Green University® LLC Internships
Wilderness Survival Skills, Sustainable Living
and Green Business Opportunities
Read Norm's Primitive Skills Internship Journal
Alumni: Meet Previous Interns from Green University®
Change your world while learning to change the world. Our Green University®, LLC Internship program connects the dots from wilderness survival to sustainable living in the modern world. Through primitive living skills, we immerse participants in the natural world and deal with sustainability issues at an intimate level. The acts of finding shelter, harvesting wild foods, making clothes, and keeping warm reproduces issues of modern sustainability on a model scale as we journey to meet our needs.
Conversations started through primitive living experiences are continued as we work on projects such as sustainable, high-efficiency construction from mostly recycled materials. We begin with self-sufficiency and look outward towards global sustainability. And for those who are interested, we seek to incubate green businesses to make our society more sustainable.
Wilderness Survival Skills
Primitive wilderness survival skills are the heart of the Green University® LLC Internship program. Follow your passions and develop your primitive skills with like-minded individuals. Learn to start fire-by-friction, harvest edible wild plants, and weave willow baskets. Help out as an assistant instructor, sharing survival and nature awareness skills with kids from our local public schools.
Every year is different, based on the interests that interns bring to the school. Some individuals have had a passion for botany, others for grandiose primitive shelters, and some have focused almost entirely on hide tanning, making their own head-to-toe buckskin outfits. Whatever your interests are, we will coach you to the best of our abilities or steer you towards the resources you need.
Intermittently throughout the year, we pack up and head out with friends and family members on wilderness survival walkabouts or canoe trips. These events are not part of the official Green University® LLC curriculum, and anyone with sufficient skills is welcome to join us for the fun. For a sampler of our adventures, be sure to read Tom's Camping Journals.
Sustainable Living
Sustainable living research and development is the practical side of Green University® LLC. Immerse yourself in alternative construction, learning the theory and practice of building super-efficient, low-cost sustainable homes. Develop the skills and knowledge to enable you to build your own home without a mortgage or to start a green construction business. Help finish past construction projects or get new ones off the ground. We are constantly experimenting with new ideas to find out what works and what doesn't.
Green Business Opportunities
Green business development is the ultimate ambition of the Green University® LLC internship program. Whether you are interested in small-scale, short-term enterprises or a full-time green career, the internship program is the place to discuss and develop green business concepts with Thomas J. Elpel and like-minded interns. It is our goal to recruit a small army of motivated ecopreneurs to enter the business world to make a large-scale demonstration that green business is good business.
Previous interns are earning lifetime royalties from projects such as illustrating Tom's book Roadmap to Reality and co-starring in the Art of Nothing Wilderness Survival video Canoe Camping: On a song and a paddle. Other interns have manufactured and sold hundreds of bowdrill and handdrill fire kits. We have also seriously considered profit-sharing house-construction enterprises with past interns. We have lots of green business ideas to develop already, or you can explore completely new frontiers of your own imagining. There is no obligation to launch a green business project while at Green University®, LLC, although you may be asked to help out with new or existing enterprises.
Logistics
Don't expect much of an organized schedule while you are here. We do not operate on a Monday through Friday, 8 to 5 schedule. Things happen when they happen, which could be any day of the week and any time of day. We work together on projects part of the time, while at other times you are on your own, doing self-directed learning. We will gladly coach you in any way that we can, but we will not get you out of bed in the morning and walk you through a schedule to accomplish your goals. Self-directed learning is a foreign concept to most people, since our educational system encourages people to become dependent on other people to tell them what to do and when to do it. Green University® LLC is a great place to develop your skills as a self-learner - as long as you are committed to making things happen!
Cost and Duration
The cost to participate in the Green University® LLC internship program is $500 per month, or a one-time fee of $2,500 for the entire year. These funds are used to offset the expenses of food and utilities to support you until you are productively earning your keep here. Internships typically start in the spring, or as soon after that as you are able to come, and run for as long as the program holds your interest--or until we become mutually tired of each other, whichever comes first! Most interns stay for up to six months; some interns stay longer or repeatedly return for more.
Green University® LLC 2012 Schedule
January through March - Winter Hibernation: Tom will be neck-deep in writing projects the first three months of the year, so we will be taking a break from the internship program until April 1st, 2012.
April - Spring Projects: April weather in Montana can bounce back and forth between warm days and heavy snows. We'll seize the opportunity as it arises to work on some outdoor projects - building some cold frames and planting the garden, and probably building a pond or possibly starting a new earthlodge-type classroom. Towards the end of the month, we will migrate to California for the Buckeye Gathering, a rendezvous of primitive skills practitioners from across North America. You will need to register independently if you wish to attend this event, but you may be able to ride there and back with us. (Anyone coming from California would probably prefer to hold off until after the gathering before joining the internship.)
May - Primitive Skills Camps: May is our big month for working with the public schools. We bring elementary kids out on day trips and junior high classes out on overnight camping trips. We give you the necessary training to assist in mentoring students in wilderness survival and nature awareness skills and games. We will also do a five-day canoe trip with friends and family on Montana's Canyon Ferry Reservoir to hunt carp with bows and arrows. A Montana fishing license is required if you wish to participate.
June, July, and August - Foraging, Expeditions, and Projects: Summer is play time in Montana when the snow melts out of the mountains and wildflowers explode with color in every meadow. We expect to do a lot of plant identification and foraging in conjunction with a book we are writing, tentatively titled Foraging the Rockies. Research for this book will take us on numerous road trips, walkabouts, and canoe trips throughout the summer, with periodic time-outs in Pony to frantically catch up on emails and business.
In addition, we will tackle a number of small construction projects (still being sorted out), such as finishing the pond or earthlodge started in April, plus possible energy-efficiency upgrades to the house, as well as plumbing, wiring, and insulating projects at Katie Russell's house in Twisp, Washington. We will especially want to be there during berry season!
September and October - Primitive Skills Camps and Food Harvesting: We will likely do some additional primitive skills camps with the public schools, then migrate back to Washington state for Saskatoon Circle, another primitive skills gathering. We'll stick around the area afterwards to do some fall foraging and food processing with wild berries and feral fruits.
November and December - Animal Processing and Braintanning: Wilderbabe Katie Russell will direct this intensive session on animal processing - including skinning, butchering, and hide tanning. The action starts in Twisp in October, during Washington state's nine-day hunting season, then migrates back to Pony for Montana's five-week general hunting season, which runs through the end of November. Animal processing and hide-tanning will continue on through mid-December, the end of the year's internship program.
How to Apply
To apply, first read through our Internship FAQ's. Please give careful consideration before you contact us. It is helpful to read Tom's books, Participating in Nature, Botany in a Day, Living Homes, Roadmap to Reality and Direct Pointing to Real Wealth, so you know where we are coming from philosophically. Applicants who apply for six months or longer are favored in our selection process. The cost for internships is $500 per month, or a one-time fee of $2,500 for the entire year.
When ready, you may click over to our Contact Page and send us a detailed biography of yourself, what skills and ideas you have to contribute to the Green University® LLC internship program, and what you hope to learn while you are here. We will read your bio and ask questions to make sure our program is appropriate for you before approving your application. All interns are required to read and sign our Liability Waiver and Release Form (PDF).
Too Good To Be True?
If our Green University® LLC internship program sounds too good to be true, then maybe it is. After all, you are paying to come serve as an intern (i.e.: slave) to learn by helping out with our many existing projects and business ventures. Also, please don't make us into something we are not. We are ordinary people. We eat frozen pizzas. We drive cars that burn gas or diesel. We watch television--or at least a lot of movies, since we have limited TV reception. We have kids, and we are busy, scattered, and our schedule is utterly unpredictable. Keep your expectations reasonable, and you just might be surprised by the unadvertised things that you would never expect.
Green University® LLC Contact List
To be notified about upcoming additions and changes to our programs, you are invited to join our Green University® Upcoming Classes Call List. Please click over to our Contact Page and send an e-mail asking to be included on the Green University® LLC Call List. The list is not used for any other purpose, and it will not be shared with any other source. Expect to receive class updates 2 to 4 times a year, with notices on stone masonry classes, wilderness survival classes and informal canoe trips and walkabouts.
Alumni: Meet Previous Interns from Green University® LLC
Tom,
The longer it has been since I was out there the more I appreciate my brief time with all of you. My memories of sitting on a big fallen cottonwood by the river at your store and watching the birds dart around just above the surface of the water, or of hiking in the Tobacco Roots through the thick grass beneath the conifers, have only become clearer and more profound with the passing of time. Even remembering the pain of hunger and cold, it all seems so... necessary. I just wanted to thank you, Tom, since I don't think I really have quite properly enough, for the whole experience.
I'm pretty tired of school. All these books that I've read and all the big questions that they ask really do pale in comparison to one fresh, clean, clear memory of the woods. And all the knowledge that I've absorbed here and all the alleged opportunities this education is supposed to bring me seem so trite and extraneous. I'm eager to get back to learning practical skills, skills that are in my blood and that are an extension of myself on the land.
That rabbit was in my dreams a while ago. It was young and in a field and when it saw me it ran. Then it turned back to look at me and when it did it was fully grown. I woke up feeling so happy and thinking that some great thing had allowed me to kill that poor bunny, and that it was an invitation to something which I should not ignore. I hope you and your family are well, and that your beautiful land remains unnoticed by the masses. And thanks again.
- Christian McCrory
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