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 one or two people to step out of ordinary life and immerse themselves in an extraordinary education. It’s ideal for a couple who wants to learn together.
And importantly, we have an on-site apartment available this year. That means you can take a balanced approach — instead of living outdoors year-round, you can take on the challenges of ReWildU but come home to a bath, internet, and a refrigerator. Our aim is to make this apprenticeship available to people who would have to work during their program. That could mean a job at the local food cooperative, or right next door at our neighbor’s organic farm. If you already have a job where you can work remotely, this might be the perfect opportunity for you to embark on a year of learning and adventure while still being able to keep your job.
With Kenton as your guide, 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.
Fun
While there’s a lot to learn, fun is of utmost importance. Sessions with Kenton will include games, adventures in nearby wilderness areas, and sometimes just sledding down the hills past the horses who will give us quizzical looks as we speed by =)
Eventually, the question becomes:
What good is being capable if you cannot help others become capable as well, and if it doesn’t increase our feeling of being ALIVE?
Residential Options
The ReWildU Guardian Apprenticeship includes the opportunity to rent our on-site apartment. This means you can maintain your normal life, including work, while you live on campus and learn new skills. You’ll also have the yurt and stream-side camp available when you want more nature immersion. We can base your learning time around your work schedule.
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?
To apply for the ReWildU Guardian Apprenticeship, contact Kenton at rewilduniversity@gmail.com, and he can answer any questions you have and provide additional information.
Tuition for the 2027 program is $32,000 USD, or 55k for a couple. We are taking a maximum of two apprentices this year. If these tuition prices are not feasible for you, contact Kenton about the possibility of financial aid. Our on-site apartment is available for an additional fee.
Get in touch for the learning adventure of a lifetime!
Contact Kenton: rewilduniversity@gmail.com
ReWild University
Learn to live skillfully. Live deeply. Rewild.