Last week I returned to San Francisco after 12 days of a School of Lost Borders “Vision Fast” in Death Valley. This event had 12 participants and 4 guides. Subsequently I wrote two posts about it and both are post below.

Post 1:

The Vision Fast was powerful, but I’ll only know how powerful with some time. It’s surreal to spend 12 days with 15 others pouring our hearts, lives, and memories out to each other, and then this pop-up community suddenly ending. Right now I’m waffling between “That may have changed my life” and “Did that fever dream even happen?”

For the first few days we got to know one another and honed our intentions for why we were there and what we wanted to get out of it. For 2 days we sat in a circle and one by one were interviewed by the guides. They helped each of us take our large unsharpened intentions and boil it all down into a single, memorizable “I am” statement of our own choosing; a mantra of sorts we could repeat in the desert. I went in with a mess of ideas and was not alone in finding myself surprised by the “I am” statement I ended up choosing.

On day four we relocated to Death Valley. We drove miles down a wild, rocky road until we got to our spot, Lemoigne Canyon. There we spent a day each finding our spot, trekking water to it, sharing a last supper, and receiving wilderness training. The next morning the guides smudged us out and we each silently headed to our respective spots where we spent the next four days and nights alone with little to do and no food or shelter.

On the 2nd night gusty winds of 40-70 mph blew in a freezing rain. I sat for hours inside a trash bag wrapped in a tarp, being rocked back and forth by the wind. It was a long night that found the clouds parting and the storm leaving suddenly. I sat under the most beautiful moon and stars with the deepest serenity and gratitude. Somehow, not one of us quit.

In short I came to see that I already contained all that I was looking for. For the final days we shared our stories in a circle and the guides “mirrored” back to us their own understanding. Most of the deepest healing happened in the circle during the retellings. Our guides’ vast experience helped move the mountains within us. I came away understanding the power of the story, of sharing, of listening, and witnessing.

Post 2:

Before Death Valley we spent days sitting in circles sharing our stories. I shared a rosy childhood picture of before my grandmother died. Her farmhouse was our community space, where my larger family came together to eat lunch, pick up mail, and share gossip over coffee. In the summers, a dozen mud swallow nests lay under the eaves of the house. The birds darted after us as we played outside.

One year, around when Gram died, the old farmhouse got vinyl siding. When the swallows returned their mud nests fell from the newly frictionless house. The birds left and never came back. I shared that I’ve thought of my childhood as “the time of the swallows” and after Gram died as “after the swallows were gone.”

The next day we walked to the meadow where we did our group work, and as we entered, a swallow like the ones from my childhood flew overhead. I hadn’t seen one in years and I was the only one who saw it. I interpreted it as “you’re in the right place.” Later I shared with one of the guides that I saw a swallow; he replied calmly, “You do know the swallows are going to return, right?”

On the 3rd day of the fast, as I rested in the afternoon sun, I sat watching over the valley in the shade of a blooming creosote bush. And then a swallow came up and darted past my face, and then some 20 more followed right behind. They circled me clockwise and counter-clockwise. They flew laps in a tight column of some 30 feet. They kept circling around me until the happening left the realm of making any sense at all.

At first I thought, “what a wild coincidence,” but then 5 minutes went by, and then 10 minutes, and they kept on. Some time in my scientific-inclined patterning left me and grander ideas about Spirit came in. After 15-20 minutes any ideas about coincidences abandoned me and finally I exclaimed, “Ok, enough!” and at that the swallows finally broke formation. For 15 more minutes they flew more loosely around me doing aerial acrobatics.

It’s hard to say what I experienced that afternoon and to draw conclusions. What I can say for certain is that I will be sitting with it for a long time, that something shifted deep within me, and that the swallows indeed returned.