"Nature exists as little more than wallpaper in most people's lives. In the modern world we are surrounded by pretty green foliage with a few flowers for splashes of color, plus birds chirping pleasantly nearby and manicured ponds with ducks looking for breadcrumbs. It is all very quaint, but who really pays much attention to wallpaper?
"At best, we are sometimes so taken with the scene of a rainbow after a storm or a butterfly visiting a flower that we pause for a moment to admire the walls of our world, but that is about as far as it goes. Some inspired individuals appreciate the scenery enough to seek out narrow wilderness paths where they can get a completely unobstructed view of the walls. But very few people ever make it beyond the paper."
--Thomas J. Elpel
Nature as Wallpaper
Green University®LLC Instructors
Thomas J. Elpel, Founder/Director
Thomas J. Elpel is the founder of Green University® LLC and Outdoor Wilderness Living School, LLC (OWLS), as well as HOPS Press, LLC and the Jefferson River Canoe Trail. He has authored nine books and produced seven videos on topics ranging from wilderness survival and botany to stone masonry, sustainable construction, and green economics.
As a child, Tom was mentored by his grandmother, Josie Jewett. Together they explored the hills and meadows near Virginia City, Montana, collecting herbs, looking for arrowheads and watching wildlife. Grandma Josie helped Tom to learn about native plants and their uses, igniting a passion for nature that has inspired him ever since. She also sparked his interest in survival skills.
Tom's first serious exposure to wilderness survival skills began at the age of 16, when he went on a 26-day, 250-mile walkabout in the desert canyons of southern Utah with Boulder Outdoor Survival School. The following year he and Grandma Josie went together to Tom Brown's Tracker School in New Jersey. From there Tom spent thousands of hours practicing, developing, and teaching survival skills in his "backyard" in the Rocky Mountains. These experiences led to writing his book Participating in Nature: Wilderness Survival and Primitive Living Skills, which is currently in its sixth edition. Tom has also produced four DVDs in his Art of Nothing Wilderness Survival Video Series.
Tom's basic philosophy is that wilderness survival skills are useful to connect with nature, yet you shouldn't run away from the problems of modern society. Instead, we need to apply the lessons of living close to nature to the challenge of solving our worldly problems. Outdoor Wilderness Living School, LLC is dedicated to providing Stone Age living skills classes and camping trips to public school groups. Tom launched Green University® LLC in 2004 to expand the curriculum from teaching merely primitive skills outward towards addressing issues of global sustainability.
In 2019 Tom enlisted former Green University students and led a "Missouri River Corps of Rediscovery" down the 2,341-mile Missouri River, as told in his award-winning book Five Months on the Missouri River: Paddling a Dugout Canoe
Shelby Kolar
Shelby Kolar of Earth Heart Herbal is a clinical herbalist and forager who is passionate about facilitating connection between people and the plants, animals, and land around them. She is a lifelong lover of nature and is passionate about and deeply committed to rewilding, personal freedom, sustainability, simple living, conservation, and heartfelt Nature connection through ancestral Earth skills.
Shelby oversees and facilitates the tending and harvest of the living beings at River Camp -- the animals and permaculture garden. She also teaches the practice of herbalism for healing and maintaining wellness and connection.
Shelby's introduction to herbal medicine began in childhood. Her mother had an interest in natural health passed down from her Abuelita. Growing up it was something Shelby took for granted, and instead was more interested in animals, spending time outdoors, and conservation. In her early teen years she came to understand how they were interconnected. Self-reliance, connection with Earth and to Spirit, conservation and sustainable living, impact on the animals and ecosystems all has something to do with herbalism and our food and lifestyle choices. Her interest in bridging the plant world with the people world grew from there.
Shelby received her herbalist training from Eclectic School of Herbal Medicine in North Carolina, where she attended a year-long intensive immersion program. She graduated in 2018 and apprenticed with herbalist Matthew Wood for six months in Wisconsin after that, then moved to California for two years where she continued to expand her knowledge of herbalism, foraging, and other skills with many different teachers and friends while living nomadically in a van. She arrived at River Camp in fall of 2020, where she continued to grow her skills in plant identification, as well as animal processing and hide tanning.
In addition to tending and teaching, Shelby particularly enjoys animal processing and the crafts of traditional hide tanning, spinning wool, crochet, and other crafting with natural and recycled materials.
Raye Schmalstig
Raye found her love of nature growing up in her father's childhood home in rural Wisconsin, where she climbed trees planted by her grandfather. This early connection with nature and history grew deeper roots when she read My Side of the Mountain in fifth grade. Raye was inspired by the story of primitive skills and living off the land, and from then on, she knew it was her destiny to live feral and free.
Attending Green University as an immersion student propelled Raye into the world of primitive skills. She gained confidence living outdoors among her tribe and dove deep into the arts of hide tanning, animal processing, sustainability, simple living, and community connection. Since then she has expanded upon her skills in many arenas -- working as a meat cutter and tree trimmer before discovering a love for wilderness therapy. As a Wilderness Therapy Guide, Raye took groups of at-risk youth into the desert wilderness for up to two weeks at a time. She acted as a mentor and taught primitive skills.
Raye loves the confidence and sense of freedom animal processing and hide tanning inspires in people. Raye hopes all students leave with a deeper connection to the skills and a deeper connection to nature, community, and self.
Sam Smith
Sam Smith is an adventurer, primitive skills enthusiast and modern survivalist. He prefers sleeping on the ground and would choose sleeping outside over being in a house any day. He has a passion for primitive skills and modern survival, knife making, backpacking, canoeing, fishing, and conservation.
A week-long canoe trip when Sam as a teenager sparked his interest in wilderness skills. It was there he got his first experience sleeping with a wool blanket on the ground. Sam later took up backpacking as a hobby for healing and growth, exploring the southern Appalachians in North Georgia, South Carolina, and Tennessee. This led to a rabbit hole of studying books and practicing skills related to modern survival for emergency situations. His curiosity led him down a path of doing more with less, and he eventually found himself studying primitive skills and putting them to the test.
Sam took his studies to the next level by traveling around the country to gain survival experience in different environments. Sam ulimately found his way to Montana where he lived in the backcountry full time while building houses in town during the day. His path led him to Green University and a community of kindred spirits.
Barnes
Barnes grew up playing in the mud and building forts in the hardwood oak, hickory, beech, and maple forests of North Carolina. He earned an undergraduate degree in parks and recreation management at Western Carolina University, snuggled in the deep valleys and hollers of Cullowhee, North Carolina. Barnes earned college credits on school-related backpacking trips exploring the mountains of western North Carolina and Great Smoky Mountains National Park. He later walked the 2,168-mile Appalachian Trail, earning a semester's worth of credit towards a master's degree in Experiential Education through Mankato State, Minnesota.
Barnes has worked as an instructor for several at-risk youth programs, otherwise known as wilderness therapy, spending nearly 600 cumulative days on the trail with young people, teaching communication and life skills, wilderness living, and primitive skills. He has worked on commercial fishing boats in Alaska, living for months at a time on the Bering Sea. Barnes has a homestead and cabin far from town where he continues to develop and practice self-sufficiency skills with his best friend, Dixie dog. Check out his website at Montana Survival Seed
Council of Elders
Linda Welsh
Linda Welsh, Tom's partner, is co-founder of Sage Mountain Center an off-grid, ecologically built permaculture homestead. Over 32 years she has been exploring strawbale construction, cordwood masonry, passive solar design and how to grow and preserve food at 6,500 feet in Montana. A Registered Nurse certified in Hospice and Palliative Care, Linda's regional work in organizational development took her to hospices around the west and five cities in Montana. With an M.A. in Transformative Learning and Change, she is committed to the work of personal and social transformation informed by an earth-based lifestyle.
Linda's outdoor passions include gardening and backpacking. She hiked 600 miles of Te Araroa in New Zealand, the Camino de Santiago in Spain plus transected the backcountry across Glacier National Park in Montana, most recently completing a 300-mile section hike of the Arizona National Scenic Trail (AZT) with Tom and friends.
Linda brings a love of organizational excellence and permaculture knowhow to Green University. Above all, Linda is Green University's goodwill ambassador, bringing treats and tending to student needs.
Vanne Mocilac
Vanne grew up on a farm in Pennsylvania along Pine Creek, a tributary to the Susquehanna River. From her German/French/Welsh relatives she learned to hunt and fish, garden, keep and process livestock, preserve food, make soap, boil maple syrup, and maintain a sustainable homestead. After earning a degree in Biology Education, she moved to Montana and was captivated by magpies and blue skies. Five western states and multiple jobs later, Vanne came back to Montana to live along Big Pipestone Creek on the eastern side of the continental divide below Homestake Pass.
Here Vanne continues to hunt, fish, raise chickens, backpack, and learn new skills, such as growing Sweetgrass, brain tanning, planting orchards, renovating a root cellar, and perfecting herbal tallow balm recipes. Her sweetgrass braids are some of the most beautiful around. The past decade also kept her learning more about human relationships, health, and how to care for the little piece of land she calls home. Vanne has been a registered Practitioner of Ortho-Bionomy® since 2015, a Level 1 Internal Family Systems student, and a beginner Integrated Energy Therapy student. She is an elite thru-hiker in Montana and beyond, having hiked the 800-mile Arizona National Scenic Trail two and a half times in addition to almost completing 900 miles of the CDT in Montana.
What Vanne brings to G.U. is profound self-knowledge with many resources shared for how to evolve into our best, healthiest selves. She is a generous and tangible supporter of students and a great mentor for anyone interested in distance hikes, homesteading, and earth-based living.
Bruce Benedict
Bruce Benedict is a retired software engineer. He has been building and shooting flintlock guns for over fifty years and has been involved in living history activities relating to the mountain men for that same time. He has also been a student of the history of the Lewis and Clark Corps of Discovery. In college, he was an instructor of outdoor survival skills.
Bruce's outdoor interests include backpacking, canoeing, cross-country skiing, mountain man rendezvous, primitive shooting competition and camping. The most significant thing that Bruce brings to G.U. is knowledge of how to build and shoot flintlock guns as well as deep knowledge of the history of the fur trade in the western U.S..
Alanna Zrimsek
Alanna is an Artist and Writer, Community Activist, Good Listener and Social Networker. Artist skills include drawing, painting, design and printmaking.A Poet and Small Press Publisher, Alanna is a great children's storyteller, aka Mrs. Birdtales. An activist for affordable housing, equity of opportunity, sustainable living and planet earth, Alanna is a public speaker networker and community builder. Her background in business organization and management extends from small businesses ownership to Mortgage Banking Consulting to non-profit fundraising and donor development.
hat Alanna brings to G.U. is availability and interest in Loving Kindness Support for Students, Facilitators, Members and Friends of Green University. She offers open personal sharing and non-judgement problem solving with ideas freely given and accepted with full confidentiality and respect. Alanna is also available for hugs in person or virtually as needed.
Jen Justis
Jen Justis has a background in classroom education and now works as a certified life coach and parent educator. Her experience in the helping professions has led her to have a fascination with what it means to be human and in learning what conditions bring out the best in our nature. Jen imagines a world where humans live in better harmony with ourselves and the planet we inhabit. She's optimistic that our best qualities might yet lead us into a more enlightened future where our drives for curiosity, creativity, and meaningful contribution are nurtured and appreciated.
What Jen brings to GU is very practical guidance in the writing of core values so that leadership comes from the heart. She is also guiding our Set-the-Month process and Change-Up process with the goal of stellar communication throughout the organization and an established pathway for creative and energetic problem-solving based on sharing awarenesses, expressing needs, proposing and practicing solutions and reflecting on whether solutions worked!
Kareen Erbe
Kareen Erbe, owner of Broken Ground, is a garden design consultant and educator. For over a decade, she has helped people in cold climates grow their own food so they can eat healthier, live more sustainably, and become more self-reliant. Through consultations, design services, her signature Resilient Homestead Program, and her YouTube channel, she has helped thousands of people grow nutritious food for their families.
Kareen is certified in permaculture design, a whole-systems approach to land management and sustainable living. She is on the faculty of the Permaculture Women's Guild and the Green Path Herb School, as well as the lead instructor for the Permaculture Design Course at the Central Rocky Mountain Permaculture Institute.
She has been featured in The New Pioneer, the Self-Sufficient Podcast, Rocky Mountain Gardening Magazine, Distinctly Montana, and Edible Bozeman. Kareen and her husband live on a suburban homestead in Bozeman, Montana, with their dog Beni, a greenhouse, pond, vegetable gardens, a food forest of fruit trees and berry bushes, and a flock of chickens.
What Kareen brings to G.U. is continuing education in permaculture design and implementation through a yearly Charette and applied permaculture afterward at River Camp. Her mentorship of the Permaculture Facilitator at G.U. is sure to assist us in the practice of Permaculture design for the garden and grounds of G.U. as well as for student development at large.
Dear Tom,
My past year at Green University has been one of the most cherished years in my life, cultivating my empowerment in my relationships with nature and community in unexpected and deeply fulfilling ways. I am so grateful for your heart-centered vision of Green University and all that I have learned and experienced this past year, including a resonant sense of family with the eccentric, lovable River Camp tribe.
As you may recall, it was a dream of encountering a tiger family in the field of Green University that initially brought me here. With amazement, I have reflected that everything in that dream has come true, even the encounter with the tigers. It was after processing a sheep, when all the River Campers stalked out to the middle of the field, our faces painted freshly with blood, that I had the distinct and joyful reflection that this was my encounter with the tiger family - wild and vital! Green University has given me a rich foundation from which I have become confident in my capacities to nurture my own unique dreams and devotions of earth stewardship and community tending, a gift that I will carry with me throughout my life."
-- Li L.
Green University® LLC Trademark
