Wilderness Vigil
Coming Home to the Wild World
A guided ceremony to commune with the wild and clarify your calling
You are not a troubled guest on this Earth,
you are not an accident amidst other accidents,
you were invited from another and greater night
than the one from which you have just emerged.
Now, looking through the slanting light of the morning window
toward the mountain presence of everything that can be,
what urgency calls you to your one love?
What shape waits in the seed of you
To grow and spread its branches
Against a future sky?
David Whyte
To grow strong and tall, like an old oak tree, the soul needs deep roots in the ground.
For thousands of years, humans across cultures have gone alone to the wild to seek clarity of who they truly are and how they can serve their people. This ancient practice offers an invitation to come home to the wild and wide world to which you have always belonged.
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Fear is the cost of admission.
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We go to the wild when our lives need a fundamental reorientation that the human world cannot provide. If you want to truly belong to something much greater than yourself, you have to leave behind who you have been. One should not take this lightly.
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This is not a weekend workshop. This is an opportunity to reclaim the wild soul that has patiently or impatiently walked beside you while you live a civilised life.
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We are not meant to live a fully civilised life.
We are meant to bring the wild to the human realm as a gift.
Your people are thirsty.
When you know the wild in your bones, you become water.
The basics
The wilderness vigil -- known also as a vision quest -- is an ancient, pancultural practice of enacting a ceremony alone in the wild, supported by an experienced guide. It is typically enacted at a time of great personal transformation, as a way of saying yes to the inner metamorphosis that is already happening.
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There is nothing to do but to be in the wild and listen. That is enough. That will change you irrevocably.
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A nine day ceremony
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The first three days we are together in base camp. We will orient to the land, physically prepare, learn to communicate with the wild, and clarify your intention.
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Four days and nights alone in a wild place nearby
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The last two days we will be together again in base camp. We will honor each others' stories. We will begin to learn how to bring our stories home and allow them to shape the clay of our lives into something wholly new.
What clients say about my work
I’m too alone in the world, yet not alone enough
to make each hour holy
I’m too small in the world, yet not small enough
to be simply in your presence, like a thing—
just as it is.
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I want to know my own will
and to move with it.
And I want, in the hushed moments
when the nameless draws near,
to be among the wise ones—
or alone.
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I want to mirror your immensity.
I want never to be too weak or too old
to bear the heavy, lurching image of you.
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I want to unfold.
Let no place in me hold itself closed,
for where I am closed, I am false.
I want to stay clear in your sight.
I would describe myself like a landscape I’ve studied
at length, in detail;
like a word I’m coming to understand;
like a pitcher I pour from at mealtimes;
like my mother’s face;
like a ship that carried me
when the waters raged.
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Rainer Maria Rilke