Green University®LLC Instructors
Thomas J. Elpel, Founder/Director
Thomas J. Elpel is the founder of Green University® LLC and Hollowtop Outdoor Primitive School, LLC, as well as HOPS Press, LLC and the Jefferson River Canoe Trail. He has authored six books and produced five 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, but 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. Hollowtop Outdoor Primitive School, LLC is presently 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.
Katie Russell, Instructor
Katie Russell is a professional Wilderbabe who brings her unique brand of enthusiasm to Green University® LLC. Her focus is in how to mesh the beauty and connectedness of the ancient skills with the necessities and possibilities of life in the modern world. Katie seeks a lifeway that encourages her wild spirit to grow while doing positive work to help others enjoy the same. She is particularly interested in sharing primitive skills with children.
Katie considers herself mainly a hide tanner, and loves the alchemy of transforming a stinky wet mass of skin and hair into the most luscious material for clothes-making imaginable. While dead animals and their bits are her first love, she also enjoys harvesting wild edibles, exploring pottery, and using her hands to make beautiful things.
Katie has been appreciating nature since she was a little girl in rural upstate New York, roaming the woods and fields, misidentifying plants, and skinning squirrels with her brother. While at college pursuing a B.A. in Sociology, Katie was desperately seeking expression for the dissatisfaction she felt for the disaffected, disconnected, disinterested society around her. With a friend, she built a yurt and lived in a wonderous meadow outside of town for her senior year of college. Among other things, Katie learned a sense of the unlimited possibilities of her hands and her heart.
With a fortuitous move to Washington State to live near her brother, Katie fell into a series of classes with Lynx Vilden at Four Seasons Prehistoric Projects. Here she embarked on a six-month intensive preparation period, followed by a month-long immersion trip using all Stone Age technologies and eating wild foods. This experience exposed her to plethora of primitive skills, and also gave her something to believe in: that the roots of our human happiness grow through real connection with the natural world.
Since then, Katie has led wilderness expeditions for troubled teens, tanned oodles of hides, worked on organic farms, gotten into food preservation and canning, helped Lynx with classes, held kids skills camps, homesteaded, and bought a horse. Katie hopes to share her experiences and create new ones as part of Green University® LLC.
Kris Reed, Instructor
Kris Reed arrived at Green University® LLC as an intern in March of 2006, a few months before his nineteenth birthday. He joined Tom and friends for a recreational walkabout In Search of Spring, but they were all a little too early for it. Kris came with a passion for primitive skills, which quickly spread to an equal interest in botany, house-building, and consciousness. Kris has made G.U. his part-time home ever since, coming and going periodically each year.
Kris assisted with nearly every step of the construction of the original Green University® LLC intern house from building the stone walls to putting the roof on, plumbing and wiring the inside and plastering the walls. Frankly, the house never would have been completed if Kris hadn't taken a personal interest in seeing it done.
Kris is a primary instructor through our Hollowtop Outdoor Primitive School, LLC primitive skills programs for public schools. He assisted with the Classroom in the Woods DVD and co-hosted Volume 4 in the Art of Nothing Wilderness Survival Video Series, Canoe Camping: on a song and a paddle. Kris also helped create the card games that go with Shanleya's Quest: A Botany Adventure for Kids Ages 9 to 99, and he collaborated with Tom through much of the writing of Roadmap to Reality.
More than anything, Kris is a friend and part of the Elpel clan, journeying together on wilderness survival adventures or car camping with the family. Kris even took Tom's son Donny on an extended canoe trip down the Colorado River from the Hoover Dam to Yuma, Arizona.
Kris has a quiet and unassuming grace. As an instructor he doesn't present himself as teacher and possessor-of-knowledge, but rather as a friend sharing knowledge, or as a mentor facilitating the exploration and discovery of new ideas.
Tom,
I have read some of your book, Primitive Living, Self-Sufficiency, and Survival Skills. As I started it, I felt angry because it conflicted with some of my beliefs and values. After a bit of digestion, talk, and thought I became grateful. Your views helped expand my perspective and enhance my understanding of life.
You seem to be developing most of your beliefs outside of labels, i.e. environmentalist, conservative, liberal. I feel excited because I want there to be more understanding and peace. I think that comes from people connecting with themselves and coming to their own understanding, instead of having beliefs aligned with a certain label. My views are constantly changing and your views have already helped me understand more. Thank You.
Chad
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