The Survivors; JMBS Article

Great read about the goings on at Jack Mountain Bushcraft School.

In Aroostook County, a ragtag troop of recent veterans converges on a wilderness school for nine weeks.

Sergeant Freddie Orcutt spent his last night as an enlisted man alone on a small island in the crook of V-shaped Scopan Lake. The first frost had come just two nights before, and as the sun sank behind the trees, the Aroostook autumn took on a chill. Freddie set two thick birch boughs on his campfire, careful to lay them parallel as he’d been taught, and he thought about his army pals, how they’d told him that he’d never make it as a civilian, how they’d said he’d be a suicide for damn sure without the military’s structure and camaraderie. Freddie poked at his fire and listened to the loons and thought of how strange it was to be on an island in Maine, really and truly by himself for the first time in his life.

Read the rest of the article HERE.  Make sure to click on the image in the article for the slide show.