ABOUT OUR STAFF
JIM LOWERY
Jim Lowery founded Earth Skills in 1987 as an extension of his longtime passion for wilderness adventure. After completing many specialized classes in tracking, wilderness survival and related subjects from Tom Brown, Jr.'s Tracker School in New Jersey, he put thousands of hours applying the skills, while he taught hundreds of beginning and advanced workshops over 30 years. Among these have been special trainings for universities, naturalists, docents, teachers and wildlife biologists. He has been an expert tracking consultant for field studies of mammals, and has led annual trainings in mammal tracking for State of California DPR staff since 2008.
Jim is the author of The Tracker's Field Guide (Globe Pequot 2006, 2013 and 2022), based on 20 years of field research and photography as well as extensive study of mammal biology and behavior. Besides this field guide, Jim has written Walk with the Animal (2013), monographs about tracking, and 20 years’ worth of newsletters about outdoor skills, nature, tracking and traditional skills.
MARY BROOKS
Mary E. Brooks, Jim's wife, has 40 years outdoors/wilderness experience and has also taken numerous courses from Tom Brown's Tracker School. She has co-taught more than 350 of Earth Skills beginning and advanced workshops and has co-facilitated 27 solo spiritual quests. Her special interests are basketry, earth philosophy, and native uses of plants; she is also a very accomplished tracker. In her full-time career, she has been an internationally-known specialist in affordable housing policy and implementation.