Last updated on 11/29/08









Custom Courses and Professional Grade Courses
 

Welcome to our Custom Courses page.  These courses are represented in two separate groups of classes.  The first group of classes is our regular class curriculum offered privately, Monday thru Friday, year-round.  The other group of classes consists of our Professional Grade classes which are different from all of our other classes and reflect the special needs of our military, law enforcement, government and outdoor professional clients.  Sorry, NO WEEKENDS.

Custom Courses

We are offer a limited number of Custom Courses during weekdays only
(that's Monday thru Friday, sorry NO WEEKENDS)
You can now enjoy our end of the year discount price $100
per person per day.  Good only til New Years Eve '08!

You pick your class, together we will schedule the date, and then we run the class at our camp for you as a One-on-One Custom Course or as a Custom Course Class for your small group.  Tim MacWelch personally runs each of these courses at Earth Connection's camp near Fredericksburg, Virginia. 

One day classes available this season are regularly $150 for a one person, One-on-One class.  $100 per person for 2 or more people in the same class.  But you can now enjoy our end of the year discount price $100 per person per day. These one day courses will run from 9am to 4pm and includes ONE of the following classes selections -

Friction Fire Making - Fall Wild Edible Plants - Tracks and Sign - Basketry - Friction Fire Materials Identification - Nature Observation - Primitive Trapping - Or your own custom class!


Two days with overnight campout this season are regularly $300 for a one person private One-on-One class,  $250 per person for 2 or more people in the same class.  But you can now enjoy our end of the year discount price $100 per person per day.  These classes run from 9am on the first day to 4pm on the second day and include ONE of the following classes
Wilderness Survival - Primitive Skills (condensed 2 day version)
 
Teens WITH a parent may be accepted for Custom Courses, call or write for more info.

 

Scheduling a One-on-One Custom Course with Earth Connection

First - call or email for availability.  To schedule a private class, we will contact each other on a Thursday evening or any time Friday to plan for the following week.  We are only able to schedule one week ahead for One-on-One Private Class due to work schedules and childcare on our end.  We hope this causes no inconvenience to you.  If there is enough time for the mail to run between the day we set our class date and the class itself, we will ask you to mail in an application form which can be printed from our web site along with a check for full payment of the class. If there isn't enough time to mail in the application and payment, we ask that you email us the info from the application ( who you are, where you live, phone #'s, etc.) bring the application form and payment of cash with you to the class.  We hope the cash payment is no trouble, as we have occasionally had checks bounce.  Directions and class info ( what to bring, what to expect, etc. ) are emailed or mailed to you upon confirmation of a class date.

 
Scheduling a Group Custom Course with Earth Connection
 
Private classes for TWO OR MORE PEOPLE can be scheduled on short notice or in advance.  Short notice works the same way as above, scheduling on Thursday or Friday for the following week.  Scheduling in advance works similarly, where we both pull out our calendars and see which dates are good for next month, next season, or whenever you choose.  Applications and payment should be sent by you after the date is agreed upon.  Directions and class info ( what to bring, what to expect, etc. ) are emailed and/or mailed to you upon our receipt of applications and tuition.

 

Earth Connection Professional Grade Courses

Earth Connection's new Professional Grade courses are now available, as of January 2008.  Enrollment is open to US Government, Military and Law Enforcement personnel.  These courses are also open to The Department of Defense; Game Wardens; Wildlife Management personnel; State and private Search and Rescue teams; Professional guides and outfitters; High risk government and civilian employees; Instructors and staff for outdoor intervention programs... just to name a few.  Our courses are a great value to anyone who could benefit from life saving outdoor skills during the course of their work in the field.  These Professional Grade Courses offer much of the smart, realistic survival curriculum that our regular public courses offer - with a unique tactical edge all their own.  Courses are taught primarily by Tim MacWelch, along with select Earth Connection staff like Rick "Hue" Hueston.  Tim founded and still operates Earth Connection, which is now in it's twelfth year of continuously teaching outdoor survival skills to the public.  Tim is in his twenty-second year of study and practice in modern and primitive survival.  Hue is a retired US Army military intelligence officer who has taught tactical and operational skills at Fort Huachuca, Arizona and continues to work in the intelligence community supporting Operation Enduring Freedom.

Courses can be held at our woodland campsite location just minutes north of Quantico, Virginia - or at your own training site or facility in Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina or Maryland.  The hands-on coaching style of each course ensures that each student gets all of the attention and custom training that they deserve.  If you are interested in seeing our regularly scheduled public courses that are open to all enrollment, please go to the Earth Connection Course Description page.  For our Professional Grade Courses, please continue down this page.

Earth Connection would like to take this opportunity to thank the men and women of our Military, Government and Law Enforcement for your service to our country and our citizens.  We hope you will consider allowing us to serve you by training your personnel with strategies to stay safe.

 

Earth Connection's mission is to provide you with high quality class content; reasonable and realistic survival strategies; & a valuable and memorable learning experience.  "Don't survive harder... Survive Smarter!" Tim MacWelch

Earth Connection classes are a refreshing experience in reality, in a country full of Hollywood shock value survival and mystical, cultish nonsense.

 

Tim MacWelch doing what he does best,
    teaching friction fire making skills.


Why Use Earth Connection Professional Grade Courses?

Earth Connection's courses provide the following valuable benefits to our patrons:
  • Earth Connection is a small, streamlined business with the ability to provide priceless, lifesaving skills at prices well below our competition.
     
  • The courses can be scheduled at your convenience, Mondays thru Fridays, year round.
     
  • Our curriculum is compartmentalized, to allow our patrons to select and combine the subjects that suit their needs.  The One Day and Two Day long courses may be run consecutively, to allow multi-day training periods.  Two Day long courses have an overnight camping option, to allow real practice of the skills taught in that course.
     
  • Even if our students have received extensive survival training, Earth Connection's innovative survival techniques will provide them with additional new survival strategies.  These new skills will give our patrons even more tactics to come back from operations alive and in one piece.
     
  • All of our courses provide patrons with a written manual on the skills covered in that course, so that everyone has consistent information to study during the course and to review afterward.
     
  • Earth Connection's curriculum is designed to introduce survival strategies or build on previous Survival-Evasion-Resistance-Escape (SERE) training to prepare military aircrew, high-risk of capture DoD personnel both military and government civilian, law enforcement personnel, search and rescue teams, professional wilderness guides, instructors for outdoor intervention programs, and anyone else to survive under any conditions.  We teach simple and effective principles, techniques and procedures necessary to survive worldwide.  Best of all, you don't have to take a pretest, pass a physical or jump out of a plane; you only have to be reasonably fit and have an eager mind.
     

 


The 2008 Curriculum

Our Modern Survival Strategies courses teach the skills of Shelter, Water, Fire, Food and Tools using modern materials and techniques.  These very practical skills and concepts can be performed by anyone and provide a lifesaving system of strategies that only require a few pieces of gear.

Our Primitive Survival Strategies courses provide the ultimate back-up survival system with no gear, or just a knife.  Shelter, Water, Fire, Food and Tools are obtained directly from the environment, with just one's knowledge and bare hands.  These skills are not as easy as the Modern Survival curriculum, but they allow one to literally start with nothing and survive in a variety of weather and terrain.

Other skills that we teach include Plant foods, Animal foods, a Friction Fire intensive and a Camouflage course.  Please read the descriptions below for more details.

Modern Survival Strategies - One Day

Course Length - 9am to 5pm
Course Cost - $150 per person

The Modern Survival Strategies - One Day course uses modern outdoor survival techniques as the system of self sufficiency and preparedness using the latest modern gear and techniques along with the best historic outdoor skills.  Students of this course will learn the Priorities of Survival; What to put in survival kits; How to build tarp shelters and hammocks with a variety of materials; How to collect and purify water with several modern methods; The basics of making fire with Matches, Lighters and Flint & steel; How to build a smokeless fire; How to sharpen knives with a stone; Knots; and How to make string from indigenous plant material.  We recommend this course for all outdoor conditions.
 

Modern Survival Strategies - Two Day

Course Length - 9am to 5pm each day

Students also may opt for overnight camping on our site between the two days of this course for survival practice and skills implementation - this is optional

Course Cost - $250 per person, $300 per person with overnight option

The Modern Survival Strategies - Two Day course is designed to instruct students in a wide variety of year-round life saving wilderness survival skills.  This is a more in depth version of our One Day course using the latest modern gear and the best historic outdoor skills.  Students of this course will learn the Priorities of Survival; How to avoid getting lost; How to signal for rescue; What to put in survival kits; How to build tarp shelters and hammocks with a variety of materials; Collecting and purifying water with several modern methods; The basics of making and utilizing fire with Matches, Lighters, Flint & steel, Batteries, Magnifying lens, How to waterproof your matches and tinder; How to build a smokeless fire.  Food gathering instruction will include Survival fishing with only a few pieces of modern tackle. How to sharpen a knife with a stone, Knots and String making from indigenous plant material will also be covered.  We recommend this course for a complete set of Wilderness Survival Strategies.
 

Primitive Survival Strategies - One Day

Course Length - 9am to 5pm
Course Cost - $150 per person

The Primitive Survival Strategies - One Day course teaches valuable wilderness survival skills using the stone age technologies that were common to of all of our ancestors.  Students will learn How to build a camouflaged leaf hut shelter, without tools or cord; How to collect and prepare tinder and kindling; How to do friction fire making with the bow drill; How to build a smokeless fire; Primitive tool making; Primitive water gathering and purification; Primitive cooking, food preservation and storage; and How to make plant and tree bark string.  This course is designed to provide skills for living primitively in the wilderness. This curriculum has long been a student and staff favorite.
 

Primitive Survival Strategies - Two Day

Course Length - 9am to 5pm each day

Students also may opt for overnight camping on our site between the two days of this course for survival practice and skills implementation - this is optional

Course Cost - $250 per person, $300 per person with overnight option

The Primitive Survival Strategies - Two Day course teaches a complete system survival skills using only stone age technologies.  Students will learn How to build a camouflaged leaf hut shelter, without tools or cord; How to collect and prepare tinder and kindling; How to do friction fire making with the bow drill; How to build a smokeless fire; Primitive tool making; Primitive water gathering and purification; How to make a rabbit hunting stick; How to skin, clean and cook small game (typically squirrel); Primitive cooking, food preservation and storage; Plant and tree bark string; and Burning out wooden bowls and vessels to purify water.  Food gathering instruction will include Primitive fishing with hand made string and thorn hooks.  This course is a complete system of survival strategies designed to provide skills for living primitively in the wilderness. This curriculum has long been a student and staff favorite.
 

Wild Edible Plants of North America - One Day

Course Length - 9am to 5pm
Course Cost - $150 per person

This Wild Edible Plants course will focus on the different plants and plant uses of each season, coast to coast.  The course is a guided examination of different habitats - identifying, collecting and frequent sampling wild plant foods, and pointing out harmful plants to avoid.  The course will cover approximately 40 plants, shrubs and trees, depending on the season in which the course is scheduled.  We will cover proper identification and use of these plants, whether plants are native or introduced, when and where to safely collect plants, and which plants will be found elsewhere in the world.  Each student gets an Earth Connection plant handout with full color photos and written plant information.
 

Friction Fire And Concealed Fire Use - One Day

Course Length - 9am to 5pm
Course Cost - $150 per person

Few things are as valuable in the wild as fire.  And few things give away a person's position like fire.  This course is designed to provide for the need of fire and the need to conceal it.  Our Friction Fire And Concealed Fire Use course will teach the skills of making fire with wood friction using the Bow Drill, Hand Drill and Fire plow methods of friction fire making.  Fire safety, tinder, fire wood selection, and setting up a primitive fireplace will be covered in addition to some of the physics of friction fire making.  Proper construction, materials and use of the fire making equipment will be emphasized during the course.  Students will construct fire making sets which will be theirs to keep from a variety of materials provided by us.  The concealed fire use portion of the curriculum will include techniques for creating a smokeless fire during the day, and a lightless fire at night.  The concealed use information will also include tricks for boiling water to purify it, and survival cooking.

Our Friction Fire course teaches the Hand Drill and Fire Plow friction fire making methods because they are the easiest fire kits to make, with wide use through prehistory and world cultures.  The Bow Drill method is also taught in this course because it is the easiest method for beginners to make friction fire, and the most likely to work under any conditions.
 

Primitive Trapping And Fishing Strategies - One Day

Course Length - 9am to 5pm
Course Cost - $150 per person

Earth Connection�s Primitive Trapping And Fishing Strategies course will teach you how to construct simple and complex traps to secure wild animals for food. Trapping is typically the most efficient way to gather high calorie food in a survival situation - as traps conserve your energy and hunt for you while you work on other survival tasks, or even while you are asleep.  Students will learn the basic principles behind traps and how to construct them focusing on the deadfalls and snares including the figure-four, Paiute deadfall, wire snare, and their variations. In addition, more complicated trapping methods using kinetic engines will be demonstrated including many variations of the toggle stick and spring pole traps.  We will cover sign tracking as it applies to trap location, baiting and trap camouflage. We will also create simple fish traps, and demonstrate how to catch fish with a thorn for a fishhook. We also demonstrate non-lethal trapping techniques to allow you to legally test your skill for practice.

This class will cover a wide variety of trap styles from the snare and dead fall groups.  Learn the tricks of natives from all over the world to satisfy the need for meat.  Several traps will be unique to our curriculum, and not found anywhere else.  Concealment of traps and fishing equipment will also be covered to help prevent the student from giving away their position.
 

Native Camouflage Strategies - One Day

Course Length - 9am to 5pm
Course Cost - $150 per person

Our Native Camouflage Strategies - One Day course will teach the remarkably effective techniques in camouflage used by Native peoples all over the world.  Mud, clay, charcoal and other natural materials are used as color and texture for concealment of personnel and gear. These extremely versatile materials provide a unique camouflage system allowing the user to match their surroundings from elements gathered in those surroundings.  Campsite concealment and concealed movement will also be components of this course.

 

 

Scheduling A Professional Grade Course With Earth Connection

Please call or email first to discuss your agency's needs and preferred dates to run courses.  The courses booked on a first come - first served basis.  The days available are Monday thru Friday, sorry no weekends.  You pick your course or courses, then together we will schedule the primary date and a back up date.  Once the date and a back up are scheduled, submit an application form and tuition, and then we run the course for your group.

Applications and tuition should be sent by you after the date is agreed upon, and must be received by us at least 7 days before the first date of scheduled courses.  Directions and class info ( what to bring, what to expect, etc. ) are emailed and/or mailed to you upon our agreement of course dates.  Confirmation will be sent to you upon our receipt of applications and tuition.

PLEASE USE THIS REGISTRATION INFORMATION AND APPLICATION AS IT IS TAILORED TO THESE CLASSES

Go to PROFESSIONAL GRADE APPLICATION FORM

Please let us know if we can provide any further information.
Thank you for your interest,

Tim at Earth Connection

Contact Information

Telephone - 540-270-2531
Postal address - PO Box 32 Somerville VA 22739
Email - econnect@earth-connection.com

 

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This site was last updated 11/29/08