Summer Vision Quest Victoria 2023
A contemporary wilderness rite-of-passage
24th November to 4th December
Do not try to save the whole world or do anything grandiose.
Instead, create a clearing in the dense forest of your life
and wait there patiently,
until the song that is your life
falls into your own cupped hands
and you recognize and greet it.
Only then will you know how to give yourself
to this world
so worth of rescue.
Martha Postlewaite
“We do not go into the desert to escape people but to learn how to find them: we do not leave them in order to have nothing more to do with them, but to find out the way to do them the most good. ”
What is a Vision Quest?
We used to ‘know’ our belonging in our bones. As a culture we have grown away from intimacy with the more-than-human world, yet it waits for us. This initiatory journey is an invitation to remember what we deeply belong to, what we have always belonged to.
For much of our story as a people the wider natural word has long been respected as a necessary partner in initiatory journeys or rites-of-passage. The land offers itself as mirror, as ally, as fertile container in which to draw close to the roots of our life, to what is important and what so easily can be forgotten in the fullness of contemporary life.
Since earliest times, people have received profound insight about themselves and their world by means of a vision fast – a multi-day solo fast within nature, seeking personal truth, emotional release and spiritual knowledge.
Stepping into your vision quest circle, you step out of your everyday reality and into the vast unknown. By doing so, you offer a clear invitation to the mysteries of life – yours, and the greater life of we are a part – to greet you.
Structure of the Quest Program
The Vision Quest we are offering in Summer this year is an 11 day program, which includes four days and four nights immersed in nature on a solo ceremony. This journey will be divided into the three classic phases of a passage rite: Preparation, Threshold and Incorporation.
The first days serve as our preparation as we come together as a community to clarify our intentions. Here we listen to each other’s stories of where we find ourselves in life and what brings us here. Specifically we explore in some depth our intention for this passage rite, what is it in our life that is asking to be honoured or marked through an initiatory journey?
The threshold phase will be a four day and night fast. Each person goes alone into the wilderness (with the support of guides at base camp), without food and minimal external trappings. The threshold time allows for one’s intention to be revealed and to be unfolded in the mirror of nature. It is a time for self-generated ceremony, for becoming intimately receptive to one’s life and for experiencing both the challenge and the beauty of taking our place amongst our relations as a simple human animal on this Earth.
The final days are devoted to incorporation. We share the stories of our threshold time and explore its gifts and implications for the life we return to. We sit in ‘story council’, sharing our stories and having them mirrored back to us by the community, offering the opportunity to see our individual narrative in a wider context. This can be one of the most touching and heartening parts of our time together: being witnessed and affirmed by those who have come to participate and create this ceremony.
Other elements we will explore in support of our time together will include:
The practice of ‘Council’
Shaping and honing of Intent as a foundation for threshold experiences
Exploring the role of contemporary wilderness rites-of-passage or initiatory journeys in our times including the challenges to this.
The nature of self-generated ceremony and the role of threshold crossing.
Nature as mirror
The role and art of Mirroring for empowerment and community witnessing.
Physical safety during the Threshold time
Facilitators
Caiyloirch Rupert Marques
My background is in environmental and outdoor education with an emphasis on experiential approaches to exploring ecological identity and personal agency. For several years I trained and guided with the School of Lost Borders (U.S.) in Contemporary wilderness rites of passage, and now offer this work here in Europe.
The other thread of my livelihood centres on contemplative practice. I have practiced in the insight meditation tradition for over 25 years in Europe, America and Asia, and teach at various retreat centres in Europe and beyond.
In recent years I have sought to bring the fields of contemplative practice and wilderness immersion together. This has been supported by living and working at Ecodharma, a contemplative retreat community in the Spanish Pyrenees dedicated to the movements for social justice and ecological sustainability.
I currently work with individuals and organizations offering a range of retreats and trainings that explore personal empowerment and resilience in service of creating a more just and beneficial human presence on this Earth.
Claire Dunn
Claire is passionate about connection - to earth, self, and other - and believes that a rewilding of our inner world is the key to rewilding our planet. For the last 15 years, Claire has been facilitating groups and individuals to dive deeply into their soul, through the pathways of traditional earth skills, deep ecology, dance, meditation, and contemporary wilderness rites of passage. Claire currently lives in the Yarra Valley with her family, including newborn baby River. Claire is the author of memoirs My Year Without Matches and Rewilding the Urban Soul. Claire has received Vision Quest Protector Training through the Earth Heart Institute of Vision and Healing in the USA. This traditional sacred ceremony has been passed down through Tom Brown Jr from his mentor, a Southern Lipan Apache called Stalking Wolf. Claire is trained as a Quest Protector Trainer.
Daniel Amrein
Daniel (Dan) Amrein is a carpenter and father of three living in the village of Warburton in the Yarra Valley. Dan’s introduction to earth based ceremony was at age 16, and since then ceremony, sweat lodge and Vision Quest has been a powerfully consistent thread and guiding principle in his life, both as participant and more recently as a trained Vision Quest guide. Since a kid Dan has had a deep love and curiosity for the wild world. Conversations with the wild other are part of his everyday vernacular, and tracking a way of life. Dan is currently apprenticing to the arts of storytelling, song, deep authentic relating, wandering, and the mythic in wild landscapes. You will often find him tending his garden, catching stories from friends, baking bread, running the trails of his mountain home, and spending sweet time with his children, and partner Claire.
Testimonials
“A vision quest is an absolutely priceless experience for any person wanting to explore and grow more deeply into themself and their experience of life. Claire holds a powerful and safe space to access deep experiences and transformations within ourself. I had such a meaningful and important experience and would highly recommend a vision quest for any person who can hear the whisper of mystery within.” - Sam
“If you are ready to embody this one precious life. To find something beyond meaning and purpose and questions of 'who am I' and 'why am I here'. If you feel deeply called in these exhausting and chaotic times to drop the search, be alive to your calling and connect with nature, you are ready for your vision quest. Meet Claire and Dan, meet this precious process and you will find the courage to be who you need to be, for all of us.” - Mary
Program info
The Vision Quest program will be held on wild land in the Strathbogie Ranges, 2.5 hours north of Melbourne. A reasonable level of fitness is required. Accommodation is tent camping. Previous experience with spiritual retreats and camping is not essential. A beautiful selection of whole food and mostly organic meals will be served during preparation and incorporation. An essential element to questing is both the physical and spiritual preparation, so if you feel the call to Quest, please be in touch as soon as possible to complete the application process, although late registrations are also accepted upon application. The program is limited to a maximum of 12 participants.
Cost:
The full cost of the 11 day program includes all food and materials. This ceremony is a significant commitment and the monetary exchange reflects this. We recognise that participants come from diverse backgrounds and income capacities and so we offer a large sliding scale of options for registration and ask that you self-select the appropriate fee.
Sliding scale: $1600 (conc)/$1900 (low income)/$2200 (average income)
Deposit $300.
A scholarship place is available
This program is now sold out. Please email emily@naturesapprentice.com.au to join the waiting list.
Payment and cancellation policy
This program requires a significant commitment and we encourage you to really feel into whether it’s right for you before booking in. Also have a good read of our cancellation policy below. It has been updated for this program, and we will be adhering to it to ensure a full program of registrations.
It takes some time to prepare for a Vision Quest. So even though our programs generally sell out, we often can’t fill places if we receive last minute cancellations - which is a shame given how many people are hungry to do this work.
We understand that all kinds of things come up that thwart the best of plans. If you do need to withdraw from the program, please give us as much notice as possible to give us the best chance of finding someone else, and so we (and you) don’t end up out of pocket.
Please pay either the deposit ($300) or full program amount to register for the program.
You will then be sent a registration/medical form. Receipt and approval of this form will secure your place. If your form is not approved your deposit/fee will be fully refunded.
Full program fee is required to be paid by 24th August (unless you have made alternative arrangements with us). If we don’t receive your payment we will open your place to someone on the waiting list.
If you cancel before 24th August, your deposit is not refundable, but you have the option to forfeit your deposit or transfer it to a future program for a transfer fee of $50. If you have already paid the full amount, it will be refunded, minus the deposit.
If you cancel after 24th August, and we can fill your place, #4 above will apply - we will refund the program fee minus the deposit, and give you the option as to whether to transfer your deposit to a future program for $50.
If you cancel after 24th August, and we can’t fill your place, we will not refund the program fee or the deposit, and you won’t have the option to transfer to a future course, except in exceptional circumstances.
When the course is full we will create a waiting list. If a place comes up and you are offered it, you’ll have two days to respond and pay a $300 deposit, or we’ll offer the place to someone else.
We’re open to payment plans. Please be in touch to discuss.
How to apply
Please start by paying either the deposit or full program amount. On receipt of payment you will be sent a registration form.