Fall Newsletter 2020

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The Experiment of Lost Borders – By Sara Harris

Once upon a time there were two people. Both had big minds, huge souls, and an even bigger hunger that they shared. The desert called their names and they answered. They first took kids over the Sierras at night in a big school bus. There were no seat belts, no insurance policies. They didn’t know exactly what they were doing or where they were going, but the desert kept calling and they kept listening.

 Something worked. They moved to the high desert and kept at it. Their house began to bulge with ideas, love, people, chaos, and madness, with the desert winds rolling through. They kept at it. It was a hard life, but certainly a meaningful one. People found them, for it turned out the desert and ceremony called to many who were hungry. They kept experimenting, inventing, learning, living this way, and the truth of it continued to call. They even called it a school. It was always an experiment. The Experiment of Lost Borders.

 Decades passed. The land and the people called the ceremony to other states, other countries.  Now forests, rivers, alpine mountain ranges, as well as deserts called. Guides came to enlarge the beating heart of this school. They brought it back from the brink of death more than once, pouring in work, love, learning, struggle, loneliness, partnership, and always their love of the land and the ceremony got them through. They had to learn systems, get insurance, and “become” an entity, territory pretty unfamiliar to some of them. Those who came forward to lead the school worked incredibly hard and made great gains.

Then, in the land, came a great pandemic, scattering to the four directions any plans, programs, travel, and all sense of what had been normal, all security shifted or gone.  Somewhere, coyote could be heard laughing his skinny ass off. “Take this, you organization, you!” The world seemed to turn upside down. The guides worked hard to turn into the skid, to listen deeply, to challenge the structures of their own ways and the ways of the school.

 In the midst of all this, the guides still knew how to empower their people. The people still came and did ceremony and thrived and grew. The work was still good.

The school was blessed. It had at its heart the living, breathing ceremony. It had guides who risked storms, dangers and discomfort because they loved this path and how it informed people’s hearts to live as part of and for this earth.  It had a community. It had a deep understanding of birth and death cycles. It already had everything it needed to get through this crisis. It just needed to draw on the bravery of truth with the heart of kindness. It needed to trust the ceremony would survive. It needed to nourish itself as it nourished others. The next chapter has begun, and all of you are integral.
The Experiment of Lost Borders continues.

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