Matthew Hunter
about the teacher
Matthew Hunter is an outdoor educator with 8 years of experience studying and practicing wilderness living skills. His most intensive area of study has been plant identification botany and harvesting the wild food plants of North America. Matthew has harvested and consumed over 300 species of wild plants in a number of states, including Texas(where he was born and raised), Oklahoma, Missouri, Florida, Tennessee, Montana, Idaho, Arizona, and Oregon.
Matthew has spent many nights camping and “roughin’ it” in the remote backcountry all over the U.S., including over two months tent camping in the Bitterroot National Forest in Montana and Idaho, a 14 day solo trip in the Cohutta Wilderness of Georgia, 3 weeks camping and sleeping in primitive shelters at a wilderness survival school in Missouri, and a 6 day trip in the Ouachita Mountains of eastern Oklahoma.
About two years ago Matthew began to pursue the path of professional outdoor instruction, and as a result developed an online survival course called Fundamentals of Wilderness Survival- Essential Knowledge for Travel in the Backcountry, a course about preventing and surviving unexpected wilderness emergencies.
In February of 2020 Matthew received a Permaculture Design Certificate from the Sonoran Desert Permaculture Guild in Tucson, Arizona. He has a passion for teaching people (especially Christians) how to become more self-sufficient, grow their own food, and how to steward and benefit from the natural world around them.
Matthew recently founded his outdoor education business, Legacy Wilderness Academy. His main goals in life are to get his friends into gardening, to turn the desert green, and to be nice to his wife. He and his wife Joy live with their daughter in Mesa, Arizona.
Teaching Philosophy
I believe that Christians should seek to shape and infiltrate every sphere of culture with the gospel of God and the Christian worldview. I intend to aid Christians in developing a healthy outlook on stewardship, ecology, natural resource management, self sufficiency, and biblical environmentalism. My aim is to help the “average Joe” foster a relationship with the physical world in a practical way. Whether that means learning how to sleep comfortably outside in the freezing cold, learning how to make an herbal tea that will soothe a cough, or learning where to plant shade trees to lower your A/C bill, I believe learning about nature glorifies God and can have practical benefits for everyone.
Statement of Faith
I am a servant of Jesus Christ who believes: The Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament are "God- breathed", infallible, and authoritative for all matters of faith and practice. I believe in the literal, plain-reading interpretation of the first 11 chapters of Genesis and that theory of evolution is a sinful, harmful lie, completely unfounded by real science. I affirm the five Solas and hold to a historic, Reformed view of Christianity. Our Church holds the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith. My wife and I are members of Apologia Church in Mesa, Arizona.