Across the Threshold:
Wilderness Quest |
April 2025

Overview

❂ 8-day wilderness retreat in Death Valley, California

❂ 3-day / 3-night solo fast

❂ Pre-retreat preparation workshop

❂ Post-retreat incorporation workshop

Saturday, April 19th, 4pm -
Sunday, April 27th, 12pm

Serving:

❂ Change-Makers

❂ Impact Founders & Investors

❂ Coaches & Consultants

❂ Purpose-Driven Organizations

APPLY

Across the Threshold

Modern culture does not actively designate time and space to acknowledge distinct life changes. We start a business, close a major chapter of our career, exit a relationship, become a parent, or loose a loved one without any apparent slowing down of the steady march of work and paying the bills.

Yet, these changes require acknowledgement. In these life changes we are shape-shifting into someone new; a new version of our self. The old self that existed in that job or in that relationship or in that prior time of our life has to be celebrated, released, and laid to rest in order for the next chapter of our life to be fully born. Otherwise, we run the risk of living partly in the past and partly here, never quite fully available for life as it presents itself now.

A vision fast or wilderness rite in a remote natural location, held by experienced guides, and in a circle of community is a traditional means of marking these changes and connecting to how our core sense of purpose wants to next be expressed.

Join Spencer Honeyman and guest guide Dashielle Vawter for this upcoming, in-person 8-day retreat involving a 3-day solo fast embedded in Death Valley, California.

The process will involve the three-fold stages of severance, threshold, and incorporation. There will be a facilitated pre-retreat and post-retreat call with the guides to prepare and integrate.

(This offering falls within the "Earth" dimension of Enliven's Elemental framework.)

Elemental Practices

a black and white spiral

Guides

Spencer Honeyman

Guide

Spencer is the founder of Enliven Academy and Climate Wisdom Fellowship, a leadership coach, a graduate of Pomona College’s interdisciplinary Environmental Analysis program, and a Certified Integral Facilitator.

Full Bio

Spencer was trained by several master teachers with an emphasis on somatic, experiential transformation, including, among others, Thomas Hubl & Diane Musho Hamilton Roshi. He has over 20 years of practice in Hatha yoga (Shadow Yoga/Scott Blossom) and 15 years in Buddhist meditation (Mahamudra with Daniel P. Brown & Dustin DiPerna) and adult developmental theories.

Outside of work, Spencer can be found making music with friends, hiking the California wildlands with his family, or building something with his hands in the studio.

Dashielle Vawter

Guest Guide

Dashielle is a coach, singer/songwriter, minister, wilderness quest and mountain guide. She supports Enliven as a guide for wilderness-based retreats and offerings.

Full Bio

Dashielle grew up running around in the woods of the California Sierra Nevada, the deserts of Anza Borrego, and on the beaches/in the oceans of San Diego. Her parents, brother, sister-in-law, nephew, aunt and cousin still live there. She is as much constituted in relationship to these places and people as by her professional and educational pursuits.

Dashielle holds a Bachelors in Peace and Conflict Studies from the University of California, Berkeley and is currently pursuing a masters in Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Innsbruck in Austria. She has also studied organizational culture at Saybrook University and trained as a facilitator with Community at Work. She is passionate about and continues to study organizational systems and personal and cultural change processes.

She has also trained as an outdoor educator with the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS) and a Wilderness EMT with NOLS Wilderness Medicine Institute.

She has worked with hundreds of adults and youth on over 150 backcountry trips. She is particularly passionate about culturally appropriate rites of passage in wilderness contexts and has been honored to be a part of dozens such initiations for both adults and high school students over the last 12+ years.

Dashielle trained for two years with the Center for Sacred Studies as a ceremonialist and believes that ceremony can be a powerful technology for cultural change and seeding new forms of relationality with each other and the more than human world. She loves to officiate weddings for friends and colleagues.

Investment

$3,000 - $6,000

Sliding Scale

(One single payment or split payments)