Course Days

Regular Class Days

While there are no "typical" days at TrackersTEAMS, our way of learning and working does have a familiar rhythm, one that moves with the seasonal rounds. Hands on activities and harvest of food make up the largest portion of what we do. We often wrap up with group storytelling and discussion of how our experience applies to our greater lives.

Some core components of our immersion program includes...

The Trackers Shuttle Every week we offer a shuttle that leaves our Portland TrackersHQ to our permaculture and wilderness site on the Oregon Coast.

Ecology of Team Leadership We focus on fun collaborative skills and arts that actually get work done. NOT overlong meetings about pretending to create consensus at the expense of everyone's time and experience.

Project of the Week Each week has a focus or theme to develop particular skills, crafts and awareness. This could be tracking, fire tools, shelter, rain catches, wild plants, bow making, and more.

Dinner Harvest and Preparation We make it a point to harvest and preserve mostly wild and locally grown foods for our dinner meals. The timing of this will often change as we flow with the tide for ocean harvest and seasons for local foods. See below to learn more about our wild and local harvest meals.

Seminars Seminars are where we get together in the evening to explore the over arching themes for the week. While many schools and gurus lecture at students we specialize in engaging them in a conversation. Your opinion and discourse is vital to us as you build personal ownership of what you learn.

Tracking & Stealth Scenarios These are not lessons that require you to be best tracker or expert in invisibility. These are well designed learning scenarios and high paced games that let us intensely experience the heightened awareness and life of a deer, fox and all the wild animals we follow through tracking.

3-day Overnights

The core of our program is an immersion of weekly 3-day overnights at our Oregon Coast location in Manzanita, Oregon. There you find the program garden, the bounty of the ocean and a slow, quiet seaside town.

To truly derive the most from our time together, many days are fully experiential and field based. Everyday week we work with our hands, harvest and care for the land and take the time to fully immerse ourselves in the natural world. See below for a sample 3-day overnight.

Nature of the Village Week Longs

Every term begins with a week-long skill shares focusing on a Guild (Rangers, Wilders, Artisans or Mariners). Depending on the season, these may be overnights or day programs with transportation and dinners included. Seasonal themes in include...

Rangers Guild: Rabbitstick Rendezvous (Fall)
Artisans Guild: DIY & Fine Folk Craft (Winter)
Wilders Guild: Permaculture and Relationships to Plants (Spring).

Sample 3-day Overnight

Please Note Themes and timing of activities will vary depending on the season and the week.

Tuesday
8AM Shuttle leaves from our Headquarters in Portland, Oregon
10AM Arrive at our site on the Oregon Coast in Manzanita, Oregon, set-up.
11AM Ecology of Team Leadership Work: Intensive Improv Theater
NOON Lunch & Beach Exploration (students responsible for their own lunch)
1PM Theme or Project of the week: EXAMPLE Leather working & Shoemaking
*Informational history of ancient shoemaking techniques
*Begin Project: 9th century German shoes
4PM Dinner Harvest & Prep: Crab, Mussel & Seaweed Harvest on the Coast
6PM Dinner with Community and Free Time
7PM Evening Seminar on reading material: The Benefits of Craft
9PM Bed or Free Time (night life in Manzanita, cedar sauna, baking cookies)

Wednesday
Early Morning Mapping wildlife movements by Bird Calls
8AM Breakfast (students responsible for their own breakfast)
9AM Continue shoe and leather working projects
NOON Lunch & Exploration (students responsible for their own lunch)
1PM Meet in Houses to design Wilderness Survival Village & plan Theater of the Week
2PM Project and Harvest Time
5PM Dinner Prep
6PM Dinner with Community and Free Time
7PM Community Campfire and the "Theater of the Week"

Thursday
Early Morning Yoga & Animal Forms
8AM Breakfast (students responsible for their own breakfast)
9AM Live Action Tracking & Stealth Scenario
NOON Lunch & Exploration (students responsible for their own lunch)
1PM Weekend Independent Study Agreements
2PM Cleaning as a Thanksgiving to the Land
4PM Leave Manzanita, Oregon for TrackersHQ

About Meals

We do our best to have all programs dinners comprised of almost entirely wild and local foods. This means a large portion of the program is actually wild harvesting from the land. Students are responsible for their own breakfast and lunch. A place for personal food storage is provided.

The Wild

Holding the program on the Oregon Coast greatly improves the bounty available to us. From fishing to seaweed harvest, from crabbing to abundant maritime forests, the sea offers a wealth of living with the land. We also encourage local off-time urban harvest for those residing in Portland. Every Fall our small green city abounds with rich fruit trees, acorns and chestnuts. There is always a Trackers community member ready and willing to embark on an urban forage with you!

Our Larder

Natural food preservation techniques form a core of the program. We begin to create a pantry and larder that can truly feed an entire village. Even if you just begin in the program, there will always be food created for you by alumni and community members who came before. You in turn give back to the village by helping stock the larder for future students.

We also yield food from the local permaculture farm we work and play at. Fresh vegetables and fruits will be relative to the season. We become part of the cycle of planting and harvest at the farm.

Every season we work with a large animal from a responsible local rancher (often from our own farm itself) and practice traditional forms of butchering and meat preservation: including corning, sausage & bacon making and drying.

Since being a hunter-gatherer and horticulturist (a Ranger and a Wilder) is all about living with the local diversity of the land, all of our meals could contain a full range of fruits, meats, spices and vegetables. We will happily accommodate all dietary needs by leaving a key station in our full kitchen open for students who find they may need other options. This additional food must be planned and brought ahead of time by the student or students.

Please Note Since harvest laws limit us and we do not have a full yearly cycle to stock up on every staple, we will may often buy a grain staple with a focus on quinoa (a whole protein grain).