About Our Mentors

Earth Mentorship Programs is part of a collective of experienced and highly educated naturalist and wilderness skills mentors. Chris Gilmour is the lead mentor for the magority of the programs we run. Other mentors from the collective are frequently brought in to teach and help with certain parts of workshops or when we have larger groups.

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Chris Gilmour

Founder of Earth Mentorship Programs and main mentor for most programs.

A Brief History of My Life:

I was born in Hamilton, Ontario and I was raised in the adjacent city of Burlington. I spent my childhood living a fairly typical suburban middle class life; BMX biking, skateboarding, little league, TV, boy scouts, playing guitar, and getting dirty in the small patches of “green” spaces Burlington had to offer. I was very fortunate to have a family that enjoyed going camping and traveling. My childhood was a happy one, but I always had this feeling inside me that the city just wasn’t the place for me. On more than one occasion while driving down to Florida I remember fantasizing about asking my parents to stop the car, then opening the door and running into the forest to live out my days like that little boy in “my side of the mountain”. Where did these thoughts come from? I’m not completely sure. I guess the ancient drum beats inside all of us. For me it was just a little louder than for other kids my age.

After High School I went away to college; Sir Sanford Fleming, School of Natural Resources. At that point in life I really had little idea of what I wanted to do with my life. I knew I liked music, the outdoors, and most people recommended that I go to college after high school. City life just didn’t make sense to me any longer. I originally started in an outdoor recreation program. My first year of college was a very confusing time for me with so many new ideologies in my head and no real focus in life. I spent a lot of time on my own that year, and a great deal of it hiking and exploring the local woods around Lindsay. Two thirds of the way through my first year I decided I wasn’t coming back and that I would save money that upcoming summer to go visit my cousin in the mountains of British Columbia. A mountain man, now that sounded more up my alley at the time.

I spent the summer working at the Royal Botanical Gardens, in Hamilton, ON. I loved this job. In the fall I bought a back pack and boarded a plane for Calgary Alberta, twenty years old at the time. With images of Jack Kerouac eating apple pie at truck stops, thumbing across the country with no destination, I planned on hitch hiking through the Rocky Mountains and right across British Columbia to the Ocean. This is exactly what I did. It became one of many exciting adventure to come. I was in my element, free as a bird, and finally in wild mans land, the mountains.

Living in BC was a very inspirational time in my life. I lived alone in a number of different cabins, a few without electricity, and a wood stove to keep me warm. I spent days by myself hiking the mountain side, reading books, and playing guitar under the stars. During that time I did a number of odd contract jobs; trail building for the forestry and parks service, a number of light construction jobs, and working with a local non-profit youth group called Earth Matters. While working for Earth Matters I led a small youth work group for a summer through various community projects. This was my first conscious experience as a mentor and a very influential time in my life. When ever I got the calling and was in between jobs, I’d pack my backpack and hit the road on another adventure.

My travels over the next few years took me to many places; Two months backpacking around the beaches and jungles of Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize, out to eastern Canada, where I volunteered on a number of farms and tracked moose up in Cape Breton, back to college to complete a diploma as a Forestry Technician, and several trips back to the west coast including trips to: Oregon, Washington, and the northern mountains of California, and sea kayaking in BC’s Haida Gawii and telegraph cove. During this time period I developed a strong affinity with the plant and tree families of the world and worked a number of jobs in tree nurseries, green houses, outdoor landscaping and garden design companies, organic farms, and completed an internship on a organic “permaculture” farm on Salt Spring Island.

While farming on Salt Spring Island, I lived in a secluded cabin with no electricity and a wood stove back in the beautiful coastal woods. This was a revolutionary experience for me in many ways. Along with the incredible feeling of growing the majority of my own food, learning the value and satisfaction of putting in a hard days work at something I felt really good about doing, I finally slowed down a little bit when I was out in the forest. I imagine this was the product of me being so tired from the long hours of work.

For the past few years I had traveled all over, and gone on lots of hikes and adventures in the wilderness, but how much did I really see? moving so fast and frequently. Maybe a better question is how much did I miss? Spending time tired and alone in the woods, and with a couple Tom Brown Jr. books as companions, I suddenly started to notice all kinds of things going on in the forest that I had never seen before on my long fast backpacking trips. Most of my experience of wildlife was from a distance or a brief glance as they ran away from me. That summer on Salt Spring I sat on numerous occasions with in a few feet of a black tailed deer and watched them eat, had owls land right beside me while we explored each other and the night sky together. I took the time to watch plants grow, insects eat plants, birds eat the insects, mammals eat the birds, and so on. I finally started to learn to observe and listen. The realizations, peace of mind, and prospective that came along with this opened me up to a whole new world of communion with the earth. I was suddenly starting to feel “part” of nature and not just like a tourist passing through it. I know many people who perceive humans and nature as separate things. I finally got my first glance at what it might actually feel like to be “one” with nature.

It was shortly after my time on Salt Spring Island that I was introduced to some incredible naturalist mentors and began my training with the Wilderness Awareness School in Duvall, WA. I began a correspondence program called the Kamana Naturalist Training Program and attended the course where I was introduced to an ancient style of mentoring called coyote teaching. These have, and continue to change my life and open up new doors of perception for me in the natural world. I also developed a very strong passion for learning about traditional primitive living skills. It absolutely fascinates me that for thousands of year people have lived in the same forest we camp in today but without all the modern equipment we have. No matches and lighters, flashlights, propane stoves, no coolers or grocery stores to buy food to go in them. They navigated without map and compasses, collected their food from the forest, and made homes that were completely biodegradable when they abandoned them. I think about the amount of resources it takes to support our modern lives and the negative impact that has on the land and compare it to how little it took to support them. These thoughts and the desire to walk through the forest and camp without hundreds of dollars in gear were what initially got me into learning primitive living skills. I had no idea at the time how many other benefits came along with it. A sense of freedom from the modern world, incredible observations and experiences while harvesting materials, more attuned senses, a better understanding of ecology, a connection to something ancient and very powerful, and a much deeper relationship with the earth itself.

After finishing my diploma in Forestry, my passion for nature studies and outdoor living became my life focus. I began my career as a Wilderness Guide. I have guided remote wilderness trips up in the great Boreal Forest of Manitoba where we were dropped off deep in the woods by float planes, in and around Quetico Park, outside of Thunder Bay, in central Ontario and Algonquin Park, and led 1 -5 day Dog Sled expeditions in Algonquin as well. I had also taught a number of primitive living, survival, and awareness courses including topics such as; fire without matches, shelters, plant ID, primitive cooking, and many others.

One major and almost shocking realization I made during my guiding career is how out-of-touch the general population has become with their senses, and observations of very basic natural cycles. I have met children and adults that don’t know what direction the sun rises in, hear a squirrel and think it is a bear, and I have seen and heard wildlife walk right past people unnoticed. What was even more shocking, was that many of the other guides and educators I was working with lacked these skills as well. I have met wilderness guides that don’t know how to find the North Star, can’t start a fire in the rain without dry paper and lighter fluid, don’t know the trees and plants, and would be in a lot of trouble if any of their modern tripping equipment were to malfunction or get lost in the woods. Don’t get me wrong, most of these folks brought incredible skills to their trips, often having extensive experience in hard skills like technical paddling, rock climbing, and first aid, but if they got lost or ran out of food they wouldn’t have a clue what to eat and how to stay warm at night.

Since my wandering days I have dedicated a large portion of my life to nature observation and research. I have given up my quest to cover as much territory in my life span and taken on a new quest of actually noticing what is going on in the smaller amount of territory I do cover. I learn how these observations can help me live a more fulfilling and environmentally conscious life, closer to the earth.

These realizations along with many conversations with educators, naturalists, guides, and participants brought me to my current quest in life; helping people re-learn the ancient and very important skills of nature observation and awareness, traditional living skills, and communion with the earth and continuing to learn myself. I believe was are all students and teachers and like to embrace this philosophy in all our programs.