Vision Quest: The Neon Buffalo

Vision Quest

From Menletter September 2005

By Tim Baehr

The Neon Buffalo

I had wondered what the term "vision quest" might mean, in general and for me. I don't have visions or hear voices (even in altered states), so I wasn't expecting what Sparrow, our leader, jokingly called the neon buffalo. (Apparently a reference to a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comic - see http://www.ninjaturtles.com/comics/mirage/volume01/27/27.htm.)

Intentions

Without an intention or set of intentions, a vision quest can be just a challenging camping trip. The intentions of the group I quested with ranged widely. They included looking for direction in the next phases of life, dropping certain family or personal baggage that was blocking happiness, dealing with a crippling inner critic, and so on. Although each story is unique, I could see a thread tying the stories together: We were seeking to become more ourselves - to hold up a true mirror to the real and potential self and not the distorted reflection of our families, our society, or our old visions and dreams.

Our group consisted of six people: four women (three in their twenties and one just over 50) and two men (34 and 61). In the three days of preparation, we shared our stories and learned about the mythological and spiritual bases for vision quests.

I've heard people say they could never reveal personal secrets, aspirations, demons - whatever - to a group of strangers. In societies in which vision quests are routine, the group of questers is probably not a group of strangers. And the quest may begin on familiar territory. In our case, however, we were strangers, coming from five states (as far away as California) to an entirely new environment in southern Vermont. But a certain magic (for lack of a better term) happens when a diverse group camps out together, eats together, and begins to hear each other's stories. The barriers we so carefully and necessarily maintain in our daily lives don't so much come crashing down as gently evaporate, and within a couple of days we feel the beginnings of a bond that will become stronger over the next week. Another factor is at work here, too: We all have chosen to be here, and we all are feeling a need for some change, large or small, in our lives.

Threshold

The beginning and duration of the solo time is called the Threshold: a crossing over into a new realm. Threshold was also the term used for the raised border around a threshing floor, to hold in the grain after was separated from the chaff. For me, that was a powerful image.

We traveled on Friday about an hour into central Vermont to a camping area on the shore of a reservoir in the shadow of Stratton Mountain. We hiked in to base camp and then went out and searched for our individual sites, bringing a supply of water and setting up a meeting point (a "stone pile," though not necessarily involving stones) for each adjacent pair of questers. The stone pile is a safety device: each member of the pair visits the pile in the morning or afternoon and changes some aspect of the pile. If one notices no change, he or she visits the partner to check in - perhaps the other person is ill or injured.

We all stayed together in base camp for the night, sharing a last meal, receiving instruction on how to set up a tarp, and asking endless questions about safety and wildlife. Of bears, snakes, moose, and humans, only the humans posed any threat. In fact, the most likely injury would be from tripping and falling. Some of us, however, were still nervous about the four-legged and no-legged critters. The nervousness was heightened somewhat when we heard a prancing-like rustling in the surrounding woods. It was probably a fox.

The following morning we were each sent, accompanied by a threshold ritual in a circle of stones, to our solo sites.

Ritual

Three rituals were common to all of us: crossing the threshold, the fast, and the stone pile. We were also encouraged to perform three additional rituals, in a circle of stones laid out to the cardinal directions:

1. The death lodge, in which we sat in the dark and imagined ourselves at the end of our lives being visited by whoever showed up, alive or dead. This was traditionally a way to give final advice, express love for those left behind, and even settle old scores.

2. Calling in the dark, in which we sat quietly in the dark and awaited a sense that someone or something was present with us. We would then ask "Who are you?" and "What do you want?" The presence might ask us to do outrageous things (kill all your enemies, totally abandon your everyday life), to which we could answer no, until the presence demanded something we would be willing to undertake. As the presence left, we would ask something from it: courage, humor, etc.

3. The purpose circle, in which we would sit through the night, in a circle of stones, and await a visit, a voice, a conviction, a strong sense, relating to our intention for the vision quest. This typically takes place on the last night.

We learned about other rituals, of severance and incorporation. Things we wanted to get rid of in our lives - fears, bad habits, and so on - could be discarded (severed). New qualities could be adopted (incorporated). Severance might involve ascribing things to some stones and then throwing them into the water. It might involve writing down things that plague us and burning them in a fire or burying them. Incorporation could involve walking from one place to another, putting pebbles into our water bottle, dancing to a new way of being, and so on. Both severance and incorporation could take many forms.

We also learned to honor the four shields, the cardinal directions and their corresponding seasons, as a way to focus on the four phases of life. These include birth and death in the springtime of the East as our spiritual entry into and exit from life or a life stage; youth and learning in the summer of the South as our self-oriented enthusiasm with new things; adolescence in the autumn West as we send down deeper and deeper roots; old age in the winter of the North as we become wise in discernment and determination.

The solo time was a precious, sacred time for all of us. Hunger was not a tremendous issue, though some of us experienced passing indigestion and nausea. One or two felt somewhat sicker, but we all made it through the four days. Sparrow remained at base camp, praying for us and standing by in case of any emergencies. In the nearly two decades he's been leading vision quests, everyone has survived, and only a few have had anything close to a serious health problem.

Return

On the morning of the fifth day, we disassembled and cleaned up our camps and hiked back to base camp. We had our first food in four days. Then we hiked together to the trail head and our cars.

That afternoon and over the next day, we each told our story, in our own way, about the quest time. We told details about how we set up our camps, our physical ordeals, and how we filled our days and nights. We also told about the inner changes, insights, feelings, convictions, and so on, surrounding our intentions. After all stories were told, each person listened as the others reflected what they had heard in his or her story.

We had already become a trusting community before our quests, having shared our stories along with meals and other activities. The post-quest stories knit an even stronger web of connectedness among us. Even in close-knit families, it is rare to find a ritual setting in which people with a common experience have their stories heard so intently and reflected on so lovingly.

We knew that our last ten days together was just the beginning of a quest. We had each been given gifts, and it was time to bring those gifts back to the world. Our fellow questers, and our chosen allies, would be important parts of that continuing journey.

A Personal Journey

Everyone's experience in a vision quest is unique. We all bring something different into the solo time - our stories and our intentions. My experience, therefore, is no more typical than any. So I offer my journey as simply one of many possibilities. There's the chance that you may be inspired to look at your own story and determine whether it needs a new vision, a new dream - through a vision quest or through any of a number of other spiritual journeys you might care to undertake.

My intentions for this quest were to determine who I will be and what I must do in the next phase of life (after retirement); to come up with a way to get out of my head and live more in the senses, feelings, and intuition; and to face the fears of aging.

The practical stuff occupied a large part of my first day: clearing the area of undergrowth, setting up a tarp to sleep under, finding another clear area and marking its periphery with stones, exploring the immediate area, and finding a path to the shore.

My death lodge took place in daylight, naked, along the shore of the reservoir. Rather than being alive in a death lodge, I was laid out on a mortuary slab - a huge quartz boulder - and had my conversations with various relatives and friends. There were many things to say, all loving but occasionally harsh.

I didn't feel any strong presence in the Calling in the Dark ritual. I was down at the shore of the reservoir, with a small fire. At one point, the embers consisted of two bright points surrounded by other embers in the shape of a fox's head. I had a dialogue with the fox, who asked me (all in my head; I don't hear voices) to burn down the forest - a nice trickster gesture. I refused. Then he asked me to be sly about everything I do. I refused. Then he asked me to be sly about what I know. I accepted this, understanding that I don't always have to contribute to a conversation by chiming in with some nugget of knowledge or clever personal observation. Then I asked the fox for something: a slender body like his - a combination of vanity and the desire to have a healthy vessel to spend my remaining years in.

The work on my intentions also took place in some of the other things I did that had ritual elements. I did some severance work with casting of stones and with burning. I took two long, slow hikes, trying to take in my surroundings and turn off the perpetual internal dialog. I lay naked by the water, exposed to the caress of sun and breezes.

Survival Skill?

At one point I was on a slow hike up a logging road, feeling each footstep, smelling the dead leaves, discovering moose prints, watching and listening to woodpeckers and other birds. The internal dialog was quieter than usual, and I became absorbed in the experience. Then something hit me: Thinking is not a survival skill. It was, perhaps, earlier, when I got paid to think - writing, teaching, and so on. The corollary was that the "thinking me" had been relatively unhappy as a thinker except when writing intuitively or from the gut. Moreover, the "thinking me" had been deceiving me into believing that the physical activities of life, including house work, home maintenance, exercise, and so on, were a drag - keeping me from the in-the-head stuff. It also occurred to me that a lot of my inner musings and dialogs were often-elaborate rehearsals for events or conversations that would never take place. What a release of energy if I could turn off that constant chatter!

And at one point during a severance ritual, something else came over me: What I have to do in retirement is...NOTHING. After a lifetime of meeting requirements, there's nothing I absolutely have to do. The external requirements, imposed by having to earn a living and support a family, had become so internalized that I was still thinking of myself as somehow unworthy unless I was at least looking for work. This conviction doesn't mean I have no intention of being of some benefit to society; in fact, it could lead to freedom to be of greater service over whatever time is left. But the sense of obligation to perform is gone.

I brought these realizations into the purpose circle for the last night.

As with the Calling in the Dark ritual, the purpose circle involved a fox. I did the purpose circle under my tarp, having laid out stones for the compass points. (The circle I had arranged before seemed too small.) There was a fox - a real one - prancing about outside the tarp, out of sight, for much of the night. I'd heard it the first night; apparently my tarp was in part of its territory. At one point I dozed off, and suddenly heard a loud thump right in front of my face. My guess is that the fox had come up to me, stopped suddenly, and vanished. The sudden stop was enough to knock an unlit candle off a flat rock I had set up as a kind of altar.

One possible outcome of a vision quest is to identify an animal guide. I had already become convinced that the bear is an important part of my psyche (after resisting the idea for years because, with my last name, it seemed a bit too convenient). Now I have some reason to think that the fox has joined the bear in personifying some aspect of my essence. In the purpose circle, the fox had seemed to come by to endorse the work I had done during the first days and nights of the quest.

Another transformation took place: I started out the ten days stiff, unbalanced, awkward, clumsy - more so than I remember being in past years. I felt old. At the end of ten days of carrying a pack, crawling around on the ground, hiking, hauling rocks back and forth from the shore, and so on, I felt lighter, more alive, more confident in my body. The aging I had felt was perhaps nothing more than being out of shape physically and spiritually. Possibly, the quest had prepared me physically to take on the tasks of following my vision.

So where's the neon buffalo? What's the vision? Well, there's the vision of a new way to be in this world: the gift of a man who is more engaged, more intuitive, less in his head, more attuned to the senses - an elder able to bless the world.

That's enough for me, a vision to hold onto for now.