This is an all camping Quest

We are honored to answer the call by Mystery to offer the first Beauty Mesa Queer Animas Quest — an eleven-day ceremony designed specifically for the LGBTQ+ community.  This contemporary Western embodiment of the ancient, pan-cultural vision fast is a dynamic wilderness rite of Soul Initiation. This is an invitation for you to let go of the life that no longer serves and descend to Soul in order to discover your ultimate place of belonging in the larger Earth Community. Recognizing there is real need for Wholing and Self-healing within the LGBTQ+ community, both individually and collectively, this is not a focus of this Quest. The intention, rather, is to approach the Mystery with empty and open hands. On this journey, you seek to retrieve the gifts that are yours alone to bring to the world, in genuine service to life.

This Quest provides Queer folks an inclusive, safe container that does not ask you to deny who you are but, rather, invites you to expand your experienced identity beyond what you already know about your queerness. Perhaps a deeper identity infused with and informed by canyon, rain, hawk and Ponderosa pine.

The feminine principle is rising to meet the masculine principle at this time on Earth through symbols, archetypes dreams and visions. There has been a separation and polarization of our instincts and feelings from our intellect and mind. How might being born queer embed an inherent intra-psychic conversation that could serve as a portal to an epochal shift in the contemporary psyche, where the feminine and masculine, and everything in-between and beyond, are uniting into a potential evolutionary leap of consciousness on Earth?

You are invited to this miraculous gathering on Beauty Mesa in southern Utah which is surrounded by three deep and devastatingly beautiful canyons carved over eons into abundant formations and shapes. Here you can descend courageously into the alluring and dangerous depths that illuminate your unique Soul beneath the surface of your day world life. Come to the edges of these depths with us for this powerful ceremony of the Animas Quest!

The Animas Quest catalyzes the encounter with Soul by temporarily displacing everyday consciousness through five primary means: (1) solitude for three or four days and nights while (2) fasting (i.e., drinking water only), (3) being fully exposed to and enfolded within the forms and forces of nature, (4) enacting a series of ceremonies, and (5) employing a set of practices (Soulcraft™) that support you in crossing into the mysteries of nature and psyche.

Most often, our quests take place over a total of 11 days, nine of which are spent in the wilderness. Preceding your time of solitude are five full days of preparation activities that enhance your ability to benefit from the fast. The first two and a half days of these five will be held car-camping at a retreat center outside of Cortez, Colorado. From there we will journey to our base camp into the wilds of southern Utah.

During the five preparation days, we work with dreams, poetry, deep imagery, ceremonial drumming and dance, dialogues with nature, the way of council, and other practices to help us slip out the door of our everyday lives and access our own deeper, wilder currents.

The heart of the quest consists of the solo: three days and nights without human companionship in nature, fasting, engaging in personal ceremonies, saying yes to the mysteries of soul, tending the true mythos of your life, praising and grieving, and birthing a vision. Upon your return to base camp, there are three days of reincorporation activities, preparing you to embody among your people what you received on your fast.

No previous backpacking experience is required. (In fact, many of those who have quested with us have never before been camping or backpacking).

We understand that ‘queer’ is a charged term, but in the past few decades many in the LGBTQIA+ community have reclaimed this word from its derogatory use to a neutral or even proud self-identifier.  Queer is an inclusive umbrella term for sexual and gender minorities who are not hetrosexual and/or cisgender.

Participants are responsible for their personal camping gear, 3-7 personal lunches, and personal snacks.  Details will be included in the preparation materials sent out after registering.

Questers are responsible for their own transportation.