Background to Earth Skills

The Earth Skills taught by Blue Skies have been passed down through a lineage stemming from the Native American Apache tradition experienced by Stalking Wolf, who then taught Tom Brown Jr. Here follows the historical story

Stalking Wolf was raised free of the reservations in the mountains of northern Mexico. Born in the 1870's during a time of great warfare and violence, he was part of a band of Lipan Apache that never surrendered. He was taught the traditional ways of his people and excelled as a healer and a scout. When he was twenty, a vision sent him away from his people, and for the next sixty-three years he wandered the Americas seeking teachers, and learning the old ways of many native peoples. Stalking Wolf traveled the height and breadth of the Americas, living on his own as a free man. He never held a job, drove a car, paid taxes, or participated in modern society. When he was eighty-three years old, he encountered a small boy gathering fossils in a stream bed. He recognized that boy as the person he would spend his final years with, teaching him all that he knew. That boy was Tom Brown, Jr. Tom became the recipient of not only all that Stalking Wolf had learned during his travels, but the distillation of hundreds of years of Apache culture as well. These teachings are what Tom teaches at his famous Tracking, Nature, and Wilderness Survival School.,

Tom Brown, Jr. is now America's premier outdoorsman, renown tracker, teacher, and author. Starting when he was only seven, Tom was taught by Stalking Wolf (Grandfather), an Apache elder, shaman, and scout. For ten years Tom was mentored in the skills of tracking, wilderness survival, and awareness. After Stalking Wolf's death, when Brown was 17, Tom spent the next ten years living in the wilderness throughout the United States with no manufactured tools - in most instances not even a knife - perfecting these skills and teachings. Brown came back to "civilization" looking for people interested in all that he had learned. He felt lost and confused until a local sheriff who knew Tom called him in to track a lost person. Tom found the missing person and in the process, found his path in life.
For the next few years, Brown earned his reputation as "The Tracker" finding lost people, and sometimes fugitives from the law. Tom has since worked with many law enforcement agencies throughout the United States and internationally on cases involving abducted children, lost hunters and hikers, and fugitives. He wrote his experiences in a book titled The Tracker which was published in 1978. Soon after, "Reader's Digest" ran a condensed version of his story and included information on the Tracker School. That was over twenty years ago, and today Tom Brown's Tracking, Nature and Wilderness Survival School is the largest school of its kind, teaching people from all over the world in all walks of life who share an interest in learning the simplicity of a natural way of living. Tom has authored 16 books on the wilderness including, The Tracker, The Way of the Scout, and a series of field guides, which combined have sold well over a million copies.

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