PROGRAM SCHEDULE

The School offers programs in a variety of locations throughout the four seasons.

We recommend registering at least six months to a year in advance to give you time to prepare for your ceremony or program as well as to ensure a spot is available for you.


March 2024

The Great Ballcourt Initiation – Spring Fast

Mar 12 - Mar 23, 2024 Death Valley, California Scott Eberle, Cynthia Morrow Living & Dying

Death is the ultimate agent of transformation—be it a physical death or “the little deaths” encountered throughout life.  Indigenous cultures developed rituals to aid and guide people ...

Walking Into That Good Night: Exploring Our Relationship With Dying & Death

Mar 24 - Mar 30, 2024 Death Valley, CA Meredith Little Living & Dying

A place to stay untouched by death Does not exist. It does not exist in space, it does not exist in the ocean, Nor if you stay in the middle of a mountain. - The Buddha "Awareness of death is ...

April 2024

CA Spring Vision Fast

Apr 8 - Apr 19, 2024 Big Pine & Death Valley, California Petra Lentz-Snow, Scot Deily Vision Fast

Life transitions, like entering adulthood, midlife or elderhood are always "DNA invitations" to go out on the land. The need to become anew is planted deeply into our ancestral bones because it was ...

May 2024

The Nature of Council

May 3 - May 10, 2024 Big Pine, California Sam DeBoskey, Yamin Chehin Training

“There is a world behind the world we see that is the same world but more open, more transparent, without blocks. Like inside a big mind, the animals and humans all can talk, and those who pass ...

NM Women’s Vision Fast

May 13 - May 24, 2024 Cochiti Lake and Ghost Ranch, New Mexico Emerald North, Cori Wright Vision Fast

A woman's journey is both vigorous and introspective as she covers ground outwardly, so she ventures deep within herself. Stirred by nature's calling to be creative and complete, and beckoned by an ...

Reclaiming the Divine Masculine

May 18 - May 25, 2024 Wildlands in the San Francisco Bay Area Scott Eberle, Logan Falley Training

Reclaiming the Divine Masculine A Program for Men in this Modern Age For the longest time, patriarchal beliefs and proscribed gender roles have discouraged men from learning to listen deeply ...

June 2024

CO June Queer Quest

The natural world reminds us that being Queer* is both beautiful and something to be celebrated! Showing up as who we are, and with our many gifts, is a celebration of nature's diversity and honors ...

BIPOC Diamond In the Rough (invite only)

Jun 6 - Jun 10, 2024 Four Springs Retreat Center, CA John Davis, Marlena deCarion Living the Practices

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CO June Queer Quest 2

The natural world reminds us that being Queer* is both beautiful and something to be celebrated! Showing up as who we are, and with our many gifts, is a celebration of nature's diversity and honors ...

The Four Directions of a Queer Man: Forgiveness, Apology & Reconciliation

Jun 8 - Jun 15, 2024 Inyo Mountains - Big Pine, California Scott Eberle, Collin Brown, Paul Browde Living the Practices

Queer people don’t grow up as ourselves, we grow up playing a version of ourselves that sacrifices authenticity to minimise humiliation & prejudice.  The massive task of our adult lives is to ...

CA Month-Long Training

Jun 12 - Jul 14, 2024 Inyo Mountains - Big Pine, California Betsy Perluss, Angelo Joseph Lazenka, Petra Lentz-Snow, Meredith Little, Kim Belair Training

*Pre-requite for this program is having completed a guided 3 or 4-day/night vision fast. Need not have been with the School of Lost Borders. For forty years the School of Lost Borders has offered ...

Young Adults Nature Based Rite of Passage

Jun 13 - Jun 24, 2024 Inyo Mountains - Big Pine, California Nick LaHaise, Gretchen (Grae) Gerlach Vision Fast

  You are a young person in this world, with childhood behind you, no longer a teenager, you have aged into the phase of young adulthood.  Are you an adult? How? When? Why?  What does being an ...

Diamond in the Rough: Wilderness and the Diamond Approach

Jun 22 - Jun 29, 2024 Wild Mountain, Colorado John Davis, Marlena deCarion, Ken Crocker Living the Practices

Direct and intimate contact with the natural world is an ancient and profound doorway to being. Our ancestors knew this, and we are rediscovering it. Curiosity, experiential inquiry, mindfulness, ...

July 2024

CA Summer Women’s Fast

Jul 8 - Jul 19, 2024 Inyo Mountains - Big Pine, California Petra Lentz-Snow, Kim Belair Vision Fast

Since time immemorial Rites of Passage Ceremonies have facilitated change, offering a simple but indispensable container to transition from one life stage to another, to let go of (die to) the old ...

In the Death Lodge: Forgiveness, Apology and Reconciliation

Jul 8 - Jul 13, 2024 Owens Valley, CA Meredith Little Living & Dying

Resentment is like a glass of poison that a man drinks; then he sits down and waits for his enemy to die. —Nelson Mandela Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the ...

CO Men’s Fast

Jul 9 - Jul 21, 2024 Wild Mountain, Colorado Pedro McMillan, Sam DeBoskey Vision Fast

Being a man can be easy, and not easy at all. How do people who identify as a man navigate both the immense privileges that come with maleness, and the weight of myths that come with being a man. ...

CO Summer Vision Fast

Jul 17 - Jul 28, 2024 Dragonback Springs Ranch, Colorado Emerald North, Colleen Bishop, tbird (Thompson) Bishop Vision Fast

In your bones you hear the singing of your sacred ancestors. You follow in their footsteps. You go alone, with an empty belly and a bare minimum of equipment, into the heart of the wilderness, for ...

BIPOC Mirroring Training: Reflecting BIPOC Stories through Nature and Belonging

This program is run by Wild Mountain Retreats and bookable direct on their website This program is open to all who identify as Black, Indigenous, & People of Color (BIPOC). Many of whom have ...

August 2024

CA Summer Vision Fast

Aug 5 - Aug 17, 2024 Inyo Mountains - Big Pine, California Scott Eberle, Betsy Perluss Vision Fast

The modern day vision quest is a border crossing practice, an opportunity to reclaim our true place in the natural world. When one steps across the threshold and into the unknown wilderness, ...

Healing Ancestral Trauma through Nature, Ritual, and Community

Aug 6 - Aug 12, 2024 Wild Mountain, Colorado Nancy Jane, Bettina Straub Living the Practices

When we heal our roots, we open up new possibilities for our future. --Thomas Hubl Ancestral Trauma Welcome to our investigation of ancestral trauma. We hold this as a sacred exploration of ...

CO Women’s Fast

Aug 16 - Aug 25, 2024 Wild Mountain, Colorado Nancy Jane, Bettina Straub Vision Fast

- Remembering Ourselves Home - You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of ...

CO Mirroring the Four Shields of Human Nature: The Art of Story Telling and Listening

Aug 19 - Aug 23, 2024 Dragonback Springs Ranch, Colorado Emerald North, Scot Deily Training

Who is this miracle speaking to me? And who is this miracle listening? What amazingness are we creating? Out of gray matter a star spark of thought leaps between synapses into the air, and ...

September 2024

CA Mirroring the Four Shields of Human Nature: The Art of Storytelling and Listening

Sep 8 - Sep 13, 2024 Big Pine, CA Betsy Perluss, Angelo Joseph Lazenka Training

Telling one’s own story is an ancient art. Nowadays, we have forgotten how to listen and how to tell. Yet the very survival of our species depends on our ability to communicate with each other in ...

Living in a Time of Dying: The Four Shields in the Anthropocene

Sep 14 - Sep 20, 2024 Payahuunadü (Big Pine) and Eureka Valley, California Petra Lentz-Snow, Yeshe Salz Living & Dying

We are living in a time of rapid change, disintegration and emergence on planet Earth - what many call apocalyptic times. From the compounding and inequitable crises of climate change and ...

NM Fall Vision Fast

Sep 16 - Sep 27, 2024 Cochiti Lake and Ghost Ranch, New Mexico Emerald North, Scot Deily Vision Fast

The land knows you, even when you are lost. ~ Robin Wall Kimmerer In increasing times of unrest and uncertainty it can be a common human experience to gravitate towards more “certainty” ...

CA Two Week Training

Sep 21 - Oct 5, 2024 Big Pine & Eureka Valley, California Ruth “Roo” Wharton, Angelo Joseph Lazenka Training

In these times of change and uncertainty, it is crucial that we show up for our community in ways that truly serve. The world is calling us to listen in new and old ways to connect with the land and ...

CO Fall Vision Fast

Sep 28 - Oct 11, 2024 Wild Mountain, Colorado Pedro McMillan, Kelly McClelland Vision Fast

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 ...

Becoming Human: The Four Shields Model of Nature-Based Therapeutics

Sep 29 - Oct 4, 2024 Big Pine, California Betsy Perluss, Gretchen (Grae) Gerlach Training

“If there were a measure of ‘mental health’, it would involve the ability of individuals to grow into the fullness of each season – that is, the ability to fully become, or enact, the ...

October 2024

Open Desert, Open Mind

Oct 5 - Oct 13, 2024 Eureka Valley, California Scott Eberle, Silvia Talavera, Bettina Straub Living the Practices

The very transparent, unfixed, yet alive quality of consciousness is its nature, a bit like air around us.  If you relax and allow this experience of unfixed knowing, you will discover what ...

The Elder’s Journey: The Four Shields of Elderhood for Women

Oct 21 - Oct 27, 2024 Catalina State Park - Tucson, Arizona Silvia Talavera, Cary Gaunt Living the Practices

“We are the seeds of the tenacious plant, and it is in our ripeness and our fullness of heart that we are given to the wind and scattered.” Kahlil Gibran Throughout the ages, elder women ...

The Great Ballcourt Initiation – Fall Fast

Oct 21 - Nov 1, 2024 Death Valley, California Meredith Little, Angelo Joseph Lazenka Living & Dying

Death is the ultimate agent of transformation—be it a physical death or “the little deaths” encountered throughout life. Indigenous cultures developed rituals to aid and guide people through ...

CA Fall Vision Fast

Oct 24 - Nov 4, 2024 Death Valley, California Petra Lentz-Snow, Gretchen (Grae) Gerlach Vision Fast

Life transitions, like entering adulthood, midlife or elderhood are always "DNA invitations" to go out on the land. The need to become anew is planted deeply into our ancestral bones because it ...

November 2024

CA Women’s Vision Fast

Nov 5 - Nov 16, 2024 Death Valley, California Betsy Perluss, Cynthia Morrow Vision Fast

“I see the Feminine defined as a reconnection to the Self, a commitment to the wildness within our instincts, our capacityto create and destroy; our hunger for connection as well as sovereignty, ...

Rites of Incorporation: Embodying the Vision and Living the Dream

Nov 5 - Nov 11, 2024 Catalina State Park - Tucson, Arizona Silvia Talavera, Kelly McClelland Living the Practices

   “Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die life is a broken winged bird that cannot ...

April 2025

The Great Ballcourt Initiation – Spring Fast

Apr 15 - Apr 26, 2025 Eureka Valley, California Scott Eberle, Cynthia Morrow Living & Dying

Death is the ultimate agent of transformation—be it a physical death or “the little deaths” encountered throughout life.  Indigenous cultures developed rituals to aid and guide people ...

June 2025

Young Adults Nature Based Rite of Passage

Jun 13 - Jun 24, 2025 Inyo Mountains - Big Pine, California Nick LaHaise, Gretchen (Grae) Gerlach Vision Fast

  You are a young person in this world, with childhood behind you, no longer a teenager, you have aged into the phase of young adulthood.  Are you an adult? How? When? Why?  What does being an ...

August 2025

CA Summer Vision Fast

Aug 11 - Aug 23, 2025 Inyo Mountains - Big Pine, California Betsy Perluss, Scott Eberle Vision Fast

The modern day vision quest is a border crossing practice, an opportunity to reclaim our true place in the natural world. When one steps across the threshold and into the unknown wilderness, ...

Healing Ancestral Trauma through Nature, Ritual, and Community

Aug 12 - Aug 18, 2025 Wild Mountain, Colorado Nancy Jane, Bettina Straub Living the Practices

When we heal our roots, we open up new possibilities for our future. --Thomas Hubl Ancestral Trauma Welcome to our investigation of ancestral trauma. We hold this as a sacred exploration of ...

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