Past Programs
Transforming Ancestral Trauma through Nature, Ritual, and Community
Aug 30 - Sep 5, 2021 Dragonback Springs Ranch, Colorado Nancy Jane, Bettina Straub Living the Practices
This program provides an opportunity to consciously explore how the shadows of the past remain undigested in our personal and collective lives. To what degree are we aware of their impact on our ...
CO Three Week Training
Aug 28 - Sep 19, 2021 Wild Mountain, Colorado Ruth “Roo” Wharton, Pedro McMillan Training
Wilderness Rites of Passage have been practiced in cultures around the world as a way to celebrate and transition from one phase of life to the next - to leave behind what no longer serves and step ...
The Four Shields of Wholeness for Women
Aug 23 - Aug 23, 2021 Inyo Mountains - Big Pine, California Petra Lentz-Snow, Gretchen (Grae) Gerlach Living the Practices
Patrilinear hierarchical systems have pushed life on earth to the edge of social and ecological sustainability. As women we feel the pain of the global crisis resonating in our bodies and personal ...
CO Mirroring the Four Shields of Human Nature: The Art of Story Telling and Listening
Aug 4 - Aug 8, 2021 Dragonback Springs Ranch, Colorado Emerald North, Ray Hillis, Scot Deily Training
The shields of human nature turn with the experiences of life, from the smallest cell to the great seamless whole of the biosphere called earth. It begins with the body (summer), turns into psyche ...
CA Summer Vision Fast
Aug 2 - Aug 14, 2021 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, ...
CO Summer Vision Fast
Jul 28 - Aug 8, 2021 Wild Mountain, Colorado Pedro McMillan, Ruth “Roo” Wharton Vision Fast
The call of the earth is getting louder! The ecological stress we see in wildfires, flooding, and global pandemics can leave you feeling helpless, frightened and stuck. Technology and the fast pace ...
CO Two Week Training
Jul 1 - Jul 14, 2021 Dragonback Springs Ranch, Colorado Emerald North, Scot Deily Training
The two week training offers the participant an immersion into the vision fast ceremony, including the beginning skills necessary to lead it and an understanding of how the principles of the vision ...
Diamond in the Rough: Wilderness and the Diamond Approach
Jun 26 - Jul 3, 2021 Wild Mountain, Colorado John Davis, Marlena deCarion Living the Practices
Intimate and direct contact with the natural world is an ancient, direct, and profound doorway to being. Our ancestors knew this, and we are rediscovering it. Curiosity, experiential inquiry, ...
CA Month-Long Training
Jun 16 - Jul 18, 2021 Inyo Mountains - Big Pine, California Betsy Perluss, Angelo Joseph Lazenka, Petra Lentz-Snow, Meredith Little, John Davis Training
The month-long intensive is designed for those who seek to explore and develop their vocation as wilderness guides within the tradition of the School of Lost Borders. Participants are given the ...
CO Queer Quest
Jun 8 - Jun 20, 2021 Wild Mountain, Colorado Pedro McMillan, Ruth “Roo” Wharton Vision Fast
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 ...
Queer Men in the Life Lodge: Forgiveness, Apology & Reconciliation
Jun 6 - Jun 13, 2021 Inyo Mountains - Big Pine, California Scott Eberle, Collin Brown Living & Dying
Imagine you, as a queer man, living in a community that has its own “Death Lodge,” a place where a dying person can rest and receive the visitors who come to say goodbye. This is the natural ...
Young Adults Wilderness Rites of Passage
May 28 - Jun 7, 2021 Inyo Mountains - Big Pine, California Siri Gunnarson, Pınar Ateş Sinopoulos-Lloyd Vision Fast
Every summer the School of Lost Borders offers a wilderness rite of passage for young people ready to confirm their entry into adulthood. Nearly every culture on the planet shows evidence of a ...
CA Men’s Vision Fast (Postponed until 2022)
May 19 - May 30, 2021 Big Pine, California Will Scott, Larry Hobbs Vision Fast
The mystery is calling! The Sun is rising and illuminating a new and yet very ancient story about the value and worth of what it means to be a man. Perhaps now more than ever -- or perhaps now just ...
Becoming Human: The Four Shields Model of Nature-Based Therapeutics
May 17 - May 22, 2021 Big Pine, California Betsy Perluss, Angelo Joseph Lazenka Training
The Four Shields model offers us guidance in the form of a map to help us find our way back to our origins on this living planet. This earth-based wheel of human nature was handed down to Steven ...
NM Women’s Vision Fast
May 17 - May 28, 2021 Cochiti Lake and Ghost Ranch, New Mexico Emerald North, Petra Lentz-Snow 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 ...
Dark Nature: Matrix of Initiatory Growth
Apr 11 - Apr 16, 2021 Eureka Valley, California Meredith Little Training
Of all the shields of human nature, the dark or fall shield can be at once the most compelling and the most frightening. It calls on us continually to risk everything, to let go of what has come ...
CA Spring Vision Fast
Apr 5 - Apr 16, 2021 Big Pine and Eureka Valley, California Petra Lentz-Snow, Angelo Joseph Lazenka 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 ...
The Great Ballcourt Initiation – Spring Fast (Postponed until 2022)
Feb 28 - Mar 11, 2021 Death Valley Scott Eberle, Meredith Little Living & Dying, Past Programs
An Advanced Program in “The Practice of Living and Dying” Death is the ultimate agent of transformation - be it a physical death or "the little deaths" encountered throughout life. ...
CA Women’s Vision Fast
Nov 9 - Nov 20, 2020 Death Valley Betsy Perluss, Silvia Talavera Vision Fast
One of a woman’s greatest longings is to be seen and known in her most wild and authentic self – a self that is intimately intertwined with the creative forces and cycles of nature. Like the ...
The Great Ballcourt Initiation – Fall Fast
Oct 21 - Nov 1, 2020 Death Valley 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 ...
Open Desert, Open Mind: A Wilderness Program for Contemplatives
Oct 17 - Oct 25, 2020 Eureka Valley Scott Eberle, Silvia Talavera 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 ...
CA Two Week Training (Full with waitlist)
Oct 10 - Oct 23, 2020 Big Pine and Eureka Valley Ruth “Roo” Wharton, Larry Hobbs Training
This training gives the student an immersion in the vision fast ceremony, including the skills involved in leading the vision fast and an understanding of how the principles of the vision fast can ...
CA Mirroring the Four Shields of Human Nature: The Art of Story Telling and Listening
Sep 26 - Oct 1, 2020 Big Pine, CA- Baker Creek Campground Angelo Joseph Lazenka, Betsy Perluss 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 ...
The Elder’s Journey: Four Shields of Eldering for Women
Sep 20 - Sep 26, 2020 Baker Creek Campground - Big Pine, California Silvia Talavera, Sara Harris 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 ...
NM Fall Vision Fast (Full with waitlist)
Sep 20 - Oct 1, 2020 Cochiti Lake and Ghost Ranch NM Emerald North, , Ray Hillis 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 ...
Grief, Loss, and Transformation
Sep 9 - Sep 16, 2020 Southern Colorado-Dragonback Springs Ranch Nancy Jane, Past Programs
The land around us (and within us) teaches with each passing season, and with each flood, drought, fire and storm, that out of change, crisis and a dying to what was, there appears a new story of ...