Tracking and Awareness Intensive
with Tom Brown Jr.
October 12th - 18th
“Immerse yourself in nature’s symphony and let your senses burst with joy.”
Nature Philosophy Australia and Nature’s Apprentice are thrilled to announce Tom Brown Jr’s first ever Australian tour - America's most acclaimed outdoorsman, renowned tracker, best-selling author and founder of Tracker School.
In October 2018, Tom Brown Jr., supported by Malcolm Ringwalt, will offer two intensive courses - Tracking and Awareness; and Philosophy and Temples of Soul. Both programs are usually only open to those who have completed the Standard class at Tracker School. The prerequisite is being waived for Tom’s Australian tour. This is probably a one-off opportunity to learn first hand these teachings passed down through an ancient lineage.
“When we track, we pick up a string. At the far end of that string a being is moving, existing, still connected to the track that we gaze upon. The animal’s movement is still contained in that track, along with the smallest of external and internal details. As we follow these tracks, we begin to become the very animal we track. Our awareness expands from the animal we have become to the landscape it reacted to and is played by. We feel the influence of all things that surround us and our awareness expands from our consciousness to the mind of the animal and finally to the very cosmos. In tracking and awareness, then, there can never be a seperation. One without the other is but half a story, and incomplete picture, thus an incomplete understanding. It is the track that connects us to that grand consciousness and expands us to limitless horizons.”
This specialised Tracking & Awareness Intensive is a class Tom designed specifically for this Australian tour. In forging this class Tom will be pulling the elements of tracking and awareness from his Standard class and combining them with the advanced practices and knowledge from the Advanced Tracking and Awareness class and a few practices from his very popular Scout classes. This way there are no prerequisites needed.
The class will begin with several days of focusing on the physical art and science of tracking. Beginning with the basics of track identification, gait, and elementary pressure releases on easy landscapes, participants will progressively build skills through more difficult terrain. The class will then enter a more advanced pressure release study, learning to read animal movement across a landscape with great clarity and detail. These tools will allow tracking on all surfaces from solid rock faces and boulders, to gravel, sand, debris, grasslands and even inside of buildings and houses. The class will also get into advanced “sign tracking” which includes the area surrounding all tracks, as well as learn team tracking and rapid tracking methods. Throughout, participants will be pushing limits so that when Tom is done, people will be able to see a landscape ‘through Grandfather’s eyes’.
The next section of the class will go deeply into the driving force behind the Apache Scouts - the sacred art of awareness. Grandfather considered awareness to be the most important physical skill that one could possess, for without an intense level of awareness, most if not all skills will never be mastered. Yet it was not just on the physical level that awareness was stressed. He also stressed that awareness was the most important spiritual skill as it is the basis for all spiritual awakening into what Grandfather called the ‘sacred dimension of life’. This class will bring the student to a place of acute awareness that the ancient Apache Scouts considered the heart of their mastery.
That being said, this class covers not just the foundations of awareness such as the Sacred Question, Grandfathers’ Sacred Silence, and Wide Angle Vision but also learning to expand awareness over a larger landscape, reading the Concentric Rings of a forest and learning to discern the background symphony that every place emits. Participants will also learn why and how modern Western peoples for the most part have lost the skills of awareness, and how to integrate these elements back into everyday life, whether in the city or in pathless wilderness.
About Tom Brown Jr
Tom Brown, Jr is America's most acclaimed outdoorsman, and a renowned tracker, teacher, and author. When Tom was only seven, Stalking Wolf (Grandfather), an Apache elder, shaman and scout, began coyote teaching Tom in the skills of tracking, wilderness survival, and awareness. After Stalking Wolf's final walk, Tom spent the next ten years wandering the wilderness throughout the America's with no manufactured tools - in most cases not even a knife - perfecting these skills and teachings. Tom came back to ‘civilization’ and began looking for people interested in all that he had learned, but found none. He felt lost and confused until a local sheriff who knew Tom called him in to track a lost person. Tom found the missing person and, in the process, found his Vision.
Over the next few years Tom earned his reputation as ‘The Tracker’ by finding lost people, and fugitives from the law. He has since worked with many law enforcement agencies, throughout the United States and internationally, on cases involving abducted children, lost hunters and hikers, and fugitives. He wrote about his experiences in a book titled The Tracker, which was published in 1978. Soon after, Reader's Digest ran a condensed version of Tom's story and included information on the Tracker School. That was almost thirty years ago, and today Tom Brown Jr.'s Tracker School is the largest of its kind, teaching people from all over the world and from all walks of life. Since the success of The Tracker, Tom has authored 16 books on tracking, awareness, nature observation and survival, including, Grandfather, The Vision, The Way of the Scout and a series of field guides, which have sold well over a million copies.
About Malcolm Ringwalt
Malcolm is the Founder and Director of the Earth-Heart Institute of Vision and Healing (since 1985). He is a highly intuitive healer and teacher who has helped countless people progress along their life’s journey. Malcolm guides people into their timeless spiritual core by putting them on the path of their own heart. He runs vision quests, advanced quest-related programs, spiritual growth retreats, and personal intensives and counseling at locations nationwide. He has been on his spiritual path for over 45 years, has a Master’s degree in counseling psychology, and is an advanced clinical hypnotherapist. More importantly, perhaps the only thing that matters, he has been graced by the presence and teachings of several powerful spiritual teachers who have guided him to his own knowledge, including extensive study with Tom Brown Jr. Malcolm is the primary teacher of the Philosophy series at Tracker School.
Program info
The program will be run on a private property near Newcastle suitable for beginner tracking study (details TBA). The facilities will be basic and outside. Participants will be required to bring their own camping gear. All meals will be provided. There will be pick-ups and drop-offs available from Newcastle airport and car-pooling will be supported.
The Hosts
Claire Dunn from Nature’s Apprentice and Kate Rydge from Nature Philosophy are co-hosting Tom’s Australian tour. Both Claire and Kate studied extensively with both Tom and Malcolm at Tracker School more than a decade ago, Kate completing the year-long Caretaker program. They are both honoured to be able to bring these teachings from such an intact lineage to Australia.
Contact: claire@naturesapprentice.com.au
Acknowledgement
We acknowledge that we will meet and learn on Worimi country, the First Peoples of this land. We thank them for caring for the land and the waterways and value the sharing of their knowledge and stories. We pay respects to their Elders: past, present and emerging.
Booking Details
This course has booked out. Please email claire@naturesapprentice.com.au to go on the waiting list.
Cancellation Policy
In the event of cancellation deposits will be refunded outside 60 days of course commencement minus a $75 administration fee. Within 60 days of course commencement deposits are non-refundable. No monies will be refundable within fourteen days of course commencement.