What if I invited you to sit at the top of a sixty-foot high zip line and fly down the wire; to watch the sunset after fifty hours of fasting; sit on the ground in a pitch-black, steam-filled sweat-lodge; to sit on a beach, blindfolded, toward the end of a 21-day trip and listen to how your fellow group members appreciate you?

If you accepted, I believe you would find that Rite of Passage Journeys keeps to their mission statement -- honoring life’s transitions through intentional rite of passage experiences, using experiential learning activities designed to foster self-discovery, connection with others and connection with the natural world.

When I stand back and remember that summer, it’s really easy to feel proud of what I achieved. Rite of Passage Journeys offered me the chance to work with them as a volunteer intern for five months during the summer with a promise that I would have a life-changing journey, and I did. No matter what the pictures show, the souvenirs I took back to the United Kingdom and the friendships that developed only tell half the story of what happened.

The first part of the Journey I went through was possibly similar to most participants of the summer programs who turn up at Journeys' base camp and see the sweat lodge, yurt and tipi. You have an excitement about what’s going to happen, fears about what’s going to happen and then huge questions in the middle of the hard times about how this is helping me and if it’s worth it, something that until you draw your own big picture is hard to see.

As part of the summer program I drew on my experience as a Boy Scout leader in England and Scotland and co-leading the Solo Crossing Journey for fourteen to sixteen-year-olds. On arrival, all participant gear was checked so that we knew they had the equipment to stay warm and dry while in the outdoors. Then, we began to show the participants the skills they would need, such as creating a shelter to sleep under and how to wear their backpacks so they could hike long distances in comfort. In addition, we drew up a group contract to ensure a supportive community would be present during the next twenty-one days, to allow the entire group the space to transform themselves.

The first part of the course involved team building and facing fears which might be found on the trip.  A low ropes course gave both the mentors and mentees a chance to get to know one another, put trust in each other’s abilities and have fun thinking outside of the box to solve various problems from balancing on a log to searching for a key while blindfolded and all attached to a web of rope.

The next day, spent in the trees on the high ropes, gave our dark fears the physical context of the dragon. This physical metaphor (paralyzed on a balance beam forty feet up) prepares you for when your muscles ache from hiking, when your loneliness makes you want to leave your quest site, and when being away from your family makes you sad. You can see these dragons and know that if you run from a dragon, you might miss that something you’re looking for. In facing each one and kissing their noses, you just might find new strength within yourself.

However, that’s theory. Put me at the top of a sixty-foot zip line with my feet dangling off a wooden platform, sitting next to a ropes instructor who has made an effort to give me confidence in the safety of the lines and then says “ In your own time, just go,”  a certain thought of “ holy moley, what am I doing” comes into your head, minus any image of a dragon to kiss. But the fifteen-second journey down that line - catching the rushing wind - teaches you to trust in your ability and not in your fears.

On our third day, we started the challenge of traveling and living in the Olympic Mountains, hiking around five miles a day, loaded with food and equipment and ensuring that we left no trace of our presence in the wilderness. We invited the youth to look on these three weeks as a metaphor for life’s journey and to look for personal meanings along the way.

As a personal example, we passed a river that divided into two channels. One side had been shaping the rocks it touched, but it never went over the rocks, and thus moss grew on them. The other side contained a large boulder which caused the river to crash up over it. The water had worn holes in it everywhere. The story I drew was that if I had stayed in the UK I would have been the first side, still having an experience, but possibly limited. However, being in the USA, I was immersed and was being shaped by encounters, tastes, cultures and much, much more.

Metaphors like this were shared at evening circle and helped prepare us for the vision quest.

Toward the middle of our hike, we stopped for three days to go on quest. To begin, we held an intense death ceremony for the participants – dramatizing the leaving behind of the lives they had known and opening themselves to the quest experience -- then we led them to their quest sites to spend about 50 hours on their own with their thoughts and dreams to support them. On their return, they had tales to tell the group at their rebirth ritual as youth. In talking circles and in the council of elders, we heard about the dragons they had met and their insights of how they wanted to be seen when they returned to the world they had now been away from for over two weeks. 

These children had now become youth, and, as we moved to the beach, we passed the responsibilities for the group from the mentors to the mentees. Each day a mentee would be the leader of the day and would have responsibilities to wake the group, navigate to the next campsite, locate a site and work with the other mentees to cook the meals, gather water and look after the group’s wellbeing.

Each night we held a council of elders with the leader of the day and offered words of experience and asked them to speak of their strengths and weakness and the challenges they had found. As each day passed and the leader of the day position rotated, it was possible to see the youth stepping more and more into this new role and practicing the way they hoped to be on their return.

The twenty-one days flew by at a relaxed pace, without a calendar and only the electrifying sunsets behind mountains and on warm beaches, turning the sea golden to record time. However, as the days passed, the journey was starting to reach the north of the medicine wheel and rebirth again for us all.

On the last day at base, we gathered for the group photographs to record the Journey and signed our names on the now-growing list on the yurt, which records the names of Journeys alumni, that we're now a part of, through the years since 1968. We then fastened large sheets of paper to our backs and took the time to write comments on each other’s sheets that we wanted to share -- advice, gratitude, even comments we weren’t sure how to say to them. After a careful folding, we all agreed to read them only when we returned home.

So, as you see in twenty-one days, seeds of transformation were planted, which didn’t stop when the youths went home. Like any seed, they take time to sprout and grow. No photograph or souvenir can show the full picture of what we went through. You can only find out for yourself. But, if you want to come to Journeys and sign your name on the yurt, beware, there are dragons out there. And they require kissing!
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Johnny Wells from Leeds England was an Intern with Rite of Passage Journeys, Bothell Washington in 2004.  http://riteofpassagejourneys.org.  He is currently in Edinburgh, Scotland studying for an advanced degree to prepare him to lead wilderness work in the UK.