Joan Arnold is a Brooklyn freelance writer, a teacher of the Alexander Technique, and a contributing editor for New Woman magazine. Undertaking a vision quest that left "no corners between me and the natural world," she needed only a few days in the wilderness to learn that Wyoming is a lot farther from New York than miles alone can measure.

       THE BOOK I read to prepare for my three-day solo in the desert was dedicated to all those who had led many vision quests "without a single serious injury or death." Great, I thought, but what about a moderate injury? I had signed a release form acknowledging the danger present in spending time alone in the wilderness. But, without completely understanding why, I had planned my summer around it.

       A vision quest is a Native American rite of passage, traditionally for boys moving into manhood. Indian maidens, with childbirth to look forward to, didn't need to make a special trip to confront their fears. The hardball version entails going into the woods with nothing but a blanket, crying out to The Great Spirit for a vision. But we had tents, sleeping bags, matches. And water. Three gallons for three days.

        Fasting in the desert might seem a radical way to take off a few pounds, but that aspect was least threatening. After quizzing outdoorsy friends about rattlesnake behavior, I was reassured, but had no idea how I'd feel when the limitless sky spread over me at nightfall. I didn't even know how to pitch a tent. Why was I leaving my cozy apartment and fitted sheets to sleep out in the cold on a Thermarest? Because, about to turn 45, I wanted to face my demons, whatever they were. I wanted to empty out the old self to make room for the new.

       Vision quests are proliferating -- for teenagers getting off drugs, kids starting college, for the middle-aged in crisis or hyped-up city folks far from natural rhythms. Our modern fascination with primal cultures collides with the images I got in high school: silly primitives who cringed at the sound of a radio and imagined spirits in trees and animals. Now, with communication reduced to faceless e-mail, we're lining up to look over their shoulders, to see what they saw, feel the wonder they felt.

        Some Native Americans aren't thrilled by the sight of middle-aged New Agers thumping on recently-purchased ceremonial drums. They'd prefer to keep their sacred, ancient ceremonies to themselves, and wonder why spiritually restless folks like me don't seek fulfillment in their own Judeo-Christian roots. Organizers of the Antelope Retreat Center, who ran this quest, were trained by Izzy Heart Man, a Lakota Sioux who was publicly criticized by Indian militants for teaching white folks their traditional ways. But quest leader John Boyer makes no claim to represent the traditions he has learned. Like his teacher, he feels that such respectful collaborations benefit both sides, and are gaining tribal acceptance.

        We had a few days to bond and prepare at the Center's old ranch house in Savery, Wyoming. Anticipating the ascetic days ahead, we relished its squishy twin beds and flush toilets. The seven of us, three men and four women, were a broad mix -- noisy to quiet, experienced campers to novices. Eighteen-year-old Hillary from Ohio signed up only days before. Distressed by her dependence on "guys," she wanted be on her own. Gentle, enerous Blaise, 37, had always devoted himself to family. He'd just sold his business in Steamboat Springs, Colorado and wanted to take some time for himself. Dick was 50, moving from dentistry to psychology. Joanne, New York video producer, dazed from her frantic schedule, felt her success had nudged out her creativity. We hung on John's every slowly delivered word; he felt his life was too sparse. Seven years ago, Rosemary had been raped in her New Haven apartment. That summer, she had survived the case's second trial, and wanted to close a long, difficult chapter.

        We got to know each other over vegetarian food prepared from the organic garden. The leaders, John Boyer and Tom Barnes, had a well-meaning warmth that drew us together. We erected tents and started fires. We sat in the front yard in the early morning sun and did exercises to expand our peripheral vision. We closed our eyes and, with a hand on the shoulder in front of us, walked barefoot through a field. We sat in a circle and each voiced our concerns, fears, hopes. As we filed into a sweat lodge -- a dome of white canvas draped over curved branches -- we dedicated our quest to the greater nation of which we're a part, saying, "All my elations." My modern mind strained to picture who My People were, to see the world as a single fabric of land, creatures and relatives. All I came up with was my warmhearted, unofficial tribe of friends.

        We left after breakfast to drive to southeastern Wyoming's Red Desert. The landscape went from forested mountains to stark, dry flats. As we turned from the highway onto the desert dirt road, Tom pointed out wildlife to our slow, urban eyes. Eagles flew, antelope galloped, a distant herd of wild horses curved over the naked, low hills, a prairie dog poked its head out of a hole. For the duration of the two-hour drive, Rosemary and I sat in the back seat and talked.

        She told me how, at 3:30 a.m. in March, 1986, a young man walked up the fire escape to her fourth floor apartment and sliced open her window. She woke up to a hand over her face and the words, "If you do what I say, I won't hurt you."

        After struggling to realize she wasn't dreaming, she says, "it was just like they say -- your whole life flashes before you. I thought of my job, my family; my mind was all over the place. But suddenly I heard this clear voice inside say, 'Rosemary, don't worry about that. Worry about the next hour of your life.' I went through this whole situation and never got hysterical, and it wasn't just that I was in shock. That voice was not me. People talk about spirit guides, and I believe them." The man raped her four times, took her money, and tied her face down on the bed. The whole episode took about twenty minutes.

        She never again slept in that apartment. The rapist was caught, tried and imprisoned. But one year ago, she received an official letter informing her that his case had been overturned on a technicality. She again faced her attacker at a retrial, seven years after the crime. On July 9th, 1993, the judge sentenced him to 110 years.

        Our trucks tilted crazily over the barren land, stopping at a base camp where John and Tom would stay, should anyone freak out, get hurt or end the solo early. Though no one would be more than a half hour's walk away, the dramatic cliffs and overhangs would give us privacy and, hopefully, shelter from wind and rain. To pick our sites, we headed in the direction that drew us. Rosemary and I went east.

        The first site I found had sheltering rocks to the west and looked out over a beautifully layered canyon, but was uncomfortably near a fully operational red ant hill. I settled on an open area with a flat place for my tent and a friendly juniper tree whose red-berried branches could shade me during the long sunny days. It looked like home.

        We were to choose a buddy for whom to leave a sign each day that we were alive and well. Rosemary and I joined forces and looked for a message point. She seemed miniature against the gigantic, primeval landscape, and I yelled, "How about that big rock there?" idiotically pointing to the south where there were, in fact, a few thousand miles of big rock. Laughing, we came together and drew a circle in the sand. To maintain solitude, one would go there in the morning, the other in the afternoon. Then I made the 20-minute walk back to base camp for my plastic gallons of water and a shovel to dig a latrine in the hard, uncooperative ground.

        As the light faded, we returned from our chosen sites and stoked up on a last, memorable meal of peanut vegetable soup and homemade bread. Tom asked us to choose a stick representing something we wanted to let go of. I named my excessive solitude, Rosemary her old relationship to food. We each threw our sage branches into the fire and watched them burn. We were entering a threshold world. There was to be no more conversation until we reunited in three days. We spread our sleeping bags to spend our first night out as a group, under the crystalline sky.

        Against the deep blue backdrop of morning's first light, Tom was silhouetted as he walked, beating a drum to awaken us. Bleary and sober, we got up, silently shouldered our packs and walked out, alone. I spent my first day grateful for good weather, setting up my household without walls--pitching the tent, digging a fire pit, gathering wood. With my watch back at camp and nothing to read or eat, the day expanded before me. I got homesick. I got bored. I missed my friends. The taste of a banana or Peking Duck would suddenly appear in my mouth. I couldn't wait till it was over. I gazed out endlessly at the rock formations, and took long naps. I watched a red ant struggle up a hill with its burden. I got so weak from hunger I could barely stand.

        The next day, it rained and the wind blew without stopping. I felt eroded like one of the rocks, and spent the day cowering in my tent, drawing and writing in my journal. On the third day, my energy returned and I took a long walk over the plains to the north, hoping for a glimpse of wild horses. As my body and mind emptied, I felt slightly stoned, at some physical, existential edge. Luxuriating in my expanded sense of time, I studied the lichen-covered rocks and watched the movement of the sun and clouds. For the first time in my life, I knew what direction the wind was coming from.

        Following recipes for rituals from the Book of the Vision Quest, I spent my first day as if it were my last. I drew pictures in the sand, each representing a friend, relative or lover to whom I wanted to say goodbye. I constructed a pathway of stones leading to an archway of branches. At dusk, on the occasion of my ritual death, I chanted some melody in a minor key that appeared in my head, took off all my clothes and crawled through the arch, out of my old self like a snake out of its skin. There -- naked at dusk, in that infinite landscape -- I crouched, sobbing for the old life that had made me who I am, the one I was leaving behind. Then I dressed and stoked my fire until the sun dropped behind the jagged horizon. There were no bugs, no snakes, no dinosaurs. I pulled my sleeping bag out of the tent and slept, peacefully, outside.

        The conclusion of a quest is an all-night vigil, kept in a circle of stones, each representing a person or quality meaningful to you. Though you ask for a vision, not everyone, we'd been warned, gets one. That night, I touched each stone and affirmed new directions for my life's next phase. As the sun went down and the night chill settled, I shivered with real fear for the first time. It was then that I felt a terrible, benificent presence, the limitless texture of the universe. I watched my fire until, in the deep of night, I ran out of twisted scraps of sage. I dragged my sleeping bag into my circle and crawled in fully dressed. Wearing a wool hat, I covered myself with a blanket and watched the stars until sleep pulled me down.

        Unlike the rest of us, Rosemary stayed up all night. "I'd been really concerned that I wouldn't be able to start a friggin' fire and keep it going, but I did," she said. "And when I'd travelled through that whole night, the morning was so beautiful. I felt grateful to be there, knowing that I had jumped over these incredible hurdles. There would be others, but I'd probably never have to jump that high or hard again. There was no going back. It sounds like a greeting card, but it really was a new beginning."

       At first light, we met at our message point, gave each other a tight, triumphant hug, and walked together with all our gear back to base camp. Hillary's makeup and sad, confused expression were gone, replaced by a warm, sundrenched glow. Joanne had camped on a dramatic precipice and moved her tent back and forth three times, out of the wind and rain, and realized how she lived her life on the edge, without tranquillity or comfort. But now, under her turned-around baseball cap, she was radiant. The guys looked pleasantly scruffy with their three-day stubble. The women hid their matted hair under hats. Tom said the temperature had plunged into the low 30s that night. No one came back early. We'd all made it.

        Back in New York, at autumn's first cold snap, I put on my leather jacket. In the left pocket was a reminder of my last morning in the wilderness: a squashed-flat roll of toilet paper. I laughed at what brought me back to those few days when there were no corners between me and the natural world, when time unfolded and when -- with my fear -- came a clear awareness of a greater presence. I felt more grounded, with less of my usual restless static -- still searching, but with a more open heart. As my head dropped back to look up at the buildings now surrounding me, I remembered John's parting words, "You are of the desert now." I was grateful for the chance to empty out and go deeper.

© 1997 Joan Arnold. All rights reserved.