This is the story of a powerful experience of solitude in nature, and some of the lessons I learned in that time and place.

André looked at me and said, “What are you taking with you?”

“Sleeping bag, underpad, tarp and ropes in case it rains, my ceremonial materials, and some water.”

“No, you’re not.”

“Huh? Not what?”

“No water.”

I gaped at him, stunned. Four days without water?!?
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This was to be my third Vision Quest: four days and nights of solitude in a wild place, looking within myself, asking the universe and the spirits of the natural world for guidance and insight about the direction of my life.

Having been taught and guided by wise and competent elders, I was confident that I would be able to explore my questions without being distracted by physical hardship. Until I met André.

I had decided to do this Quest alone, and I told a friend, Christiane, of my plan. A few days later, she called me—she had someone she wanted me to meet, a medicine man named André.

The three of us talked about the Vision Quest. I told them the date I would leave.

The day of separation came. As the sun came up, I went down to the sweatlodge and prepared the fire. While the rocks heated toward glowing red, I sat facing the fire and pondered the next few days. It felt good to be alone.

I heard a call. I looked up, surprised, to see Christiane and André coming down the hill. Christiane greeted me, then moved away. André sat beside me on the log. I began to talk about something inconsequential. He stared at me, expressionless, until I stopped, then he said, “There’s something you need to do.”

It was a perfect setup. I had not asked him to guide me on this Vision Quest. He was now letting me know, in a way that I could not refuse, that he was there to do just that.

I returned to my house and brought back a pouch of tobacco. I asked him formally, according to the protocols I had been taught, to guide me on my Quest.

He accepted the tobacco, and with it my request. Then he told me I was to go without water.

I was frightened. I had fasted for four days on previous Vision Quests, but had never gone without water. In my wilderness first aid training, one advanced instructor had said that tissue damage begins after twenty-four hours without water. I had decided that “tissue damage” was not something I cared to experience. So, of course, I would take water. Now André was telling me no.

I had a choice to make. I could refuse his guidance and go alone, or I could face one of my biggest fears, suffering and dying helplessly and pointlessly. My hours and days alone in the wilderness, my ancient survival skills training, my previous fasts—none of that prepared me for this. This was unknown territory.

I would be alone. There would be no one to ask for assistance, and it would be a long walk to get help. My only contact with the human world would be five sticks that I had laid on the ground out of sight of my Quest location. Every morning I would stand one of them upright in the ground to indicate that I was okay. Someone would come every day to check that a new stick was standing.

Somewhere within, I knew that I needed to face this fear. André waited while I came to my decision. Now, I do not doubt he was praying for me to find the highest course.

A few minutes later, we dumped out the six gallons of water I had put aside.

That decision, that act, changed the whole Quest.

After the sweatlodge ceremony, André drove me to the drop-off point. He walked with me to an old barbed-wire fence about ten minutes from my circle. My threshold. He turned away in silence, and my time of solitude began. I crossed the fence, noticing for the first time the bear hair caught in the wire, and walked to my circle on the trail made by that bear.

I spent the rest of that first day settling in: preparing a sleeping spot, rigging my tarp under a big cedar tree, completing the ring of stones that marked my circle, and getting to know the area within the circle.

Seeing the bear’s trail crossing my circle, I honored the spirit of bear and asked this one to allow me to be in its home for the next four nights. As darkness fell, I went to bed.

When I awoke next morning, I had no feeling of being on a sacred Quest: I felt no anticipation, no sense of connection, no purpose. It felt like a bad camping trip, where I had forgotten my tent, food, equipment, water, matches, and books. What I had with me was barely enough to prevent me from dying of hypothermia.

I could not find the reason why I was here. I had made a big mistake.

All I could think to do was say, as I had done nearly every morning for years, “Thanks for the day”—a small ceremony of gratitude for the gift of one more day of life. When I spoke those words, I felt no gratitude, only numbness and an undercurrent of despair. I heard the words in my head, but that was all.

Then, as I finished speaking that simple sentence, everything transformed. I felt no hunger or thirst, no fatigue, discomfort, or confusion. I saw the beauty and meaning in everything around me and in my own life. I became present to the experience of the Quest.

For the next four days I was with Spirit.

I had chosen my circle area beside a pond, making the circle big enough that one edge of it was in the water. Early on the third day, after a light rain, I went down to a small willow that stood with its feet in the pond. The tip of one of its long lance-shaped leaves curled up slightly and held a single drop of sparkling clear water. I stood for a long time with that beautiful drop of water, admiring it, loving it, immersing myself in the awareness of how vital water is to all life. I knew that I would not touch that drop, even as I imagined its brilliant coolness caressing my tongue.

Sometime during that day, I learned to draw the essence of water into my body from the pond.

There were other lessons and gifts offered to me as well. One of them was a new ceremony of healing for my sweatlodge—a gift to be brought to my people. Other experiences from that time are not to be written, only spoken, and then carefully. Some are not to be told at all.

When André appeared to bring me out on the morning of the fifth day, I had no sensation or symptoms of dehydration.

I came back renewed. I brought with me new gratitude, gifts, understandings, power, and a sense of the possibilities of my life and my path. All of this was made possible by accepting the challenge to step up, to face the unknown.

Christiane and André, migwetch—thank you.