One year of learning to become extraordinarily capable
What if you could spend a year learning how to live skillfully, simply, and fully?
Not just how to survive in the woods.
Not just how to meditate.
Not just how to defend yourself.
The ReWildU Guardian Apprenticeship offers you the chance to become the kind of person who can take care of yourself, the people you love, and the place you live.
This is an opportunity for a very small number of people to step out of ordinary life and immerse themselves in an extraordinary education.
You will learn wilderness skills, train your body, steady your mind, develop practical self-reliance, deepen your relationship with the natural world, and learn how to help others do the same.
Along the way, you may discover that the real thing you’re learning is how to be human.
This is not just a wilderness course
The fields and forests are our classrooms, but the goal is bigger than wilderness skills.
Modern life gives us exceptional conveniences. It also gives us a remarkable dependence on systems we rarely think about.
What happens when the power goes out?
What happens when you don’t know the answer?
What happens when someone needs your help?
What happens when the technology stops working?
What happens when you are simply tired of consuming and want to know how to make, grow, repair, protect, teach, and provide?
A capable person can adapt.
A resilient person can remain calm.
A grounded person can think clearly.
A connected person knows that survival is not just about the individual.
The ReWildU Guardian Apprenticeship is about developing all of these qualities.
What You'll Learn
Your year will draw from several different areas of training woven together to give you a holistic education.
Wilderness
Fire, shelter, water, navigation, tracking, foraging, primitive skills, weather awareness, and the many small skills that make the natural world feel less like an obstacle and more like home.
Body
Martial arts, grappling, self-defense, strength, mobility, fitness, movement, physical awareness, and the ability to remain effective when you’re tired, uncomfortable, or under pressure.
Mind
Meditation, mindfulness, attention, emotional regulation, stillness, resilience, and the ability to meet difficult experiences with calm poise.
Connection
Nature observation, awareness, ecology, and the deeper experience of becoming a participant in the living world rather than merely an observer of it.
Self-reliance
Food growing and preservation, practical skills, emergency preparedness, household resilience, problem solving, basic skills for living with fewer conveniences, and ways to help your family or community remain capable when circumstances become difficult.
Community and Teaching
Communication, leadership, cooperation, mentoring, working with youth, facilitating experiences, and learning how to teach the things you have learned.
Because eventually, the question becomes:
What good is being capable if you cannot help others become capable as well?
Residential Options
The ReWildU Guardian Apprenticeship can include a residential component for those who want a deeper immersion.
Depending on the arrangement, an apprentice may live in our onsite accommodations or spend significant periods living outdoors in the yurt or camp. You’ll have everyday access to the ReWildU campus and training grounds, right outside your door.
There is something powerful about waking up each day in the same place where your education is happening.
You don’t simply attend a class.
You live it.
You cook, sleep, train, and practice right here at ReWildU.
There is also the possibility of nearby work opportunities, like an organic CSA right next door.
Part of the ReWildU Guardian Apprenticeship is Teaching
One of the most important parts of the program is learning how to pass skills on to others.
Throughout the year, apprentices will have opportunities to practice leading activities, working with groups, teaching skills, facilitating nature experiences, and helping others learn.
This program is for people who want to lead, mentor, and create meaningful experiences for youth, families, and communities.
People who can carry what they have learned into their own lives and, eventually, into the lives of others.
Who is this for?
This is for someone who feels that something is missing from the way modern life is usually lived. Someone who feels that too much comfort is stealing something precious from them. Someone who wants to be capable of protecting, nourishing, and inspiring those they care for.
You may be looking for a radical life change.
You may want to become a wilderness educator.
You may want to develop practical skills for your family and community.
You may want to deepen your meditation practice.
You may be intrigued by martial arts.
You may simply have an enduring sense that human beings were meant to be more capable, more connected, and more involved in their own lives.
You don’t need to fit a particular mold, but you do need curiosity, humility, a willingness to learn, and a genuine desire to grow as a human being.
A Small Community of Apprentices
This will never be a program for dozens of people at a time.
The ReWildU Guardian Apprenticeship is intentionally small.
That means much more personal attention and the opportunity to develop a genuine relationship with the people you are learning alongside.
One year. Many directions.
There is no single version of what a Guardian Apprentice ultimately becomes.
One person may go on to teach wilderness skills.
Another may work with children.
Another may simply bring a radically different level of capability and resilience into their family life.
Another may develop their own nature-based practice or educational program.
The point is not to turn everyone into the same kind of person.
The point is to help each person become more fully themselves, with a much larger set of capabilities to draw upon.
The Deeper Purpose
There is a stream that runs through the ReWildU Guardian Apprenticeship program.
Become someone people can count on.
Someone who can stay calm, can protect, can provide, can listen. Someone who can make something from very little. Someone who knows what to do.
Someone who can teach, and feel at home in the woods.
Someone who can walk back into civilization and remain fully themselves.
Interested?
The ReWildU Guardian Apprenticeship program is currently in development, including schedules, residential options, tuition, and the exact structure of the experience.
If this idea speaks to you, I’d love to hear from you.
Tell me a little about yourself, what draws you to the apprenticeship, and what you hope to become more capable of doing.
There is no obligation and no commitment at this stage. I’m creating a list of people who will be contacted when the final details are complete.
Sometimes a life-changing idea begins with nothing more than recognizing it when you see it.
Contact Kenton: rewilduniversity@gmail.com
ReWild University
Learn to live skillfully. Live deeply. Rewild.