Vision Fast – Karen's New York Love Affair

Vision Fast Retreats at BC Wilderness Visions

2012 Dates

There are no dates scheduled for 2012. If you are feeling the hunger for solo time and sacred ceremony in nature and the call of the wild is strong within you, we will do our best to fill this need, even if for just a 2-day weekend fast. The location will be in the wilderness near Missezula Lake, in a private area that’s close to a campground. The spot is near Monkey Valley. I discovered it on my first medicine walk, and it is a very special place.

2013 Dates TBD

We are currently planning for a vision fast retreat in July or August of 2013. This will be a 5- or 6-day trip with a 3-day fast, pre-fast preparations, and post-fast storytelling and incorporation. This retreat will be in the wilderness near Missezula Lake. Cost: $800 – $1,200 sliding scale.

If you are interested in participating in 2013, please send an email to info@klove.nyc.

To arrange a customized individual vision fast for other dates, contact Karen at 604.251.6337.

“…by the time you step out of your purpose circle into the broad daylight, something has happened, whether you know it or not.”
Steven Foster and Meredith Little

A teenager is about to be released from a minimum-security youth prison, and has a chance to make a new start. A stay-at-home mom contemplates returning to the work force now that all her children are in school, but is unsure about whether she is ready. A business executive in upper management feels dissatisfied despite prestige and financial success, and wonders whether some other work would be more fulfilling. A woman in her sixties is making the transition from worklife to the freedom of retirement. What do these people have in common? They are each at a time of potential transition, and wonder what direction to go in.

The vision fast is a cross-cultural ceremony that brings guidance and healing through solo time in wild nature. This journey is a very personal one, and its meaning will be unique to you. Traditionally, the vision fast is a rite of passage that marks an important transition in your life, such as the passage into adulthood. The vision fast can be used for contemplation and celebration of life at any time of change, including puberty, marriage, divorce, career change, meeting life goals and milestones (something we often don’t take the time to celebrate and acknowledge in a meaningful way), loss of a loved one, retirement, illness, and preparation for death.

Today, precious time alone in wild nature is rare, and you might wish to take this time for contemplation or to renew your connection to yourself, to the earth, and to the sacred dimension in your life. Or perhaps there is an area of your life that you want to spend some time healing, such as a distressing event or a relationship. Or maybe you are aware of an inner quality of yourself that you wish to cultivate and invite to participate more fully in your life. What longing in your heart is calling you to undertake this journey?

The vision fast ceremony begins with time spent making preparations and clarifying intentions. Then participants fast alone in the wilderness for three days and nights, following the ancient practice of going without food, human companionship, and built shelter. (To adapt this ceremony to modern questers in a mountain climate, fasters use a tarp and sleeping bag for shelter.) After the solo, you will have time to share your story, integrating your solo time and preparing to reincorporate into your life at home. For customized individual fasts, the format described here can be adjusted to a two-day or four-day fast if desired. Even a one-day fast can be very powerful.

One of the tasks of preparation is to undergo a medicine walk. BC Wilderness Visions offers medicine walks in the Vancouver area. Or type Medicine Walk in the Search box at the top of this page to find out more information and go on your own medicine walk.

The basic structure of the vision fast wilderness retreat draws on elements of rites of passage and renewal that stretch back to the beginnings of human consciousness: removing ourselves from our familiar worlds and going into the wilderness; using ceremony to deepen awareness and open our hearts; having time together in close community; having time alone; fasting; and returning with greater clarity and specific tasks.

Required reading: The Trail to the Sacred Mountain—A Vision Fast Handbook for Adults

To register, please fill in the online Registration Form. For payment information, see Fees.

A father’s forgiveness

I keep meaning to get back to the story of my first vision fast, but today I feel inspired to tell you about my second vision fast. Did you ever see the wonderful Japanese-Icelandic film Cold Fever? It tells the story of a Japanese man who feels reluctantly obligated to travel to Iceland to perform a mourning ritual at the place where his parents died in a river accident during their trip to Iceland 7 years before. This movie was very inspiring to me, and in 2001, the spring after my father died, my family held a private ceremony to scatter my father’s ashes in the Horsefly River. We sang Amazing Grace on the hillside overlooking my mother’s ranch, and then walked single-file to the river, each holding a candle. We released his ashes into the river, and poured in some of his favourite vodka. The candles bobbed on the water, floating with the current until one by one they were extinguished. I was very moved that my mother and four siblings were each willing to participate in this nature ceremony that I had created, and each brought their own unique contribution to add to the ceremony.

But mourning a parent can be a long process, and when I set out to do my second vision fast, in 2006, I still had many unresolved feelings about my father and our relationship. I was still mourning him, and seeking some kind of peace that eluded me. My father was diagnosed with a brain tumour in 1998, after driving into a ditch when his vision blacked out. He gathered the family together in Kelowna to tell us the news, and had an operation soon after. Luckily, he lived for two more years after the operation, before the tumour grew into different parts of his brain and took his life. This gave us time to spend together and make peace with the past as much as we were able to, each one of us. I know my father sought forgiveness for his failings as a parent, and he asked each of his children for this forgiveness. I thought I had given it to him already, but there are many hidden places in the psyche, and they reveal themselves in their own time.

My father was not on my mind as I prepared for the vision fast in 2006. I was travelling to Boulder, Colorado with my friends Dorrie and Marvin, and we were going to rendezvous with the rest of the group in Parachute, Colorado, about 4 hours west of Denver. I had been fooling around on the monkey bars at the park near my childhood home a few days before leaving, wrenched my shoulder, and was in severe pain as the trip began. It seemed the purpose of the trip for me was learning to accept feeling helpless and let others help me. When we arrived at the slickrock basecamp in the high mountain desert, I couldn’t carry my pack or set up my tarp. For someone who is fiercely independent and likes to do everything herself, this was very difficult! One of the members of the group was a doctor, and he advised me to take ibuprofen every 4 hours, and double the dose I would normally have taken. Another participant was a sales rep for Motrin! She had plenty of tablets with her, and gave me enough to last for the remainder of the trip. The apprentice helped me set up my tarp, and during the days of preparation for the solo, I received incredible support from the entire group.

We all selected our solo spots, and it turned out my friends Dorrie and Marvin were each nearby, though out of sight and hearing. I was surrounded with gentle sweet holding support. And once on the solo, nature took over, guiding me to do exactly what was needed. Originally my intention for the fast had been to deal with my fears, because during my first fast, that is what I was faced with, over and over. But for this fast, Being had something else in mind for me. I spent the first few days laying in the sun, fully clothed and with every inch of my body covered in cloth or mosquito netting to keep out the biting gnats. As I lay there, helpless, and baked, my soul was infused with the warm sun, the delicate precious desert flowers, the sound of Marvin’s drumming at dusk, the constant drone of gnats. Water, peeing, dozing. The crisp hours before sunrise and at dusk, before the gnats were out, I lay cozy in my sleeping bag. Letting myself rest and be, a vision of a ceremony began to take shape. Halfway through the third day, I knew what I needed to do.

I wrote my father a letter, telling him about the things he had done that had hurt me, and that I believed made it impossible for me to have a committed, enduring romantic relationship with a man. It is strange how the sharpness of painful incidents can resonate over the decades, outweighing the much more constant facts of Dad going to work to design logging mills to feed the family, and taking us on camping trips every summer, and mowing the lawn, and teaching me to play crib and chess. As my thoughts turned to what was unresolved with my father, it was the painful events that still cried out for resolution. In spite of years of therapy and inner work, layers of imprints shaped my soul and were not letting me be free.

Then there were the last few years of my father’s life, and the regrets I had accumulated over not being there for him as I would have wished to be. I took all of these thoughts, memories, regrets, and walked them out on a sandy path 20 yards long, in the late afternoon of the third day of my solo. Back and forth I walked barefoot on the sand, as the shadows of the scrubby juniper bushes lengthened. I spoke to my father as I walked, telling him everything I could think of. The time he asked what we did when I was young—because of the tumour he couldn’t remember the early days of our family—and I said we watched TV. A moment of anger because I could not forgive him for the abuse. How I wished I could have opened up to him in that moment, and had a real conversation about how it was when I was young, and the fullness of our family life back then. The good memories of him wheeling me and my sister around the yard in the wheelbarrow of grass cuttings, him making loud exclamations of peril and me and Kim screaming with laughter. I told him all the memories, good and bad. For hours I did this walking meditation in conversation with my father. A one-way conversation, but I felt he was listening. I told him everything that still hurt my heart. I talked until there was nothing left to say, and it was nearly dark. The sand had grown cool under my feet.

Feeling quiet and empty, I moved off the sandy path I had made, back to my solo spot, where I intended to carry out the next part of the ceremony—the burning of the letter and letting go of the hurt and resentment I had carried all these years. But the spirits of the ceremony had other ideas! The wax-coated waterproof matches I had brought with me in my pack would not light. Over and over I struck them, but not a spark or sizzle of cooperation would they give. Time for Plan B. A less dramatic but equally effective symbolic act was to bury the words and all the feelings that they contained. So I dug a hole in the dirt. I ripped the letter into tiny pieces, and buried them in the hole. Invoking the spirits of the four directions, of the land, of my ancestors, for support and witnessing, I spoke my intention of letting go of my anger, bitterness, and resentment towards my father. Kneeling there in the darkness on the cool earth, I felt my father’s hand gently brush against my head. I knew he heard and forgave me, and that all that was left in his heart was love for me. I felt the gentleness of his unbreakable loving connection to me, and I cried. Shards of blue and white confetti light rose into the sky, releasing the pain with my tears. My softened heart opened to the vast, personal warm holding of my father’s love.

The purpose of suffering

I am looking forward to continuing the story of my first vision fast, as I think sharing my experience might be helpful for people who are struggling with difficulties they have experienced on their own first fasts. Sometimes it is good to hear others’ stories.

First, though, I’d like to share some thoughts on the purpose of suffering that is caused by the physical discomforts of the vision fast. I have been thinking about this subject in response to a reader who wrote to me and asked about the purpose of “abusing the body through sensory deprivation or excessive fasting and weight loss.”

I trained through the School of Lost Borders, where people always are encouraged to bring some food with them on the vision fast if necessary for their physical well-being. For example, on one fast I took along some crackers to eat because I was taking ibuprofen for a strained shoulder, and the pain-killer could be too hard on my stomach when taken without food. The first priority is always the person’s safety. For people who are going out on a fast, I advise you to listen to your inner guidance, to make sure you say and get what you need. I encourage you to raise your questions with the guides who lead your program. I know they will want to hear about your concerns and questions.

The significance of enduring suffering during a rite of passage might be difficult to understand from our Western view where physical comfort is paramount. Before I get to why it might actually be beneficial to suffer, I’d like to mention a few factors to consider before undertaking a vision fast. First, it is always up to the individual to determine what is right for her. I think that if a person has experienced physical abuse or other types of physical trauma, then enduring physical suffering in a rite of passage could be re-traumatizing, and would probably not be appropriate. So there is this aspect to consider. Also, a person’s physical condition is a factor to consider, and guides should always confer with a participant to ensure the physical difficulties won’t be too much for a person. In my programs there is a health questionnaire to fill out, which is designed to determine if there are any physical factors that might make fasting or hiking harmful for a person. We also spend a lot of time teaching participants how to stay safe on their fast, including staying found, drinking enough water, and protecting oneself from the elements. We also use a buddy system to check in on a person each day, without having actual contact, so that we know each person is safe.

Second, the next thing to consider is a person’s psychological well-being. A person has to have a well-established ego structure in order to endure the difficulties of a fast and benefit from them. The point of the trials of the fast is to help dissolve the ego structure, at least for a while, so that different views of reality can be glimpsed. If a person’s ego structure is not secure enough, this would be too challenging and dangerous.

If the faster does have the physical and psychological strength to endure a fast, then there can be benefits to the physical suffering that can occur with fasting. I have found that the first thing I needed to face on my first fast was all of my fears. I didn’t like being uncomfortable, and worried about my physical safety in many ways; that the fasting would harm me, that I would get sick, that the wind would carry my tarp away, that there would be a terrible rainstorm and I would get soaked and get hypothermia, that lightning would strike and kill me, that I would go crazy, and that I would be too weak to walk back to basecamp with all my gear. After a while I saw how much I was afraid of so many things. This was a revelation and one of the gifts of my first fast. Before now I had always hidden the awareness of my fears from myself. I was too afraid to admit I was afraid! During this first fast (and in later ones) I had some encounters with rabbits, and this was a spirit animal that came to me to reflect my fears. I keep a little rabbit finger puppet near my desk to remind me of this teaching.

Dis-identification with the physical body can be another purpose of the physical deprivation of a vision fast. Although it can seem life-or-death, fasting for three days never did kill anyone, so far as I know. Learning that we are more than our physical bodies, through getting past the physical discomfort, is a blessing. We are more than our physical bodies. If we are fortunate enough to realize this during a vision fast, it is a learning that will enrich us for the rest of our lives.

There is also an altered state that can occur through fasting, which allows the ego structure to soften so that we are more available to be impacted by the natural world around us. I think this is the main purpose of the vision fast. It is to help us get out of our daily mind and habits, so that we can see other aspects of reality that are real, but that don’t reveal themselves as easily while we are preoccupied with our daily lives. This could be in the form of contact with animals, rocks, trees, wind, sky, or any other aspect of nature, in such a way that we become aware of our interconnection and the support that is always there for us in nature. It could be in the form of an inner experience of our true nature, such as deep peace or complete love. It could be as simple as seeing a life situation from a new perspective, or letting go of an old self-limiting belief. In the magical place that can be created by your intention of doing the vision fast, exactly what you need right now in your life is what occurs.

This has certainly been true for me and for the people I have been honoured to guide.

Another aspect of fasting, which sometimes occurs, is shakiness. This is normal, and it is definitely more difficult to function when on a vision fast. The hike back to base camp with all of one’s gear can be very difficult. And this difficulty varies from fast to fast. There is no predicting how a particular fast will impact us, or what our experience will be. However, sometimes with the physical symptoms of weakness and shakiness can come an inner experience of lightness and clarity. I have found that hunger usually passes quite quickly. But it can definitely be scary to experience the physical weakness and shakiness.

The vision fast is a rite of passage. In ancient times, in some forms of the wilderness solo, there was a real chance of death. When the faster returned to her or his people, they had proven themselves and entered into adulthood, often with a vision that would guide them for the course of their lives. In modern times, the fasters I have witnessed have connected with their inner strength and confidence through enduring the difficulties of the vision fast, including the loneliness, boredom, hunger, fear, physical weakness, and other forms of suffering they experienced. For some, this passage was the most difficult thing they had done in their lives. The benefit of passing through to the other side, and coming back to their people with the marks of this ceremony on their soul, was a tangible outcome.

A final aspect of the physical suffering, which I have especially experienced during the sweat lodges I have been in, is the aspect of being humbled. This was a profound experience for me. When the heat was so hot I couldn’t take it and had to lie on the ground in the dirt, I was humbled in such a way that my heart was opened to the suffering I have caused others, and I was transformed. The desire to be a better person that arose in me was a lasting force that helped me transform my relationships with the people who are most important to me. This doesn’t mean I agree with having so much steam in the sweat lodge that it is scalding my body! But it wasn’t as bad as it felt, and the impacts and benefits for me were enormous. It also felt very right to me to be in that sacred darkness, with the smell of the herbs on the rocks, and the glowing grandfather stones. However, sweat lodges are not part of the vision fast ceremony the way that the School of Lost Borders does it, and are not part of the vision fasts I conduct.

To sum up, I would say that the purpose of physical suffering in relation to the vision fast and other practices such as the sweat lodge is to help us get over our big selves! To wear away the crusty exterior shell, so that we can be touched and blessed by the grace of the true nature of reality—a blessing as fresh and pure as a gentle rain. We do these things because we want to have a taste of transcendence. The physical suffering is the admission price.

Next steps on Decision Road

Today I’d like to pick up the story of my journey to my first vision fast. When I left you last time, I had set out on the road trip to Boulder, Colorado, for a week-long intensive at Naropa University, prior to going with my classmates to our vision fast site in Wyoming.

The first night of my trip I had camped in BC. The next day I travelled through Idaho, finishing the day at a Super 8 Motel in White Hall, Montana. Bad idea! It was a tough day overall, as I passed a total of three dead deer by the highway. I was exhausted by the time I reached White Hall, and thought I’d treat myself to a motel room rather than camping. I checked in after midnight. I was relieved to just be able to crawl into bed, but I soon found that I felt itchy and creepy. I looked more closely under the sheets and saw bedbugs. Gross! I still feel itchy just remembering this event that took place 6 years ago!

I brought in my sleeping bag from the car, and slept on the floor. I woke at 6:00 am and wanted to hit the road right away. I left a note for the manager, with a sample bedbug on a kleenex, asking for my money to be refunded. The office didn’t open until 8:00 am, and I didn’t want to wait around, so I packed to go, carefully shaking all my belongings to make sure I didn’t carry any of the bedbugs on my journey. (Needless to say, I never heard a word from the Motel 8 manager, and my money was not refunded on my credit card.) Perhaps this event was one of the heroic ordeals that the adventurer must pass through on the journey to the treasure!

The next day’s drive was better, and I paused to visit with flowers and a Russian olive tree on the way. The Russian olive tree is a survivor, and it reminds me of my family’s history. Transplanted in the new world and finding nourishment, even thriving. I saw a prairie dog, lots of magpies, and 3 antelope. I’d never seen antelope before, so this was a special treat. I was driving through the grasslands of Wyoming. The land was so beautiful, but it saddened me that all the fields were fenced off and “owned.” Although the rain continued, the soft mist felt like a gentle holding, palpable, soft, and loving.

I reached my friend Tom’s place near Boulder by 7:30 pm, in plenty of time to settle in, pitch my tarp in the back yard, have a shower, and rest from the journey before class started the next morning.

The week at Naropa sped by, with each thought, dream, and learning seeming to have significance for the upcoming vision fast. So much was new and unfamiliar, it allowed me to open to new parts of myself. I dreamt that one of my teachers was in the back yard at Tom’s with me, whirling me around and hugging me. Energy and essence of many colours swirled around and through us as we whirled.

A classmate set me up on a blind date, and it was the perfect date. We had a delicious dinner at a restaurant in Boulder called Saffron (wonderful vegetarian food), and then happened upon an outdoor movie as we walked through the streets. It was The Motorcycle Diaries, a foreign film—the dramatization of a motorcycle road trip that Che Guevara went on in his youth that showed him his life’s calling. The theme of road trip as inner journey continues! I hoped that my upcoming vision fast would show me my life’s calling… To be continued…

Severance phase: setting out on Decision Road

John Boyer, one of our guides for the upcoming vision fast in Wyoming, taught us some aspects of the Lakota people’s vision quest ceremony. The first stage of the vision fast is called “Decision Road.” This is part of the severance or preparation phase, in which we make the decision to commit to the fast—to fasting for a vision for our people.

On June 10, 2005 I set out on the drive to Boulder, Colorado, where I would be meeting my classmates at Naropa University. I felt like I was truly on Decision Road. The sense of sacred ceremony that I had felt on the medicine walk lived in me still, and imbued my road trip with the same feeling of magic. Two nights previously I had a dream in which John had recognized my abilities and acknowledged them publicly to my people. There had been a romantic element in the dream as well, which had filled my heart with gladness. Although I forgot about the dream soon after, the sense of warm-heartedness from the dream also imbued my journey.

I left Monkey Valley at about 3 in the afternoon. As I drove east along Highway 3, I could feel my identities and attachments peeling away. I had a vision of cords dissolving—the cords that bind me to my people. It was dark when I decided to make camp at the Johnston Creek Provincial Campsite, about 45 minutes east of Osoyoos. I hadn’t made it out of BC yet, but luckily I wasn’t in a hurry. The campsite was near the highway, but there was a noisy creek between the campsite and the highway, which eliminated most of the traffic noise.

It only took me 35 minutes to set up camp in the dark, and in the rain! I was pleased. I used my car (the yellow Tracker), a picnic table, and two trees to hold up the tarp. I meditated in my car for 40 minutes, while it rained, and then tightened the tarp cords before climbing under and into my sleeping bag. I read in bed a little, and a moth came to visit, attracted by my flashlight. Then I saw a small mouse-like creature running silkenly towards me, then dart under the car. So I had a visit from mouse too! My dear friend.

I thought back over the trip so far. I’d been feeling a great deal of pleasure while I was driving, sometimes very intense. An intimate singing aliveness in my body. A short distance after Princeton I began to smell sage through the open car roof. I pulled over at the side of the road, and went to see it more closely. I gave Reiki to the sage and asked permission to take some of its leaves for sacred purposes. It smelled so good. I smelled each leaf as I picked it, and gave Reiki to each plant I picked from. As I left I picked up a piece of trash. I looked up and there were two rainbows hanging against the mountains across the highway. What a beautiful sight and gift! Then I saw that the driveway I’d parked on belonged to the Lower Similkameen Indian Band. These people had hunted and fished on the land at and around Monkey Valley. I felt that they were blessing my journey. A gift from my people! What a wonderful start to my trip. The rainbows lasted for a few minutes, and became double and triple rainbows—three or four of them as I drove along. Decision Road is the beauty way!

Fasting for a vision: naming my intentions

As I mentioned last time, writing a letter of intention was one of the preparation tasks in the severance phase of the vision fast. I wrote a 6-page letter and sent it to the two guides. Here I include the part where I focused on my hopes for the vision fast:

“When considering what I seek from the vision fast, my mind naturally turns to my desire for a strong, clear vision of my life’s purpose. What are my gifts? How can I best be of service? What is it I am here on this earth to do? To be? Certainly answering these questions is an ongoing, lived experience that is already underway.

“Perhaps there are harder questions that I need to bring to the vision fast. Questions like what prevents me from opening my heart to my direct experience? I long to let go of the habitual patterns of ego that keep me busy, planning, and unable to respond freely in the moment. These patterns also prevent me from being touched by what is happening in the moment. I noticed on a recent visit with my mother that I could see her vulnerability, and feel my love for her, yet my defensiveness prevented me from being fully present with her in a fresh way in the moment. I know these defenses were necessary, and served a purpose. What healing needs to occur within me to let go of them now? I want to be touched by my life and my interactions with others! I want to be open to people and to what is arising, not to act in the patterned ways of my ego. I long to be able to trust the moment. I want to know the open luminosity of my true nature. I have tastes of the incredible richness of the true nature of reality, yet so often my experience is dulled by the ego-supporting activities of my mind.

“I want to lay myself bare in the vision fast. To lay myself bare on the bare earth, and let everything that is not real be stripped away.

“I want to help the child part of me grow up in the vision fast. I have been independent and supporting myself for over twenty years, yet there is still the part of me that is hoping someone will come along and look after me. There is still the part of me that is looking for my father’s love. And maybe my mother’s too! I haven’t met my living partner yet, and this is something my heart longs for. I have a deep yearning for that, and a corresponding sadness. Somehow the two things seem interconnected—the fact that I haven’t let the little girl grow up, and the fact that I haven’t met my living partner. I understand that the vision fast is a rite of initiation that has the potential to grow me up. I state my intention to let the ritual transform me into a true adult. While honoring the gifts of the little girl. The possibility that she has gifts to offer didn’t occur to me until now.”

Reading this now, I smile at the self I was then, and the connection I have since shared with my little girl within, some of which I have shared on this blog. I celebrate the warm intimacy we share in my heart. I also smile because I still have many of the same questions about life purpose. I wonder if I will ever know the answers! To be continued.

Fasting for a vision: preparing for the journey

The story of the vision fast I was going to undertake in June 2005 begins with the preparations I made in the threshold phase. The vision fast was a component of the three-week residential portion of the summer semester at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado. This would be my fourth trip to Boulder; I’d previously attended three other residential sessions. The last one was in January of 2005, in Boulder, when my class met our two vision fast guides and we had the opportunity to ask questions to help us prepare for what lay ahead.

The two guides, Nancy Jane and John Boyer, were very patient with us. I was worried about wild animals, and whether my sleeping bag would be warm enough. I was somewhat belligerent as I spoke my questions to these two strangers who would be guiding me and my classmates. Other people in my class asked about different aspects of the ceremony, such as meal planning before and after, and what to do on the solo time. As we sat around the table in the Naropa cafeteria, excitement mixed with anxiety as our questions tumbled out. I didn’t realize yet how significant these two people and the vision fast ceremony would be to me.

Nancy Jane and John had guided together many times. For many years, they had taken the Grade 12 Waldorf School students in Boulder out for a rites of passage vision fast. Nancy Jane also guided for the School of Lost Borders, and John had put hundreds of fasters out on the land near his ancestral ranch in Wyoming. My group was going to fast in the red desert of Wyoming too, at a special place that John had known since his boyhood when he had gone out gathering fossils and arrowheads. It was a place that the Native Americans had used for sacred ceremonies, perhaps for thousands of years. Ancient stone circles and other evidence of sacred ceremonies remained on this land, and wild horses lived there too.

To help us prepare for the ceremony, we had been given various tasks to perform. The medicine walk was one. Another was to write a letter of intention, stating what we were claiming on the vision fast—our reason for undertaking this rite of passage—an ordeal that would involve sacrifice, discomfort, and the risk of death. I had also been writing down my dreams, and performing impomptu sacred ceremonies on my land. During this time of preparation, it seemed that everything was infused with mystery, magic, and significance.

One cold evening at Monkey Valley in February, wondering what my intention really was, I went out into the cold starry night to find out my true heart’s desire. I found it was to be right there, in the cold starry night, on a rock with snow and trees around. Nowhere else. Not different than exactly how I was and reality was in that moment. It was to meet my man-god, fully matching my godself. It was to open out and be consumed by the whole valley and hills. To dissolve into the breadth of it. It was to have the black mystery swoop in and engulf me, annihilate me. It was to know the mystery. And too, to know the sacred embrace of making love with all that—the dark mystery. The passion of being alive filled me there in the darkness. To be continued.

Fasting for a vision: the threshold time

The time when we are preparing to undertake a vision fast is the first of the three phases of the vision fast ceremony. It is called the severance phase. The medicine walk I’ve been describing was an important step in preparing for the vision fast, as well as being a ceremony of its own.

In some ways I had been aligning my intention to undergo the mystery of the vision fast since 2003, when I decided to do the master’s program in ecopsychology at Naropa University. The vision fast was a component of the program—for 3 credits! When I read about it on the Naropa website, I was fascinated. The opportunity to partake in this mysterious ceremony of the first peoples of our land was a strong factor in my decision to pursue the program at Naropa. I wondered what it would be like to go for three days and nights without food. I wondered if I would be scared, sleeping outside, alone in the wilderness. I wondered what magic would befall me.

As I write this a golden moon hangs low in the west, shining through my kitchen window. It shares with me the warm secrets of all I have experienced between then and now. My heart glows in answering honey warmth.

This morning I have been pondering whether to share this story of my first vision fast. It is a sacred ceremony—not to be treated lightly. And yet the purpose of the vision fast is both personal and social. It is a journey of discovery of self, nature, and our place in the world. The culmination of the journey is to bring the gifts of discovery back to our people. You, dear reader, are my people. I will share my story with you.

Beckoned: reflections on the medicine walk

Seeking meaning in our experiences is a human compulsion. It is part of how we build and maintain our self-image and our view of reality. Looking back at the meaning I derived from my medicine walk, I am struck by how I concluded that the day’s adventures affirmed my affection and love for the land. I felt that the land and her creatures were innocent, and I wanted to protect them. I believed in the power of the ceremony, and the sacredness of the interactions I had with the various animals and nature beings on my journey.

Even though the mosquito breeding ground terrified me, I accepted the tormented run home as a demonstration of the actions of my mind, always pushing me on, frustrated, unable to rest and be at peace. How willing I was to open to the postive in my experience! Perhaps this is one of the gifts of the vision fast ceremony: learning to view all that is arising as part of something mysterious and beautiful.

I was beckoned by the many encounters with wild creatures. Beckoned to listen to the bear, telling me that if I am humble and have basic trust, I can stand my ground. Beckoned by moose telling me I am awakening to the preciousness of my life’s journey. Enchanted by the surprising almond scent of the mushrooms. Loved and held by the giant, ancient fir tree. Instructed by the stern granite rock face. Entertained and companioned by the chattering pika. Beckoned beyond just the adventures of the day, into a new calling for creating sacred ceremony with others in nature. Aho!

A pesky, mad dash home

The “something else” that awaited me was being chased by blood-thirsty mosquitoes all the way home! I followed the ravine between the giant old fir tree and the rock face, heading northwest towards Monkey Valley. Suddenly I heard an angry buzzing. It was amazingly loud. So loud it was terrifying. It sounded like a gigantic power plant buzzing with electric charge.

I headed uphill quick, out of the ravine. I saw that ahead the ravine was marshy. It must be a mosquito breeding ground, with the wetness. And the warm spring sunshine of the past few days must have sparked the hatching process. Holy toledo! What a racket!

I headed away from this area as quickly as I could, but some of the mosquitoes found me and chased me all the way home. If I stopped to kill them (not a good idea on a Medicine Walk, when all life is to be treated as sacred), more appeared. They were vicious and determined. I was bitten at least 8 times. Each bite set up an angry itching in my body.

I felt so happy when I crossed Galena Creek Road, ran down the 100 metres to my gate, and was back on my land. Of course the mosquitoes didn’t care about property boundaries, and continued to chase after me. I stopped and said “Fuck off” to the mosquitoes. It happened that a deer was on the road just there. My cursing startled it, and it stotted away. I admired its magnificent, big life-force as it jumped into the forest. I apologized, “I didn’t mean you, dear deer!” Darn.

The temperature dropped as I entered the valley. The sun was behind the cliffs on the western edge of my land. Amazing, it was almost dusk! I jogged most of the last 3/4 mile to elude the mosquitoes, anticipating having a nice oatmeal bath to sooth the itching. When I reached the house, I crossed through the threshold rather quickly, anxious to get inside and away from the mosquitoes. Hmm. What a day! Moose, bear, pika, deer, and mosquitoes! Did I learn about the purpose for my upcoming vision fast? Or was it just a meaningless series of events and encounters? I thanked the spirits for being with me on the walk, and crossed back into ordinary life. To be continued…