includes a 4 day & night solo fast

            This Vision Quest is held in the spectacularly beautiful Gila Wilderness, located in southern New Mexico.  The three days of preparation camp and two days of Incorporation are held at the Gila Hot Springs Campground.  Here camping is “car camping” with ready access to food, water,  bathrooms, and hot pools.  Participants provide their own food and camping equipment.

            The Vision Quest has spoken to your soul in some way.  You may be called to this path by a crisis or transition, which has rocked your world, and you are seeking guidance or renewal.  It may be a part of the natural unfolding of your life as you seek to empower yourself within Nature.  You may be seeking a deeper connection with your soul, or with Nature, or with Spirit, however you may conceive that.  You may be seeking renewal in the arms of solitude and silence.  You may be seeking to heal old wounds and give birth to a new story about yourself.  You may be seeking guidance about an important life decision.  Whatever motivated your inquiry, we honor your interest in this ancient, transformative process.  As we enter the heart of Mother Earth and stand naked before Spirit, we re-enact an act of surrender, of death and rebirth, which women and men have done for thousands of years.

            Upon your arrival, we begin the three days of preparation camp.  First we will make sure you have the equipment necessary to insure your comfort and safety.  If you are missing anything, you will be given the opportunity to get the item(s) needed.  Then in our council meetings you will receive instruction in traditional rites of passage, as practiced among indigenous peoples and as conveyed in myths, stories, and The Four Shields of Human Nature, an ancient model of the soul's venture based on the four elements and four seasons.  These myths and stories can serve as maps to help you to navigate and re-imagine your own life and passage.  As well each participant will be given the opportunity to tell her/his own life story in the safety of council.  There will also be exercises of awareness and attention designed to help you break free of the narrow box of the rational mind, so that you may be open to the magic and mystery of 'the other self,' the deeper, intuitive, indigenous way of knowing and seeing.  In addition, you will be given instructions in the dynamics of fasting, contemplative practice in nature, self-created ceremonies, and other tools which can enhance your solo time.  Procedures to insure safety will also be given.  During this preparation phase, there will be time for solitude in nature, individual counseling, and fun.   

            On the third day our preparation camp we will hike in three miles to a wilderness setting.  That afternoon you will venture out from base camp to find a vision quest site.  The next morning at dawn after a threshold ceremony you will cross over into the threshold space and the challenge of spending four days and nights alone fasting (drinking only water) in the wilderness.  During this time you will be completely alone, but close enough to base camp to receive aid if you need it.  Once a day you will visit a pre-arranged stone pile, which you have picked out with a fellow quester, and change the stone pile, which communicates that you are safe.  Other than this minimal requirement, your time is yours to be in close contact with yourself, the natural world, and Spirit. In this threshold space, an opening is created to the unknown, to the magnificent mystery of being.  Here is an opportunity to heal old wounds, to connect with the greater potential within you, to be fully present to the life within and around you, to walk in beauty, to be touched by wonder.                                                                                                                              

            The morning after the fourth night of your solo you will return to base camp.  Here you will be welcomed with a simple ceremony and your first food in four days.  The next two days will be spent in rituals of incorporation.  Incorporation involves decompressing from the intensity of the quest and beginning the process of re-entry.  Each person will be given the opportunity to tell her/his vision quest story in the Elder's Council and to receive assistance in integrating the lessons learned while questing.  There will also be a feast.

            After our councils and ceremonies have been held, you will return to the familiar life you temporarily separated from, but you will be different.  You will have gone to the sacred mountain and called for a vision with all your heart and soul, and you will no longer be the same.  You will know what it means to dwell on this magnificent Earth in a prayerful, meditative way.  You will know more profoundly what is important to you and what is not.  You will know more deeply who you are and what your destiny is.  You will have suffered and through that emerged on the other side into light and joy and beauty. And you will have been blessed with a profound sense of community.  Then with an enriched soul you will return to your life with the strength and courage to live your vision in the world.  And, indeed, that is the hardest task of all.

                We invite you to join us for this powerful, transformative experience.

                        The School of Natural Wonder, 35 Fairview Rd, Wardsboro, VT 05355

802 896-6271, email: flynn@sover.net

www.questvision.org