Tom Brown, Jr is America's most acclaimed outdoorsman, and a renowned tracker, teacher, and author. When Tom was only seven, Stalking Wolf (Grandfather), an Apache elder, shaman and scout, began coyote teaching Tom in the skills of tracking, wilderness survival, and awareness. After Stalking Wolf's final walk, Tom spent the next ten years wandering the wilderness throughout the America's with no manufactured tools—in most cases not even a knife—perfecting these Grandfathers skills and teachings. Tom came back to "civilization" and began looking for people interested in all that he had learned, but found none. He felt lost and confused until a local sheriff who knew Tom called him in to track a lost person. Tom found the missing person and, in the process, found his Vision. Over the next few years Tom earned his reputation as "The Tracker" by finding lost people, and fugitives from the law. He has since worked with many law enforcement agencies, throughout the United States and internationally, on cases involving abducted children, lost hunters and hikers, and fugitives. He wrote about his experiences in a book titled The Tracker, which was published in 1978. Soon after, Reader's Digest ran a condensed version of Tom’s story and included information on the Tracker School. That was almost thirty years ago, and today Tom Brown Jr.'s Tracker School is the largest of its kind, teaching people from all over the world and from all walks of life. Since the success of The Tracker, Tom has authored 16 books on tracking, awareness, nature observation and survival, including, Grandfather, The Vision, The Way of the Scout and a series of field guides, which have sold well over a million copies. (bio: from www.trackerschool.com)
Stalking Wolf was raised free of the reservations in the mountains of northern Mexico. Born in the 1870's during a time of great warfare and violence, he was part of a band of Lipan Apache that never surrendered. He was taught the traditional ways of his people and became a shaman and a scout. When he was twenty a vision sent him away from his people, and for the next sixty-three years he wandered, seeking teachers and learning the old ways of many native peoples, and others who lived close to the earth. Stalking Wolf traveled the length and breadth of the Americas, following the Creators call. He never held a job, drove a car, paid taxes, or participated in modern society. When he was eighty-three years old, he encountered a small boy gathering fossils in a stream bed. He recognized that boy as the person with whom he would spend his final years, and to whom he would teach all that he knew. That boy was Tom Brown, Jr. Tom became the recipient of not only all that Stalking Wolf had learned during his travels, but the distillation of hundreds of years of Apache culture as well. These are the teachings that Tom passes on at his famous Tracking, Nature, and Wilderness Survival School.
