The Woods Are My Classroom

The Woods Are My Classroom

Brad Northway doesn't need much to be happy. A stretch of woods, a campfire, his laptop, and enough power to stay connected when he needs to is pretty much the whole picture. He's 45, lives just outside St. Louis in South Roxana, Illinois, and has spent most of his life finding his way back to nature, no matter what tried to pull him away from it.

There's been a lot that has tried.

He broke his spine in a car accident at 15: two vertebrae, two rods, eight screws. He lost the hockey career he'd been building. He lost the military path he'd planned. He spent years drifting, working jobs at the zoo, pet stores, as a vet tech, as an animal control officer, building a life around the things he loved, even when the larger plan wasn't clear. 

Then came a marriage, three daughters, a divorce, and a period of his life that dismantled almost everything he'd rebuilt. He was falsely accused of a serious crime, and though he was fully exonerated years later. The damage was already done. He lost his job, his savings, and his home. He was homeless for eight months.

"I rebuilt my life," he says simply. "The people in my life now are the ones who want to be there."

His father died three months before the exoneration. That's the one wound that didn't fully close. Everything else, Brad rebuilt, including a decent apartment, a reliable car, and most importantly, his relationship with his daughters, whom he sees nearly every day.

"We always go on trips," he says. "I've more than made up for it."

Power in the Middle of Nowhere

For years, Brad's outdoor life had one persistent limitation. The further he hiked from his car, the further he got from any way to charge his phone or keep his laptop running. 

"I could spend a weekend in the woods without my phone and be completely fine," he says. "But being able to access my school work, record a presentation, and keep my GPS running, that's crucial.”

He tried to manage it by staying close to his car, using it to charge his phone when he could. It worked, but it meant he was tethered. The range of where he could go and how long he could stay was limited by where the car could reach.

That changed at a family reunion in early September a few years ago. He was standing in an outdoor pavilion with no outlets, watching his mother and brother set up crockpots, wondering how they were going to power them. His brother walked to his car and came back carrying a small box with Jackery written on it.

"I'm like, what in the heck is that?" Brad says. "He goes, it's a battery pack. I'm like, really, it's gonna be able to plug all this in?"

It did. Brad watched, and something clicked.

The Jackery Explorer 300: A Birthday Gift That Became a Lifeline

Brad's brother gave him a Jackery Explorer 300 as a birthday gift eight days after that reunion. Brad's birthday is September 20. The timing was almost too perfect.

He didn't take it camping immediately. First, he tested it.

"I went home, plugged my laptop in, and let it go until it died," he says. "Continuous use, laptop the whole time. It took three days."

That was the information he needed. "With every piece of equipment, you want to know its limits before you go out in the field," he says. "It performed better than I thought it would."

Now the Jackery Explorer 300 goes everywhere. It lives in a specific spot in the back of his car. It's always the first thing he loads. He has a carrying case for it and a small foldable wagon he uses to wheel it in when he doesn't want to backpack everything. It's been dropped, bumped along rough terrain, and taken through rain.

"I've dropped it a bunch, and it hasn't broken, hasn't shorted out, hasn't faltered at all," he says.

On a winter camping weekend, the setup is straightforward. Phone charged and accessible for GPS and communication. Laptop powered for schoolwork and reading. Air mattress compressor for setting up camp. A water kettle for boiling water fast and melting snow over a campfire takes forever and yields almost nothing. A radio playing from his phone in the background. All of it runs off the Jackery Explorer 300, which he charges fully before he leaves and brings back empty.

The Car Battery Moment

One moment stands out above the rest.

He came back from a weekend in the woods to find his car battery dead. He'd left the dome light on. He was deep enough out that a tow truck would have taken a long time to reach him, and there was a lot of hiking between him and the nearest person who could give him a jump.

Then he remembered the Jackery Explorer 300 had battery clips.

"I let the Jackery charge whatever power level I had left into that battery," he says. "About an hour later, the car fired right up."

He pauses on this.

"If I wouldn't have had that, I would have been screwed."

Doing Homework in the Wild

Brad does his coursework from wherever he is. If it's raining, he finds a pavilion. If it's snowing, he bundles up and goes anyway. If he needs to record a presentation about biology, he'd rather do it with trees behind him than a living room wall.

"It doesn't matter if it's raining, snowing, sleet, or ice," he says. "If I'm outside, I'm happy."

The Jackery is what makes that possible. Without reliable power, the schoolwork stays at home. The range of where he can study shrinks back to wherever there's an outlet. With it, the classroom is wherever he wants it to be.

"It's probably been the most helpful piece of equipment I have," he says.

His daughters benefit from Jackery too. When they're out together at a park, and a phone dies, the Jackery Explorer 300 is in the car. When they want to watch a movie on Brad's laptop somewhere outside, it's there. One afternoon, during a power outage at his kids' place, he brought it in and powered their devices. They even managed to run a pizza cooker off it long enough to make a meal.

What the Woods Give Back

Brad is fifteen months from a degree he started because he was bored and needed a purpose. He's planning graduate school. He has a clear destination. And somewhere in the middle of all of it, he found his way back to the thing that's always steadied him.

The woods. The cold air. A fire he built himself. His daughters are nearby.

"Peace of mind," he says, when asked what the Jackery gives him most. "Knowing I'm not going to run out, and that I'll have what I need when I need it. The power is always there."

He never forgets to bring it. Everything else, such as a cooking pot, a utensil, a piece of gear, he might leave behind. But the Jackery Explorer 300 has its spot reserved in the back of the car, and it's always fully recharged.

The Explorer 300 is already sold out on the CA official website. For a similar experience with improved performance and enhanced features, explore the Jackery Explorer 600 v2, Explorer 1000 v2, or HomePower 3600 Plus.