Title: Executive Assistant, a.k.a a Partner in Crime for our Founder-Director

Location: Teaching Drum Outdoor School, Three Lakes, WI

Position Summary: The proper title for this position might be personal coordinator or executive assistant, but then, Tamarack isn’t known for doing things proper. He sees working closely with someone as more of a creative collaboration, to realize both personal and shared goals. The last thing Tamarack wants is for someone to think they are coming merely to fill a position. His partner gets his full support for being who they are and manifesting their dreams as well.

Perhaps most important for Tamarack’s cohort is that they embrace community spirit — what he and his ilk call circle consciousness. It’s going from the accustomed I to we, in order to function as caring and giving organs in a greater organism. When one organ is valued or accorded more attention than the others, the neglected ones suffer (the favorite child syndrome) and the whole organism falls out of balance. Ostensibly working for Tamarack, his sidekick is in actuality here to serve a greater purpose, along with Tamarack; and like Tamarack and the rest of our staff, ready and willing to slide in wherever needed. It is essential that everyone provide for our four sister organizations equally, with no bias.

Reflecting that, Tamarack supports his compadre being engaged in the local community, whether it be volunteering for a nonprofit, mentoring a child, helping with an environmental restoration project, or any other way that they are called.

Equally as important, his fellow conspirator must be able to maintain personal confidentiality and respect counselor-client privilege, as Tamarack serves as a consultant and counsels on some very personal and sensitive topics. Being painfully ethical, his cohort is open and nonjudgmental, strives to do everything with integrity, and practices radical honesty and emotional spontaneity.

Preferred qualifications: They have a well-developed sense of responsibility and are sticklers for detail. They won’t settle for anything less than perfection. At the same time, they don’t take anything too seriously: They recognize paradox and question everything, they are fun-loving, have a sense of humor, and are capable of being outrageously irreverent.

This person is multi-talented and blindingly brilliant, with the resourcefulness of a wizard. They are self-motivated and insanely productive, to the point where they sometimes need encouragement to slow down. To keep Tamarack challenged and inspired, they can not only keep pace with him, but occasionally jump out ahead. They can live with — and even thrive on — several projects going simultaneously. At any one time, Tamarack could be working on two or three books, while being actively involved in several nonprofits, along with consulting and counseling. And he likes to get his hands dirty — literally, with physical projects — on a fairly regular basis.

Activities may include: On any given day, Tamarack’s cohort could find themself watering wildflower plantings, digging up a last-minute book citation, transcribing, tending to an Elder, wild food foraging, assisting with a workshop, skinning a bird for our feather collection, lending a hand with a craft or carpentry project, recycling shipping containers, finding some trance music, helping with communication, doing an impromptu edit, or…

And, there is the option of being in training with Tamarack, who lives by the slogan, Life is training, and training is life. As a perpetual Guardian-Zen trainee, he is continually working on awareness and physical-mental attunement exercises, which he incorporates into his daily activities. But truth be told, training for him is more like the spontaneous play-training of the Wolves he lived with the than routines of any formal training, which he shuns.

A bonus for techno-illiterate Tamarack would be someone who has a modicum of computer and software savvy, and who is willing to use speech recognition software, in order to develop a level of functional knowledge that would be beneficial to him.

An introduction to Tamarack

If you’re still reading, you might at this point be wondering what kind of character Tamarack is. He’s still trying to figure that out himself, yet here is a glimpse into his soul, followed by how he appears to the outside world.

Tamarack’s Bio

Tamarack has dedicated his life to bringing the time-honored ways of living in Balance into our contemporary existence. He draws from his time living with Wolves and Doves, subsisting in the wilderness, apprenticing to Native Elders, and his academic background, which includes upcoming doctorates in nature-based healing and recovery from childhood trauma. As well, he brings management skills and awarenesses from having become a self-made millionaire entrepreneur and having founded or cofounded twenty nonprofit and for-profit and organizations, along with four intentional communities.

He lived primitively in the wilds for fifteen years as a Zen seeker, during which time he owned nothing and owed nobody. With one foot yet in the wilds, he came back to found the Teaching Drum Outdoor School, Snow Wolf Publishing, and the Healing Nature Center, which are the offspring of the Brother Wolf Foundation he established in 1972. He is the founding chair of the regional Natural Resources Committee.

Currently, Tamarack serves as director of the four above-mentioned organizations, faculty member of Transformations School of Integrative Psychology, and consultant for outdoor education schools, therapists and healing practitioners, youth at-risk programs, environmental restoration projects, and intentional communities. As well, he does suicide prevention and couples counseling.

An internationally recognized expert on indigenous lifeways and wilderness survival, he teaches extreme survival skills and conducts guardian-warrior trainings in the United States and Europe, along with courses and workshops in shamanic trauma recovery, suicide prevention, nature-based healing, therapeutic breathwork, Zen awakening, truthspeaking, emotional freedom, human archetypes, animal guides, primal parenting, relationship skills, storytelling, and creative writing. He is the author of twelve award-winning books on the topics he teaches, and he is a national book award judge.

Diversity is a source of strength, creativity, and innovation for Teaching Drum Outdoor School. We value the contributions of each person and respect the profound ways their identity, culture, background, experience, status, abilities, and opinions enrich our greater community. We at Teaching Drum Outdoor School fulfill our mission by living in intentional community with all the plant and animal relations, and being inclusive and welcoming of people from every background.