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Artwork by Wolf Journey alumna Joanna Colbert, depicts one of Chris Chisholm's mentors Serene Stephenson. We chose this piece to symbolize Ethno-Ecology, the cultural use of, and human interaction with, earth's plants and animals.

 

Wolf College Survey of Ethno-Ecology: Plants, Animals & Minerals

Part-Time Semester-by-Semester Apprenticeship

The Part-Time Survey of Ethno-Ecology: Plant, Animal & Mineral is an introduction to Ethnoecology and may be repeated at the advanced level to earn an Ethnoecologist Certification. For an explanation of these fields of study, check out the Wikipedia Definition of Ethno-Ecology and our Essay on Earth Skills Education.

Scroll Down or Click for Specifics:
• Application Deadlines, Tuition & Enrollment Capacity;
• Schedule Breakdown;
• Mission & Who Would Attend This Program;
• Program Instructors & Benefits including Certification;
• Program Goals & Skills Covered;
• How to Prepare & Apply for this Program; Responsibilities at Camp; Notes from Chris
• Program History & More Depth

Tuition, Credit, Cost Breakdown, Refund Policy

Click here for tuition, credit information, cost rationale and refund information. Program Capacity will be limited to 20 students between all our apprenticeships during the 2011-12 Academic Year. No prerequisite, but see our application page for suggested preparation.

Academic Year Apprenticeship Schedule:

• Fall Semester - Click Here for Full Schedule running Sept 10, 2011 - January 21, 2012 and covers Harvesting Wild Edible & Useful Plants, Animals & Minerals. No prerequisite.

• Spring Semester - Clicke Here for Full Schedule running January 21 - June 12, 2012 and covers Tracking, Birding, Geology, Seashores & Herbal Medicine. No prerequisite.




 

Artwork by Wolf Journey alumna Joanna Colbert. This is another fine example of ethnoecology, as an elder spins fibers out of sheep's wool, and interacts with deer in her orchard.

Program Mission & Participants

The mission of this Ethno-Ecology Apprenticeship is that you become an versitile wildlife tracker and honorable harvester. Ethnozoology means that 1) you understand and can track down most Vertebrate animals and some Invertebrates, both wild and domesting, and 2) when you harvest an animal, you honor all of its gifts such as preserving its meat for food, brain tanning its hide for leather, making bone tools and gut cordage, fletching arrows with feathers, crafting water bladders and hoof rattles, for example through artisanry skills.

Vertebrates are animals that generally include fish, amphibians, reptiles, mammals, and birds. Invertebrates are animals without a backbone, and trackers limit their pursuit to those which can be readily seen and followed, including Annelids (earthworms, leeches), Arthropods (insects, arachnids, and crustaceans), and intertidal life (shellfish, jellyfish, starfish, anemonies, urchins, squids). To further your wildlife tracking skills even further, we recommend that you also check out our Summer Wildlife Trackers Teaching Apprenticeship for a follow-up program.

This Part-Time Apprenticeship Semester is designed for aspiring naturalist, zoologists, artisans and trackers learn to further their understanding of the animal world, especially with 1) full-time high-school and college students, 2) working adults who only have evenings and weekends available to study. No matter your previous experience, you will be expected to fully participate in every possible training opportunity to push your skills to a higher level of excellence, although your own health will be the priority, and we hope that each participant becomes a person to whom anyone could turn for learning about tracking and wildlife in general.

No prerequisite, but please see our application page for suggested preparation.


Heidi Bohan's People of Cascadia is the best overview of regional ethnoecology, and it is one of the required texts for this Ethno-Ecology Apprenticeship. Books and travel are the only expenses associated with this program not covered by your tuition.

Program Instructors, Benefits & Certification Options

Program Instructors: Chris Chisholm will be your mentor through this experience, with assistance from Kim and guidance from Seasonal Faculty.

Benefits of the Program: Your transformation into an excellent tracking instructor is the greatest of benefits, but for every semester you complete, you will receive $250 off additional apprenticeship semesters, and $500 off your choice of Summer Teaching Apprenticeships. Training in each Ethno-Ecology semester includes:

• Attendance at your choice of any 1 of our scheduled Training Camps per semester (all expenses included except travel to-from the course site and any nights requiring indoor lodging);
• 5 monthly Apprenticeship Field Trips per semester running from 9-5 on Saturdays;
• 5 monthly Wolf Journey Classes per semester running on weekdays from 7-9 p.m. in the location nearest your home, plus optional complimentary attendance/assistance at Wolf Journey classes running earlier in the day and at locations further away from your location if space is available;
• Feedback from your instructor Chris Chisholm after every field exercise you complete as you procede through the Wolf Journey Earth Skills Training Course chapters of your choice; expected progress is one field exercise per week, or a minimum of 20 field exercises per semester, although you may do as many as one per day if desired;
• 1 Mentoring Visit from Chris & Kim to your personal Study Site;
• 4 Study Days normally taking place on Sundays at the Wolf Campus in Puyallup;
• 4 all-day Saturday Workshops per semester taking place in the mid-south Puget Sound area, with additional optional Saturday Workshops charged at just $25 each;
• 4 Optional Sunday Afternoon Permaculture Workshops taking place at the Wolf Campus in Puyallup at $15 contribution each until you received a Permaculture Design Certification;
• 4 Optional Sunday Afternoon Wolf Tracking Workshops taking place at the Wolf Campus in Puyallup at $15 contribution each until you qualified for Wolf Tracker membership;
• Optional Ethnoecology Certification evaluation upon graduation which requires a $200 fee for contracted evaluators.

In addition, those students who begin to take responsibility for assisting Wolf Journey classes and workshops may be hired to lead those courses in the future. By the end of two semesters, we hope you will fully embody your title of Certified Ethnoecologist.

Click here for a complete description of all our Wildlife Ecology & Tracking Certification options.

 

Artwork by Wolf Journey alumna Joanna Colbert.

Artwork by Wolf Journey alumna Joanna Colbert.

 

This completed thatched hut we made in 2005 is a good example of ethnoecological use of grasses.

This willow-frame wigwam in process of being constructed is another good example of how ethnoecologists utilize the natural resources around them to meet their basic needs.

Above is the outside of Andrew Twele's stump house back when he was an apprentice in 2007. Below is the inside of the stump house, with some ethnoecological uses of plants and animals visible including a hanging goard water container, a handing woven basket, and barely visible on the left is a tanned hide he used as a door.

Program Goals & Skills

 

Specialty Skills Learned
• Wildlife Tracking & Animal Surveying (identification, trailing, aging, interpretation)
• Birding & Bird Language (academic and song-to-alarm interpretations)
• Naturalist Sketching & Journaling (using sit spots, drawing instruction, quick journaling strategies)
• Skills of the Ancient Scout (sensory awareness, stealthy movement, camouflage, games)
• Primitive Fishing (wiering, netting, spearing, bow fishing, hand fishing, hook and line, gorges, bullfrogging)
• Primitive Hunting (bow and arrow, rabbit stick, at-latl, ethics, strategies, butchering)
• Hide Tanning (wet and dry scraping, brain and other high-tannin methods, hair on and off)
• Human Tracking
• Backpacking & Camping
• Land Mapping & Water Navigation (orienteering with and without modern aids)
• Trapping
• Parfleching (carrying cases, drum making, sheaths and quivers with fur and tanned hide)
• Orienteering (map reading, aidless navigation, etc)
• Artisanry Craftwork
• Writing & Journaling; Photography & Recording; Sketching & Drawing

Knowledge Acquired
• Wildlife Study (in-the-field biology classes, sit-spot sensory awareness exercises, etc)
• Bioregional Ecosystems (old growth temperate rainforest, glaciated alpine meadow, intertidal and estuary, river and lake, wetland and bog, desert and sagebrush steppe, mixed pine and subalpine forest)
• Time Outdoors (especially growing up playing in the woods, deserts, or beaches around your home; harvesting fruits and vegetables, fish and animals both domestic and wild, as a youth; plus taking adventures on the mountains, prairies, and waterways of this beautiful earth as a young adult)
• Political Environmentalism (left and right wing strategies, legislative and artistic strategies)

In addition to learning in-depth earth skills during all the courses we offer that you want to attend throughout the year, there are 3 main objectives for this program:

• Live an ultimate naturalist lifestyle, based on your rhythms and the rhythms of our micro-climate and bio-region. You will help develop a wall-size naturalist mentoring internship calendar to document the best times for us to harvest wild resources and cultivate the land, while developing your own personal medicine wheel of health. This naturalist lifestyle includes a daily routine of visiting your peaceful place, making primitive fire, working on shelter, taking care of yourself, caretaking the land, doing some service work, and of course, working on an earth skills craft.

• Study the Wolf Journey or similar curriculum, and work toward a certification in your chosen area of specialization within the field of earth skills. You can set your own goals here, and live as close to the land as you choose: in one of our earth lodges, in a tent, yurt, or cabin, depending on space, while studying alongside participants in our other apprenticeship programs.

• Help caretake the land, lake, farm and earth skills facilities for as many seasons as you choose to remain here, in an effort to make Wolf Camp as healthy, self-sufficient, sustainable, abundant and beautiful a place as possible.

You graduate from the program when you have completed all our courses and reached the learning objectives you set at the start of your program. No matter your previous experience, you will be expected to fully participate in every possible training opportunity to push your skills to a higher level of excellence, although your health, including rest and rejuvenation, will be the priority. The goal is to always develop ourselves into better and better naturalist mentors.

Specialty Skills Learned
• Wildlife Tracking & Animal Surveying (identification, trailing, aging, interpretation)
• Birding & Bird Language (academic and song-to-alarm interpretations)
• Naturalist Sketching & Journaling (using sit spots, drawing instruction, quick journaling strategies)
• Skills of the Ancient Scout (sensory awareness, stealthy movement, camouflage, games)
• Wild Edible Foraging & Preparation (Herbs, Nuts, Roots, Flowers, Fruits, Insects)
• Primitive Cooking & Food Storage (pit cook, clay oven, ash cakes, smoking, jerkying, pemmican)
• Medicinal Herb Collection & Preservation (drawing from knowledge of area herbalists)
• Preventative Health & Herbal Spas (from daily health routines, to our special spa treatments)
• Emergency Shelter & Primitive Shelter (debris hut, lean-to, wickiup, thatch hut, earth lodge, split cedar cabins, including fire drafting strategies)
• Wet Fire Maintenance & Fire by Friction (bow drill, hand drill, fire plow, flint & steel)
• Flintknapping & Primitive Tool Making (from harvested stones, bones, wood)
• Bow & Arrow Making (survival bows, self bows, lumber bows, fletching, lashing, etc.)
• Primitive Fishing (wiering, netting, spearing, bow fishing, hand fishing, hook and line, gorges, bullfrogging)
• Natural Water Purification (seeps, filters, rock boiling, and locating natural springs)
• Bowls & Cordage Making (double and triple reverse wrap using nettle, fireweed, cedar, kelp seaweed)
• Primitive Hunting (bow and arrow, rabbit stick, at-latl, ethics, strategies, butchering)
• Hide Tanning (wet and dry scraping, brain and other high-tannin methods, hair on and off)

Experiential Skills Introduced
• Natural Selection Forestry (chopping and chainsawing, wood splitting and moving)
• Sustainable Building
• Organic & Biodynamic Gardening
• Farm Animal Care & Cultivation
• Human Tracking
• Backpacking & Camping
• Land Mapping & Water Navigation (orienteering with and without modern aids)
• Sailing, Kayaking, Canoeing, Raft Making
• Trapping
• Clay Harvesting, Molding & Firing
• Parfleching (carrying cases, drum making, sheaths and quivers with fur and tanned hide)
• Bioregional Ecosystems (old growth temperate rainforest, glaciated alpine meadow, intertidal and estuary, river and lake, wetland and bog, desert and sagebrush steppe, mixed pine and subalpine forest)
• Music and the Arts (flute making, drumming, songwriting, poetry, clay sculpting, natural paints, singing and pianos/guitars on hand)
• Rock Climbing & Alpine Mountaineering

Earth Skills Educational Skills
• Best skills to introduce to each age group (3-6, 7-9, 10-12, 13-15, 16-18, 19-21, young adults, parents, elders)
• Most effective methods to use with each age group (didactic/wolf, questioning/coyote, imitation/ant)
• Delivery of age appropriate stories (personal, european, african, persian, chinese, other eastern, indigenous)
• Risk Management (assessing sites, planning activities, mitigating hazards)
• Emergency Rescue, Advanced First Aid, CPR (wilderness and water settings)
• Influences of Nature on Spirituality (buddhist, christian, hindi, indigenous, jewish, muslim) including opportunities of retreats and quests, sweat lodges and fasts
• Health & Organizational Strategies (western lineal and medicine wheel use for self, lessons, projects)
• Incorporating Earth Skills & Starting New Schools (examples of non-profits, partnerships, sole ventures, and communities)
• Political Environmentalism (left and right wing strategies, legislative and artistic strategies)

 



Chris demonstrating "animal forms" in 2010.

Students tracking in 2010.

Sizing up the the bear scratch marks on an alder tree at the old Wolf Camp property on Woods Lake in 2005.

Black bear track up in the snow, which lingers all summer at high elevations in the Cascade mountains.

 

Employment: We only need instructors with experience running camps and teaching in the field of Earth Skills Education, including skills of the Naturalist, Tracker, Herbalist, Survival Scout, Primitive Artisan and Sustainable Pioneer. Apply to become an instructor through our Earth Skills Teaching Apprenticeship.

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