Steven Foster - Book Of Vision Quest

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Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint material copyrighted or controlled by them:

The Bollingen Foundation, Inc., for an excerpt from Hero With a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell. Doubleday & Company, Inc., for an excerpt from Once More, The Round, copyright 1962 by Beatrice Roethke, Administratix of the Estate of Theodore Roethke, from the book The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke; and for excerpts from Technicians of the Sacred edited by Jerome Rothenberg, copyright 1968 by Jerome Rothenberg. Harper & Row, for excerpts from Seven Arrows by Hyemeyohsts Storm, copyright 1972 by Hyemeyohsts Storm. New Directions Publishing Corporation, for an excerpt from Paterson by William Carlos Williams, copyright 1948 by William Carlos Williams. Sierra Club Books, for an excerpt from The Unsettling of America by Wendell Berry, copyright 1977 by Wendell Berry. The Pacific Sun , for excerpts from Surviving Vision Quest, by Steven Foster. Natalie Rogers, for excerpts from her book, Emerging Woman , A Decade of Midlife Transitions , copyright by Natalie Rogers. Rites of Passage, Inc., for excerpts from A Vision Quest Handbook by Gift Bearer and others, copyright 1980. Princeton University Press, for an excerpt from Hero With a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell, Bollingen Series XVII. Copyright 1949 by Princeton University Press. Copyright renewed 1976 by Princeton University Press.

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Designed by Victoria Hartman

First Fireside Edition 1992

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Foster, Steven, 1938

The book of the vision quest: personal transformation in the wilderness / Steven Foster with Meredith Little.

Rev. ed. p. cm.

Bibliography: p.

1. Spiritual life. 2. Rites and ceremonies.

3. Vision quests. I. Little, Meredith, 1951 . II. Title.

III. Title: Vision quest.

BL624.F67 1988

291.3'8dcl9

88-19180

CIP

ISBN-10: 0-671-76189-7

ISBN-13: 978-1-4516-7240-4 (eBook)

For M, in memory of

K I

and

For Tom Pinkson, in memory of

The Yosemite

Returning from the Last Chance Mountains with a group of vision questers, we were presented with the news that Prentice Hall Press would accept this new, expanded edition of The Book of the Vision Quest for publication. The season is fall. The leaves of the cottonwoods are turning the bright golden glow of death. It seems entirely appropriate that winter should be almost here.

Soon the dark of the year will come. What will keep the people warm through the long, cold nights when the trees stand bare and the aching wind sows seeds of yearning to the iron earth? Some say the wheels of war will carry us back again to the Dark Ages. Others say that Armageddon is at hand. Still others, preferring to make no further effort to swim upstream, turn away from the global realities of human survival, and endlessly contemplate themselves in mediamirrors that lie, that tell them they will never grow old, that they will never want or suffer, that no matter how they treat her, the Earth will always be technicolor green. Of course, there are always the legions who say, Follow like sheep and you will escape the slaughter.

Here is our contribution to the survival of the people through the coming winter. Here is a fire, fueled by human hearts, ignited by dreams of human wholeness. Here is a warming flame from which light may be drawn to illuminate the cold hearths of the world.

We have been especially pleased to learn that this book has penetrated the Iron Curtain and found an audience among Soviet citizens who, like Americans, are looking for ways to revive the power of ancient rites of passage within their culture. Requests for the book have also come from Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands, South Africa, Zambia, Mexico, Honduras, New Zealand, Australia, England, and Wales. The interest of diverse peoples suggests the relevance of passage rites such as the vision quest to diverse cultures. This relevance is not surprising. The archetype is a prominent feature of the human collective unconscious.

For this revised edition we are especially grateful for the help of Wabun Marlise James, Sun Bear, and the Bear Tribe.

Steven Foster

Meredith Little

The School of Lost Borders

Big Pine, California

1987

Four years have elapsed since the first printing of The Book of the Vision Quest. During this time the work has been blessed by the spirits of wind and rain, lightning and thunder. Individuals come from all over the country to participate and be trained. Many others are also doing the work. Today, there is hardly an isolated range of mountains in the American West that has not heard the voice of a modern vision quester crying for a vision.

Meredith and I continue to go with people to the sacred mountain. Faced by steadily increasing numbers of participants, however, we felt the necessity to go into semiretirement and to move our family to the Eastern Sierra where we currently operate a small school for individuals seeking to be trained in the ways of fasting, vision, and dream quests. Here, at the edge of the northern Mojave Desert, we keep close to our family and study at the feet of las sierras desiertas.

When Island Press changed its editorial focus, the book faced oblivion. A note from Wabun (and the Bear Tribe) expressing interest in the future of the book arrived the very day we were told by Island Press that the rights were reverting to us. We particularly want to thank Wabun and Sun Bear for agreeing to take on a second edition. We are learning to take such miracles as a matter of course. The vision is not under our controland never was. We are but two of its many earth-appointed custodians, as are Wabun, Sun Bear, Shawnodese, the Bear Tribe, and so many others. The spirit of Mother Earth is moving in our hearts and in the world at large to get her word out. The vision quest is good for all of usas individuals, families, communities, culture, and land. This rite of passage must be set free. It has been trapped behind culturally conditioned fears for too long. Let the river flow freely through the thirsty canyons of the modern world. There is a way to heal ourselves and our land.

With these brief remarks we want to honor the contributors to this book who subsequently became vision quest guides. They have served their people well, without a single serious injury or death. Mark Stillman, Linda Gregory, Virginia Hine, Patricia Burke, Marilyn Riley, Steve DeMartini, and Jack Crimminswe salute you! We also want to honor those who guided Rites of Passage, Inc., in the years after we left: Jennifer Hine-Massey, Drew Pratt, Michael Bodkin, Miguel Batz, Theresa Koke, John Morris, Tim Garthwaite, Howard and Sue Lamb, Frank Burton, and others. Above all, we want to publicly express our loving gratitude to Virginia Hine, grandmother and teacher, who went on her last vision quest in January 1982.