Wilderness Guides Council

8th Wilderness Guides Global Gathering
2022-05-31 - 2022-06-06 | Bearskin Meadow Camp, 65000 Ten Mile Rd, Miramonte, CA, 93633, United States
After two years of not being able to gather, we are beyond excited to invite our global community together again at beautiful Bearskin Meadows in the southern Sierra mountains of California.

As we face the great challenges of climate change, recovery from a global pandemic, and the rising awareness of inequity on our planet, we come together to ask “What new world is arising, and what is our role as rites of passage guides in this extraordinary time of change?”.

A good portion of time will be spent in simply re-connecting to old friends and making new ones, to re-affirm our personal bonds as community and hear each others’ stories.

And we will sit in Circle together, play and dance, speak to shadow and grief, share our gifts via workshops and member offerings, and vision together the future we wish to co-create. It is an opportunity to network and to be inspired and enriched, both as guides and as supporters of this work.

The Andy Gardner Memorial Scholarship application deadline has been extended to April 30th. This scholarship is specifically for partners of gathering participants that would like to attend the gathering with their loved one. To learn more about this scholarship and to submit an application link here: Andy Gardner Memorial Scholarship.

The date of equal consideration for general scholarships has passed. However, if you would like to purchase a ticket, but are in need of a scholarship, link here to fill out an application and we will do our best to help out as more funds potentially become available. Global Gathering Scholarship Application

INTERNATIONAL VISION QUEST – SOUTH AFRICA
2022-06-12 - 2023-03-24 | GROOT WINTERHOEK WILDERNESS AREA, South Africa
International Vision Quest
13-24 Mars 2023
Cape Town, Afrique du Sud
Venez-nous rejoindre sur l’ancienne terre d’ Afrique!
Cette quête de vision est une offre à la communauté internationale, un appel à nous retrouver ensemble en cérémonie pour manifester la sagesse de notre diversité. Nous rassembler en Afrique du Sud, au berceau du genre humain.
Une invitation à explorer ton intime vérité et à la partager en communauté, sur cette terre qui détient notre intelligence et notre savoir commun.
Venir affirmer ta « médecine » – pour soi, la communauté et le monde plus vaste que nous partageons.
Cette quête demande de connaître l’anglais, au moins de le comprendre même si on choisit ensuite de s’exprimer en français dans le groupe.
Pour les modalités du voyage et avant de s’inscrire, merci de me contacter personnellement par email carine@ceuxdici.ch
Le groupe est limité à 12 personnes.
La cérémonie commence au mois de juin 2022, avec 5 appels vidéo de préparation et d’enseignement.
Group calls 12 June 2022, 7 August 2022, 16 October 2022, 11 December 2022, 12 February 2023.
Bienvenue si tu entends résonner cet appel important.

Womens's Wild Soul Quest - High Desert Western Colorado
2022-06-16 15:00 - 2022-06-26 13:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Uncompahgre National Forest or National Grassland., CO, United States
Spending intentional time on the land helps relieve fear, anxiety, stress, worry, anger, etc. It enhances feelings of well-being and delight. As we attune ourselves with the earth and all of its inhabitants we begin to let go of the perceptions and attitudes that do not serve us. We see ourselves reflected, or mirrored, by the trees, the animals, the rocks, the sky. We find our place in the way of things.
In this 10 day experience you will be invited to let go and find what you are seeking.
This quest takes place in a community of supportive women. You will spend 3 days in preparation: physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually. You will then have the opportunity to go out on the land in your chosen spot to spend 3 days and nights with only the company of the “other than human” world. You will not be alone! When you return you will share your story with the circle, and it will be mirrored by your guides to deepen it and help you see different perspectives. Lastly you will contemplate and share how you will integrate your new wisdom into your lives, how you will share your experience, and how you will maintain this new level of awareness. We will celebrate!
Please consider participating if:
• You would like insight or guidance about what’s next for you in an area of your life.
• You are feeling confused and ready for some kind of change, but not sure how to navigate it.
• You are called by the gift of having time for stillness in nature to reconnect with your inner self.
• You simply want to be present with yourself & Nature for deepening into yourself and with Spirit- in a supportive small comfort of women

2022 Saltspring Wilderness Vigil
2022-06-24 16:30 - 2022-07-02 13:00 (America/Vancouver) | KDOL Saltspring Island, Mount Tuam Rd., Saltspring Island, British Columbia, Canada
A four day rites of passage fast in the tradition of the School of Lost Borders. This ceremony takes place on the site of Buddhist retreat lands, on a mountain
in the Salish Sea, in the territory of the Hul’q’umi’num, the Cowichan people. For some, the space is too gentle; for others, it is just right.

Community Based Ceremony and Rites of Passage
2022-06-30 00:00 - 15:42 (America/Los_Angeles) | Consultation and Coaching, 128 Bliss Road, Montpelier, 05602, United States
COMMUNITY CREATED CEREMONY AND RITES OF PASSAGE
Vermont Wilderness Rites’ Community Consultation invites communities to create ceremonies that mirror the land, the people, the context, and the larger currents in the world. We are living in a time of great upheaval. Within that is great opportunity to create and strengthen traditions and practices based on shared values that establish and enhance a regenerative culture in the place you call home. Community ceremony, particularly rites of passage, rises up out of a people and the land they live on. Held by people who have prepared to guide others through life’s transitions, it takes time and intention to build and is not something that can be superimposed or appropriated. This process of becoming is both individual and communal. It often begins with one audacious idea, a dream seed that needs the fertile ground of a community that dares to say Yes!
Vermont Wilderness Rites’ Community Consultation is adapted to suit your unique group and community vision and readiness. Areas that we offer consultation, training, and facilitation include:
Visioning: The Seed and The Fertile Ground
Foundations of Community Created and Held Ceremony
Rites of Passage -Developmental Considerations for Youth, Adults, and Elders
Community-wide Celebrations of the Seasons
Community Roles in Ceremony and Rite of Passage
Guide Preparation, Training, and Mentoring
Safety and Risk Management Considerations
GUIDES, VENUES AND FEES
Vermont Wilderness Rites has guides experienced in each of the program areas listed above. After an initial conversation with Lead Guide, Fran Weinbaum, guides who can best support your vision and goals will be matched with your community. Consultation and training can be provided virtually or in-person depending on location and focus. Fees will vary depending on the nature and scope of the services requested, from a one-day workshop to a series of sessions to a yearlong process that incorporates all of the components of creating community rites.

Beholding the Stories of the World: a ceremonial remembrance
2022-06-30 08:00 - 2022-07-08 17:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Boulder Mountain, Utah, Boulder, UT, 84716, United States
As bees are the reproductive organs of flowering plants,
might humans be the song and story organs of the world,
carrying the pollen grains of story around as we fall hopelessly in love
with the nectar of life, moving from flower to flower?
​We might.
In the long ago, Humans were given the gift of language, the gift of story, so that we might behold the world in all its mystery and beauty and wonder. While most of us have forgotten this, and have been using this gift for all manner of absurd and frightening purposes, there are a few who have never forgotten – the poets and bards, the song and story-carriers of the world.
In the long ago, Humans were given the gift of story so that we might bear witness to the inexhaustible beauty of the world. With our throats and our hands and our brilliant minds, we were asked to give this beauty back, to sing the songs of Life back to itself, to feed the soul of the world with poetry, song, dance, with wild beauty. We were asked to tend the world with our eloquence, our imagination, our capacity for grief and praise. We were asked to Behold the elegance of the world with the fullest limits of our humanness. We were asked to be artists.
The power of language and story is our species’ unique way of being in the world, and it is a powerful magic indeed. What if we were to take accountability for this gift, for this power, and use it for honoring and celebrating the world? What if we were to allow ourselves to truly see the beauty of the world, and be seen in turn? What might happen?
Beholding the Stories of the World is an eight day journey into a world of very real magic and wonder, a world in which you are an integral part of the story of the world, and what you do with your gifts – your art, your magic – matters greatly to the entire fabric of Life.
Who is this for?
This ceremony is for poets, bards, vagabonds and miscreants, brush-and-pen-wielders, pot-shapers, spoon-carvers and basket-weavers, song-keepers and myth-tellers, minstrels and wastrels and artists of all breeds and persuasions. Throughout the ceremony, you will be asked to take accountability for your role as a human and as an artist. You will be asked to witness the beauty of the world, and be witnessed in turn. You will remember why your people were given these gifts so long ago, and why you are carrying them now.
We are playing in the sandbox of what it might mean to live in an animate world – exploring the possibilities, potentialities, and limits of what is possible when a group of humans come together to open their ears, eyes and hearts to the songs and dreams of the wild world.
What will we be doing?
We will be gathering, camping, and cooking together at a basecamp on Boulder Mountain, and venturing into the surrounding wilderness in a series of ceremonies designed to bring us into immediate contact with the nonhuman world. The week will be weaving back and forth from solo wilderness time and community story-telling, art-creating, and witnessing time.
This sounds a lot like Mirroring
For those unfamiliar with this term, Mirroring is an essential part of a rite-of-passage ceremony, a way of witnessing, celebrating, and midwifing stories into the world. Mirroring is an act of tending the rich soils of death and life – compassionately holding the hand of that which is dying in us, as well as welcoming the beautiful story which is struggling to emerge into this strange and terrifying world.
Beholding is a child in the lineage of Mirroring, taken a few steps deeper into an animate world. Beholding is applying the magic of mirroring to the nonhuman world, as humans are not the only beings whose stories need to be held, witnessed, and loved.
Do I need prior experience with ceremony, mirroring, or poetry?
This is a more advanced version of our Beholding the Human Story ceremony, and so prior experience with ceremony, mirroring, and beholding is helpful and indeed necessary to be able to fully engage with the particular magic that we are working with.
What about reciprocity?
The Oak and Bone School operates on a gift economy. For more details on what this means, please follow this link: https://www.theoakandboneschool.com/soul-of-gift
or contact tamarix for more details.
Participation is limited to ten humans. Please RSVP by June 1st.
For questions, details, or to RSVP, please follow this link: https://www.theoakandboneschool.com/apply-1
or contact tamarix at
tamarix@theoakiandboneschool.com

LA QUETE DES JEUNES – SUISSE
2022-07-03 - 2022-07-06 | Jura, Suisse, Switzerland
Quête de Vision pour les 15 à 24 ans
(jeûne de 24h00 en solo)
Jura, Suisse.
3 juillet au 6 juillet 2022.
Carine Roth, Line Bachmann et Guido Albertelli
La Quête de Vision est un jeûne seul en nature, c’est une forme spécifique de Rite de Passage
qui permet de marquer et célébrer le passage d’un état à un autre,
d’un âge ou d’une étape de vie à un autre.
Pour la 4ème année consécutive, nous offrons cet espace aux 15 à 24 ans pour se mettre à l’écoute de leurs talents et aspirations. C’est à chaque fois un honneur et une grande joie de pouvoir partager ces moments ensemble.
Le passage de l’âge de l’enfance à celui de jeune adulte est une étape importante qui peut naturellement être accompagnée de questionnements. Affirmer mes valeurs et trouver comment prendre ma place dans ce monde moderne peut être un enjeu que la quête de vision soutient et favorise.
Cela demande du courage d’aller s’asseoir seul en nature face à soi-même. Et cela procure en retour de la clarté et de la force.
Etre vu pour qui je suis et trouver « ma médecine », ce que je souhaite apporter à la communauté.
Trouver le lieu de ma force, de mon coeur, choisir de faire briller ma flamme, unique, essentielle à la bonne marche du monde.
La société se doit d’offrir un espace à la jeunesse pour découvrir comment prendre sa place et embrasser la possibilité d’un futur collectif.

Transforming Ancestral Trauma through Nature, Ritual, and Community
2022-07-03 - 2022-07-09 | Southern Colorado, CO, United States
This program provides an opportunity to consciously explore how the shadows of the past remain undigested in our personal and collective lives. To what degree are we aware of their impact on our present day experiences? How does our behavior reflect some trauma or dysfunction from the past? What resilience and wisdom have we inherited through our lineage?
The stories of our ancestors are part of who we are today, but much of their influence remains unconscious. Through immersion in wild nature, supported by ritual and safe community, we can begin a process of healing. When we explore and bring awareness to what is unintegrated in our ancestral line, we create more presence and more vitality in our life that helps with the challenges we face. The journey is both a deeply personal exploration as well as an inquiry into our collective trauma.
Historical events, such as war, the Holocaust, slavery, the genocide of Native Americans, and the Depression, intersect with the traumas in our lineage and are carried across generations. Through awareness and the courage to face the past, we can bring light to the shame, fear, mistrust, numbness, grief, and other feelings that perhaps lie dormant from “looking away.”
The format of the 7-day program is spacious, to allow for delicate insights to emerge. We will meet daily in sharing councils, with teachings followed by experiential reflection walks on the land, and then further councils in the evenings. The framework of the Four Shields will support and help us map out our exploration of ancestral wounding. Other rituals and practices 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.
Program Overview: This 7-day program provides an opportunity to transform the energy we have inherited. We sit in a sea of personal and collective influences that color how we react, what motivates us, and how much we trust ourselves and others. Through awareness and the courage to face the past, our deep dive into our genealogy leads to a beautiful liberation of aliveness, inspiration, and gratitude for ourselves and those who came before us.

Women’s Solo Quest Online
2022-07-15 00:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Gwynedd
This six week program will be held online, and in the nature setting of your own choice.
A homecoming to deepest self, this six session sacred journey of healing and transformation honors the power and the path of the sacred feminine as experienced in nature and in our lives as women.
The supportive container of the Women’s Solo Quest provides a safe, wild and beautiful way to renew your sense of purpose, heal a weary heart in order to live your most alive self. Enter sacred time and space alone to reflect and redirect. Connect with the earth and claim your place in the order of all life. Find and claim the gifts that are uniquely yours to give.
From an article on the Women’s Quest written by Scout Tomyris, who guided with Rites of Passage for several years:
We let down our guard and simply become ourselves. Meeting in Council circle, sharing our intentions and fears with each other before the solo time, each woman experiences for herself the complete freedom to say whatever she wants without fear of judgment or reprisal.
All beings have a relationship to Mother Earth. It has been widely recognized since ancient times and in cultures worldwide, that the energy of the Earth is feminine and that of the Sky is masculine. I don’t know why.
What I do know is that when I spend time alone on the Earth, She feels like my true Mother. I lay on the ground and I am caressed and cradled to her Breast. I inhale deeply the scent of the sagebrush and I am Breathed by Her. I am fed by a view of the landscape and so She nourishes me in return. I hear birds cawing and singing, twigs breaking, a mole digging underground and I know that I am hearing Mother Earth speak to me.
Mother Earth teaches me that everything is connected. She is the penultimate guide as far as I am concerned. I am a mere human, albeit one who does her best to listen to Earth’s guidance. I feel blessed that at least once a year I am called to venture forth and lead a small troupe of women on their quest for vision. Empowerment, resourcefulness, humility and freedom are just some of the rewards that we all experience. Women deserve this.
The Solo Quest Online Program Incorporates the Five Core Elements of a Wilderness Quest:
1. Solitude
You will have a full day of solo time, either sunrise to sundown, or 24 hours.
2. Immersion in Nature
An entire day is spent in nature–time for walking, exploring, sitting still, journaling, and enacting ceremony.
3. Fasting
Fasting is an ancient cross-cultural practice, one that opens the mind and heart. Most women are able to fast during the nature immersion time of the Solo Quest. This practice can be modified for those who cannot fast.
4. Pan-cultural Teachings
In this program, we will apply practices and teachings drawn from more than 40 years experience guiding rites of passage in nature, including the Four Directions teachings (given to Rites of Passage by a Native American teacher); dialogue with the natural world; journaling; and other eco-psychological practices. We will also teach simple ceremonial practices that can be utilized by Solo Quest participants.
5. Community
Traditional rites of passage always take place in the context of community. This program will have a community of up to eight women, to share stories, learn from each other, and create a safe and powerful container for the work.

BIPOC Mirroring Training: Reflecting BIPOC Stories Through Nature and Belonging
2022-07-17 - 2022-07-23 | Wild Mountain Retreats, Buena Vista, CO, 81211, United States
Gathering with a supportive group of BIPOC Guides is an opportunity to feel deep connection and belonging with each other and nature. Nature both reflects and celebrates the full spectrum of our intersecting identities. Sharing our stories and receiving mirroring can transform trauma and separation into healing and liberation. This is a place to be seen and heard in our fullness and to celebrate the value our unique identities bring to the world.

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

Wilderness Ceremony of Becoming | ONLY ONE SPOT REMAINING
2022-07-22 10:00 - 2022-07-31 10:00 (America/New_York) | Friends Wilderness Center, West Virginia, Harpers Ferry, WV, United States
This ten-day retreat functions as a Ceremony of Becoming, allowing you to step into a more meaningful and complete version of your life with the help of nature and a small community of individuals. You are invited to leave your current life behind, severing from work, relationships, household duties, school, social media and the everyday constant flow of life. You will find yourself in a beautiful wooded space set aside for spiritual retreats and journeys, and enter into a guided ceremony where your perspectives and outlook will broaden and change. With your boundaries and walls becoming more permeable, your essential questions are allowed to come to the forefront:
What am I ready to leave behind? What am I moving into? What really is the point of it all? What do I have to offer this world? What is most essential in me that brings life and love? What do I need to let die so that a new life can be reborn?
There are ten spots open for this summer, and we are donation based, asking participants to give what they can at an appropriate amount reflective of their life situation. LGBTQ+ community is welcomed and honored with open arms and hearts.

Weekly event: Interbeing
2022-08-02 15:00 - 2022-09-06 16:00, 2022-08-09 15:00 - 2022-09-13 16:00, 2022-08-16 15:00 - 2022-09-20 16:00, 2022-08-23 15:00 - 2022-09-27 16:00, 2022-08-30 15:00 - 2022-10-04 16:00, 2022-09-06 15:00 - 2022-10-11 16:00 (America/Denver) | Virtual, United States
We will practice being present with each other as a group, in groups of 2 or 3, and, using my photos, being present with the earth, a plant, an animal, a landscape, etc.
There can be very little speaking beyond a word or two stating what is evoked or there can be some or a lot, depending on what is going on. The focus is on being present; with the ‘other’ in their fullness and recognizing that he/she/it is not separate from me, that I am being a part of him/her/it. Despite intending to see the world through such eyes, I am still too much entrained to the judgments that I have grown up with and am surrounded by. It takes practice, presence, and a whole lot of love to change that.
The term Interbeing comes from Thich Nhat Hanh. I may use quotes from his book Interbeing to take us deep into that state of being.
We will stay within 60min. and may start out with using less time.

Women’s Solo Quest Online
2022-08-02 16:00 - 2022-08-13 18:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | Virtual, United States
This six week program will be held online, and in the nature setting of your own choice.
A homecoming to deepest self, this six session sacred journey of healing and transformation honors the power and the path of the sacred feminine as experienced in nature and in our lives as women.
The supportive container of the Women’s Solo Quest provides a safe, wild and beautiful way to renew your sense of purpose, heal a weary heart in order to live your most alive self. Enter sacred time and space alone to reflect and redirect. Connect with the earth and claim your place in the order of all life. Find and claim the gifts that are uniquely yours to give.
To register for this program, please visit https://wildernessquest.org/schedule/womens-solo-quest/
From an article on the Women’s Quest written by Scout Tomyris, who guided with Rites of Passage for several years:
We let down our guard and simply become ourselves. Meeting in Council circle, sharing our intentions and fears with each other before the solo time, each woman experiences for herself the complete freedom to say whatever she wants without fear of judgment or reprisal.
All beings have a relationship to Mother Earth. It has been widely recognized since ancient times and in cultures worldwide, that the energy of the Earth is feminine and that of the Sky is masculine. I don’t know why.
What I do know is that when I spend time alone on the Earth, She feels like my true Mother. I lay on the ground and I am caressed and cradled to her Breast. I inhale deeply the scent of the sagebrush and I am Breathed by Her. I am fed by a view of the landscape and so She nourishes me in return. I hear birds cawing and singing, twigs breaking, a mole digging underground and I know that I am hearing Mother Earth speak to me.
Mother Earth teaches me that everything is connected. She is the penultimate guide as far as I am concerned. I am a mere human, albeit one who does her best to listen to Earth’s guidance. I feel blessed that at least once a year I am called to venture forth and lead a small troupe of women on their quest for vision. Empowerment, resourcefulness, humility and freedom are just some of the rewards that we all experience. Women deserve this.
The Solo Quest Online Program Incorporates the Five Core Elements of a Wilderness Quest:
1. Solitude
You will have a full day of solo time, either sunrise to sundown, or 24 hours.
2. Immersion in Nature
An entire day is spent in nature–time for walking, exploring, sitting still, journaling, and enacting ceremony.
3. Fasting
Fasting is an ancient cross-cultural practice, one that opens the mind and heart. Most women are able to fast during the nature immersion time of the Solo Quest. This practice can be modified for those who cannot fast.
4. Pan-cultural Teachings
In this program, we will apply practices and teachings drawn from more than 40 years experience guiding rites of passage in nature, including the Four Directions teachings (given to Rites of Passage by a Native American teacher); dialogue with the natural world; journaling; and other eco-psychological practices. We will also teach simple ceremonial practices that can be utilized by Solo Quest participants.
5. Community
Traditional rites of passage always take place in the context of community. This program will have a community of up to eight women, to share stories, learn from each other, and create a safe and powerful container for the work.

Boulder Mountain Mens Fast
2022-08-09 08:00 - 2022-08-20 17:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Boulder Mountain, Utah, Boulder, UT, 84716, United States
To belong to the way of Man is a matter of no small consequence. What does it mean to be a man in a world where we have almost no role models, no mentors, no helpful guides for a beautiful masculinity in service to Life? What does it mean to be a man in a world where men have done horrible, horrible things to this planet and all her precious creatures for thousands of years? What does it mean to have come into this world with a tremendous capacity for creation and destruction, and no guidance for what to do with this power? What does it mean to be a man in a world where even the concepts of masculinity and femininity are being scrutinized, weighed, tested, and found wanting?
The Boulder Mountain Mens Fast is a space to open up some big questions around what it might mean to be a man in the world and begin to tend the deep wounds that lie therein. This is a ceremony open to anyone willing to take accountability for their experience of masculinity in a community of men. This is an initiation into a wild and beautiful masculinity, one which has the courage to meet our inherited cultural poverty and shame with profound courage and compassion.
No prior experience with fasting or ceremony is necessary, only a sincere desire to take accountability for belonging to the story of masculinity and a willingness to show up as the most courageous version of yourself.
Layout of the 12-day ceremony
We will be gathering at a basecamp on Boulder Mountain for four days of preparation and working with intention, transition to four days of ceremony in the tradition of the vision fast, and a return to the basecamp for four days of working with the stories that have been born and learning how to integrate them into the fabric of Life. For those unfamiliar with the vision fast, it is a pancultural model of initiation that has been remembered, carefully tended, and lovingly offered to our culture by the School of Lost Borders (https://schooloflostborders.org/) over the past forty years. The ceremony will consist of four days of solo time in the wilderness while fasting from food, human companionship, and most everything else you have been using to distract yourself from the deep longing that has been tugging at your chest – the wild call of your soul.
We will be following backcountry Covid protocols throughout the duration of the ceremony, which unfortunately includes cooking meals individually or in pods of folks who are comfortable sharing physical space.
Dreamwork
Working with the dreamworld is integrated into all Oak and Bone School fasts. In addition to an invitation to begin tracking dreams during the time leading up to the fast, there will be a dream tent available each morning for those who wish to engage in dreamwork.
Reciprocation
The Oak and Bone School operates on a gift economy. For more details on what this means, please follow this link: https://www.theoakandboneschool.com/soul-of-gift
or contact tamarix for more details.
Participation is limited to eight humans and one cat. Please RSVP by June 1st.
For questions, details, or to RSVP, please follow this link: https://www.theoakandboneschool.com/apply-1
or contact tamarix at
thetamarixproject@gmail.com

Intergenerational Women’s Fast
2022-09-03 - 2022-09-10 | Southern Colorado, CO, United States
Since time immemorial, women have gathered to celebrate, honor and support life. In doing so we form a sisterhood deeply rooted in our own authentic nature. As we join together to share our stories across a spectrum of years, we hear echoes of our own wisdom and intuitive knowing, and we remind each other that we are enough; we are beautiful; we are powerfully creative.
Please join us to renew your connection to the natural world, to better understand your life transitions and stages of growth, and to reaffirm your natural vitality and sense of well-being. We offer a circle of care and compassion for befriending those events in life that have obscured a sense of wholeness. The ceremony makes space for all of us 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. We take notice of what is emerging through that body-sensing way that our feminine nature is designed for.
Welcome to our village! We invite you to go out on the land not to be tested or to prove your strength, but to discover your own natural rhythms and your own rootedness. Come nourish the inner well and allow yourself to receive the gift of taking time to tend and befriend yourself.

Secret Canyon: Utah Vision Fast 2022
2022-09-06 11:00 - 2022-09-13 12:00 (America/Denver) | South Eden Ranch, Bear Lake, Utah, Laketown, UT, 84038, United States
A few spots are left!! Sign up at https://www.newmoonritesofpassage.com/utah-fast
You are invited to join us on this 9-day vision fast ceremony, enacted in high desert ranch land of Utah.
This vision fast trip is offered once a year and performed in a pan-cultural form (as taught by the School of Lost Borders). We will form a community and explore together the deepest meaning of our lives both personally and collectively, and what it is to be fully human. This is a ceremony of living and dying, of death and rebirth, and so of authentic growth. It gives you the opportunity and space to dig deep, and to die to what no longer serves you so that you may hear your soul’s genius, echoed in the clear mirror of Nature.

Fall Rites of Passage
2022-09-13 16:00 - 2022-09-25 15:00 (America/Denver) | Wild Mountain Retreats, Buena Vista, CO, 81211, United States
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 eleven-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.

Nature Coaching in Colorado
2022-09-20 12:00 - 2022-09-22 12:00 (America/Denver) | top of the pines, Ridgway, Colorado, 81432, United States
Your True Nature Coaching: Using age-old sacred practices, enhanced awareness of self and other, as well as natural spaces to support and challenge those you coach.
Are you a coach? Are you a leader who is using coaching skills? Are you wanting to access the profound wisdom of nature in your work?
Nature offers the opportunity to experience questions and musings and discoveries in a completely new surrounding.
~ Nature allows us to walk our talk, choose a different path, experience getting lost and finding our way again. In nature, we can still ourselves and listen to our bodies, hearts and souls.
~ With nature as our insightful partner, coaches and those using coaching as a way to support others, can use age-old processes to support setting intention; create deep, personal journeys of self-discovery; and facilitate meaningful re-entry and integration through coaching.
~ Particularly during major transitions, these rites of passage ~ some call ‘soul searching’ ~ can propel the coachee to new awareness, new discovery, and a natural sense of well-being.
If this is your first time attending a nature coaching program, you will learn an adult development framework to orient those we coach to their life phases and transitions, with clearer steps to move forward, naturally.
If you have some experience with coaching in nature, not only will you deepen your skills and application, you will also have an opportunity to hone your mentoring skills using nature as your partner.
You will benefit personally as you immerse yourself in wild nature and are coached by your peers as well as enhance your coaching skills by coaching your peers with mentoring and guidance from Melissa and Christiane. Bring your own life questions, ponderings and reflections.
Join us for an in person Coaching Workshop with ICF CCEs. In this ICF CCE program, learn to create and use sacred coaching and leading spaces and times as well as ancient processes for modern times to imbed in your leading/coaching style. Be in wild nature to re-member your own true nature and life story: September 20 (12 noon) through September 22, 2022 (12 noon).
Treat yourself to gorgeous, wild nature while advancing your coaching and leading skills and competence.
Skills you will learn during our time together:
• Understand how to support your coachees in sharpening their awareness of self and other
• Build confidence in working in natural surroundings, including keeping you and other safe in nature
• A process for coaching with nature as a partner, including
 Shaping and clarifying intentions as you listen to self and other
 Creating a sacred pause and space to let the extraordinary emerge
 Generating ideas about self-ceremonies and practices that include nature
 Keeping others safe as they spend alone time in nature – their own purpose retreat
 Stepping into purpose, and then processing discoveries upon return from their experience through listening, mirroring and integrating nature
 Creating action steps and practices for integration and accountability
• Apply nature-based practices in your own coaching to create sacred spaces and times that translate to regular rituals and practices in back every-day life
• Hone your ICF Core Competencies of Coaching Presence, Establishing Trust and Intimacy, Active Listening, Powerful Questioning, Creating Awareness, Planning and Goal Setting, and Accountability
Colorful Colorado – Ridgway in the San Juan Mountains:
Located in beautiful Colorado wilderness and surrounded by untouched National Forest land, Top of The Pines offers rustic camping with fire rings and an outhouse. We will be spending our time together here during the day. For those wanting to stay immersed in nature, camp sites are available at the program site. You are welcome to come early and go for a walk or come a night before and stay a night longer to acclimatize. https://www.topofthepines.org
Coaching in a natural space supports deep connection, profound meaning making, and a unique client experience. When you coach in nature, your coachee has space to venture forth from and to be welcomed back into greater clarity. Their time in nature takes on a special meaning with your coaching of clear intention and enacted beginnings and endings. As coach, you allow awareness and guide supportive personal discovery that is essential for the process to be safe and impactful.
Research shows that being in nature enhances the positive emotions of joy, awe, optimism and courage. The energetic waves found in nature are those found in the human brain when in deep meditation. We slow down, deepen our insights, open to taking in what’s around us. We also connect to a broader purpose and to what is really emerging in us as a yearning or next step on our road.
Being in nature enables us to externalize our internal landscapes. Nature allows us to sharpen our senses and to have a more expansive, deeper and slower experience. Nature doesn’t judge us or make meaning for us or nudge us in any way. Nature simply is. In relationship to nature, we can test ourselves, listen to ourselves and listen to what nature can tell us about ourselves ~ our life phases, paths forward, and next steps.
When: September 20, 2022 (noon), through September 22, 2022 (noon). As an additional feature, we can expand the program and create your individual post program experience. You can go for an additional solo walk and spend another night at the site. The participants may want to have a dinner together or go to the hotsprings together on the night of September 22, which can also be arranged. Just let us know.
You: Everyone is welcome regardless of physical ability, fitness, agility, experience in nature. This program will meet you where you are from novice- to experienced-in-nature.
Cost: 895$ for early bird special up to May 15, 2022 and 995$ after the deadline. We require a minimum of 4 participants to make this program work.
Want to save money? Register prior to May 15, 2022 to receive a $100 early-registration discount. In order to make this program as affordable and as good of an individual fit as possible, we will be charging only for the program design, preparation, facilitator travel and facilitation and the campsite for the program. All other costs will be up to you and your preferences.
To learn more (no obligation) and to register, contact Christiane christiane@gfconsulting.org
Planning travel: The closest airports are Montrose (30 minutes away) and Grand Junction (90 minutes away). Durango is 2 hours away. Feel free to email and ask questions.
What to bring: Dress casually and in layers as we will be inside and outside, in various weather conditions. Bring sturdy shoes and a jacket/hat for cool evenings. (Zip code 81432) Bring a journal, pen and water bottle. The venue neither sells nor serves alcohol, however, you may bring alcohol onsite for your own or for shared consumption. We will provide further logistical details upon your registration.
Cancellation policy: Due to payments for the campsite, materials and logistics and plane tickets, we must have a cancelation policy in place. Prior to May 15, a full refund is offered. After May 15, we are unable to offer a refund. We will decide on May 15 if we have the minimum number of participants required to make the program work.

The Big Listen – Germany
2022-09-20 15:00 - 2022-09-25 13:00 (Europe/Paris) | The Art of Rewilding, United Kingdom
We call this retreat, The Big Listen because we believe that to really listen has magic; listening for the call of the forest and for the myths of our lives, giving our full attention to ourselves and then not forgetting each other.
PROGRAMME
This programme weaves together Wilderness Practices including The Fours Shields nature-based four directions map, Way of Council and solo time in nature, with meditative, ritual and heart-based practices from the Buddhist tradition.
At the heart of this programme lies an invitation to spend time alone with Nature, and listen. This ‘solo’ will take the form of a Threshold Walk. Inspired by our place within the cycles of nature, traditional vision quests and ‘nature solos’ have been practiced by many people and cultures across time. Whilst immersed in nature, ‘listening’ you may receive a gift; the beauty of an insight or the “rapture” of reconnecting with the most authentic and unique currents in your life.
“ People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances with our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.”
— Joseph Campbell
THIS RETREAT AIMS TO HELP YOU:
– Develop the ability to make deep, authentic contact with yourself and others
– Track the obstacles that keep you ‘refusing your own flowering’
– Be present to the sensing and feeling body, beyond the limitations of the rational mind
– Find a deeper sense of your own belonging.
A WINDOW ON OUR TIME TOGETHER
We’ll begin each morning with mindful practices. Mid-mornings will be set aside for soulful storytelling, making time to listen to what has purchase on our hearts, using the Way of Council model.
The afternoons will involve nature-based practices that support contemplative self-reflection, inviting a deeper conversation between our most authentic selves and the wisdom found in nature.
The evenings will be set aside for integrating the threads of our days through creative exercises that might include dancing, walking with the full moon and sitting around a fire under the stars..
Guides: Natasha Lythgoe and Werner Pilz

Women’s River Rites 2022
2022-09-24 - 2022-10-03 | Labyrinth Canyon, Utah, UT, United States
The River is Calling…
Please join us in 2022 for a fun-filled 10 days of meandering through majestic canyons, nature immersion and reflective time. We will gather as a fun-loving community of women supporting each other along the way. Each day will be filled with opportunities to learn about natural history, desert wildlife and plants as well as river time to hone your paddling skills. Solo time may include wandering the landscape, journaling or creativity pursuits. We encourage group activity alongside solo time all in preparation for a 3-day solo experience on the land.
We are so excited to share this beautiful journey of heart & soul with you!

The Mirror of Nature
2022-09-24 12:00 - 2022-09-29 12:00 (America/New_York) | Green River Reservoir State Park, Vermont
The Mirror of Nature Retreat
Exploring our inner landscape through the wild landscape of the natural world.
Allow the earth to open your heart, the souls of your feet, your belly, and palms of your hands to receive your story as it bubbles from the spring, murmurs from the needles and leaves, comes on mist, sunbeams, rainbows and starlight, resounds in thunder and whispers in the wind, sings through loon calls, coyote howls, and bear growls ….
In the silence before dawn and in the mirror of still waters.
The Mirror of Nature Retreat is an invitation to explore your inner landscape through the landscape of the natural world. Using the Four Shields of Human Nature as the template for wholeness, we will spend solo time each day with a question that opens up communication with the natural world and reveals wisdom only nature can provide. Returning to the group, we will learn to mirror each other’s stories, reflecting the fullness that is seen in each story.
Mirroring is deep listening and reflecting that rises out of deep communion with the natural world. We see and are seen by Nature. We are given a story, both very old and sparkling new. Mirroring is a way of seeing the wholeness in a person and reflecting back the gift they have just been given by Nature. In this retreat, we will learn how to be our own mirror and be a mirror for others; and we will be mirrored by a person who serves as a clear mirror for others. Time will be given for creative expression of your story through nature craft, ceremony, writing, song, and movement.

Four Directions Fall Workshop Online
2022-09-29 17:00 - 2022-11-03 19:30, 2022-10-06 17:00 - 2022-11-10 18:30, 2022-10-13 17:00 - 2022-11-17 18:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | Virtual, United States
This ONLINE workshop is a six week program for anyone who wishes to deepen their connection to nature and soul. The group will meet once a week for 2.5 hours, and there will be solo explorations in nature between group meetings.
The Four Directions / Medicine Wheel teachings, first presented to Rites of Passage by Hyemeyohsts Storm over 40 years ago, provide a deep and powerful foundation for recognizing our human place in the creation. In this workshop, we explore each Direction through discussion, sharing, assignments in nature, telling the story of these encounters, and mirroring of the stories by staff and participants.
These core teachings help us to understand ourselves, our life changes, our place in the natural world, and the gifts we have to share. People in any profession or stage of life will find this workshop of value as an in-depth application of eco-psychology tools and as an opportunity for personal growth.
From a participant:
The power of the course is hard to suggest. The time here, on the land and with these people, has led me to great awareness that will help my in my own life. Most importantly, it has opened my heart, connected me to the beauty in humanity and in myself. I know the gifts given to me over these days are only the beginning.
–Bianca D., businesswoman
