Weeklong Adventures

Rewild Portland offers a trilogy of adventures for adults during the months of July and August. We start out in the city, in a post-apocalyptic scenario. The second week we move from the city out into the wilderness. The third week we work on established wilderness living and evasion.

Urban Scout’s

Preemptive Post-Apocalyptic Survival Summer Camp:

It’s the end of oil and the lights have gone out for the last time. Food is no longer being shipped and water has ceased its flow from the tap. Welcome to our camp, the only place where you learn valuable skills that will give you confidence in any situation. This week will turn you into an unstoppable post-apocalyptic team. We band together in teams of 6 including one of our instructors. Morning consist of lectures and tool-making. Our afternoons simulate life in an urban tribe and our evenings are spent around a post-apocalyptic campfire telling stories of the day while discussing the intricacies and opportunities of collapse. Work through your fears and learn to see the future as a blessing rather than a disaster. You’ll finish this week feeling like our post-apocalyptic paradise is more desirable than the modern American age of alienation and technological excess.

Instructors: Urban Scout, Various

Date: TBA

Cost: $695

Apocalypse Camp Curriculum

We take one week and pack it with intensity and fun. We will cover the basics of survival in a way that will apply to either wilderness or an urban setting. Our focus will be on urban survival but you will learn how to alter the skills for the wilderness setting.

• Hazards

There are many hazards in the urban habitat. From toxic chemicals in plants and water to diseased and parasitic animals, the city has many ways of killing the unknowing survivalist. Through each skill we cover we will first start with the hazards involved. This gives you a feeling of safety in the knowledge of how to avoid, handle or work through each skill without getting hurt or worse. Safety first!

• Shelter

Without proper shelter our lives can be quickly taken by the elements. We will utilize modern and natural structures to use as shelters as well as build shelters with natural and modern materials. But shelter is more than just a place to sleep and stay away from the elements. Everything needs a shelter, a vessel. We will make baskets to shelter the tools we make and the food we gather. We will make bowls to shelter our water and food when we eat.

• Water

Water is the most basic element of life. We often take it for granted that we can just turn on the tap and have water that is drinkable. But when disaster strikes, water may be hard to come by. We will go through the process of cleaning water in order to make it drinkable, but also how to maximize your hydration and replenish you with nutrients and minerals.

• Fire

Fire is not just a pleasant comfort. It purifies our water, sanitizes our food, keeps us alive through the coldest times, and gives us peace of mind in the darkest nights. At our camp you’ll learn the basics of friction fire using the bow-drill and hand-drill methods. You’ll also learn about tending fire.

• Food

While food may not be the first item on the survival shopping list, it is definitely something we can’t live without. Throughout the week we will forage for seasonal wild food (supplemented with store bought food) including fresh greens and fruits. We will also scavenge roadkill.

• Tools

Industrial tools will be around for a long time, but with scarce energy to fuel these “power tools” we will have to learn to create our own tools and learn to use ancient methods. Stone and bone are fairly easy to work, it just takes a long time to sand, scrape, score, snap, smash and grind. At our camp we will build a basic “primitive” tool kit consisting of the bone and stone essentials.

• Teamwork

Hoarders go home! The last thing we need in a crisis is a hoarder or a psycho on a power trip. It also becomes increasingly difficult to survive alone than with a group of well-organized people. Thus, we must learn the art of teamwork in order to create that unstoppable post-apocalyptic tribe.

• Collapse Theory

Climate Change, Peak Oil, Economic Collapse, Ecological Dieoff, Population Growth, and Nuclear Fallout. These are just a few of the items we will discuss in depth over our evening campfires as we sit around and work on the hand crafts that we’ve learned earlier in the day. What are the biggest dangers we are facing? What is more realistic and what has been over-blown? How can we prepare ourselves for these things?

Continuing Your Education Beyond the Class

This week will be intense and fast-paced. If you don’t finish a project in the time we have allotted, you may not finish it during the week as we move on from topic to topic rather quickly. This is not a problem for our students. We run a weekly skill-share in Portland every Saturday called Rewild Camp where you may continue your education for free on the parts that you missed out on. So not only will you have a priceless experience, your investment in learning these skills will pay forward after the class has ended, helping you continue to build fluency in these skills.

The Buddy System

We offer a discount for anyone who has a friend sign up with them. A single student’s tuition is $625 but students who have their friends sign up with them both only pay $500 per person. This encourages part of our curriculum which we call “learning buddies”, which insures that after the class, you’ll have a friend who shared the experience with you and will continue to work on the skills with you after the class has ended.

Escape From Portland!

Portland was once a thriving city, known for it’s sustainability, open-mindedness and rich creativity. That was then. This, is now. Disaster has struck. It happened over night. We don’t even quite understand what happened. No one does. There is too much chaos and misinformation. With no electronics working, it’s hard to tell what’s true and what isn’t. All we know is that we need to get to the woods as soon as humanly possible. There is just one problem: we have to make it out of the city first. Through marauding gangs of crazed civilians, power-hungry military road blocks, an under-trained police force, paranoid stock-pilers, and who knows what else. This class is an educational adventure simulation where we start in downtown Portland and hoof it through the suburbs and into the foothills of the cascades, ending our evacuation run at the amazing and refurbished Bagby Hot Springs. Part education, part entertainment, part experience, this “class” is not for the faint of heart or the newbie hiker. This is an emotionally intense and physically demanding adventure. You have been warned.

Prerequisite: Watch the movie Survival Quest.

DATES: TBA

COST: $695

Conquest of the Longbow

Join Robin Hood’s band of merry men and women in their battle against tyranny; stealing from the wealthy elite of Nottingham and giving to the marginalized slave-class. This week will focus solely on archery, making quickie bows and arrows, wilderness and urban stealth, lock-picking, camouflage, disguises, improvisational story-telling and military tactics through fun and ridiculous simulations such as: sneak into Nottingham castle, escape from the gallows, evade the sheriffs men, win the archery competition and assassinate the sheriff of Nottingham. This class is meant for entertainment purposes only.

Instructors: Robin Hood himself, various