Vision Quest I: The 72 hour fast & solo camping trip that changed my life

🏕️ My experience of the ancient rite of passage 🌀🌲

As I scanned my calendar for the summer ahead, I was jolted by the sudden realization that I might have made commitments for every single weekend from May - August. My apprehensive eyes found a future full of festivals, family reunions, friends visiting, and leadership retreats. My inner introvert reacted with a single syllable: “oy…”.

To be sure, I love being together with family & friends. Quality time is my love language.

That said, I cherish my solitude, maybe moreso than most. A hearty dose of time alone helps me feel grounded and confident. When I go too long without granting myself the time and space I need to stay connected, I end up feeling stressed and drained. Finding and maintaining that balance has been a journey, a work in progress; I suppose it's one of the quintessential lessons for me to learn and relearn throughout this life.

Eyes back on my calendar, I found that there was actually ONE weekend still free in my Summer 2023. It happened to be the weekend closest to the summer solstice, complemented by a new moon as the darkness cherry on top. 🌘🌑🌒

My inner introvert batted his eyelashes at me expectantly with the energy of “so where are you taking me?”.

I closed my eyes, drew in a slow breath, and the answer unveiled itself like the billions of buds opening in the Cali wildflower superbloom:

“June 16-18 is my time to go on a Vision Quest!”

What's a Vision Quest?

It's a rite of passage practiced by some Native American cultures to support the transition or transformation of a young person into adulthood. It involves being alone in nature for several days while fasting. Intentionality, prayer, dreams, and guidance from Elders and family are key elements in the preparation and integration of the experience.

How'd it come into my field of awareness?

My first exposure to the concept of the Vision Quest was when Michael J. Meade, regarded as one of the world's foremost experts on mythology, described it on Aubrey Marcus’ podcast:

“Traditional cultures would have some kind of rite of passage. In a healthy culture it would be for girls and for boys and it would happen somewhere in what we'd call teenage years.

It was a process that would take each young person away from their family, out of the community circumstances, away from everybody that they know, and put them in ritual circumstances which could be challenging or even ordeals.

A famous one which is easy to access is the Vision Quest where you go into nature - all of the old rites were in nature. They weren't in a community, they were in nature.

The understanding was that each child was being moved from the lap of their mother to the lap of mother nature.

It was like a rebirth into a world that was on one hand natural, on the other hand deeply psychological because each person would hand their own vision, experience, and realization that they were a unique being on this earth… not because of a textbook; they'd know it from their own body and their own embodied experience.

Since everybody's wounded, no family can take care of a child perfectly. That's why everybody leaves home. If you don't leave home you could remain a child your whole life.

And so they'd make sure that everybody would leave home and have this revelatory experience: the revealing of ‘who I am’ from inside myself.

Then some there'd be some kind of a wound involved which would be a symbolic representation of the fact that everybody is already wounded. And there would be healing that happened, so that what we'd call adults would be people who had an awakened experience of themselves and had experienced healing.”

(Aubrey Marcus podcast link: THE TRUTH OF A MYTH W/ MICHAEL MEADE | AMP #361, this segment starts around 44:55)

When I listened to that episode, a seed was planted with the idea to go on a Vision Quest.

The next ping from the universe came in the form of a friend's story.

In April, my buddy Yoyo visited me in San Diego from Germany and happened to share the story of his friend Simon’s Vision Quest experience. Here's Yoyo’s recap in a voice message:

In summary, when Simon was 22 he found himself struggling with the transition to adulthood & the idea of what it meant to be a man. His grandfather told him about the Native American and Mayan tradition of the Vision Quest, which was intended to support young people in that transition.

Simon went to a spot in the Alps near Traunstein, Germany. It was a forested valley with a huge lake where Simon went swimming. He camped close enough to civilization in case of emergency, but secluded enough to spend the time alone (and naked). He considers the experience one of the most important in his life.

When Yoyo shared Simon's story with me, the seed that Michael Meade had planted was watered and a sprout emerged. At that point, I decided to definitely do a Vision Quest when a good time for it came up.

The summer solstice weekend, my only free time in a summer otherwise dedicated to work and group events, seemed perfect. I figured it would be beautiful for me to do some serious inner work so that i could show up happy, healthy, present, and maybe a little lighter for my friends and family.

Ok, so how'd it go?

Ah, yes, i did it. 72 solitary hours of fasting, most of it in silence in San Bernardino National Forest. It was a powerful experience: I found confidence, clarity, and connection within myself to levels I hadn't felt before.

🌟 It changed the trajectory of my life.

What I love about my first Vision Quest is that it was both incredibly meaningful for me and also laughably simple to do.

I didn't even take a day off work; I started fasting on Friday and drove to the forest after work. I also came back Sunday for my breathwork community's Sunday morning session. So in that sense it could even be considered a Vision Quest Lite, since i fit it into my normal schedule and wasn't immersed in silence & nature for the entirety of the 3 days.

Here's all it took from a “doing” perspective:

Beforehand:

1. Spoke with an Elder for guidance, my coach Jeff, who encouraged me to set clear intentions and pose questions I'd like to answer

2. Found a spot to camp. I asked around and a few friends pointed me towards Big Bear. Online, I found a “yellow post” area that required no reservations¹

3. Set my intentions & posed open-ended questions (they're listed below)

4. Packed (5 gallons of water, warm clothes, tent, sleeping pad & bag, hammock, knife, journal, trail mix in case of emergency/moral support)

Day 1, Friday:

1. Started fasting

2. Worked a full day

3. Drove to the forest

4. Put my phone on airplane mode and locked it in the glove box

5. Pitched the tent

6. Slept

Day 2, Saturday:

1. Spent the day in nature: walking, sitting, meditating, breathing, observing, sensing, napping in the hammock, napping in the tent, and lots of writing in the journal. Cliche but true: i was “just being”

2. Slept

Day 3, Sunday:

1. Just being in nature

2. Drove back to San Diego for community breathwork

3. Continued the fast & silence at the nearest park, Kate Sessions

4. At the 72 hour mark, broke my fast with green juice

Here's what I DIDN'T do:

1. Use my phone (except for taking this one pic👇🏽)

2. Eat

3. Read

4. Speak

🌲 Pine silhouettes at dusk on the summer solstice before the deep darkness of the new moon 🌑

📍 Forest Ranger trail 2N08 off Knickerbocker Road, Big Bear, California

Of course, these actions & non-actions don't tell the full story. The intentions i had set for myself and the questions i posed won't either, but they'll add some flavor to the mix:

Intentions

1. I intend to be curious about the physical experience and present to my body; to put safety first!

2. I intend to be open to hearing any messages that arise from my subconscious.

3. I intend to generate clarity + confidence.

Questions

1. How does it feel to eat nothing and drink only water for 72 hours?

2. What do I need to know?

3. Where am I silencing myself, selling myself short, or holding myself back?

These intentions & questions shaped the experience beautifully! Here are some of the answers that arose:

Answers

1. It was surprisingly easy to complete the fast. I felt physical hunger a few times but it wasn't intense and subsided before long. Hence, I gained the knowledge that i can easily go 3 days without food which continues to serve me as a source of confidence and tranquility when it comes to the prospect of missing meals or eating at irregular times.

2. The core message I heard that I “needed to know” was one of self-realization: “everything I need is within me. I am complete; I am enough.” The message arose from intuition, which i consider loosely synonymous with these terms: my gut, the universe, God, collective consciousness, Self, Spirit, unity, infinity, and my inner voice. I also filled page after page in my journal with clear, life-affirming insights such as:

   • I know I'll be leaving UiPath (my employer at the time) this year

   • I know I can trust the world's abundance

   • Community is important & healthy for me: the more i show up and connect with loving community, the more content and loved i feel

   • I know I'm blessed with a healthy, beautiful, capable body

   • I know I'm going to move out of San Diego and start traveling this year (i wrote that I'd go to India but ended up visiting family across the USA instead)

   • This experience of listening only to nature and to myself (and taking multiple long naps) is so nurturing, healthy, healing, and important. It's like my brain has been a fully soaked & saturated sponge for months and I'm finally wringing it out!

   • Some of the major things i still needed to process were: the feelings I'd been ignoring that stemmed from the end of a relationship with someone I'd met in Costa Rica and welcomed into my home in San Diego, a conversation that I'd been avoiding about clarifying commitments and defining value with a coach, envisioning my dream job & my dream partner, thinking through some childhood trauma that was coming up in a situation with some friends, etc.

3. As for silencing myself and holding back, I knew without a doubt that there were many things I'd been refraining from sharing publicly out of fear of judgement and tough conversations I'd been avoiding out of my people-pleasing tendency. I resolved to share the posts on Instagram that I've been afraid to post because I thought people would laugh or judge or be offended:

   • Soon after the Vision Quest, I posted this highlight reel of my freshman year in San Diego which celebrated the ‘chocolate moments’ of my year (a term i got from Yoyo) along with a caption that described the lowlights, the sadness, the scary moments, the time spent in the underworld (a concept from ancient Greece also covered in the podcast with Michael Meade).

   • Shortly after that, I posted a heartfelt goodbye to my cousin Madeleine along with a fundraiser to honor her life. It was very scary and challenging for me to share that post publicly, and i credit my Vision Quest experience as teaching me that i already had all the courage i needed. I'm incredibly grateful to everyone that contributed to the fundraiser which ended up with $4,444 for the Humane Society and $2,762 for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. 🤍👼🏼

   • I committed to creating this blog! A few days after the Vision Quest, i thought of the Serial Dabbler name. I'd wanted to share my writing publicly for years and finally determined that i was definitely going to make the leap.

I wrote some flowery descriptions of the ambiance too:

I've seen a few other mammals: mountain bikers, a squirrel, and a young buck that trotted across the clearing. I like to think that none of them saw me.

My camo hammock sways in the breeze with Louie strapped to its strap. The lake view from here spans 100°, green Ponderosas towering around like Doric columns. I sit and breathe, luxuriating in a soft bed of pine needles nestled in a patch of crunchy, knee-high grasses, yellow wildflowers, and mossy stones.

The pines’ burgundy bark basks in the sun, offering wafts of woody terpenes. I lean in to the fragrant portal which melts me into rich, chocolate mocha. Ah, that sweet bar I've always cherished has surprised me with such delicate yet forlorn comfort, almost curing my sadness in the aftermath of Ireni’s departure.

The Vision Quest’s afterglow

During the weeks after my Vision Quest, I was on fire. The way i showed up in ordinary conversations with colleagues and clients at work was so charged with joy, presence, and authenticity that i fundamentally changed the paradigm of our working relationships. The same is true for my friendships and family relationships.

I was being so vulnerable and open with people that they felt safe to reciprocate, and i was constantly amazed at how much people were sharing with me: intimate personal details, secrets, regrets, dreams, fears, etc - the JUICY stuff - after i took that first step to show & tell about my life on that raw level. Literally just a few minutes of courageously vulnerable conversation was transforming my relationships and therefore my life… Amazing!!

The breakthrough i needed to finally ‘enter the arena’

For the first time in my life, I took a video of myself speaking to the camera and then shared it online. Yes, the internet is full of people doing that and it might seem like no big deal. For me, though, this was a breakthrough. This was the moment I entered the arena and allowed myself to be heard, not just partially seen.

And here's the first meal i enjoyed after 3 days off food:

An invitation for you!

Maybe you've heard of the The Marketing Rule of 7, which states that a prospective customer needs to be exposed to an advertiser's message at least 7 times before they'll take action to buy that product or service. The calculus changes when the message is coming from a personal connection instead of an advertiser - often it only takes one recommendation from a friend for us to commit to trying something new.

So, please consider this post an invitation for you to embark on a Vision Quest of your own!

I believe it can benefit almost anyone at any stage of life, especially given how overexposed so many of us are to external stimuli these days. If you're interested in endeavoring to experience a Vision Quest, I'd be thrilled to chat with you as you consider/prepare/reflect on it. You're welcome to drop me a line. 💙

May you feel peaceful and free ✌🏽

Road trip from San Marcos la Laguna to Antígua con mi mamá y hermanita 🌊🌋🇬🇹💙💜🩵

1. Full disclosure: I didn't actually look for a place to camp (or pack my gear) until Friday after work, when i was 22 hours into my fast and about to hit the road. I included these actions in the “beforehand” section because, for anyone embarking on a Vision Quest, these are great to do in advance 😁