The Tom Brown School

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We emerge from the lodge into a cold, bright, crystalline night. I stand under the stars, throw my head back to the sky and bask.

By 9:00 the next morning we're on our hands and knees out in front of the barn with Brown, tracking mice across the farm's hardpacked gravel driveway. I can't see the tracks Brown points out until I heed his instructions: "Always keep the track between you and the light, get close to the ground, and look at the surface at a severe angle." I lean way down, my eye an inch or two above the ground, low morning sun opposite. There; so subtle they're barely more than a reflection, the crucifix-like compression shapes characteristic of rodents.

An hour later we're back in the classroom. Most of us have to leave soon. "I have a confession to make," Brown says. "I brought you here on false pretenses. You came here to learn survival skills, and I've taught you those skills. I know that with what you've learned you'll be able to survive, quite comfortably, anywhere in the country as long as it's not a parking lot. But that's not why I spent this week with you." He pauses. His voice shakes with emotion. "I believe we're fighting a desperate war to save what's left of the earth from destruction. The earth is our mother. She is lying raped and dying by the side of the road. She needs our help. We have to help, or she'll die, and we with her.

"I believe that teaching survival gets to people's hearts, that when a person learns how to enter the world purely, unencumbered by society, where you live a hand-to-mouth existence with the earth, a connection develops. That's why I run this school, to bring as many people as possible back to the earth, and to send them out to teach other people."

Brown speaks slowly, pleadingly. "I hope that when you go home you will have a new love and respect for the earth, that you will have a commitment to help save it, and that you will help bring others back close to the earth. Please, people, take what you have learned here this week and teach others. Time is running out."

The room is silent, charged with passion and purpose.

By late afternoon, I'm on a crowded bus headed back to the Newark Airport, Brown's words still ringing in my ears. I'm leaving the school with far more than I expected.

Am I an expert tracker? No, that'll take time. But I've got an awfully good start. I've acquired survival skills that I know will keep me alive should I ever need them, and that in any case will allow me to hike, camp or otherwise enter the natural world free of worry, free of what Brown calls the "what if" question: What if I lose my backpack, what if I break my leg . . . And I'll be able to teach those same skills to my wife and children and friends.

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