The UNcivilized Podcast

| Jul 22, 2020

How to survive in the wilderness with Matt Furches

Listen to the UNcivilized Podcast:

If you’ve been around here for a while, I am sure you’ve heard me talk about the month I spent with Boulder Outdoor Survival School (BOSS). Today I brought on Matt Furches, Matt is one of the instructors for BOSS and a good friend of mine. We talked about how he got into his work at BOSS and how their training helps transform attendees lives for the better. We get into the idea of not having everything available to you at your fingertips, outcomes he’s seen from the BOSS training and some of his favorite memories and outcomes he’s seen come out of the survival courses.

About Matt Furches

Matt Furches hails from Nottingham, Pennsylvania, where he was greatly inspired by the woods and the creeks, and by the Amish culture that coexisted side-by-side with 1980s American culture. After discovering the writings of Tom Brown Jr., George Washington Sears, and Henry David Thoreau, he became a self-taught naturalist and practitioner of bushcraft and indigenous survival skills.

In 2008 he spent an entire summer in the American West studying with some of the most skilled instructors in the field of primitive technology, survival, and natural history, his journey culminated in a 28-day field course with the world-renowned Boulder Outdoor Survival School (BOSS), which since the late 1960s have been at the forefront of survival training and adventure travel. Matt was invited to apprentice with the school and after 10 seasons is now a Master Instructor at BOSS.

Connect with Matt

Website: gnarlybranchstudio.wordpress.com
Instagram: @gnarlybranchstudio
Boss Inc: boss-inc.com/staff/matt-furches

Links

Hunter Gatherer course: boss-inc.com/survival-courses/hunter-gatherer

What You’ll Hear

3:12 What Boulder Outdoor Survival School is and what they do
8:57 Matt’s experience of starting with BOSS
14:59 The concept of not having everything at your fingertips
18:46 Why they create compare down situations
22:09 A few surprising outcomes that he’s seen come out of the BOSS training
26:40 An outline of the survival tactics at the minutes, hours and days levels
31:00 The problem with hoarding during the pandemic
35:20 The challenges they’re going through right now
37:40 One lesson they teach at the BOSS training that everyone needs right now
39:18 His thoughts on a resurgence of primal skills, homesteading and natural living
43:10 His favorite story from his years of teaching at BOSS
50:39 How we can persevere through anything