Wilderness Guides Council

The Elder’s Journey: The Four Shields of Elderhood for Women
2025-10-20 - 2025-10-26 | Aravaipa Canyon Ranch, 91467 East Lewis Ranch Road, Winkelman, AZ, 85192, United States
“We are the seeds of the tenacious plant, and it is in our ripeness and our fullness of heart that we are given to the wind and scattered.”
Kahlil Gibran
This will be celebrating our 10 year anniversary of this beloved program!
Throughout the ages, elder women have enjoyed sitting in circle to weave the rich tapestries of their stories, stories that continued to warm and inspire people across time and culture.
What about us, now, in our time? As women in all stages of growing into our greater years, there is a growing passion and a commitment to tell our own stories. We have children, or we are childless, we are single or we are partnered, working or retired, healthy or feeling the struggles of the body. Whatever stage of eldering we find ourselves navigating it is important that we find our way, with as much humor, grace and dignity as possible. Death awaits us all, and how we move through these years is of utmost importance.
Elderhood is an evolving experience that can be a ripening of our strengths rather than the dulling of our minds. From the words of social activist Maggie Kuhn, “Old age is not a disease. It is a strength in survivor-ship, triumph over all kinds of vicissitudes and disappointments, trials and illness.” This speaks to aging as an extraordinary achievement. It is an opportunity to re-awaken the imagination towards new possibilities and a renewed spirit inspired by the lived wisdom acquired over the years.
As women ripen into the various stages of elderhood, it may be time to re-map the landscape to make room for the emerging new perspectives of what it means to be an elder in today’s world. Through honoring the years of a life lived, creating new meaning and imparting our gifts in service, we move towards transformation and into a renewed vitality, creativity, and vision. This program is an invitation to open to what is needed to welcome the elders we are becoming.
We define “women” inclusively, inviting all those who primarily identify as female or feminine.
Program Overview: During our time together we will explore ways to deepen into a more conscious approach to how we can live as elder women in the world today. We will recall our personal stories, life experiences and collected knowledge and discover ways to transform them into our wisdom and our medicine.
We will explore an ancient means of looking into the mirror of nature through the lens of the Four Shields (a nature based teaching) that will reflect and support the wisdom of the elders as a natural point for introspection and meaning . Together we will move through the 4 seasons, the 4 directions and the stages of life. These teachings and the earth itself will help to bring what is needed to our particular stage of this rich new frontier.
Our days will begin with a morning circle that will include a check-in, and a weaving of teachings and exploring together what it means to grow into our greater years. There will be daily solo time in nature and late afternoon story councils for listening and reflection of your solo experience on the land.
A dawn to dusk contemplative solo/silence will be offered during the week. On our last night together we will offer a fire ceremony.
Program Questions Contact Silvia Talavera at silvia@lostborders.org

Finding Purpose and Meaning through the Practice of Living and Dying
2025-10-10 - 2025-10-16 | Catalina State Park, Tucson, AZ, United States
Life is the primal impulse towards a never ending search for vitality and also the struggle to survive. Without death the life force could not exist. It has been said we come into the world with death beside us. And in the end our physical death is the ultimate rite of passage. This begs the questions: What is my relationship with my own mortality? How does the certainty of my own death inform my life? What are contemporary practices to support living and dying in these complex times of cultural and environmental crisis and “the great separation” from self and nature?
Life is uncertain and there are no final answers to these and many more questions, rather an opportunity to begin to cultivate new ways we can deepen our relationship with our mortality.
Keeping death close at hand has been key to helping many at the end of their lives to realize what matters most. We will come together to explore how we can find ways to shift our attention more consciously towards our own mortality, and look at what emerges for each of us as we hold the tension between being alive while walking towards death. Welcoming in conversations with the land, and each other about death (the hidden teacher), our fears and our relationship with this unknown territory.
Daily solo time in nature during which time you will explore and foster your own ways of walking through this fertile and mysterious landscape. Culminating in a dawn to dusk contemplative solo and ending our last evening with an offering of a fire ceremony.
This program is offered to all humans who are interested in deepening a natural relationship with death and bringing the focus toward living life with meaning and joy.

CA Women’s Vision Fast
2024-11-05 - 2024-11-16 | Death Valley National Park, CA, United States
“I see the Feminine defined as a reconnection to the Self, a commitment to the wildness within our instincts, our capacityto create and destroy; our hunger for connection as well as sovereignty, interdependence and independence, at once.” –Terry Tempest Williams
Like the waxing and waning of the moon, our inner essence is reflected in the creative forces of nature, in the continual movement of light and dark. Throughout the stages of our lives, we flow between the stages of birth, death and re-birth.
You know in your bones the ancient practice of rites of passage. This is a time to go out alone, be held by the earth and the spacious desert. For four days and four nights, there is space to remember your wholeness, sink into your dreams, and release what no longer serves. Here we can clear away the distractions of busy life and tune our ears to our inner voice and nature.
It may be time to ask questions, such as: What needs to be let go? How can I come back to center? What deeper truths are unfolding in my life? How can I tend to my own dreams? And how can I give and receive from a place of nourishment?
Program Overview: This ceremony involves several days of preparation, 4 days and nights of fasting/living alone in a wilderness place, and a few days of incorporation.
PREPARATION: You will be readied physically, psychologically, mentally, and spiritually, that you might fully benefitfrom this solo experience in the wilderness. You will be given an ancient means of looking into the mirror of nature (“The Four Shields”). Preparation will also include the study of symbols, archetypes and ways common to vision fasts and rites of passage.
SOLO FAST: You will cross the threshold and enter into your ceremony, making it your own. You will live alone in the wilderness as so many have done before. Your teachers will maintain a safe perimeter around the area and make sure you have sufficient provisions. Safety is our utmost concern and you will be given the tools necessary to support your well-being.
INCORPORATION: During the final days, we will join together for the sharing of stories. The guides will listen, help you to understand, and challenge you to give your vision practical feet—to live the life you have rightfully claimed as your own!
We welcome all women, transgender, and gender non-conforming people to this ceremony. We also welcome and invite in all forms of gender identity and expression and see our diversity as a gift to the whole.
Program Questions Contact: Betsy Purluss at Betsy@lostborders.org

Rites of Incorporation: Embodying the Vision and Living the Dream
2024-11-05 - 2024-11-11 | Catalina State Park, Tucson, AZ, United States
“Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die life is a broken winged bird that cannot fly.”
– Langston Hughes
The time is now. Come closer. You are the acorn that becomes oak, not willow or cedar. You have a uniqueness that is all your own. We need you. The world needs your gifts now.
This program is an invitation for all folks that are holding a potent vision or dream in their hearts that they long to embody and live out. It is open to all who have experienced a vision fast, life transition, or special event they want to mark or celebrate. It is for those who are timid, terrified, and thrilled, perhaps all at the same time, to move into incorporation and live their fullest truth, lives, and expression.
For decades we have seen folks go out on the land and come back with potent visions, dreams, and transformative changes that they yearn to integrate into their lives. Yet we know that the most challenging part of a rite of passage is the incorporation phase or the rite of return.
Coming back to a busy life, loved ones, and work after a life-altering experience can leave you in overwhelm, grief, or loneliness. Rarely, at the pace of this modern-day society do we have the threads of an intact culture and community to hold us. This can leave us feeling further disjointed and isolated. It can not only feel daunting but impossible to fully embody your vision and live your dreams.
This program is designed to take incorporation to a deeper level. We will be taking the rites of incorporation through the lens of the Four Shields of Human Nature (a nature-based teaching) and nature itself to help teach, guide, and inspire you.
We will meet every morning for a daily check-in, teachings, and discussions. In the afternoon you will be given a suggested mission and have 2-3 hours solo time in nature. There will be times in the afternoon and evenings given for reflections and discussions.
It is our hope that you will come away from this program with new skills and a refreshed awareness of ways to work with your visions, dreams, and ideas and carry them forward into your lives.
Program Questions Contact: Silvia Talavera at silvia@lostborders.org

CA Fall Vision Fast
2024-10-24 - 2024-11-04 | Death Valley National Park, CA, United States
Life transitions, like entering adulthood, midlife or elderhood are always “DNA invitations” to go out on the land. The need to become anew is planted deeply into our ancestral bones because it was (and is!) crucial for the survival of the community that we let go of what no longer serves and enter the calling of our new becoming.
Sometimes, traumatic events or other drastic life changes will beckon loudly, calling us to enter a deeper conversation with our lives and thus lead the way to the ceremony. Other times, the longing for change may be harder to name, but is equally important. It may be an unnamed sense of separateness from one’s inner nature while our outward life seems picture perfect, or a feeling of disconnect with one’s life purpose or heart’s desire.
So 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, perhaps to find some of the big questions waiting: “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 so that you can become anew.
Program Overview: The twelve day ceremony involves four days of preparation, four days and nights of fasting alone, and four days of incorporation. This is an immersion ceremony that will take place in Death Valley National Park (Tüpippüh Valley).
Preparation: Your preparation begins the moment you decide to come, and perhaps it has been happening long before that. Once in the desert, you will be readied to physically, psychologically, mentally, and spiritually benefit from the experience of fasting alone in the wilderness. You will be given an ancient means of looking into the mirror of nature (the Four Shields).
Threshold: The time of fasting and aloneness will take place at Hole in the Wall, Death Valley. Your teachers will maintain a safe perimeter around the area while you are alone and make sure you have sufficient water. Another person will fast nearby. The two of you will be “buddies,” each day leaving assurance of your well-being at a stone pile erected along the borders of your respective areas.
Incorporation: You will return to human companionship and a feast. In council you will confirm the attainment of a new maturity. With others, you will tell your story. The Guides will listen, help you to understand, and challenge you to give your vision practical feet — to live the life you have earned. When all the stories have been told, you will celebrate with the others and then return to a life lived with new understanding.
Letter of Intent: As part of the preparation process, we ask that you write a letter of intent. Is there a particular life stage or event you are marking? You are welcome to take your time with your letter, as it is often a longer process to formulate the core knowing of why you are called to this ceremony. However, we ask that you have it ready at least a month before the program.
Program Questions Contact: Petra Lentz-Snow at petra@lostborders.org

The Elder’s Journey: The Four Shields of Elderhood for Women
2024-10-21 - 2024-10-27 | Catalina State Park, Tucson, AZ, United States
“We are the seeds of the tenacious plant, and it is in our ripeness and our fullness of heart that we are given to the wind and scattered.”
Kahlil Gibran
Throughout the ages, elder women have enjoyed sitting in circle to weave the rich tapestries of their stories, stories that continued to warm and inspire people across time and culture.
What about us, now, in our time? As women in all stages of growing into our greater years, there is a growing passion and a commitment to tell our own stories. We have children, or we are childless, we are single or we are partnered, working or retired, healthy or feeling the struggles of the body. Whatever stage of elderhood we find ourselves navigating it is important that we find our way, with as much humor, grace and dignity as possible. Death awaits us all, and how we move through these years is of utmost importance.
Elderhood is an evolving experience that can be a ripening of our strengths rather than the dulling of our minds. From the words of social activist Maggie Kuhn, “Old age is not a disease. It is a strength in survivor-ship, triumph over all kinds of vicissitudes and disappointments, trials and illness.” This speaks to aging as an extraordinary achievement. It is an opportunity to re-awaken the imagination towards new possibilities and a renewed spirit inspired by the lived wisdom acquired over the years.
As women ripen into the various stages of elderhood, it may be time to re-map the landscape to make room for the emerging new perspectives of what it means to be an elder in today’s world. Through honoring the years of a life lived, creating new meaning and imparting our gifts in service, we move towards transformation and into a renewed vitality, creativity, and vision. This program is an invitation to open to what is needed to welcome the elders we are becoming
Program Overview: During our time together we will explore ways to deepen into a more conscious approach to how we can live as elder women in the world today. We will recall our personal stories, life experiences and collected knowledge and discover ways to transform them into our wisdom and our medicine.
We will explore an ancient means of looking into the mirror of nature through the lens of the Four Shields (a nature based teaching) that will reflect and support the wisdom of the elders as a natural point for introspection and meaning . We will move through the 4 seasons, the 4 directions and the stages of life.
These teachings and the earth itself will help to bring what is needed to your own particular stage of this rich new frontier.
We will meet together in an outdoor setting. Mornings will be taken up with check in, teachings and discussions. And the afternoon or evenings will be solo time on the land (usually 2-3 hours ), story telling, and mirroring of the participant’s solo experience. Direct contact with nature is vital to the non-duality of our relationship and connection to nature. Every day will be a full exploration of this rich landscape we call elderhood.
Program Questions Contact Silvia Talavera at silvia@lostborders.org

Open Desert, Open Mind
2024-10-05 - 2024-10-13 | Eureka Valley
The very transparent, unfixed, yet alive quality of consciousness is its nature, a bit like air around us. If you relax and allow this experience of unfixed knowing, you will discover what Buddhists writers call the clear open sky of awareness. It is empty like space, but unlike space it is sentient; it knows experience. In its true state, consciousness is simply this knowing—clear, open, awake, without color or form, containing all things, yet not limited by them.
Jack Kornfield, The Wise Heart
Eureka Valley is a vast open space that stretches on for miles. Here the scale of desolate earth and expansive sky is something to behold. “Clear, open, awake, without color or form, containing all things, yet not limited by them,” writes Jack Kornfield. What better container, what better mirror, for an expansive state of mind than the vast open space of Eureka Valley?
“Open Desert, Open Mind” draws upon the wilderness-based tradition of the School of Lost Borders and the spiritual practice of sitting meditation to create a unique program for desert contemplatives. This is neither a typical SOLB program nor a typical meditation retreat, but a blend of the two. The usual SOLB program invites participants to spend time alone on the land to access a deeper telling of their own story (while a wide-open desert setting naturally encourages an inner stillness that supports this deeper telling). A meditation retreat usually invites participants to move beyond the telling of stories in search of inner stillness (though often a deeper knowing of one’s own story is a gift found within that stillness). Here we will draw on both traditions.
While this program draws some from Buddhist teachings, no particular religious orientation or spiritual affiliation is asked of participants – nor is any excluded. That said, comfort with a regular meditation schedule is recommended.
Program Overview
During the first four days together, we will weave together a tapestry of inner and outer exploration. Mornings will be a mix of sitting practice and council time for stories about what is coming up while sitting, with each successive morning becoming more silent than those before. Afternoons will start with several hours alone on the land to invite clear open awareness, inside and out. Late afternoons and evening will again be a mix of sitting and council, including time to have our stories mirrored by others. The morning of the fifth day, participants will be smudged out for a 24-hour solo fast in the desert. After a day of reentry, we’ll then spend two full days hearing everyone’s story, inviting a mirror of each story from both the desert expanse and our three guides.
This program is led by Scott Eberle and Silvia Talavera with Bettina Straub
Program Questions to Scott Eberle: seberle@sbcglobal.net

Becoming Human: The Four Shields Model of Nature-Based Therapeutics
2024-09-29 - 2024-10-04 | Big Pine
“If there were a measure of ‘mental health’, it would involve the ability of individuals to grow into the fullness of each season – that is, the ability to fully become, or enact, the contents of each shield.”
– Steven Foster and Meredith Little
All that we do and teach at the School of Lost Borders may come down to this simple intention: to tap into the deep memory that we are not separate from nature, that, indeed, we are no different from the land on which we live. To know this simple truth sets us upon the path to becoming “fully human.” Nevertheless, after absorbing centuries of messages that tell us we are different from nature – separated and above – such a path is not so clearly marked. As a result, we feel alienated and disconnected from ourselves, from others, and from this planet we call home.
The Four Shields model offers us a compass to help us find our way back to our origins on this living planet. This wheel of human nature was handed down to Steven and Meredith in the early days of Lost Borders and has become essential teaching for regaining our human wholeness within the wholeness of life. The wheel of life is archetypal, crossing boundaries between cultures and time; it is both simple and profound.
The Four Shields demonstrates that our lives move with the seasonal cycles and directions found in the natural world and incorporates all aspects of being: body, psyche, mind, and spirit. It begins in the summer of physical awakening, turns into the fall of our inner depths, moves into the north of our intellect, and emerges in the mysteries of spring. The Four Shields also helps us understand the maladies and symptoms that occur when the natural cycles become hindered in our lives. Thus, the Four Shield provides an excellent diagnostic tool, as well as the means for restoring movement toward wholeness.
During this six-day experiential ceremony, we will dive deep into the Four Shields, evoking each shield through teaching, solo time on the land, council, story-telling, and mirroring. Each shield will reveal its essence and provide a doorway to the next shield. We will also look at how the Four Shields teaching is used in wilderness rites of passage and how it can be applied in other therapeutic settings, schools, and organizations. This will be a hands-on, practical program, as well as a time to deepen your practice of becoming more fully human as a being on Earth.
Program Questions Contact: Betsy Perluss at betsy@lostborders.org

CO Fall Vision Fast
2024-09-28 12:00 - 2024-10-11 17:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Wild Mountain, Colorado
As the leaves change, a different way of life is tugging at your heart. A new story is begging to be told. And your gifts are longing to be shared with the world.
Marking life passages allows you to release what no longer serves you and fully embrace all of who you are. As you spend time alone, in a wild place on the earth, something deep in your bones is revived – a call you have been longing to answer.
It is time to nurture your aliveness, live in reciprocity, and in harmony with the Earth, yourself, and one another.
This initiatory time can transform your life and allow you to emerge with a new story. The one that is begging to be told.
You will have the opportunity to share this story and to be witnessed by community amongst the stunning Fall aspen leaves in the Colorado Rocky Mountains. This experience can cultivate belonging and meaning in your life and invites you to show up fully as the valuable human being you are.
Program Overview: This thirteen-day initiatory program is divided into three sections; severance, threshold time, and incorporation.
Once you commit to coming, the severance process begins where you sever from the life you have lived in order to step into the life of who you truly are now. You physically leave home, but the psyche also severs from the old during this time. The first days of the program are a time of physical separation from your daily life, psychological preparation, and setting the intention for your solo time.
The threshold time is your solo time of four days and nights on the land to mark your own life passage(s). This is the liminal space for you to deal with the past, let go of what no longer serves, and celebrate all of who you are now. Base camp will be held not far from your solo spot and you will have a ‘buddy’ to ensure both your and their wellbeing each day.
The days spent after your solo time are the beginning part of the incorporation process. You are invited to share the story of your solo and be witnessed in the community of the group. The guides will reflect or ‘mirror’ your story back to you and the gifts you bring to this new phase of life. Finally, we will prepare you to carry your story, your gifts and yourself back into the world where your incorporation process will continue to unfold over the year ahead.
Program Questions Contact: Pedro McMillan at pedro@wildmountainretreats.org or Kelly McClelland at kelly@kelly-mcclelland.com

NM Fall Vision Fast
2024-09-16 - 2024-09-27 | Cochiti Lake and Ghost Ranch, New Mexico
The land knows you, even when you are lost.
~ Robin Wall Kimmerer
In increasing times of unrest and uncertainty it can be a common human experience to gravitate towards more “certainty” rather than less. Yet, in the Zen tradition “not knowing” is most intimate. The natural world reminds us of this intimacy and offers us refuge. There is something waiting to find us but in order to be found…we sometimes must first admit we are “lost”.
No matter our ancestry, we are all a part of the lineage of this living planet. And because of this it is in our marrow to be called to the land and into ceremony especially during personal and collective transitions. Courageously we surrender to the mirror of our wild environment, and to memory, the looks-within-place. We enter into the mansions of nature’s soul, pondering the questions: “who am I?” “Who and where is my community?” And “what is my intent?” We wander the precincts of loneliness, where vision lies waiting. We drink at the springs of our own soul and quenched with Self-recognition.
This can be a different kind of humbling – one rooted in the humus of belonging to those that are still here and those that came before. In our aloneness we shed off the “should’s” of modernity revealing something much bigger. However small amongst the company of stars, now may be the risky business of truly taking our place, claiming the brightness of our gifts and more fully committing to that which we are called to tend and be tended by. We are embraced by place and re-membered amongst the communities of red mesas, coyote and cliff swallows. Retrieved: a bone-knowing clarity. What is not important falls away. The work needing to be done lies ahead.
May you have the courage to listen to the voice of desire
That disturbs you when you have settled for something safe.
May you have the wisdom to enter generously into your own unease
To discover the new direction your longing wants you to take.
– John O’Donohue
Program Overview: The twelve day ceremony involves four days of preparation, four days and nights of fasting alone in a wilderness place, and four days of incorporation. You will be readied to physically, psychologically, mentally, and spiritually benefit from the experience of fasting alone in the wilderness. You will be given an ancient means of looking into the mirror of nature (the Four Shields).
Program Questions Contact: Emerald North at emerald@lostborders.org

Living in a Time of Dying: The Four Shields in the Anthropocene
2024-09-14 - 2024-09-20 | Big Pine
We are living in a time of rapid change, disintegration and emergence on planet Earth – what many call apocalyptic times. From the compounding and inequitable crises of climate change and pandemic, to the impacts of globalization and colonization, systems are falling apart all around us and it seems there is no way back to so-called “normal.” The world as most recent generations have known it is unraveling and the Earth will never be the same. Coming to grips with the truth of our times in perilous.
How do we go on living when there is so much dying happening all around us? How do we continue to lead meaningful lives and show up for our people in the midst of so much loss and destruction?
As humans of the Anthropocene*, many of us have forgotten our place in the web of life. Centuries of cumulative harm and perpetual environmental assault on the Earth Body are reverberating in each of our bodies, ancestral story lines and in the torn fabrics of our communities, feeding a sense of separation, hopelessness, anxiety, guilt and despair.
And yet, in the long view this lostness is still so very new to the history of our species. For most of our human record, cultures across the world knew how to honor their place in the wider circle, and tend relationships with a living world they knew themselves to be a part of. This knowing, no matter how far from it we may feel, still lives right beneath the surface of our urban skin. We need not learn this way, as much as we need to remember it.
RE-MEMBERING IN DEEP TIME
On the land and in the liminal, we have the rare opportunity to do just that: to remember and return to a knowing so much older than the traumas that have severed us from it, a knowing that re-connects us with the truth and wholeness that lives deep in our bones.
Humans have always known times of great upheaval and “world-endings” – from civilizations rising and falling to the great migrations of the last ice age – to the wars and displacements presently happening across the globe. From the rising and falling away of oceans to the breaking apart of Pangea – the land has seen bedrock change long before us.
Ceremony invites us to root in the memory of our ancestors and the geologic stories of the land. As we sink into deep time on the land we are invited to learn from these stories of resilience and remember how to move through profound change and loss – and how to adapt.
LIVING IN A TIME OF DYING
Restoring, renewing and healing our relationship with death is vital for an increasingly unknown future. This work may well be some of the most important work of our time.
As a culture, we have forgotten how to die. The post-colonial, capitalist systems of oppression in which we live, and their “survival at all costs” narrative, have pushed death out beyond our borders, costing the lives of millions around the world. Lives lost due to starvation, war and climate disasters – most of those lives least responsible for the impact.
What does it mean to re-inhabit our dying? How do we lean in, how do we face into death with a courageous heart? Not to fix. Not to avoid. To truly grapple with our mortality is essential for living an awakened, resilient life. Every time we choose not to look away, we come more alive.
A vital part of our inquiry during our time on the land and in community will be directed at how to sit with death, how to die to old stories, and how to re-member ourselves in the life-death-life circle of nature.
RECKONING AND REBIRTH
At the same time, while this is a time of dying and reckoning, it is also a time of being born – to a new and ancient way of relating to the earth and to each other. How could it be otherwise? The cycle knows no end. In entering a profound threshold of transformation as a species and as a planet, we must draw on the practices of living and dying. Moving through the lowest places, and doing so together, we create new fertile ground to stand on.
When we come together in ceremony on the Earth to offer our gratitude, dance with our despair and remember our interconnectedness we reclaim our place in the web and rekindle the joy that is our birthright – that we may go forth with our best offerings in service of life and all that is yet to be born.
*Anthropocene: an unofficial unit of geologic time used to describe the most recent period in Earth’s history when human activity started to have a significant impact on the planet’s climate and ecosystems.”
Overview
Location
Financial Support
Access
Schedule: Mornings will be spent together in circle with the group, and afternoons are time for contemplative walks and time alone on the earth. We will use the four shields as a road map, to track our individual experiences, as it pertains to the theme, through the lens of body, soul, mind and spirit. We will also use teachings from The Work that Reconnects to inform each shield. A day long solo with fasting begins on the morning of day 5.
During your time of fasting and aloneness, your guides will maintain a safe perimeter around the area, and another person will be nearby. Individual modifications to the solo are made based on medical and personal needs.
Who this offering is for: This offering is for anyone who finds themself needing time out, community witness and ceremony to help move through these times and explore how they are moving within each of us. We are especially welcoming those working on the frontlines or whose daily life is already being impacted by climate change. It is an offering for community stewards, land-tenders, environmental warriors, artists, activists and simple humans of all trades. If you feel a quickening in your bones when you read the above, and know it is your time to be in ceremony, weaving intentional solo time on the land with time in community to learn collectively how to lean into this time in the world please join us!
Who we are: As guides of European descent – Petra, a German immigrant and yeshe, 3rd generation mixed-heritage Jewish, who each fall in our own ways along the queer/gender spectrum – we honor the gifts and cultural influences of our ancestors while recognizing the limitations of holding the identities we do in multi-racial, multi-cultural contexts.
As we do the fierce, ongoing work of creating spaces for dialogue, healing and re-patterning of harmful dynamics in white-led spaces, we aspire to create cross-cultural ceremonial containers and remain committed to honoring diversity of cultural experience and creating a safe(r), brave(r) space to welcome participants from all backgrounds.
Program Questions Contact: petra@lostborders.org / yeshesalz@gmail.com

CA Mirroring the Four Shields of Human Nature: The Art of Storytelling and Listening
2024-09-08 - 2024-09-13 | Big Pine
Telling one’s own story is an ancient art. Nowadays, we have forgotten how to listen and how to tell. Yet the very survival of our species depends on our ability to communicate with each other in such ways as to be mutually enriched by the telling and the listening. If we cannot tell with expression, our life is mute. If we cannot listen like a mirror, we cannot reflect back the wholeness of the four shields — the body, soul, mind and spirit of the teller. The best stories are about human nature — that is, the human of us which is, after all, nature in her basic manifestations as physical, psychical, rational, and spiritual. One of the best ways to create a four shields story, if not the best, is to put people in contact with nature in the raw.
What comes forth in the story is the stuff of self-transformation. Even as we “myth” ourselves into experience, so we express ourselves into existence. Our stories about our natural selves, and our means of expressing them, lead us to courage, determination, commitment, hope, wisdom, and the will to survive, to transcend the difficulty, to go beyond ourselves. Those of us who work with people must know how to listen and respond to the stories our people tell, so that we can help them create a life that is deeper, richer, and of greater benefit to our community and the earth.
Program Overview: This seminar is designed to evoke and create a style of listening and storytelling that is uniquely your own, to practice reflecting what you hear with the fullness of your being (body, psyche, mind and spirit). It is also a ceremony and, like all ceremonies at the School of Lost Borders, requires a willingness to lose your borders and to go beyond what is familiar and known. Our time together will be a weaving of teaching circles, solo time in nature and story council.
Program Questions Contact: Joseph joseph@lostborders.org

CO Mirroring the Four Shields of Human Nature: The Art of Story Telling and Listening
2024-08-19 - 2024-08-23 | Dragonback Springs Ranch, Colorado
The shields of human nature turn with the experiences of life, from the smallest cell to the great seamless whole of the biosphere called earth. It begins with the body (summer), turns into psyche (fall), becomes activated form (winter), which dissolves into spirit (spring) — which is born again in the body (summer). The four seasonal directions of human nature, in their complex, yet simple, interaction, form the basis of an eco psychology which redefines traditional psychologies based on human alone, apart from nature.
Telling one’s own story is an ancient art. Nowadays, we have forgotten how to listen and how to tell. Yet the very survival of our species depends on our ability to communicate with each other in such ways as to be mutually enriched by the telling and the listening. If we cannot tell with expression, our life is mute. If we cannot listen like a mirror, we cannot reflect back the wholeness of the four shields — the body, soul, mind and spirit of the teller. The best stories are about human nature — that is, the human of us which is, after all, nature in her basic manifestations as physical, psychical, rational, and spiritual. One of the best ways to create a four shields story, if not the best, is to put people in contact with nature in the raw.
What comes forth in the story is the stuff of self-transformation. Even as we “myth” ourselves into experience, so we express ourselves into existence. Our stories about our natural selves, and our means of expressing them, lead us to courage, determination, commitment, hope, wisdom, and the will to survive, to transcend the difficulty, to go beyond ourselves. Those of us who work with people must know how to listen and respond to the stories our people tell, so that we can help them create a life that is deeper, richer, and of greater benefit to our community and the earth.
Program Overview: We will meet together in outdoor settings. Mornings will be taken up with meetings, afternoons or evenings with solitary excursions into the surrounding forest. Participants will forgo companionship, food, and shelter during these times. We will tell and listen to stories that empower and participants will respond to stories in a variety of ways. The objectives of the seminar are to experience human-nature deeply; to elicit personal “mythos” through the expression of the story; to acquire knowledge of how to listen and respond to the four personas of human nature (to “mirror”), and to utilize a powerful incorporation tool of self and group empowerment.
Program Questions Contact: Scot scotdeily@lostborders.org

CO Women’s Fast
2024-08-16 - 2024-08-25 | Wild Mountain, Colorado
– Remembering Ourselves Home –
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
– Mary Oliver
What is calling you?
Do you wish to claim and mark a change in your life stage? Have the time and community, both nature and human, to listen more deeply to your heart-song that is on the edge of emergence? Hunger for solitude and the whispers of wild nature?
Restoration
In this program we create a clearing in our lives to restore what has been forgotten, fragmented or diminished. Ceremony invites us to take time to slow down and to find what we may have lost in the frenetic pace and challenges of our daily lives. We pause. We listen. As we renew our connection to the more than human world, we notice what is emerging through that body-sensing way of our sensual nature.
Reconnection
We go out not to prove our worthiness or strength, but rather to return to our natural rhythms and our rootedness. Through immersion in wild nature, the teachings of the Four Shields, ritual, and community, we gain clarity on what is ripening within us and ready to be revealed, so that we may step more confidently into our gifts and aliveness. As we nourish the inner well, we uncover our radiance.
Empowerment
The vision fast is a ceremony of empowerment and renewal, as we remember that we are an intrinsic part of the natural world. During our time you will gain profound insights into your current life passage, come into deep relationship with your longing and belonging, and discover clarity about your unique offerings to the world.
Overview
This 10-day vision fast ceremony, led by two experienced guides, involves four days of preparation, three days of solo, and three days of reincorporation, to support and hold your emergence. Following a pan-cultural model of transitions, this ceremony moves through the three stages of severance (preparation) – threshold (solo) – reincorporation (return).
Living nature is your mirror and source of transformation, and we will dive deep into this exploration of inner and outer communion. Our community is witness to the layers you shed and the new identity you may find.
Who this serves: We invite a village of women of all ages to gather and join. We celebrate the diversity of all expressions of sexuality and female-identified humans.
To be whole. To be complete.
Wildness reminds us what it means to be human,
what we are connected to rather than what we are separate from.
— Terry Tempest Williams —
Contact Guide: Bettina Straub beingbettina@live.de
Co-guide: Nancy Jane nancy@lostborders.org

Healing Ancestral Trauma through Nature, Ritual, and Community
2024-08-06 - 2024-08-12 | Wild Mountain, Colorado
When we heal our roots, we open up new possibilities for our future.
–Thomas Hubl
Ancestral Trauma
Welcome to our investigation of ancestral trauma. We hold this as a sacred exploration of what
often has no words. We trust in our human capacity to heal when given appropriate support
and healthy relationship.
Perhaps you are holding a question about what you might have inherited from your ancestors.
You may even be acutely aware of traumatized aspects of your past and the residues of fear,
anger, or shame that get triggered in everyday living. You may have only a vague sense that
some issue is “bigger than just me in this present moment.” Whatever brings you to look at this
program, we welcome your inquiry and will support you in any way we can.
The stories in our lineage are part of who we are today, but much of their influence remains
unconscious. Our ancestors lived through the trauma of immigration, painful historical events
such as war, the legacy of slavery, Native American genocide and the Holocaust. It is common
for expressions of trauma, such as family suicide, depression, addictions, grief, or physical
health conditions, to be passed down from generation to generation.
Why It Matters
The importance of this work cannot be underestimated. Insights of our time carry forward to
new generations, empowering us to connect and repair with our families and communities. In
order to gather our creative energies and follow a heart-felt path of service to others and the
planet, we must uncover and befriend the entanglements of the past.
Ceremony, Wild Nature, and Community
The journey is both a deeply personal exploration as well as an inquiry into our historical and
collective wounding. Through immersion in wild nature, within a safe community and
supported by ritual, we can begin a process of reclamation and healing. We give ourselves time
and space so that the invisible can become visible. As we bring light to the stories and emotions
that may lie dormant from “looking away,” we liberate our natural aliveness, inspiration, and
gratitude for ourselves and those who came before us.
Flow of the Days
The format of the 7-day program is spacious, to allow for profound insights to emerge. We will
meet daily in sharing and teaching councils, followed by experiential reflection walks on the
land and evening gatherings. The framework of the Four Shields will help us map out our
exploration of ancestral wounding. Other rituals and the mirror of nature will enhance our time
together. On Day 5, participants will undertake a 24-hour solo with optional fasting. Upon
return, participants will share their stories and have them mirrored by the guides. Our last day
focuses on how to take the insights forward into daily life.
Program Questions Contact: Nancy Jane at njane615@icloud.com

CO Summer Vision Fast
2024-07-17 - 2024-07-28 | Dragonback Springs Ranch, Colorado
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 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.
Program Overview: The twelve day ceremony involves four days of preparation, four days and nights of fasting alone in a wilderness place, and four days of incorporation You will be readied to physically, psychologically, mentally, and spiritually benefit from the experience of fasting alone in the wilderness. You will be given an ancient means of looking into the mirror of nature (the Four Shields).
Program Questions Contact: Emerald North at emerald@lostborders.org

CO Men’s Fast
2024-07-09 - 2024-07-21 | Wild Mountain, Colorado
Being a man can be easy, and not easy at all. How do people who identify as a man navigate both the immense privileges that come with maleness, and the weight of myths that come with being a man. Myths like ‘the self-made man’, the ‘warrior’, the ‘breadwinner’ and ‘protector’. In a world where patriarchy has created real and lasting harm to others and the earth, how can a man be sensitive and compassionate yet have a strong voice and presence that leaves room and space for the voices and presence of others?
Through this rite-of-passage we invite those who identify as men to take a leap – to look deeply at our notions of manhood – and to enter the threshold with an open heart. Alone and together we’ll embark on a shared journey towards finding integrity, towards finding real community, and towards finding a future that is calling us to slow down, show up and embody the transformation these times are asking of us. Truly, the world needs initiated adult and elder men more than at any time in memory.
This initiatory ceremony will take you to the edges of who you are in a safe and caring space. This is a time that will hold you in all your wholeness, ask you to be all of who you are and to bring all the gifts you carry back to the world in an authentic and caring way.
Come and join us, surrounded by some of the tallest peaks in Colorado and under billions. of stars as we take this journey together. Your ceremony will begin with enrolling in the program and sending a deposit to hold your space. More information will be sent to you once this is done. The time has come and we welcome you to join us on the amazing land we call Wild Mountain for this transformative experience.
Program Overview:
This ceremony involves several days of preparation, 4 days and nights of spending time alone in a wilderness place, and a few days of incorporation. You will be supported physically, psychologically, mentally, and spiritually, so that you might fully benefit from this experience of being alone with little or no food in the wilderness. After our days of preparation, you will cross the threshold and enter into your ceremony or threshold time, making it your own. During the final days, you step into the incorporation process where we will join together for the sharing of stories. The guides will listen, support your understanding of the experience, and challenge you to give your vision practical feet – to live the life you have rightfully claimed as your own! When all the stories have been told, we will celebrate together and prepare for your return to your community.
For more info please contact Sam via sambdeboskey@gmail.com

Young Adults Nature Based Rite of Passage
2024-06-15 - 2024-06-26 | Inyo Mountains, CA, CA, United States
Every summer the School of Lost Borders offers nature based rites of passage for young people age 18-28 ready to confirm their entry into adulthood in the eastern mountains of Payahuunadü (also known as the Inyo Mountains outside of Big Pine, California). These are the ancestral and contemporary lands of the Nüümü and Newe people.
Nearly every culture on the planet shows evidence of a ceremonial marking of the passage from youth to adulthood, undertaken consciously and witnessed by the community. Marking the threshold of adulthood takes great courage, perhaps now more than ever before as young people face growing stressors of environmental and social crises. With the intention of finding and facing your deepest truths, your strengths and weaknesses, you turn toward the critical questions: “Who am I to be in the world?” “What are my gifts?” And perhaps “What is needed now?”
The wilderness rite of passage is an opportunity to bring your whole being into contact with the natural world, including your concerns, your challenges, your grief and your prayers, your rage and your fragility…as well as the dreams only you can dream.
The solo fast requires a willingness to go alone in the high desert of the Inyo Mountains for three days and nights without food and minimal shelter. It is a ceremony of wholeness and belonging, in which profound bonds with inner and outer nature, self and community may be discovered. Each will come to and return from the solo time with a unique story to share and be witnessed in a story council.
Program Overview: This eleven-day program is divided into three sections; severance, threshold, and incorporation. The first few days are a time of separation from your daily life, physical preparation, and becoming clear on your intention for going out alone into the natural world. The threshold time is your solo time – three days and nights alone on the land. Finally, the days spent after the solo are the first days of your year-long incorporation experience, where you will learn to work with the gifts you bring to the new phase of life you are entering. Our program includes an incorporation call a season after we return, September 2023.
Program Questions Contact: Gretchen Gerlach via gretchen@lostborders.org

The Four Directions of a Queer Man: Forgiveness, Apology & Reconciliation
2024-06-08 - 2024-06-15 | Big Pine
Queer people don’t grow up as ourselves, we grow up playing a version of ourselves that sacrifices authenticity to minimise humiliation & prejudice. The massive task of our adult lives is to unpick which parts of ourselves are truly us & which parts we’ve created to protect us.
—Alexander Leon
epigraph in Last Call, by Elon Green
Gathering in a natural setting – the high desert east of the Sierra Mountains – we will look to nature as our mirror, as we aim to learn more deeply what it means to be “a man” and to be “queer.” Each of the four directions mirrors back something uniquely: call this “the four directions of a queer man.” The south, where the sun is high in the sky, is the place of the child—or for this week, the queer child. In the west, where the sun sets, is the darkness of adolescence: where a queer man must navigate their “coming out”—however many times, and during whatever stages of life. In the north, the direction of night, is the place of the empowered queer adult who knows how to survive and thrive in dark times. And in the east, with its daily inspiration of the sunrise, is the place of Queer Spirit. We will explore each of these four directions – a day at a time – culminating in an overnight solo on the fourth full day, the day in the east.
Through the week, we will weave in the themes of wounding, forgiveness, apology, and reconciliation. We recognize that growing up queer in a homophobic world may have left each of us with old wounds and complicated ongoing relationships – with family, community, and even chosen friends. That has left many of us with lots of unfinished business.
To do this healing work, we will draw upon an old hospice teaching. To complete a relationship at the end of life, five things need be said: “Please forgive me”; “I forgive you”; “Thank you”; “I love you”; and “Goodbye.” One of the great opportunities we all have is to do this work now – to keep our relationships current rather than waiting for our final days. Otherwise, we risk being weighed down by a lifetime of woundings, angers, and regrets.
We are calling in a circle of “GBTQ men.” Put another way: people who identify as “queer” and as a “man” – whatever those two words mean for you. We aim to be inclusive. If you would like to attend but don’t identify as a queer man, please talk to us.
Program information: Enrollment is limited to 10. This program will be held in the Inyo/White Mountains east the Sierra Mountains and immediately east of Big Pine, CA. We will start midday on the first day, a Saturday, and finish by noon of the last day. We will be camping together the entire week, likely with a simple toilet set-up and no showers. More detailed logistical information will be sent out a few months before the course begins.
Program Questions Contact: Scott Eberle at scott@lostborders.org
Of special note: We have raised scholarship money from previous participants for this particular program in an effort to make this year’s gathering more accessible to those with limited income. This program-specific fund can support participation for up to five men, contributing to the cost of their tuition, transportation, and food. We are especially interested in drawing younger people and/or BIPOC people. Please contact Scott at the email above for more info.

Colorado Queer Quest 2024
2024-06-04 16:00 - 2024-06-16 16:00 (America/Denver) | Wild Mountain Retreats, Buena Vista, CO, 81211, United States
For over the last decade at the Queer Quest, groups of people from every part of the queer community have gathered on the land to celebrate our stories and step into the fullness of our queer bodies and selves. This safe and healing space has been a refuge and a reminder to all that being queer is a reflection and celebration of nature’s true diversity. Showing up as who we are, and with our many gifts, brings wholeness to the world!
Queer people have always been edge walkers who are a source of deep connection between the community, nature and the mystery, and now is the time to fully own our place. With all the challenges facing the queer community in the world today, now is the time to come back to our roots and the gifts that the queer community brings to the world. Connecting deeply to yourself, and fully accepting all of who you are, is both a radical act of rebellion against forces of hate and division, and a radical act of communion with all living things!
Join us in this inclusive and supportive circle surrounded by the tallest peaks in Colorado for this ceremonial rite of passage designed specifically for the LGBTQIA2S+ community. Coming together, to step all the way in to the multifaceted person you are and being witnessed by the community, is healing for everyone and the land.
If you are feeling the call to be on the land in queer community to do deep, personal work for yourself, your community and the earth, then this program is right and the time has come. To secure your place, the first steps are to enroll by clicking the ‘enroll’ button and sending a deposit by clicking the ‘pay deposit/tuition’ button. If you are unable to pay a deposit, write to school@lostborders.org about a scholarship. No one will be turned away for lack of ability to pay. Taking these steps will save your spot in the program. You can also send a check to the School of Lost Borders but you will still need to enroll through the website. This program has a long waitlist every year so enrolling and paying or working out the deposit as early as you can is a good idea. You will then receive more information about the next steps in the process.

Reclaiming the Divine Masculine
2024-05-18 - 2024-05-25 | Wildlands in the San Francisco Bay Area
For the longest time, patriarchal beliefs and proscribed gender roles have discouraged men from learning to listen deeply and gently reflect. In the last half of the century, we’ve seen a growing recognition of the importance for each person to make their own spiritual connection with the Divine – an energy that resides inside each of us and in the natural world. But even for those who aspire to cultivating a spiritual life, rarely is there time, space, and support for this kind of
deeper attunement.
Come join us for a week in the natural world as we explore the Four Directions of the Divine Masculine. We’ll first spend a day in the South, where the body serves as a temple for the soul. Then will come a day in the West, where the storytelling adolescent boy seeks to find identity and meaning in the world by exploring his shadow. Next is a day in the North, where the empowered adult man looks to be of service to his people and use those gifts found in the West. And finally, starting at the crack of dawn, will be a day in the East: the place of Spirit, God, Goddess, Beauty, Love, and – in this week of exploration – the Divine Masculine.
Program Overview: To encourage our busy minds to settle, each day we will sit in silent meditation—some sessions optional, some encouraged.
We also will gather in council, holding space for the sharing and witnessing of stories. Afternoons will include time for walking in the natural world to explore each of the four directions of the Divine Masculine, culminating in a sunrise-to-late-afternoon solo walk on the day in the East. When we reconvene, we’ll then spend two days hearing
stories from this solo time.
A note about gender: We invite anyone to join us who identifies – wholly or in part –
as “a man” or as “masculine.” We are looking to create the cohesion that comes with
an affinity group, while also being inclusive.
A note about religion & spirituality: We welcome people of any religious affiliation.
We also welcome people without any religious affiliation. Our aim is to offer to participants the bare-bones spiritual practice of fasting alone in the natural world—a way for each person to source their own connection with the Divine, however they conceive of that.
Program Questions Contact: Scott Eberle at scott@lostborders.org

The Nature of Council
2024-05-03 - 2024-05-10 | Big Pine
“There is a world behind the world we see that is the same world but more open, more transparent, without blocks. Like inside a big mind, the animals and humans all can talk, and those who pass through here get power to heal and to help. They learn how to behave, and how not to give offense. To touch this world no matter how briefly is a help in life.”
~ Gary Snyder, The Practice of the Wild
Council is an ancient way and modern practice whose roots are deep within the natural world, spanning diverse cultures and spiritual traditions. Sitting in circle we remember and learn to listen to the whole: the people, the place and all living beings. This practice elicits an experience of deep community, recognizing that each voice has value, every person has a gift, a story to share, a piece of the puzzle.
Overview: The eight-day arc of this training gives us time to explore different forms, formats, exercises and ways of sharing council in intimate relationships, families, schools and communities. There will be both solo-time and group-time, in order to open to the teachings offered by the natural world. We will offer group exercises, weaving in self-generated ceremonies, inviting the mystery into our personal journeys. We will explore the facilitation challenges of working solo, with a partner, and with the whole circle.
We will use the universal map of the Four Directions as our compass to guide our way through the wilderness within and without. We will be asked to cross threshold after threshold into the wholeness of our lives. Ultimately, it is the questions you are living and the experiences you bring with you that will shape our time together, as will the shadows following you here.
With vulnerability and a little grace, we hope to meet the moment where serving self, serving others, and serving Creation, are spoken in one voice.
Who is this offering for: This extended training is intended for leaders and change-agents, caregivers and caretakers, and those longing for and creating community. It is intended to support and inform those working with young people and elders, as well as guides using Council with rites-of-passage. It offers guidance for Council Carriers introducing the Council practice into other cultures and challenging places.
Venue: In the circle of our days together, Payahuunadu, “The place where water flows” (Owen’s Valley in the Eastern Sierra) will be our home. Our base will be Baker Creek, a campground nestled below the southernmost glacier in North America just west of Big Pine, CA.
For program enquires please contact Sam DeBoskey sambdeboskey@gmail.com

Four Shields of Human Nature: Finding Wholeness in the Living Body of Nature
2024-04-01 - 2024-04-07 | Catalina State Park, Tucson, AZ, United States
“The Great Summons of our time is to find our way home
to our true nature in the living body of earth.”
Joanna Macy
The gift of this nature-based teaching—part of the “bare bones” of the School of Lost Borders’ ceremony—was given to us by our founders Steven Foster and Meredith Little ( authors of The Four Shields: The Initiatory Seasons of Human Nature). There have been many nature-based teachings throughout indigenous cultures worldwide. Nature was home, church, schoolroom, play ground for all to learn about life and how to live in communion and cooperation with each other.
The world today is in a great crisis, borne of a deep, collective separation of nature. Will we heed the call towards healing—towards remembering that all things are connected. In the words of Chief Seattle: “What ever befalls the earth befalls the children of the earth”.
Nature has a way of teaching us right relationship with our own humanness, both inside and out, when we open to different qualities to be found in each of the four directions: The south: the qualities of the physical body, instincts and emotions. The west: the qualities of intuition and introspection. The north: the qualities of standing in our own truth. The east: the qualities of that which is greater than us and the divine within.
During our time together we will look to disprove the ‘lie’ that we are separate from nature, and from each other. We will strive to re- remember our place and our belonging in all of creation as well as our connection to one another. We will learn from observing nature, the seasons and the life cycles. We will begin to re-orient to the natural world by looking closely at the clues and patterns of the natural blueprint that surrounds us. We will learn through our senses and feelings how the cycles, rhythm and flow of nature reflect our own natural flow.
This week’s experience will be helpful to those who are in training for nature based work, those who work in counseling, life coaching, or anyone living in this world working towards wholeness.
We will begin our days with check-ins, teachings, and discussions. The afternoons and one of the evenings will be spent alone in nature for 2-3 hours with a suggested mission. Late afternoons and early evenings we will spend sharing stories of your experiences when out alone.
For enquiries please contact Silvia Talavera at silvia@lostborders.org

Rites of Incorporation: Embodying the Vision and Living the Dream
2023-10-22 09:00 - 2023-10-28 12:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Catalina State Park, Tucson, AZ, United States
“Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die life is a broken winged bird that cannot fly.”
– Langston Hughes
This program is an invitation to all who have experienced a vision fast, or a life transition, had a dream or may have had a special event to mark or celebrate that long to be embodied and lived out. This offering may be a helpful tool in negotiating this challenging yet rich and fruitful landscape of living into your dreams or vision along with the many other possibilities that are begging to emerge in your life. It begs the question “How do I embody my vision and live my dream?”
Corpus is the Latin word for body, and to incorporate is to bring into your body.
Your physical body is the structure and form in which you live and it is imperative that you give your new ideas and dreams a solid and foundational platform so that you are better able to embody and move them forward into your life.
This program is designed to take incorporation to a deeper level. Usually, the work of incorporating experiences into your life can be most challenging. Often when you return to your busy life it is not always easy to continue with the hard work it takes to manifest your vision and give it practical feet. If ignored it is the place where the previous work of all your dreaming and great ideas can easily be forgotten and placed on the back burner or dismissed altogether.
We will be taking the rites of incorporation through the lens of the Four Shields of Human Nature (a nature-based teaching) and nature itself to help teach, guide and inspire you.
We will meet every morning for a daily check-in, teachings and discussions. In the afternoon you will be given a suggested mission and have 2-3 hours solo time in nature. There will be times in the afternoon and evenings given for reflections and discussions.
It is our hope that you will come away from this program with new skills and a refreshed awareness in ways to work with your visions, dreams, and ideas and carry them forward into your lives.
Program Questions Contact: Silvia Talavera at silvia@lostborders.org

The Elder’s Journey: The Four Shields of Elderhood for Women
2023-10-08 09:00 - 2023-10-15 12:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Aravaipa Canyon Ranch, 91467 East Lewis Ranch Road, Winkelman, AZ, 85192, United States
“We are the seeds of the tenacious plant, and it is in our ripeness and our fullness of heart that we are given to the wind and scattered.”
Kahlil Gibran
Throughout the ages, elder women have enjoyed sitting in circle to weave the rich tapestries of their stories, stories that continued to warm and inspire people across time and culture.
What about us, now, in our time? As women in all stages of growing into our greater years, there is a growing passion and a commitment to tell our own stories. We have children, or we are childless, we are single or we are partnered, working or retired, healthy or feeling the struggles of the body. Whatever stage of elderhood we find ourselves navigating it is important that we find our way, with as much humor, grace and dignity as possible. Death awaits us all, and how we move through these years is of utmost importance.
Elderhood is an evolving experience that can be a ripening of our strengths rather than the dulling of our minds. From the words of social activist Maggie Kuhn, “Old age is not a disease. It is a strength in survivor-ship, triumph over all kinds of vicissitudes and disappointments, trials and illness.” This speaks to aging as an extraordinary achievement. It is an opportunity to re-awaken the imagination towards new possibilities and a renewed spirit inspired by the lived wisdom acquired over the years.
As women ripen into the various stages of elderhood, it may be time to re-map the landscape to make room for the emerging new perspectives of what it means to be an elder in today’s world. Through honoring the years of a life lived, creating new meaning and imparting our gifts in service, we move towards transformation and into a renewed vitality, creativity, and vision. This program is an invitation to open to what is needed to welcome the elders we are becoming.
Program Overview: During our time together we will explore ways to deepen into a more conscious approach to how we can live as elder women in the world today. We will recall our personal stories, life experiences and collected knowledge and discover ways to transform them into our wisdom and our medicine.
We will explore an ancient means of looking into the mirror of nature through the lens of the Four Shields (a nature based teaching) that will reflect and support the wisdom of the elders as a natural point for introspection and meaning . We will move through the 4 seasons, the 4 directions and the stages of life.
These teachings and the earth itself will help to bring what is needed to your own particular stage of this rich new frontier.
Our days will be filled with a morning circle that will include a check-in and teachings and discussion. In the afternoon a mission will be suggested and there will be time alone on the land. There will be late afternoon story councils for listening and reflection.
A 24 hour contemplative solo/silence will be offered during the week. Fasting is suggested during this time. A ceremonial sweat will be offered (moderate heat due to honoring sensitivities).
Time and Location: A special offering for the first time at the Elders’ Journey program. We will be Staying at one of Tucson’s special ranch and retreat centers at Aravaipa in Winkleman, Arizona. Steeped in Apache history and land that offers a stream that flows through the canyon and a beautiful labyrinth nearby and much more.
Program Questions Contact: Silvia Talavera at silvia@lostborders.org

THE FOUR SHIELDS OF WHOLENESS FOR WOMEN
2022-07-17 10:00 - 2022-07-23 13:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Los Padres National Forest, CA, CA, United States
Finding our medicine as women and female-identified people, finding our voice and way as daughters, mothers, elders, and stewards of this Earth at this time is essential.
Feminine nature has been abused, pillaged, murdered, kidnapped and sold for thousands of years. Women carry heavy on the trauma their ancestral lineages have endured, whether we are conscious of it or not. Too many of us carry the blueprint of sexual and/or violent assault in our physical and/or ancestral bodies informs and shapes us in more ways than we are consciously aware of. As a result, we may be more comfortable living in the masculine part of ourselves, where we perform as best we know how in a dominance driven culture.
Remembering our birthright, unearthing, empowering and uplifting feminine nature within us and around us is as necessary for ourselves as it is for life on Earth.
Although the feminine lives in exile in a culture that has forgotten how to nourish and tend instead of extract, how to collaborate instead of compete, we are innately connected to cyclical, natural time – with every moon, every cycle of our menses, and in all life cycles of our fertility and beyond.
In our time on the land and in circle, we will invite and invoke the intuitive, creative, irrational, deeply informed feminine nature within. We will dare to unlearn the logic of colonial capitalism and unearth a deeper knowing of (and belonging to) the life-thriving paradigm that – no matter how much we fear we have lost it – still lives right beneath the surface skin of our homogenized cultured selves. As with all ceremony, we will do this not only for ourselves, but for our kin, our human and more-than-human communities and in honor of creation/life herself, flowing in infinite forms through all manner of bodies.
Come as you are. Perfect, imperfect, cracked open or blown away. You are welcome.
More detailed info here: https://schooloflostborders.org/programs_courses/the-four-shields-of-wholeness-for-women/
Financial help: Scholarships are available through the school – and – knowing the disparity of income caused by racial, and social inequities, we are offering two spaces with near full scholarships (covering 80-90% of total tuition, based on need). BIWOC will receive primary consideration as we strive to create more access to this work as well as bring racial diversity into future leadership.
Who this offering is for: This invitation is for women and significantly female-identified people. “Woman” and “female” are used as inclusive and expansive definitions. All are welcome: cis and trans women, genderqueer women, and members of non-binary communities who are also female-identifying.
Program Questions Contact: Petra Lentz-Snow at petra@lostborders.org
