Wild Threshold Crossing
A 48-hour solo fast
Dec 7 - 12, 2024
I am clearing a space
here, where the trees stand back.
I am making a circle so open
the moon will fall in love
and stroke these grasses with her silver.
I am setting stones in the four directions,
stones that have called my name
from mountaintops and riverbeds, canyons and mesas.
Here I will stand with my hands empty,
mind gaping under the moon.
I know there is another way to live.
When I find it, the angels
will cry out in rapture,
each cell of my body
will be a rose, a star.
~ Morgan Farley
Somewhere deep inside, we know when it is time for us to stop and listen. Really listen. To put down the phone, the to-do lists and the middle world concerns, and head to the wilds on our own. To put our ear to the earth, our nose to the true scent trail of our life and radically open ourselves to the kind of communication not available on google; engage in a conversation that, as Derrick Jenson suggests, is older than words. As our outer world tremors and shakes, those with the courage to heed this call are greatly needed.
Since earliest times, people from many earth-based cultures 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 the Vision Quest circle, we take pause of the day-to-day, and begin a larger conversation. What message is mystery holding for our heart, if only we had space to hear it? What wild longing is clawing for attention? What parts of us need to be welcomed home?
Our traditional Vision Quest program is 11 days, including a 4 day fast. However we know this is not possible for many including those with family responsibilities. So, we are again offering a shorter version - a 6 day program including a two days and two nights fasting in nature in solo ceremony. This journey will be divided into the three classic phases of a passage rite: Preparation, Threshold and Incorporation. Efficient - yes. Powerful - definitely!
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 two 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 day is 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.
Who is this program for?
This ceremony is for those who are ready to step out of their comfort zone and make space for deep listening. We offer this as an alternative to our longer Vision Quest for those who are not ready for a four day fast or are unable to take 11 days out from their other commitments.
Email emily@naturesapprentice.com.au with any questions.
Facilitators
Yonke van Geloven
Yonke is a mother, teacher, farmer and rewilding facilitator. She facilitates community gatherings on her honeybee, permaculture property ‘La Fleur de Soul’ in Central Victoria such as seasonal celebrations, moon gatherings, olive harvest festival, dandelion festival etc.
She is passionate about deep listening to the sacred wild for healing. Always in wander and wonder, she is co learning the crafts which bring us into deeper relationship with nature and the more than human world.
Mitch Stent
Mitch is a rites of passage facilitator, hiking tour guide, backyard bicycle mechanic and lover of singing, poetry and myth. Originally from the rainforests of Cairns, he has always been looking out the window - finding peace, perspective, vitality and inspiration with bare feet on bare earth. He is currently a lead facilitator at the Rites of Passage Institute, supporting young people to thrive in the transition from adolescence into healthy, responsible, expressed and empowered young adulthood. After gathering 8 years of experience in group facilitation and transformational program design across the not-for-profit and corporate sectors, Mitch has spent the past 2 years completely spellbound by vision quest ceremony. Mitch has a profound faith in the power of this ceremony to re-weave our lives into the greater unfolding story of our planet, and in the quiet of days alone on the land, to hear more clearly the husky whispers of Soul urging us toward the life we’re really here to live.
Emily Coats
Emily is a nature connection facilitator, dancer and lifelong apprentice to the mysteries of nature and psyche. For the past 15 years, Emily has worked to heal the rift between modern civilisation and nature, initially through environmental activism, policy analysis and renewable energy modelling. Eight years ago, Emily was catapulted into deeper conversation with the underworld of mythology, dreams, personal healing and ancestral skills such as bird language and fire by friction. With an innate empathy for other humans and wild nature, and one ear attuned to what Stephen Harrod Buhner calls the 'metaphysical background of the world', Emily has found her passion in guiding others towards connection to nature, community and themselves. Alongside studies in transpersonal counselling and vision quest guiding, Emily's most potent training has been the opportunity since 2021 to work alongside Claire at Nature's Apprentice. Emily lives on Wurundjeri Country, having returned in 2018 to her birth lands after a decade in the UK.
Al Jeffery
Al is an integrative psychotherapist, regenerative leadership guide, wanderer and writer endlessly fascinated by the relationship between minds, cultures and Life herself. With family lines from India, Portugal, Ireland and Scotland, and growing up in the ferny hills of the Dandenong Ranges, he’s always carried a deep appreciation for Eastern, Western and place-based ways of seeing and knowing. He’s spent the last 12 years guiding individuals and groups through change, and apprenticing to various teachers and systems of practice such as contemplative psychology, social process design and facilitation, wilderness rites, Insight Meditation and in the last 4 years, the Indo-Tibetan Bön tradition.
Currently, he lives in Thornbury, Naarm and is committed to supporting Naarm’s transition to a life-affirming culture. He co-runs Turning Ground as a lighthouse and lab for place-based personal and cultural renewal. He also serves on the Council at Meditation Australia and semi-regularly teaches meditation in retreat settings.
Bone-deep sure of the need to re-plant our selves, our minds and our cultures back into the breathing earth, if you feel the call, he can’t wait to share in this threshold marking with you.
Testimonials from our 2022 48-hour solo program
“I am so deeply grateful to the Nature's Apprentice team for such a life changing ceremony of reconnection to self and inner knowing. The experience of sitting with self and nature was so empowering and restful and the support to bring that back to be heard and processed was warm, understanding and as needed.”
— Lisa Silva
“If you want to feel alive, dream about what you're here on earth to do, in what Joanna Macy calls 'the great adventure of our time' and come home to connection to yourself, others and the land, then I couldn't imagine a better way to spend your time.”
— Pru Gell
“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 yourself. 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 Burns
“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 Ferguson
Program info
The program will be held on wild land near Venus Bay, 2 hours south-east of Melbourne. A reasonable level of fitness is required. Accommodation is tent camping at base camp. 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 17 participants.
Email emily@naturesapprentice.com.au with any questions.
Cost:
The full cost of the 6 day program includes all food, accommodation, guide fees and materials.
Early Bird before August 7th: $1,200 ($300 deposit required by August 7th, remainder of payment by October 7th)
Full Price: $1,350
Deposit $300
A scholarship place is also available. To learn more and apply, please email us with a little about your circumstances and interest in this program.
Application Process
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 wilderness solo. 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.
Please start by paying the deposit ($300).
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 will be fully refunded.
If accepted, you will then be sent full information about the Quest, including physical and spiritual preparation, and asked to pay the remainder of the fee by 2 months before program start date (7th October). If deposit was paid before August 7th, this will be the early bird price, otherwise it will be the full price. If full payment is not received in this time, your place will be forfeited, unless you have spoken to us to arrange a payment plan.
If you are joining after October 7th (e.g. from waiting list), full payment will be required within two weeks of approval of registration form.
** Participation is subject to approval of registration and medical form **
Email emily@naturesapprentice.com.au with any questions.
Cancellation Policy
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.
A) If you cancel more than 60 days before program start (before 7th October), your deposit is not refundable, but you have the option to transfer it to a future program for a fee of $50. If you have already paid the full amount, it will be refunded, minus the deposit.
B) If you cancel between 7 and 60 days before program start, and:
we can fill your place, we will similarly refund the program fee minus the deposit, and give you the option to transfer your deposit to a future program for $50.
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. If you have not already paid in full you will be required to pay.
C) If you cancel fewer than 7 days before program start, we will not endeavour to fill your place and will not be able to refund any of the amount.
** Gratitude to Martin Stringer for use of the beautiful photos of our venue at Venus Bay **