Our Story

Walker School of the Wild didn’t begin as a business.
It began as a way to survive.

Before there were hunts or rivers or programs, there was a young man who didn’t trust himself. I was restless, addicted, ashamed, and constantly trying to outrun something I couldn’t name. I had been taught how to perform, how to succeed, how to toughen up—but not how to listen. Not to my body. Not to animals. Not to grief. Not to the land.

The first real teachers weren’t mentors with credentials. They were horses that bucked me off when I tried to control them. Remote unnamed rivers that refused to be channeled. Seasons that cared about my timeline. Elders who spoke plainly and expected me to show up anyway. The wild wasn’t kind, but it was honest. And honesty, it turns out, is what saves people.

Learning to hunt changed me—not because of the kill, but because it demanded responsibility. We don’t get to dissociate when an animal dies by your hand. We must be present and care for what we take. Fishing taught me patience. Horses taught me humility. Processing meat taught me gratitude. Fire, the only element that cannot be claimed, taught me stillness. Over and over, the same lesson arrived in different forms: slow down, pay attention, take care.

For years, this learning wasn’t something I planned to teach. It was personal. Private. Necessary. But eventually, men began asking to come along. To hunt. To fish. To sit by the fire. To learn the skills they were never taught and feel something real again. What they were asking for wasn’t adventure—it was reconnection.

Walker School of the Wild was born from that asking.

Born on the banks of the West Walker River in the California Eastern Sierra Walker School of the Wild exists to pass on fieldcraft, yes—but more importantly, to pass on a way of relating: to animals, to land, to food, and to oneself. This work isn’t about dominance or escape. It’s about becoming capable, grounded, and accountable. It’s about remembering that wildness isn’t recklessness—it’s relationship.

We don’t promise transformation—but apprenticeship. We don’t sell intensity—but teach presence. And we don’t separate the outer work from the inner one, because the land never does.

Walker School of the Wild is for those who feel the pull but don’t yet have the language for it. For those willing to learn slowly, fail honestly, and carry what they take all the way home.

The wild did not save me.
But it taught me how to save myself.

And now, I pass that on.

— Ned Weidner