The Provident Primitive
Advance Your Wilderness Skills to a New Level of Self-RelianceClass limited to 12 students
June 14-15, 2025
Tuition: $695 ($765 after October 15th. Save $70!)
Instructors: Cody Lundin and Mark Dorsten
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Click here for wait list options if course is labeled "full"
Like the Essential Abo course, the Provident Primitive has been a regular offering at our school for more than three decades. It continues your evolution into exploring sustainable, indigenous living skills that were used by native peoples for thousands of years. After short-term needs have been met, such as those covered in the Essential Abo course, wilderness needs quickly shift to procuring food. (Note: The Essential Abo and the Provident Primitive courses are offered on back-to-back weekends allowing you to enroll in both while exploring Arizona, like the Grand Canyon, during the week.)
Along with advanced fire-making and containers, the Provident course focuses heavily on how to catch and gather the elusive "calorie" in the back-country. Advance your long-term wilderness skills and mind-set to a new level of self-sufficiency and freedom!
Advanced Fire from Sticks: create a functional hand-drill fire making set from a wilderness environment, more uses for fire as a tool, fire carriers, fire safety and extinguishing.
Dead-fall Traps and Snares: creating sticks and strings that feed you in town or in the outdoors, recognizing wildlife sign, de-scenting and camouflage, dealing with animal diseases and the legal ramifications of trapping.
Throwing a rabbit stick.Ancient Hunting Tools: learn to identify, choose, craft and use a hard wood throwing stick, (the ancestor to the boomerang) the world’s most effective hunting tool for small game.
Washing out gourds for canteens.Advanced Containers: make a gourd canteen wrapped within a Tarahumara Indian style netted bag, learn about growing gourds, harvesting them, cutting them and creating a field worthy water carrier that dates back thousands of years.
Wild lunch.Wild Edible Plants: eating your lawn and loving it, the truth about wild plants as food for short-term survival or long-term living in the bush, pre-historic hunter-gatherers vs. planting societies, basal metabolic rate requirements for men and women, how to identify, harvest, process and eat wild edible plants.
Learning about wild edible plants.Immerse yourself into what Mother Nature has to offer. You’ll never look at the outdoors the same way again! (some cross country hiking required)
“I plan to take my nine year old on a father and son camping trip this fall and teach him some of the things you taught us. I find myself more confident in many areas than I was before I met you. Thank you again for the unforgettable experience.”
Mark Reardon, PA. "Provident Primitive" alum, 1995.