During my teens I’d stumbled across, and become fascinated with, the idea of a Native American-inspired vision quest. Coming from a controlling and demeaning childhood, the idea of venturing into the wilds in search of a guiding vision sounded exhilarating.

Suddenly unencumbered of a job and relationships and buoyed by the idea that the something was listening and cheering me on, I scraped together another courage to move foward with the idea. Or at the very least, run it by my psychotherapist of the previous few months.

“It sounds like a good idea,” he said. As I would later discover, my therapist, like most, was burned out on patients who did little more than complain about their problems without actually taking on some of the healing for themselves. “Most people come in here to make the pain go away,” he’d later confess. “Few actually want to heal. Which is why we see them again months or years later.”

Breathing In

Fully committed, I did what any novice American would do: search for a remote location that also happened to be picturesque. If you’re like me, this comes to mind:

Don’t consider national parks for your vision quest.

When I arrived at Arches National Park, the ranger was kind enough not to laugh at me and the idea of undertaking a vision quest in one of the nation’s most popular settings. In fact, he pointed me to a nearby area that was far less trafficked and wished me well.

Less than an hour later, I parked my rental and set off on foot to find an appropriate location to settle in. My goal, arbitrarily set, was to remain in place for 100 hours. No food, no outside contact, and to the degree possible, no water.

After a 30-minute hike I located a mesa tucked between massive sandstone walls. I set up my tent and laid out my sleeping bag.

Note: I’d later learn that traditional vision quests discourage such trappings. A blanket? Sure. But that’s pretty much it. When I undertook an authentic Lakota vision quest the following year I played by the rules, and wow was it an otherworldly experience. You can read about it here.

The Circle

If by now you’re thinking, ‘this guy doesn’t know what he’s doing,’ you’d be right. I did, however, learn enough to know I’d need to build a prayer circle. (I failed, however, to understand I was never to leave it. Yet another oversight corrected during the following year’s vision quest.)

The prayer circle for my vision quest.

With the sun setting behind the canyon walls, I hurriedly collected a number of large stones with which to construct my prayer circle. I settled in just as darkness blanketed the valley.

I sat there for I don’t know how long, my mind chattering away at whatever it is that might have been listening to me. Chances are good nothing was.

As with so many other lessons, it would be years before I discovered from a legitimate teacher that prayer a state of listening. No words, no thoughts, and most definitely no requests. Just silent listening.

So as you can see, Day 1 was a flop.

Another Little Revelation

I would spend the next two days mostly wandering about my little mesa (again, a no-no), hiding from the midday sun under a nearby conifer tree (another no-no), reading from a woo-woo book I’d brought (yes, wrong again) and jotting notes in my journal (I’m a broken record at this point).

The days, if I’m to be honest, were dull. My mind was incredibly restless and not at all prepared for or attuned to what was actually required of a vision quest.

The second night was much like the first – sitting, listening to the desert wind, and little else.

By the third evening, however, I was famished, weak, and feeling forlorn. I’d traveled all the way to southern Utah from my Virginia home and was going to return to my lonely, despondent life bereft of any vision.

Dead-eyed and tired, I marched toward my prayer circle and just before reaching it came what I can only describe as a kind of intelligent energy that said, without saying the words, “Know yourself, the rest will take care of itself.”

I froze in my tracks. The experience was unmistakably, vividly real. My temporarily quieted mind kicked into high-gear, chasing after that intelligence, pleading with it to return, to offer more. Instead it found only a desert night wind and a rapidly cooling canyon.

A sense of joy filled me. Again, something was listening, was guiding me forward.

Now What?

I stuck around for the following day and night, committed to my 100-hour timeline, and hoping God or whatever would offer up a bit more detail. But something told me it was over, I’d gotten what I was supposed to get.

Flying home I repeated the message over and over again: Know yourself, the rest will take care of itself. Like most college graduates, I was familiar with the cornerstone of Socratic philosophy, the one reminding us that unexamined lives are’t worth living. Clearly, I needed to get to work knowing myself.

But as I was to learn (so much learning to be done), the words behind spiritual truths unfold over time and in rich and unexpected ways. I was operating from a surface level. Which not only wasn’t going to do much for me, it was going to leave me feeling more depressed than when I’d departed for Utah.

I didn’t know it at the time, but I was about to replace the dry, windswept landscape of Utah for the wet, humid world of the Peruvian Amazon.