The School Of Lost Borders
by Mark Schlenz
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(This story first appeared in the April 2005 issue of Mammoth Monthly magazine)
Mary Austin called it "The Country of Lost Borders." It is the
territory of the great rainshadow that extends from the Pacific Crest
into the Great Basin, including Death Valley and the Mojave Desert - a
huge area that is easy to see, on a map or a drive. But to comprehend
the region, to connect its aridity and barrenness to life's essence and
abundance, is quite another thing.
In 1903, Austin described this dramatic vitality in her classic
book, "The Land of Little Rain." And since the early 1980s, The School
of Lost Borders in Big Pine has sought to guide thousands of seekers
into the wild places where borders fade.
Supplied with only a tarp, some water jugs, and little if any food,
the school's "students" cross thresholds in their lives through a
carefully guided rite of passage known as a Vision Fast.
Developing the Vision Fast, founders Meredith Little and the late
Steven Foster may have achieved for passage rites what author Joseph
Campbell accomplished for mythologies: They have shown how images,
stories, and ceremonial acts from time immemorial still speak to those
seeking personal connection to a collective human story.
Austin, the turn-of-the-century playwright, poet, essayist,
novelist, ecologist, feminist and mystic understood intuitively these
connections, writing, "out there where the boundary of soul and sense
is as faint as a trail in a sandstorm," renewal comes by stripping life
to bare bones.
"For all the desert takes of a man it gives compensations, deep breaths, deep sleep, and the communion of the stars," she wrote.
Austin's voice still echoes among the crags, cinder cones, grabens, and
calderas, in this case at the School, whose core curriculum offers a
contemporary, bare-bones ceremonial framework that students adapt to
explore their own life stories.
 The Vision Fast syllabus involves an elegantly simple and infinitely
challenging encounter with one's self beyond the borders of one's life.
In 11- to 12-day courses, students move through three passage-rite
phases of a hero's journey.
In the first phase, fasters spend four days preparing for their
personal ceremonial processes and to let go of familiar personal
boundaries. During the central phase of their passage rite, Vision
Fasters spend four days and four nights fasting alone in a personally
chosen place in the wild "country of lost borders" to the east and
south of Big Pine. In the final phase, Fasters spend three to four days
returning from their wilderness solitude and reconnecting.
The hero's journey of the Vision Fast curriculum developed by Foster
and Little offers students a transformational passage through the loss
of their old selves to make way for the new, a regenerative rebirth
born of a symbolic death.
Foster's own, very real death at age 65 in 2003 followed a long and
heroic journey through a progressive genetic lung disease. Through this
final passage, Foster and Little worked with their school's faculty and
friends to bring about an expansive rebirth of its mission and
transformation of its leadership that would survive his departure.
During his last year, Foster, working alongside Little, drew upon
their life's work with passage rites to explore borders of life and
death on the frontiers of hospice care. Since Foster's passing, Little
has collaborated with Dr. Scott Erbele, a hospice and AIDS physician
who had also trained as a Vision Fast guide, to develop new programs at
the school that provide passage rites for hospice patients, their
family members, and caregivers.
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Joseph Lazenka and Emerald North, experienced Vision Fast guides now
in their early 50s, accepted the legacy of Foster's and Little's
groundbreaking work in the wilderness and became the school's
codirectors in 2003.
In midwinter they agreed to a Mammoth Monthly interview with Swall Meadows author Mark Schlenz.
MARK SCHLENZ: How would you describe the campus of the School of Lost Borders?
EMERALD NORTH: The school's Lost Borders Press is located in Big Pine
where Joseph and I also live, but the School of Lost Borders itself -
as the name suggests - doesn't really have any fixed location. I guess
you could say that it lies within the hearts of the people who come
seeking the heart of this land and find their center in its
expansiveness. The courses themselves, though, are conducted from
carefully selected base camps in our mountains and deserts.
JOSEPH LAZENKA: Since we work with people who have widely differing
outdoor experience and physical abilities - we have students of all
ages from all walks of life - we think a lot about accessibility. We
look for remote sites available to people with various personal needs.
Base camp can't be too difficult to access for students, staff, and
supplies, and it needs a generally open area for the whole group of a
dozen people to meet. It should also offer lots of walks - some short
and some longer for the more adventurous - to places isolated from one
another by ridges, hills, or declivities for individual solitude. And
there's lots of sites like that out in the Inyos and around Death
Valley. There's backcountry roads, but you don't see anyone out there
and the country's rugged enough to create lots of privacy.
EM: When we find a good place, we walk it and imagine fasting there
ourselves. We see if it feels welcoming. Sites we've used for years now
feel like they've actually absorbed additional power from all the
people who've fasted there. To keep these places special, we don't use
the same site twice in a year; we often let a year or more pass before
going back.
MM: How do students select their personal places?
EM: When we first arrive at base camp, students have 20 minutes to
wander the general vicinity and do a "body-check" on different places
in the area to see how they'd feel about hanging out there for the next
four days. Then everyone meets back to the base circle and points in
the directions of the spots that call to them. They have the rest of
the day to get situated and to build a stone pile where they'll leave a
sign that they're OK for their buddy each day of the Threshold Phase.
 JL: Most folks find a good spot right away - somewhere with a tree,
an overhang, or piled rocks where they can rig a shade tarp - and start
moving water jugs and getting themselves settled. Every so often
though, someone is called by a distant horizon and just starts walking
- the pull of the land can be so strong. Then our guides do need to be
on their toes.
MM: Speaking of safety issues, how have you avoided serious
accidents or injuries with all the thousands of students you've
introduced to wilderness experiences?
JL: We provide information and training about how to keep a secure
camp and about how to avoid hazardous situations before we send them
out, but the most important factor of our safety record is the pledge
each Vision Faster takes before they go to their personal places. It's
the last thing we do together in base camp. In our closing circle each
person repeats a Safety Pledge that says, "I promise not do anything
that would put myself or the group in any unnecessary risk."
MM: I think it's important your pledge recognizes responsibilities
that even solitary wilderness adventurers have to others. We see more
and more backcountry cell-phone rescues these days from folks seeking
extreme experiences who end up exposing search and rescue volunteers to
extreme hazards.
EM: Yes, those are real responsibilities every wilderness traveler
carries with them when they walk away from civilization, but we believe
those seeking visionary experiences in the wilderness have an
additional obligation: They have the obligation to return, to come back
to their families and communities and to incorporate their personal
visions into lives that also serve others. It's a matter of intention,
really. I mean, what good is a vision if you don't share it, if you
just keep it in your head or die alone with it in the desert? The crux
of our work is to help people find their personal power in ways that
bring real meaning to their lives through service. And that means our
Vision Fasters want to complete the hero's journey. They want to come
back safely.
JL: Another thing that helps is that we don't romanticize the Vision
Fast experience much either. Both Emerald and I have fasted every year
since our early 30s - almost 20 years now. We stay in touch with the
real experience. If you've only done it once or a few times, it's easy
to remember just the epiphanies. It's easy to forget how much boredom
and monotony is involved, how it feels to be so empty and alone. We
fast every year to stay in touch with that, and we present realistic
expectations for our students. Climbing peaks or challenging yourself
physically in the landscape isn't always what you want to do - or
should be doing - when you're fasting. Insight doesn't come just from
ecstasy, and the extreme may not always be the most enlightening.
MM: You inherited a powerful, but fragile, legacy from your
inspirational mentors Steven and Meredith. How do you see their  vision
and the school's work staying relevant as our region and world enters
the 21st century?
JL: Well, there's the strength of the legacy itself. Steven and
Meredith inherited it themselves from inspirational forebears -
including Mary Austin. It's an ancient thing, really: seeking this kind
of connection with wildlands has always been a part of human
consciousness. It's hardwired in us.
EM: And we're seeing lots of new developments in recent years too.
When the School of Lost Borders began its work, there was no academic
field of ecopsychology. Now we work with professional wilderness guides
who want to explore inner as well as outer landscapes. There's growing
awareness of how what we do to the land we do to ourselves, of how much
suffering comes with our separation from nature and the Earth.
JL: Losing Steven really reenergized the school's work. Meredith's
collaboration with Dr. Erbele is transforming our understanding of
passage rites. Sure, we've been working with hospice patients and
caregivers to share our insights into ritual and ceremony with them,
but we've learned even more from those who must face death - not just
metaphorically or ritually - but directly and actually. No matter how
much humans may think they can ever separate themselves from the land
with new technologies or whatever, death always shows us that any
border between human nature and nature itself is only an illusion - an
illusion we may be better off losing in order to survive.
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