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wfranck@mindspring.com
Link to Tom Brown's
Tracker School in
southern New Jersey
An Apache, known as Stalking Wolf, was
born in the American Southwest around 1875. Stalking Wolf's parents
and grandparents were killed during the violence that swept that region
during the latter part of the century. From that time on, he
was raised by his great-grandfather Coyote Thunder, among a small group
who evaded capture and thus never lived on a reservation. This small
clan lived a traditional life in the wild places, remaining close to nature
and the things of the spirit.
From an early age, Stalking
Wolf grew in the ways and knowledge of things of the spirit, and was given
guidance by the elders and people of his clan. Early in his life,
he received 
a vision leading him into the life of
the Apache Scout and Shaman. Part of this same vision directed him
to spend 60 winters wandering and learning, simplifying, and passing on
the old ways of nature and spirit. This is what he did as he wandered
North and South America for the next 60 years. At the end of that
time, he traveled to the coast of New Jersey where he began to teach these
skills to his grandson, Rick, and to Rick's friend, Tom Brown.
For the next 10 years, Tom
and Rick were taught by Stalking Wolf, whom they called Grandfather. A
vast range of physical survival skills and awareness skills were covered
in great depth. In all of the skills and lessons that were taught
during those years, Grandfather always stressed the things of the spirit
as being of greatest importance.
At the end of the high school
years, Rick and his family moved overseas. Grandfather, then about
93, went back to the Southwest. And, soon thereafter, Tom set out
to wander both North and South America for ten years, testing out the many
things he had learned from Grandfather,
learning from elders and tracking lost people and fugitives. At the
end of this period, his first book, The Tracker, was published in
1978. It was also at this time that he began teaching. He still
teaches today at his Tracker School in the vast Pine Barrens wilderness
of southern New Jersey.
The classes taught at Tom
Brown's Tracker School preserve the powerful simplicity of Stalking Wolf's
philosophy.
".... The accumulation of knowledge
is not wisdom -
only experience turns knowledge into wisdom...."
Grandfather - 1961
________________* Art credit - 1978 Readers Digest
