Join your instructor lakeside at a Forest Service campground to carve paddles the bushcraft way, canoe, and camp (optional) in the great North Woods. We will spend our days carving paddles in the tradtional way, using axes and crooked knives. Our evenings will be spent paddling birch bark canoes provided by the instructor, fishing, swimming, and gathering by the campfire. Our project will begin as a log that we split into rough blanks with ax and wedges, we will then hew our paddle blanks to shape with an ax, and finally carve them smooth with the nomads “crooked knife”. The course will end on the lake for a canoe tour and test of our new paddles. We will take time to walk the forest and identify trees useful for a variety of woodworking projects relevant to the bushcrafter and wilderness traveler, and learn how to select trees with proper grain characteristics for green wood working projects. The course will meet on campus on Day 1 and then set up camp in a nearby campground. Staying overnight with the group is optional.