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Wilderness Drum > Wilderness Experiences > Vision Fasts | |||||||
—Joseph Campbell To me, the wilderness vision fast, based on worldwide indigenous models, is one of the best ways to learn about yourself in the wilderness. In many ways, it is the ultimate solitude. You are alone with your fears, your selfishness, your goals, your compassion, your soul – and the spirits of the wilderness. We can debate about the Sacred Other – whether it is your own soul or the spirits around you; whether it is one or many; how it speaks to you and what it tells you. But I think one thing is true. You can meet the Sacred Other anywhere, but it is what you seek on the vision fast. Steven Foster and Meredith Little have put it this way: In your bones you hear the singing of your sacred ancestors. You follow in their footsteps. You go alone, with an empty belly and a bare minimum of equipment, into the heart of the wilderness, for four days and nights. There you live with yourself, in perfect solitude. You surrender to the mirror of your wild environment, and to memory, the looks-within-place. You enter the mansions of nature's soul. You ponder the questions: "Who am I?" "Who are my people?" and "What is my intent?" You wander the precincts of loneliness, where vision lies waiting. You drink at the springs of your soul and are filled with self recognition. What is not important falls away. The work that must be done lies ahead. The vision fast is very personal, and I cannot make any recommendations for a guide who will suit your own aims, background, style, and personality. Bear in mind, too, that what is important is not so much a school or organization as the individual guide. For that reason, I introduce below not only the Wilderness Drum vision fast, but also some of the outstanding guides in this field, and, as far as possible, I have tried to let them speak to you in their own voices. I hope that the descriptions also succeed in conveying the great variety of approaches taken by these guides. Thus, if you are interested, call them up, speak to them, arrange a face-to-face meeting if at all possible. You are literally putting your life in their hands, so choose carefully.
For a number of years, I studied wilderness survival. I was trained in wilderness survival in the Sierra Nevada, the Mojave Desert, and the Peruvian Amazon. I became certified in wilderness medicine and wilderness leadership. I took jungle survival trips in the Amazon; I traveled into the highland jungle between Peru and Ecuador to study the jungle survival skills of the last of the Shapra and Candoshi Indians; I worked with the Rainforest Health Project helping to provide basic medical care in the Tamshiyacu-Tahuayo region of the Amazon. Yet, as I studied the survival skills of indigenous people in both North and South America, it became increasingly clear to me that wilderness survival has a spiritual component. I came to realize that indigenous people survive – even flourish – not just because of their skills but also because they learn to maintain right relationships with the spirits who live in the wilderness. This realization led me back into the jungles and deserts, to seek out this relationship for myself. I have both undertaken and helped to lead four-day and four-night vision fasts in Death Valley and in the Gila, Chama, and Pecos wilderness areas of New Mexico. I have two doctoral degrees – one in religious studies and one in transpersonal psychology. I have studied council facilitation at the Ojai Foundation; I have been trained at the School of Lost Borders in the guiding of wilderness spiritual experiences; and I have served as an apprentice to vision fast guide Sparrow Hart of Circles of Air and Stone. I have been privileged over the years to have studied healing and visionary plant rituals with skilled and gifted shamans, healers, and ayahuasqueros in the Amazon jungle. And I have learned this: The spirits of the wilderness miss us. They want us back. Not as we are now – uprooted, selfish, greedy – but as the true humans we can be, adding our unique song to the music of the wilderness. And they will teach us how to become human again, if we let them. That is why we fast in solitude in the wilderness – to touch our original humanity, to gain greater clarity regarding our life's purpose and meaning, to find our unique gift, which we can bring back for the benefit of our people. This wilderness adventure lasts ten days. First there are three days of preparation, sharpening our intention, and learning the ways of the wilderness. Then there are four days and nights of solitary fasting in a sacred place; and, finally, three days of telling our stories, celebrating our adventures, exploring our visions, and committing ourselves to bringing the unique gifts we have found back to our people, and back to ourselves. Click here for more Wilderness Drum adventures.
Sparrow Hart, founder of Circles of Air, Circles of Stone, undertook his first wilderness rite of passage in 1971, a five-month solo pilgrimage in the Cascades and Canadian Rockies. Over the last twenty years he has practiced and familiarized himself with modern and indigenous therapeutic approaches and has apprenticed with a variety of native and non-native teachers. In April 1988 Sparrow completed training at the School of Lost Borders with Steven Foster and Meredith Little, authors of The Book of the Vision Quest, who described him as "perhaps the best who ever enrolled in the program." Since that time he has been leading several quests each year in various parts of the country. He has also undertaken over fifteen quests of his own. "I want to emphasize that my gift to you is not my story," Sparrow says, "but the extent to which I can help you find your own voice, your own truth, your authenticity. There is no greater tragedy than a life unlived, and no greater joy than holding to one's Vision through the blessings and sorrows of life." The vision fast program at Circles of Air, Circles of Stone, aims to assist individuals who seek to find their true nature in nature. The participant spends four days and nights alone, fasting on the earth. The first four days are spent in preparation with the staff, including instruction in the three-phase dynamic of initiation; the four shields model of Self and psyche; emergency and survival procedures; archetypes and allegories of the heroic journey; the dynamics of fasting; and instruction in self-initiated ceremony. Preparation includes individual counseling and instruction in passage rite forms and ceremony relevant to the specific status of the individual. I should add here that Sparrow has been my own guide and teacher, and a man who has deeply influenced my life. May you be as lucky in your choice.
Bill Plotkin, Ph.D., the founding director of Animas Valley Institute, has been guiding vision quests since 1980. It considers it his soulwork to support people in accessing that which is most fulfilling and sacred in their lives. Bill has been a wilderness guide since 1974, a licensed psychologist in private practice since 1980, and has been training vision quest guides since 1988. He is the author of the forthcoming Soulcraft: Human Development When Soul and Nature Really Matter, as well as several articles on contemporary wilderness rites, ceremony, and psychotherapy. He says that he is a psychologist gone wild. Animas Valley Institute offers vision quests, rites of passage, nature retreats, and other self-improvement programs in the Southwest – the Four Corners of Colorado, Utah, and Arizona. AVI is for people who are ready to explore the archetypes of the collective unconscious and use ceremony and ritual as forms of self improvement and human development. AVI utilizes the work of Carl Jung, James Hillman, Jean Houston, Joseph Campbell, Thomas Moore; the primary goal and method of all Animas Valley Institute programs is the encounter with soul. The Institute is one of North America's longest-standing organizations offering contemporary wilderness rites. "Animas" is plural for "souls" in Spanish. In Jungian psychology, the Anima is the Inner Woman in a man, and the Animus the Inner Man in a woman. The Anima and Animus refer to the mysterious energies within our psyches that guide us on the inward journey to soul. Animas Valley Institute is located in southwest Colorado in the valley of El Rio de las Animas Perdidas – The River of Lost Souls.
Thje Earth-Heart program is based closely on the teachings of Tom Brown, Jr.. Malcolm Ringwalt, who founded Earth-Heart in 1985, has a Master's degree in counseling psychology, is an advanced clinical hypnotherapist, and is an ordained minister and pastoral counselor. For many years, Malcolm studied and taught Transcendental Meditation with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi; and he has been a long-time instructor for Brown at his Tracking, Nature and Wilderness Survival School. The co-director is Allyson Rice, who also received her wilderness and healing training from Brown. She is an internationally certified kundalini yoga teacher through Yogi Bhajan's Kundalini Research Institute A vision quest, according to Earth-Heart, allows you to “connect with your Vision, your True Self, your unique path of purpose, direction, clarity, insight, courage, Spirit.” In addition, Earth-Heart offers ten-day protector courses, and the teachings on the seven levels of quest as given by Tom Brown, Jr. These teachings, Malcolm says, “have the power to lift ordinary life experience from the mundane and physical to the height of spiritual clarity and enlightenment.”
Jim Collins, Ph.D., is an ecopsychologist, licensed therapist, a former university instructor, and a seasoned wilderness guide. His work is informed by over four decades of wilderness experience, which he skillfully blends with over twenty years of counseling expertise in a warm and humorous teaching style. In addition to his training in western psychotherapy and depth psychology, he has studied the esoteric wisdom of indigenous cultures for many years, particularly Polynesian shamanism and the pathways of his Lakota heritage. He has been guiding people to empowerment and inner peace through the power of the wilderness since 1980. Eagle Mountain Institute is an educational institute dedicated to providing high-quality wilderness retreats and ecopsychology-based personal-enrichment programs. Central to its programs and purpose is our practice of applied ecopsychology through introducing people to the profound wisdom of the wilderness and teaching them to draw from nature's power for personal healing and self-transformation.
Joseph Jastrab is an author, teacher, therapist, ecopsychologist, and founder of Earth Rise Foundation. His first book, Sacred Manhood, Sacred Earth, was a pioneering work in the emerging field of ecopsychology. Joseph's voice of experience and sense of humor encourages all who participate with him to bring greater insight, compassion and joy into their own lives. Joseph has an extensive background in wilderness survival. He has served as the Chief Instructor for the North American Wilderness Survival School and is currently a certified New York State Wilderness Guide. Jastrab describes himself as ”a facilitator of the inevitable.” Earth Rise offers its vision quests as a contemporary expression of the need to encourage the process of transformation by celebrating it, as contemporary rites of passage. The wilderness and the ritual create a healing vessel where it is possible to to experience a profound communion with all life. ”For healing.” Joseph says, “we go to places that restore ourselves … sunlit meadows, green forests, moving water, dark silent caves … places of beauty and integrity that remind us of our place in the family of life. We return to the basic sanity of the earth. And in that diverse and sacred space, something happens, something moves inside, a remembrance that we are so much larger than our struggles and fears, that we belong to a process of life that is pulsing with energy, renewal and creativity. From that place of remembrance, anything can change.“ Earth Rise quests and workshops offer support to people whose natural impulse toward wholeness returns them to the sacred earth. Earth Rise quest guides share a deep respect for the earth-wisdom traditions of the past. They are likewise dedicated to serving the rebirth of the sacred that is true to the particular challenges and opportunities of our present age.
Jesse Wolf Hardin is the author of seven books and numerous articles for publications such as Magical Blend and Circle. His writing has been praised by Gary Snyder, Joanna Macy, Sedonia Cahill, and Edward Abbey. His Earthen Spirituality Project promotes an “ecology of spirit” – that is, “the mindful reinhabitation of our intuitive sensate bodies and the natural world we're an inextricable part of.” Held in New Mexico’s Gila National Forest, the program’s week-long wilderness quests, for individuals or small groups, are personalized to meet the needs of the participants. These quests begin with a cleansing sweat in a heated lodge. ”The Spirit Quest,” Hardin says, “is a week-long process of deliberate, ritual reconnection in an inspiring and informative place of power. The Quest strips away illusion and denial, reuniting us with our authentic selves: with our feelings, instincts, needs, gifts, abilities, hopes and dreams. It leads us out of the cage of the fearful, rational mind and back into the intuitive matrix of Earth and body, heart and soul.” Also involved in the program is Loba, the author of Sister Tribe: Sharing The Gifts of the Rewilded Woman, as well as articles in Natural Beauty & Health, SageWoman and The Beltane Papers. Loba hosts Earthen Spirituality’s annual Wild Women's Gathering, Wild Mamas, and Gila Wild Foods weekends, and directs and supports female seekers during their time in the program. She runs spiritual wilderness quests specifically for women, emphasizing self-knowledge, self-acceptance, and personal reenchantment. The participants are encouraged, she says, “to deepen their inherent connection to Nature, embrace their fears, identify their genuine needs, and live their wildest dreams.”
John Davis has guided wilderness rites of passage and healing for fifteen years. He is on the faculty of the School of Lost Borders, where he was also trained, and he has been active in the Wilderness Guides Council since its inception. He started the wilderness courses and ecopsychology studies at Naropa University, and was chairperson of the Transpersonal Counseling Psychology Department there from 1994 to 1996 . John has written both popular and scholarly articles on this work. He has been a student of the Diamond Approach taught by Hameed Ali (who who is best known by his pen-name of A. H. Almaas) since 1975, a teacher of the Diamond Approach since 1983, and the author of a book on the subject. High Desert Passages aims to help participants discover meaning and celebration in their life transitions, to support a profound connection to their sources of guidance and fulfillment, and to foster a supportive, loving, enchanted relationship with their world, their self, and their life's journey. Its wilderness rites of passage enact the archetypal themes of death and rebirth, initiation, and the heroic journey, providing essential support and guidance for life transitions and opportunities to reclaim and develop one’s deeper nature. Participance spend three days in basecamp, acclimating to the wilderness and preparing for the solo. The three-day solo offers a period of receptivity, openness, vision, trial, and gift. Another two days in basecamp allow for storytelling, reflection, integration, and return to our familiar lives. Fasting from food – but not water – is supported and encouraged but not required. This trip is appropriate for first-time campers as well as seasoned backpackers, although participants must be in good health.
Lynnaea Lumbard, Ph.D., and Rick Paine, Ed.D., co-founders of Naos Foundation, have been guides for the transformational journey for over twenty-five years. They bring extensive wilderness and ceremonial experience to their vision fast work. They have trained for their vision fast work in the lineage of the School of Lost Borders with Stephen Foster and Meredith Little, having also fasted and studied with Gigi Coyle and Roger Milliken as well as Elizabeth Roberts and Elias Amidon. ”Our Vision Fast is an 11-day journey into the high desert of the Utah Canyonlands,” they say. ”For several days in our wilderness base-camp, we build community, learn the ways of the desert, and prepare physically, emotionally and spiritually for our solo Fast. We clarify our intentions and develop the rituals and ceremonies that will augment our experience. We then go out for four days, fasting and alone in our own sacred space. Later we return to tell our stories, bringing the gift of our selves to the wisdom council and receiving the reflection of the group.” Rick describes the vision fast like this: ”The Vision Fast is a powerful initiation. Entering the Wilderness, we invite the wisdom of the rocks, trees, canyons, sky, stars, and moon to teach us. Living without our customary comforts of food and shelter, we open ourselves to insights and visions that are beyond our normal consciousness structures. Alone and vulnerable, we are challenged to discover who and what we really are.” And Lynnaea says: ”Nothing compares to taking your whole body through the physical encounter with the wilderness: the silence, the fasting, and the being alone. It is a real rite of passage, in real time, in real space. Your entire being goes through the gate of the experience and on the other side you are no longer the same.”
Michael DeMaria is a practicing clinical psychologist with twenty years of experience in helping guide others on their life journeys. He has published and presented numerous papers, both nationally and internationally, on the role of creativity and spirituality in the healing process. For the first decade of his professional life he devoted himself to working with abused children and their families. The years of working so closely with severe cases of child abuse precipitated a spiritual crisis for Michae, which led to a great deal of introspection and exploration. As a result of this personal journey, Michael has integrated spiritual direction into his work as a psychotherapist. During this time, too, Michael trained with indigenous and contemporary teachers in a variety of healing modalities, including wilderness based rites of passage such as the vision quest. One of his greatest joys now is weaving his love of nature, creativity, and spirituality into accessible and innovative healing practices. Ontos offers vision fasts in the North Georgia Mountains, on a 2000-foot-high peak on the edge of Lookout Mountain with mountain laurel, rhododendron, and wild dogwood in bloom. This is an ancient ceremonial site with a beautiful base camp and plenty of solitude in this 600 acre private reserve bordered by National and State Forest. Ontos also offers a vision fast in the mystical Cape San Blas Wilderness area. This pristine beach ecosystem is one of the last with a plentiful population of deer and other wildlife. Sixty-foot dunes with exotic pine hammocks and canopies create miles of ideal solo spots for a vision fast. “When we connect to our wholeness,” Michael writes, ”we discover our own truth, authenticity and healing capacity within ourselves. We do this by helping you tell your story, find your voice and discover your best guide is your own experience. Often this involves healing individual, family and cultural wounds and exploring your relationship with yourself, others, the natural world, and your spirituality. This is a process that awakens genuineness, opens the heart, and helps you feel the true gift of loving and belonging to your own unique and precious life.”
Michael Bodkin has been the executive director of Rites of Passage since 1987. His first vision quest was with Steven and Meredith Foster, then the codirectors of Rites of Passage, in March 1980. Trained by the Fosters and certified as a vision quest guide in 1982, his leadership of Rites of Passage has included directing a training program for guide-trainees. Michael has been a California licensed Marriage and Family Therapist since 1978 and has over twenty-five years experience working with youth, couples, and families in counseling and wilderness programs. A strong interest in men's work has led to a number of men's Vision Quests. In 1991 he moved with his wife to an intentional community in Northern California, where he practices his passions of organic gardening and bluegrass music, and continues to learn about the third part of the rite of passage, returning to your people. Rites of Passage, Inc., founded by Steven and Meredith Foster in 1977, is a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing meaningful rite of passage experiences for youth and adults. A rite of passage, a ceremony marking or celebrating the experience of a life transition, symbolically represents the end of one's old life and rebirth into new life. These ceremonies, which enabled our ancestors to find meaning and guidance in the major turning points of their lives, have largely disappeared from the modern industrialized world. Rites of Passage exists so that people in our modern world may undertake, complete and understand their passages, discovering within themselves meaning and vision.
Amy “Dreamweaver” Katz is founder and director of the School of Living Dreams. As a wilderness rites of passage guide, professor of human – and ”other-than-human” – relations, professional poet, former actress in film and theater, photographer of light and darkness, psychic, healer, dreamworker, and transformational counselor, she dances, she says, on the edge of many realities and worlds. She has studied tracking and wilderness survival with Tom Brown, Jr.; Celtic shamanism and mythology with Tom Cowan; ecotherapy, vision quest guiding, and soulcraft with Bill Plotkin, and rites of passage with Emerald North and Angelo LaZenka of The School of Lost Borders. ”We understand that we can only take our students as high and as deep as we ourselves have gone or are willing to go,” she says, ”and therefore we must be willing to jump into the abyss of the unknown again and again and again.” The vision fast is ”the most direct and sacred passageway into the mysteries of soul and spirit; a gift for the children of our future.” The School of Living Dreams offers vision quests in Chucach State Park, by the Eagle River in Alaska, for anyone who has ever felt the call to be a healer, a shaman, a lightworker, a guide into psyche and the natural world – or is simply a person ready to mark a passage into healing and empowerment, into greater awareness and consciousness.
Steven Foster, Ph.D., and Meredith Little – sometimes called Grandfather and Grandmother – are the founders and former codirectors of the School of Lost Borders. For thirty years they guided thousands of individuals through the initiatory steps of wilderness passage rites , and trained hundreds of teachers and guides. The fruits of their research, teaching, experience of natural solitude, and apprenticeship to a variety of teachers are set forth in several books: The Book of the Vision Quest, The Roaring of the Sacred River, The Sacred Mountain, Technical Guide to Threshold Safety, Lost Borders: Coming of Age in the Wilderness, Betwixt and Between: Patterns of Masculine and Feminine Initiation, The Four Shields: The Initiatory Seasons of Human Nature and Remembering Why: Ruminations of an Old Midwife. They authored many chapters and articles in books and magazines, and lectured and held seminars at colleges, universities, and conferences worldwide. On May 6, 2003, at the age of 65, Steven Foster died of a rare genetic lung illness. Meredith Little, his partner for 30 years, continues to participate in month-long trainings and an occasional training seminar. The programs at the School of Lost Borders are now directed by Joseph LaZenka and Emerald North. Steve and Meredith put their program this way. ”Most people live within well-defined borders. They will change these borders only if change is thrust upon them by fate. Do not attend the School of Lost Borders if you plan to remain the same person. You will come here to lose your borders, your boundaries, your limitations. The first border you lose is the civilized one. The second border you lose is your psyche. The third border you lose is your mind. The fourth border you lose is the one between you and spirit.” .
Flynn Johnson, M.A., founder of The School of Natural Wonder, has Master of Arts degrees in philosophy and counseling psychology. Since 1993 he has been leading vision quests and has gone on many quests himself. He combines his love of nature and his love of people into creating unique rite of passage experiences. In his work he draws on his background in Jungian psychology, ecopsychology, Core Energetics, indigenous rituals, storytelling, Buddhism, and yoga. He is a certified Wilderness First Responder. Jill Neitlich, LICSW, a licensed clinical social worker, has been working with adults and adolescents for many years and co-leading vision quests with her husband Flynn. In her work Jill draws on her background in psychology, ecopsychology, indigenous rituals, Core Energetics, and yoga. She brings to her work her love of nature and people, and her passionate interest in community building and Earth advocacy. Both Flynn and Jil received their training as wilderness vision quest guides with Steven Foster and Meredith Little. "The Western psyche has been split asunder," Flynn writes, "by the dualistic assumptions inherent in our way of seeing the world. Foremost among these assumptions is that humans are separate from and superior to Nature." The School of Natural Wonder seeks to mend this wound to our psyches by offering experiential, nature-based programs designed to help people connect deeply with the natural world, themselves, each other, and Spirit, however that may be experienced. Flynn and Jill believe that Nature, as the dwelling place of Spirit, is our first and foremost teacher. The rhythms, inhabitants, and relationships of the natural world mirror back to us aspects of our own souls. "Dwelling upon the Earth in a sacred way returns us to our true nature," they say. " Buried beneath the masks of civilization lies an indigenous soul within us longing to emerge into the light of the sun, to sing and dance with joy, to reclaim that which is wild, holy, and free within us."
One week each summer, since 1980, people from North America and all over the world have gathered in Temagami, Ontario, and traveled by float plane to a rugged island deep in the Canadian wilderness. They come because they are concerned by what they are seeing in their own lives, in their communities, and in the world around them. They seek a deeper connection to their inner lives and a greater sense of meaning in a cultural environment that seems to have lost its way. They seek a source of inner vision, creative energy, and personal renewal. The Temagami Vision Quest lasts a full eight days giving time for a deepening connection to psyche, nature and community. Daily, small dream groups are led by Jungian analysts Louise Carus Mahdi and Barry Williams to interpret dreams and process experiences evoked by the program. "Temagami Vision Quest is an experience of the unfolding of the Self within the container of nature and close community," they write. "Through the use of myth, metaphor, and deep dreamwork we begin to understand the rituals of the sweat lodge, vision quest and shamanic teachings. We begin to catch a glimpse of our true connection with both the natural world and the natural psyche, consequently renewing our sense of spirituality." Louise Carus Mahdi is a Zurich-trained analyst in private practice in Illinois. Her interest in initiation, dreams and mythology has taken her around the world gathering research. Louise has been a facilitator with Vision Quest since 1979. Barry Williams, M.Div., Psy.D, is a Jungian analyst in private practice in Taos, New Mexico. He has had many years of wilderness experience and has a deep interest in patterns of initiation. He teaches and lectures widely, and was Scholar-in-Residence at Pacifica Graduate Institute. Barry conducts workshops focused on dreams, as well as experiences that explore the relationship between indigenous healing practices and depth psychology, working with indigenous healers from many cultures.
With the encouragement of his grandfather and parents, John began doing wilderness solos and vision quests at the age of seven in 1945. For the next five years, he did one or more quests a year in northern New Hampshire, Maine, or in the swamps and Pine Barrens of southern New Jersey. When he was fifteen, he did his first month-long solo in the Olympic Mountains of Washington State. John's formal training in Zen meditation began in 1958; he has studied T'ai Chi, Chi Kung, Taoist yoga, Tibetan Buddhism, and Tantra. He has studied Vipassana meditation in Nepal, and has been initiated by Vasudev, tantrika and devotee of the Divine Feminine. His professional ecological background has focused on ecological studies, ecological and economic development issues, national and international environmental policies, and on saving the planet's rapidly vanishing wilderness. After immersing himself in creating major environmental initiatives for many years, he became convinced that political, legal, and economic approaches did not go deep enough, ad could not alone bring about the penetrating changes in human culture that we need for people to live in true harmony and balance with the Earth. The next great opening of ecological view, he says, would have to be an internal one. The eleven-day Sacred Passage is the foundational program of the The Way of Nature offerings. A group of three to twelve people participate in a guided five day Awareness Training together, combined with a seven-day wilderness solo. The participants are trained in the basic principles and associated practices of the Way of Nature. John says that he has distilled these principles over the past thirty years, essentializing . them from the experience of his own yearly wilderness solos, together with insights provided by some of the world's classical traditions focused on the realization of inner Nature and harmony with outer Nature. Particularly relevant, he says, have been the teachings and insights of Taoism, the Native American way, shamanism, Buddhism, Tibetan Dzogchen, Tantra, Hindu Vedanta, and Christ Consciousness.The core practices of the Way of Nature include nature-based meditation styles; instruction in the cultivation of internal energy; sacred movement, which merges T'ai Chi principles, tracking skills, and shamanic invocation; immersion in sacred sound; and universal-style ceremony. The training also covers basic wilderness skills. After the your solo time, there is time for sharing together and integrating the insights from the Passage into everyday life.
Marilyn Foster Riley, M.A. is a seasoned wilderness guide, psychologist, and life transition counselor. Trained by Steven Foster and Meredith Little, she has consulted with numerous schools, colleges, agencies and organizations. She has worked with hundreds of individuals and groups in city and wilderness settings. She has also served as the Netkeeper or chairpserson for the Wilderness Guides Council, the international organization of wilderness rites of passage guides, and is affiliate assistant professor of Recreation at the University of Idaho. A highly practical visionary, she's led more than 100 modern wilderness vision quests and other programs since 1979. Marilyn describes the vision fast as follows. "The vision quest is a spiritual journey because it provides the time and a natural, quiet place to look within and see again who you are, what you think and feel, where you are going. No one is there to tell you what to do, think or be. You search for your truth. While alone, you may fast. Your imagination and dreams may be active and vivid. The void created by fasting will be filled with new awareness-you'll remember things you forgot in the hustle and bustle of daily living. You can discover a personal connection and relationship with all things, and see clearly what you have to contribute to your world. The vision quest is as much a celebration of who we are as of what we seek to become." | |||||||
      
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The heroes of all time have gone before us. The labyrinth is thoroughly known. We have only to follow the thread of the hero path, and where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god. And where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves. Where we had thought to travel outward, we will come to the center of our own existence. And where we had thought to be alone, we will be with all the world.
