of all the lessons I learned while teaching, ensuring that a group stayed emotionally and physically safe was certainly the most important. Having a good knowledge of the survival skills and a desire to teach was not enough. It was paramount that staff understood how to create safety for a group on all levels in order to foster an environment in which the students could learn and thrive. In order to achive this, a huge amount of the staff training was focused on learning the fine art of group psychology and dynamics. The staff needed to be able to recognize and interpret signs of fear, conflict, frustration and many others, among individuals or the group before they could customize an effective learning experience. I still strive for this high standard of teaching and I feel it is part of what makes my teaching experience unique. Whether I was sleeping in snow caves during sub-zero conditions with a group of teens, seeing a five or fifty year old participant light their first fire with a bow drill set, helping students to tan a deerskin into leather, displaying fine crafts and skills at festivals and schools or leading PBS producers through a survival scenario, I have concluded, that any one, at any age, in just about any environment, can begin their journey to learning these amazing universal skills of survival.