The 2027 Wilderness Guide Program

Living and Learning the Way of the Wolf

Here is an outdoor adventure program-plus—a Rite of Passage into the very heart of Nature. The WGP is one of the most extreme, exhilarating life experiences you can have: For a full turn of the seasons you get to live in a primitive Wilderness wigwam camp and learn everything you need to know to sustain yourself with little from the outside world. From wild food foraging and wilderness first aid to moving invisibly and communicating with Animals, you acquire from direct experience what all Native People know: that Earth Mother kindly and generously provides all your needs and wants.

But don’t think for a minute that this is just a survival course. In the WGP you go from survive to thrive. You learn how easy it can be when you connect with your Ancestral Wisdom and learn how to listen to the guidance that Wolf and the other Animal and Plant Relations all around you are ready to share. You go from observing and studying Nature to living and breathing Nature—to becoming the Child of the Earth you are intended to be.

A Special Year

For the first time since 2012 we are offering a family-oriented Wilderness Guide Program! We are doing it again in 2027: Up to 25 parents, children, parents-to-be, grandparents, child educators, and all others who want to be a part of an extended-family Wilderness immersion experience are invited to join in this enchanted adventure.

When you first walk into the WGP camp, it feels like you’ve gone through a time warp and you’re back in the Stone Age. It’s the perfect setting for learning respect for Native cultures and all they’ve given—and are still giving—us. You are taught some of the local Native language, and Native Elders may drop by to spend time with you around the Evening Fire.

“Doing the Wilderness Guide Program is the best thing I have ever done. It was more than a “thing” or an experience. It fundamentally changed my entire reality and how I view the world and myself. It showed me the truth I was looking for. It showed me what a connection to the Earth felt like and how it was what was missing in my life.”

A WGP graduate

Certification

Graduates of the WGP are awarded the Wilderness Guide Diploma. Being the only certification of its kind, it is respected throughout the Wilderness skills, Outdoor adventure, and Nature education communities. The certification gives you professional credibility and qualifies you for employment in many outdoor-related positions.

Guides

Your first teacher is Wolf. Our Ancestors learned from the example of Wolf how to live in clan, communicate effectively, conduct a coordinated hunt, and raise children cooperatively, and you do the same in the WGP.

Inspired by the spirit of Wolf and guided by the voice of your Ancestors, you learn how to live in Balance with each other and all the Plant, Animal, and Mineral Relations.

Complementing Wolf’s guidance is the wisdom and training that Native Elders have passed down to our Senior Guides for safekeeping and transmitting to those who are ready to honor it and keep it alive by becoming Wilderness Guides.

Our Senior Guides Lety Seibel, Tamarack Song, and Odemakwa are among the best-trained and most experienced you’ll find anywhere. They’ve done it all, from living with Wolves and living in the Wilds on foraged foods to apprenticing with American Indian Elders and Mayan Curanderas, from surviving harrowing Wilderness adventures to taking Deep Soul Journeys. Lety is a traditional storyteller trained in the ancient traditions of her Mayan ancestors, Tamarack is an expert in animal communication and Wolf language, and both are internationally recognized authorities in Indigenous lifeways, Wilderness survival, and the full range of primitive skills. Tamarack has authored definitive works on survival foraging, traditional tracking, primal parenting, Guardian training, Nature-based healing, Truthspeaking, and the Talking Circle. As a graduate of the WGP and longtime course director, OdeMakwa knows what it takes to help everyone have the richest and most rewarding experience possible.

Click here for a full faculty description. Guest instructors in various skills round out the faculty.

Equally as important, our Guides foster your personal growth and oversee your psycho-emotional health by being specially trained in leadership, mentoring, ethics, suicide prevention, trauma recovery, conflict resolution, emotional honesty, and shamanic healing.

“We made fire by friction. We sang and danced. We trapped and gathered. We fought and cried. We practiced crafts. Made leather and clothing baskets and bowls. Tools. We hiked and canoed, ran and swam. Napped. Lay gazing at the stars. We sat in a circle around hearth, told stories and jokes or sat silently absorbed in each other, food, fire, the lushness of ALL that is. We ate wholly. We gifted to the earth and she gifted us. We played and experimented. Always intensely. Everything was/is always intense. If life is a dance then I have just learnt some new moves.”

“The year-long experience has been a step and a journey into a world I did not know existed. My world view about the natural world and myself were transformed and it took a lot of time and a full immersion into the clan-based native lifeway for that to happen. The…direct and sensory connection to the ever changing flows of the surrounding wilderness helped me to become so much more aware of myself and my non-human relations. I started to reawaken and realize that there was more to discover about myself.”

“The Wilderness Guide Program provided me an opportunity to have a real intimacy with the rawness of Life. When you can drink and swim and run and sit and sing with the rhythm of your Mother Earth and all your Brothers & Sisters of this world… you realize Who You Are. Oh yeah, and you learn cool survival skills too!”

“For me the greatest gift of the Wilderness Guide Program was getting to know myself and the rest of life a lot better…Having the open and accepting surroundings, both human and non-human, helped me tremendously to be open and accepting of myself. Living in the wilderness with minimal distractions and all the support needed to be able to do it, and to be able to do it for a whole turn of the seasons, is a unique and great gift to everyone that has the honor to experience it. The lessons from the WGP keep coming back to me. Some lessons have taken years to sink in. I feel immensely grateful for all that I was given during my year in the program.”

Location

The setting for the magical, mystical experience known as the Wilderness Guide Program is Wisconsin’s Headwaters Wilderness, which lies adjacent to the WGP base camp. The camp is tucked under tall Pines on the shore of a pristine wild Lake. It is unique and special—it is a place where you can live for a full turn of the seasons the way your hunter-gatherer ancestors did and be guided by Elders, the spirit of Wolf, and Guides who live and breathe the Old Ways.

This is sacred ground for Tamarack—it is where his Wolf family once ran free. It’s where the last surviving family member was shot and killed.

Dates

Every Melting of the Snows (which is sometime in April-May), a new group of people come together in Clan and walk into the Wilderness to begin their full immersion experience. Other individuals, called Lone Wolves*, might come and join the Clan at various times during the turn of the seasons. The 2027 family-oriented Wilderness Guide Program begins at the end of May 2027.

Registration for 2027

As you’ve by now gathered, this is not your regular outdoor education course; this is life—your life. In honor of that, you don’t apply by just filling out a standard dry, impersonal application form. This experience is all about relationship: first with Nature and your inner self, then with your clanmates and Guides. To begin creating that relationship, please call 715-546-2944 and ask to speak with one of our Elder Guides: Lety or Tamarack, or e-mail wgp@teachingdrum.org to set up a Zoom appointment.

For questions please call the above-listed number or email the above-listed address.

* Like Humans, some Wolves stay with their families when reaching maturity, yet most become Lone Wolves, leaving to go on their Journey of Discovery. They might return one day, join another family, or start a family of their own. Part of the original Vision for the WGP was to make the traditional Lone Wolf Journey of Discovery Experience again available for Humans.

Offering the Lone Wolf option is important to Tamarack because venturing forth alone is sometimes not a choice for either Wolves or Humans. Such was the case with Tamarack, as he was the last one standing after the tragic demise of Wolf family he lived with.

A Note from the Wilderness Guide Program Founder

I recently took a pilgrimage to Henry David Thoreau’s little one-room cabin on the shore of Walden Pond near Concord, Massachusetts. There I walked the Woodland trails in his hallowed footsteps and again found the words, posted on the sign outside his cabin, that were...