About Our
Vision Quests
How our Vision Quests work
There are many forms of Questing, but this ceremony is four days and four nights alone in a 10 ft circle. You only take the basics of survival, fasting from food and leaving behind all distractions. In the days before the Quest, we prepare you mentally and physically for the challenges ahead. After the Quest, we give you time to break fast, decompress, and journal.
In order to Quest, participants must agree to drink water, continue taking any prescription medications, and once a day leave your quest circle to place a trail side marker so we can check on you. These agreements are mandatory for this Quest, if this is a problem then this Quest may not be for you.
Where our Vision Quests
are held
Currently, we are holding Vision Quests at Liberty Arising, a 165 acre retreat center in the high desert, east of San Diego, California. It is a beautiful property with a long history of spiritual work. The granite boulders and mountains provide a unique landscape for Questing.
How to join a Vision Quest
After filling out the “request application” form on our website, we will reach out to you to schedule a video call or in-person meeting. In this meeting, we will provide more information about our Quests and answer any questions you have. If Questing is right for you, we will then provide you with an application for an upcoming Quest. There is a $250 deposit required to reserve your spot, the total suggested donation is $850. This goes towards food expenses, land rental fees, and staffing.
The lineage of our Vision Quests
The Vision Quest I know comes from a man named Stalking Wolf, a Lipan Apache elder, shaman and scout. Stalking Wolf, who we call Grandfather (teacher), had a Vision, in part, to find the common spiritual truths among the world’s religions and cultures. He wandered North and South America learning the ways of the Earth and spirit from shaman, holy men/women and then took those teachings out into nature and found their core essence, the common thread. As such, this particular Quest is not Lipan but, rather, a distillation of the core experience that is the essence of a Vision Quest. The second part of Grandfather’s Vision was passing on his skills to a student, The White Coyote. That student was Tom Brown Jr. Tom learned his ways from the ages of 8-18, and tested them further on his own once Stalking Wolf returned to his people to go on his final walk. In 1978, Tom opened his world famous Tracking Nature and Wilderness Survival School. My family started taking classes at the school in the early 90’s and it changed our lives.
Tom Brown passed Stalking Wolf’s Vision Quest ceremony down to some of his most experienced instructors; Karl Povosils (Bear), Malcolm Ringwalt and Chuck Goewey. The three of them started a Vision Quest program in the 80’s and further developed the experience to better prepare people who may be new to survival and a life outdoors. One of them, Malcolm Ringwalt, continues to guide students on Quests to this day. Malcom developed the Vision Quest Protector Program, training others to lead Vision Quests in this tradition. One of his early students was Matt Hanson, who Matt Fields-Johnson (Bear) trained with in the summer of 2021. Bear (Matt) has been vision questing for 20 years and is now organizing this Vision Quest program. For more information about this lineage visit heartsoffire.net.