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Green University® LLC Internships
Wilderness Survival Skills, Sustainable Living
and Green Business Opportunities

Alumni: Meet Previous Interns from Green University®

Read Norm's Primitive Skills Internship Journal

      Change your world while learning to change the world. Our Green University® LLC Internship program connects the dots from wilderness education to sustainable living. Through wilderness survival skills and adventures, we immerse participants in the natural world to address the issues of survival and sustainability at an intimate level. We focus on the essentials of physical and mental well-being, shelter, warmth, clothing, water, and food on a model scale as we journey to meet our needs. This survival living leads to discussions about global survival and sustainability. Conversations started in the wilds are continued as we return home and work on projects such as high-efficiency construction from mostly recycled materials. We begin with self-sufficiency and look outward towards global sustainability.

The 2,300 square-foot intern house is 95% complete. It has a daylight basement, main floor, loft, and greenhouse.

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 practices 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.
      Our intern house was built by past interns pitching in and helping out. Help apply the finishing touches to the house and garage, fine-tune the solar and wood water heating systems, develop the gardens, and grow food all year-long in the greenhouse. We are constantly experimenting with new ideas to find out what works and what doesn't. For more information on the intern house, be sure to read the multi-part story Building a Passive Solar Slipform Stone House.

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 manufacture and wholesale bowdrill and handdrill fire kits to Granny's Country Store. 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 anything remotely resembling an organized schedule while you are here. We work together on building 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® is a great place to develop your skills as a self-learner--as long as you are willing to put forth the effort to make 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 start March 1st of every year, 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, but with the intern house mostly complete, some interns stay longer or repeatedly return for more.

Green University® LLC 2010 Schedule

      The Green University® LLC intern house is mostly complete now, although there are a couple years worth of small projects to wrap up on the place, such as grouting the stonework, plastering the basement, finishing the kitchen cabinetry, integrating a boiler system into the fireplace, and installing photovoltaic panels. We are also continuing to retrofit Granny's Country Store next door, insulating the walls and crawl space, installing a solar water heater, and remodeling the bathroom. Expect to spend up to two weeks per month on these various building projects throughout 2010.

      Otherwise, the focus of the internship program is shifting away from house-building, towards primitive skills, wilderness survival, and green business projects. We especially hope to expand our primitive skills programs for public schools. Additional green business projects are encouraged. Here is a tentative schedule for 2010:

      January - March: Tom will be neck-deep in a writing project the first three months of the year. Expect him to be mentally or physically absent most of the time. We are accepting intern applications for this time period, but do understand that it will be pretty quiet here.

      April: We'll start out the year with a walkabout somewhere in the western half of the U.S. Tom will likely be stir-crazy after a few months of writing, eager to go walk a couple hundred miles. This is not an official part of the G.U. curriculum, just something that Tom likes to do with friends, family members, and interns. After the walkabout, we will spend the rest of the month working on various building projects around the place.

     May: 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 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: Summer is play time in Montana when the snow melts out of the mountains and wildflowers explode with color in every meadow. (Okay, so it can snow here in the middle of June, but it is still summer by our standards!) Expect Tom and family to be periodically absent throughout the summer for some quality family time. Otherwise, we will tackle some small jobs on the construction site, but primarily focus on primitive skills and having fun in the great outdoors. We hope to do a ten day walkabout through Montana's Pintlar range towards the end of July.

     September, October, November Tom and kids attend Rabbitstick Rendezvous for one week every September; it is an annual gathering in Idaho of primitive skills practitioners from across North America. Interns are also encouraged to register for this special event. Afterwards, we may canoe a river or lake in eastern Montana when the wild plums and wild grapes are ripe. Then we will wrap up a few building projects while the weather is still favorable. Fall is also time for making apple cider, always a treat for everyone!

     Winter: Winter is a great time for craft-type primitive skills projects, such as tanning skins and making clothes, as well as philosophical discussions and developing green business ideas. Tom usually spends a lot of time writing in winter. Expect him to be seriously distracted or completely absent. The internship program runs largely on its own momentum through the winter, according to the interests and motivation of participating interns, but Tom does get sucked into group interests when he is around.

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 it probably 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 no TV reception. We have kids, and we are busy, scattered, and our schedule 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® 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®

Return to the Green University® Home Page

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
(used with permission)