Ann grew up in the Missoula valley camping alongside mountain, rivers, and lakes. She fell even deeper in love with the natural world while working as an instructor for Ravenwood Outdoor Learning Center in Whitefish, MT for six seasons. Her own curiosity for learning led her from there to the Santa Cruz, CA mountains where she began an even deeper dive into mentoring and learning many ancestral skills. In addition, She worked for The Buckeye Gathering for four years on the lead registration team. In 2014 she ended up in west Sonoma County where for four years she lived and studied with Weaving Earth: the Center for Relational Education. Over the course of her time in California, she was on the organizing team for five week-long Bird Language Intensives, and this is where her love for the birds and bird language really solidified. She moved back to Missoula in 2019 where she is now a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner (SEP), helping teens and adults rewire their nervous systems from accumulated stress and trauma one spontaneous breath at a time.

Kelly secretly grew vegetables as a teenager growing up in the shadow of the Wind River mountains. Herbal medicine caught her young-adult attention so she sought formal training with Michael Moore at the Southwest School of Botanical Medicine. Today, Kelly turns to plant allies first, preferring those that she can harvest in the wild or grow. She loves sharing knowledge and learns something from every student. She finds joy in anything that gets her out from under a roof and into wild places.

Jake has a bachelor’s Degree in Recreation management from BYUI where he developed his love for the outdoors and the peace it brings. This grew into a career when he started working for the Anasazi foundation in 2009. Since then he has worked as a professional desert guide teaching Ancestral living skills in a therapeutic setting to teens and Adults off and on for the last 10 years. Jake is an accomplished potter and basket maker.

You can see Jake on season 1 episode 6 of Discovery Chanel’s “Bushcraft Build-Off.”

Jake currently lives in Kanab, Utah with his wife and 3 children where he teaches classes in ancestral skills and works as a Canyoneering guide.

Joshua is a hide tanner, a tracker, a teacher, and a student of the natural world. He’s been tracking wildlife since he was a boy and has run a mountain lion study for over a decade using his skills to learn from these elusive animals. His love for traditional buckskin grew out of hunting and a desire to use more of the animal and honor their sacrifice. He has studied and taught this skill for almost 15 years.

Jon Johnston is a professional wildlife tracker, cinematographer, and naturalist with over ten years experience studying the tracks, signs and natural behaviors of North American wildlife. He is an extremely passionate and dedicated wildlife tracker, spending countless days in the field honing his skills and gaining new knowledge through observation. Through tracking, Jon strives to help facilitate a closer connection between people and the land and wildlife around them by sharing knowledge of how to recognize and interpret the subtle signs left in the woods that tell stories of wild creatures living out their lives.

Carrie grew up among four generations of women crafters and artists. Carrie’s grandmother and mom taught her how to sew, paint, and upcycle almost everything from a very young age. Carrie still uses the blankets and clothing handmade by her Irish and Scottish ancestors. Over the years, Carrie honed her passion for functional fiber arts, watercolor painting, wild crafting, weaving and connecting others with traditional crafting overall. Nature is her source of constant inspiration. She looks forward to sharing her creative endeavors with MFS.

Willis moved to Missoula from South Georgia in 2016. He grew up a wild child spending most of his time in the woods crawling among the critters and building shelters from earthen materials. These endeavors led to his passion for natural building techniques including cordwood masonry and straw-bale construction as well as his interests in natural animal hide processing techniques with a particular passion for sheep skin rug making. With so much experience working hides and creating traditional structures, Willis has many years of experience under his belt. He is excited to share his knowledge and skills. You might still hear his occasional Southern twang too.

Barnes has been formally practicing and learning primitive and ancestral skills since attending undergraduate college at Western Carolina University and graduate school at Mankato State University (Minnesota). He has also been teaching and inspiring students for almost as long because to be a teacher one must be a student and visa versa.

Past experience and teaching includes hiking the Appalachian Trail for graduate school credit, acquiring 600+ field days in 3 different wilderness therapy programs, teaching multiple ways of making fire, throwing atlatl, archery, simple stone tools, making a bison robe with zero chemicals, animal processing, making buckskin and buckskin clothing, among other skills.

Elena is a wildlife biologist, teaching naturalist, and tree hugger. Her favorite tree to hug is the ponderosa pine and her favorite bird to admire is the pygmy nuthatch. She has spent the past 24 years in Montana. She has worked as a wildlife field technician for the Forest Service and as an educator for various organizations teaching classes about birdwatching, plant identification, and gardening. She teaches Master Naturalist courses in the Bitterroot Valley and Glacier National Park and is the Garden Manager for the Montana Natural History Center.

Jason loves to spend his time away from educating Missoula's youth about food and farming exploring the mountains to fish, hunt, and look for mushrooms. He has a Master’s degree in Environmental Studies from the University of Montana with a focus on place-based education and sustainable agriculture, and believes the food we choose to eat at each meal is one the most important decisions we make each day.

Gary moved to Western Montana in 1976, following his dream to live in the wilds of the Rocky Mountains. He built a small cabin in the foothills of Mission Mountains, where he had more bears for neighbors than people, just the way he wanted it. There he was able to follow his dreams. He rode his horses thousands of miles in the Bob Marshall Wilderness and guided backpacking and sea kayaking adventures from Yellowstone to the Sea of Cortez. He rode his motorcycle throughout the back roads and blue highways from Canada to Nicaragua, he sailed the Caribbean with the 23 peaks expedition. He became a Whitewater kayak instructor and was an EMT on a volunteer ambulance Service in St Ignatius for 10 years. In 2013, Gary discovered how much he enjoyed teaching primitive skills. He then started the Gettin Primitive program where he focuses on primitive weapons and tools. Through Gettin Primitive, Gary has worked with Boy Scouts, university archaeology classes , elementary schools, and primitive skills gatherings. For the past eight years, he has been the mountain man in residence at the Paws Up guest ranch on the Blackfoot River. Since becoming aware of the Montana Folk School, Gary is excited to be part of their curriculum for the local people around Missoula.

Thomas J. Elpel is the director of Green University LLC near Whitehall, Montana, and the author of nine books, including Botany in a Day, Foraging the Mountain West, Participating in Nature, Green Prosperity, Roadmap to Reality, Living Homes, and Shanleya’s Quest I & II and Five Months on the Missouri River.

Estabon Fire lives in Oregon with his dog Augaknock and has been learning about and teaching pit fired pottery for fifty plus years. He regularly attends primitive skills gatherings, including Rabbitstick, Winter Count, Buckeye and Echos in Time.