Recap: 9 Days of Training

I’m finally home from our big annual East Coast Training Week. This one was longer than normal, because NC Scout and I started with a weekend at Mountain Readiness. While there, I taught a Land Navigation Basics course and Scout taught Driving Under Night Vision, using his truck that has IR headlights. Mountain Readiness is a great event bringing together homesteaders, bushcrafters, and preppers for a great weekend of community building and training. We are bringing the event to Camp Ponderosa July 24-26, 2026 in Bigfork, Montana.

Praise be to the Lord my Rock,
    who trains my hands for war,
    my fingers for battle.

Psalm 144:1

The actual training week kicked off with my Fieldcraft Course. While Brushbeater’s Scout course teaches you to conduct small unit tactics, Fieldcraft teaches you individual light infantry skills. Student learn to move quiet and undetected both indvidually and as a team. They learn how to select, occupy, and set up a secure campsite. They learn how to mitigate thermal detection and how to set up tarp shelters in seconds. Most importantly, they learn to navigate with a map and compass in the day and night. The skills learned in Fieldcraft will help you in the Scout and Recce Courses.

Scout and Recce followed, where students learn to execute patrols, move as a team, ambush and react to being ambushed, as well as how to conduct a squad attack. Students get trigger time with night optics, thermals, radios, and digital communications. The course is live-fire with blanks, using your own equipment. There is a lot to be said for training to fight against armed opponents using your own gear. The noise and confusion of battle help prepare you for a real world engagement.

More important than the course content, each day the students shared meals and spent time getting to know each other. We held movie nights and informal side trainings (including a very detailed tactical medical course with Doc Teddy). Relationships were built. I cannot stress enough – meet your online friends in real life. Share meals and talk.

The students in all the classes got to learn how thermal drones work and got to see how easy it is to defeat thermals both from the ground and from the air. It dispelled a lot of fear and “Eye of Sauron” propaganda.

One morning, before class, a student asked Matt (NC Scout) and I about Venezuela. We should have set up a video camera, because we then launched into an hour-long live Radio Contra-like discussion and intel update on the Carribean situation, including the order of battle on both sides. I even drew a fairly accurate color-coded map (better than a CFC map segment, I might add). Matt, suspiciously, drew an accurate and to-scale map of Havana Airport and the Cuban Intelligence School.

I always return from these refreshed and recharged to get after it and up my game. I cherish the people I’ve met at these events, several of which I consider true brothers (and sisters). This is why everyone needs to try and make it to events to spend time together.

I’ve added a few courses to my schedule for this winter, including winter survival classes and a winter variant of Fieldcraft, covering winter variations in movement, camouflage, concealment, and shelter.

Train like you life depends on it, because it does. There are people who would rather see you dead than compromise with you.

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