2008 EC Class Schedule is Posted

Hot off the press... 2008 class schedule is up on Earth Connection's website.

Lots of new classes and all the favorites.

New Classes Offered:

19- 21 Jan - Winter Wilderness Survival (16-18 Feb is no snow backup date)
Experience winter firsthand and learn to stay alive and comfortable in Earth Connection’s Winter Wilderness Survival class. This new 3 day long winter version of our trusty old Wilderness Survival class will include basic principles of cold weather survival, cold weather survival strategies, dressing for the weather, winter fire (making, using, and living with), shelters applicable to the winter environment (including snow shelters like the Quinzee), making improvised snowshoes; useful wild plants available in winter; frostbite and hypothermia awareness and treatment, and more. The Winter Survival Class will be held at Abram’s Creek Campground near Mount Storm, West Virginia to take advantage of snowfall not normally found at the Earth Connection’s School in northern Virginia.

7-9 Mar and 26-28 Sep - Primitive Village
This class has been a dream of ours for years. We have always wanted to offer a venue for our students to have a primitive survival experience, in which they can practice their skills, pick up some new ones and do it all for REAL. The Primitive Village course offers students a chance to practice their skills, and still benefit from our coaching and guidance in a structured survival scenario. Prerequisites - Earth Connection's Wilderness Survival or Primitive Skills courses - or any two of Earth Connection's other courses.

26 Apr - Land Navigation
This class provides the basic skills required to navigate cross-country day and night using modern (sorry no GPS) and primitive techniques of direction finding, and how to use these skills in the field for day hikes or long-range outings. The class includes basic navigation principles (maps, compasses, declination, the forms of navigation, and route planning, day and night land navigation techniques), as well as advanced instruction in the skills of intersection and resection (triangulation), hand-drawn maps and using terrain features like "road signs." We are also currently making plans to add an optional cross-country course in the Shenandoah Mountains as a group the next day, Sunday April 27, that may include possible diversions like wild edible foods, water procurement, and sight seeing. There will be a small additional fee for this learning opportunity.

17 May - Primitive Trapping
Earth Connection’s Primitive Trapping class will teach you how to put your hard earned tracking skills to task by constructing simple traps to secure wild animals for food. Students will learn the basic principles behind traps and how to construct them focusing on the more familiar (and using less cordage) deadfalls and snares including the figure-four, Paiute deadfall, wire snare, and their variations. In addition, more complicated trapping methods using kinetic engines (and much more cordage) will be demonstrated including many variations of the toggle stick and spring pole traps. This class harms NO animals and all local trapping laws are adhered to.

26 Jul - Nature Observation
This Nature Observation class will return you to your senses and to the vivid experience of living in the moment, experiencing nature with a sense of awe and wonder. The skills taught in this class are the foundation for all nature studies and primitive skills classes that we offer. The class includes nature observation through heightened senses, self awareness/observation, methods of immersing oneself in nature, natural movement techniques, camouflage and blending, understanding animal senses, animal/plant transition zones, pattern association and life long learning exercises. Making field notes and basic sketches in a field notebook is an essential part of this class.

27 Jul - Avoiding Nature's Dangers
Avoiding Nature’s Dangers class is like a mini how-to-survive anything class. We face a multitude of dangers every minute of our life, but recognizing and avoiding them takes education and, sometimes, active mitigation. This class highlights the dangers/risks found in nature and how to mitigate through Risk Management (the human activity which integrates recognition of risk, risk assessment, developing strategies to manage it, and mitigation of risk using managerial resources). The class covers a variety of risks from poisonous plants, insects and animals, contaminated water, animal attacks, knife/axe/machete safety, wildlife diseases, surviving extremes (hypo/hyper-thermia), fire behavior, and much more.

For the personal touch, Tim is still offering private classes as well.