Summer 2023 I participated in a rites of passage ceremony at Wild Mountain. For myself the retreat was to facilitate my life stage transition to elder hood. We spent a week in daily ceremony, each of us honing our separate intentions we talked, cried and sang them into being. We listened with open hearts to the whispers of nature, earth, animal and ancestral. What followed that week of work was a solo four day vision fast into the mountains. With only water, a tarp, a sleeping bag a few personal items and totems I walked as spirit on the land, listening, and watching the world around and within me with new eyes. On the third day I prepared for what is called the death lodge. Of the many ceremonies I prepared for this one I feared the most. I knew I’d be weak and hungry and who knows what else I would find out there on the land. On that evening I was to prepare for my symbolic death. And for as much work as I’ve done in the service of death, and ceremony and ego loss. After divorce and bankruptcy and loss and therapy, and sweat lodges and health scares I was terrified. Truly. Would I really able to face whatever demons came up? Review my life and actually let go of the habits that may have once helped keep me safe but are now killing me? What if I opened something in the spiritual realm that I couldn’t handle? I was alone out there in the dark. And yes, that was the point. To face my self, my past, weak, vulnerable and alone with only myself to answer and to and walk through the threshold. Because in the end, that’s the walk we all take.
That evening I walked to the spot I had chosen for ceremony days before. I climbed the ridge to the base of the elder tree. An ancient jack pine whose broad trunk was scarred from time and fire. It’s desiccated top and limbs home now to burrowed birds and insects.
I heard the rumble of thunder from the east, felt the wind pick up, smell the change in the air. A big storm was coming. Up there you could see for miles and lightning lit up the clouds for miles. I placed fallen pine limbs on the ground in a sketch of a coffin. Placed items from my pack around the outside. Objects representing family, friends here and gone, ancestors (mine and the Ute peoples whose land I stood). I called to them all to witness my death. To offer guidance. I cried out the of parts of myself that were ready to die. Some parts carried on from childhood trauma. Some protective some not but they no longer served me. I gave thanks to those that were there to witness and to those who accompanied me on my life journey. And I begged forgiveness to those I had hurt or wronged. I was emptied. Ready.
Then I stepped naked and laid on the stones in the makeshift coffin.
I won’t get into here what came in those moments. That’s another story I think. But the storm was here now. I broke apart my altar, packed my totems and walked back in the windy dark to my site. A little spatially disoriented but keenly aware that I was not the same person that walked to that sacred site an hour before. The storm hit hard. Whipping rain sideways under my tarp. Lightning hitting closer than I’ve ever experienced. The storm I slept through had closed down the Denver airport.
This part of the ceremony was a symbolic journey to the underworld. Like many described in stories and myths throughout time. These rituals open us to the cyclical nature of life death. They help us facilitate a way to enter, and navigate these processes in ways that modern society and its systems simply are not built for. These rituals and ceremonies as well as time spent in nature are deeply important aspects of death work, of teaching, of art, and of relationships. They connect us in community, to ancestral knowledge and to our place in the wheel of life. They have been with us for generations and with time and practice we can return to them.