Field Philosophy Programs
Thinking with Wilderness
Field Philosophy Programs
Special Programs Offered on Request
To find out more about what our programs are like, take a deeper dive into the Headwaters Experience and the Headwaters Philosophy.
All of our trips are beginner friendly, with no tripping or camping experience required.
The Ontario Wilderness Leadership Symposium is a unique event designed to support the development and leadership of outdoor educators, including wilderness guides, teachers, camp staff, and canoe trip leaders. Starting from the understanding that all education, at its core, is about building good people...
While travelling by canoe we will examine the concept of wilderness. Through readings and discussions, and direct experience in a wild place, we will ask questions such as: What is wilderness, what is its history? Why is it important? How ought we to act in regard to its existence (or lack thereof)? Can humans ever become part of wilderness?
Climate change, species extinction, habitat loss – the environmental crisis demands an educational response, a path forward beginning with the re-imagining of how we teach and learn. While travelling by canoe, we will utilize the collective wisdom of our group to think about, tease out, and experiment with educational pedagogies and practices for an ecologically just world. This program is designed for practicing and aspiring educators of all types (classroom teachers, outdoor educators, guides, coaches, mentors, and administrators). Consider it professional development of the most authentic kind, as the wilderness setting shares lessons and inspiration that the classroom never can.
Philosophy goes wild
Making sense of the world by engaging with it
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Re-situating philosophy
If the ultimate subject of philosophy is the question of life – what it means to live and, subsequently, how one ought to live – then the proper place of the philosopher is not removed from the world, thinking about it abstractly, but rather engaged in the world – engaged with life – such that one may come to know what it is, in all of its details. Only after one has come to fully live life, may understanding and direction arise.
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Philosopher as wilderness traveller
If there is a better way to fully live life – to come to deeply know the world – than travelling in community with wilderness, we have not found it. Stripped of the ephemerality of technological culture, what remains is only that of inherent and immutable value: living beings and their relations, in which is located the essence of life on this planet.
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Engaging with the big questions, in the field
At Headwaters, we seek to engage with the big questions of our time. Our field philosophy programs are designed to do just that. Each course revolves around a particular topic of inquiry and takes place in a wilderness setting, establishing the conditions through which we think: engaging with these topics on an island campsite results in far different insights than doing so in a classroom, for the campsite implicitly invites nonhuman beings, and the wild place itself, into the conversation. We live with wilderness, read, think, write, and discuss, enabling a unique experience of philosophical practice that is unlike any other, for it takes place in the field, transforming from a solitary experience into a relational one.
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A rare gift: the chance to think
Philosophy may sound confusing, or like it is limited to those with particular background knowledge. On the contrary, we find that everyone has the capacity to engage in philosophy, as it is nothing but the love of wisdom tied to the practice of intentional thinking. In a culture sorely lacking in slow, unhurried thinking, we find that our field philosophy courses offer an opportunity to consider important questions and to find deeper meaning. An opportunity that is missing in the day-to-day. Absolutely no prior knowledge is required, only an openness to experience, to think, and to share.
What Our Trips Look Like
All of our trips are traditional. The lakes, rivers, and portages we travel constitute an interconnected trail system that has been in use by the living beings of the land for thousands of years: we voyage on ancient paths, never the first to have done so and hopefully never the last. What we see has been seen and what we experience has been experienced, but to us it is new, and so long as the wilderness remains free and our hearts remain open, we shall be pioneers of the spirit.
Character Development
All of our trips intentionally develop moral character, with a special focus on the following traits:
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Joy for life and its experiences
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Care for others and our world
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Wonder about life's mysteries
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A feeling of awe for both the grand vistas and the little things
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Respect for the wellbeing of others and our world
We place an emphasis on developing resiliency as the groundwork of moral character
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Resiliency teaches us to keep going even when things are uncomfortable. Because of this, it is the core of moral character, enabling us to ask, "what is worth doing, even if I fail?"
"Our life is frittered away by detail […] let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand"
~ Henry David Thoreau