School of Lost Borders

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School of Lost Borders

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The School of Lost Borders is committed to creating opportunities for people from all walks of life to express their individual natures within old and modern ceremonial practices.

06/23/2026

The blossoms are exploding. And everyday the arrival of full potential. Where am I, I ask, in all of this abashed boldness?
Have I not earned the divine right to show up in my radiance? Was I not born with the blooms of my gifts?

Or do I stand in fear of my worthiness? And have I turned my back on my genius?
I have seen the joy of abundance dripping from the fruits as they show themselves in their ripeness.I have smelled the intoxicating fragrance of the sweet peas and honeysuckles that have overtaken my senses so shamelessly.

My eyes behold the unconscious competition of natures struggle. A fight for the sun’s brilliance to radiate its energy onto the greedy verdant reaching arms of the earth’s arrogant over growth.

This is summers greatness. Am I truly afraid of my own greatness.? I think not. I choose to partake in summers good and plenty, and I will fill up on milk and
honey, and revel in the bounty that the great mother gives to us so freely. As is my right, your right, our right.

Complacency, fear and safety does not serve anyone. Madness moves me towards bewilderment. I am meant to be wild, to explode, to blossom , and
to drip with the juiciness of aliveness.

Somewhere it has been said: “ who are we not to be brilliant”? Nature reflects us boldly in the summer time. It mirrors our wholeness. The wild places dare us to show up in our brilliance. May it be so ... as we step into the summer seasons untamed
abundance and raise up our cups and toast our aliveness.

Happy Solstice to you all
-Silvia Talavera, Guide and Elder
https://schooloflostborders.org/guide/silvia-talavera/

06/22/2026

Happy solstice. we are sending you wild beauty and sweet wonder.

"i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday;this is the birth
day of life and love and wings:and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any-lifted from the no
of all nothing-human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)"

ee cummings

06/15/2026

“And you should not let yourself be confused in your
solitude by the fact that there is something in you that
wants to break out of it.
This very wish will help you, if you use it quietly and
deliberately, like a tool, to spread out your solitude over
wide country.”

– Rainer Maria Rilke

06/11/2026

One last spot left on our Two Week Training for Women- August 7th - 22nd, 2026 in the Inyo Mountains, Big Pine, California

Restoring a nurturing relationship to the wholeness of our nature (body, psyche, mind and spirit) is as essential for ourselves as it is for life on Earth and women’s access to these types of ceremonies is essential.

This training is an experimental immersion ceremony model that is designed to inspire, strengthen, and create rites of passage containers and ceremonies for women in the modern day. This program is offering an experimental immersion in a women’s vision fast ceremony, while also transmitting the bare bones practices and skills involved in guiding modern rite of passage ceremonies, such as:

The Practice of Council and “safe” containers
The Four Shields of Human Nature
Working with Intention in ROP ceremonies
Self-Generated ceremony
Threshold crossings and skills of threshold holding
Beholding (mirroring) Threshold Stories
Incorporations and applications to life and work
As we explore these topics we will consistently center women rites and ceremonies A few select themes we will intersect with are listed below. Others will arise in the process

This training offers the Two Week Training Curriculum offers in a gender expansive/inclusive women cohert and with a special focus on women’s rites of passage.

During the two weeks, personal time on the land will weave with time in council. Teachings of ROP guiding skills will alternate with practices that can be applied in a variety of settings, professions or in private practice.

As part of the training, we will co-create ceremonies for the four days set aside for your own threshold (liminal time) experience. Beyond the classic modern ROP taboos of no food, no shelter, no company, we will hold a flexible container for a wider span of body needs and intuitive knowing of what shape the ceremony needs to take for each individual. Is fasting right for me? Are four days alone what I need? What role does community, so vital for women’s health, play in our inquiry into old and new forms of female initiation?

On the backend, we will witness and integrate the individual threshold experiences as well as work with the emergent wisdom and greater collective story that returns from the land to incorporate in the body of our lives.

This offering is both a training as well as a personal ceremony at a time where unearthing, empowering and uplifting the feminine within us and around us feels as necessary for ourselves as well as for life on Earth.

Guides: Petra Lentz-Snow and Kim Belair

Full info can be found at:
https://schooloflostborders.org/programs_courses/two-week-training-for-women/

06/09/2026

"I sometimes forget
that I was created for Joy

My mind is too busy
My heart, too heavy

For me to remember
That I have been called to dance
The sacred dance of life

I was created to smile
To love
To be lifted up
And to lift others up

O’ Sacred One
Untangle my feet
From all that ensnares

Free my soul
That we might
Dance

And that our dancing
Might be contagious..."

~Hafiz

06/08/2026

The need to share and listen to stories lived deep in our bones. And yet, in today’s fast-paced world, many of us have forgotten how to truly speak from the heart—or how to listen in a way that honors what is being shared. But storytelling is more than art—it’s survival. It’s how we make meaning, connect with one another, and find our place in the larger web of life.

Without expression, our lives can feel voiceless. Without deep listening, we miss the truth and wholeness of another’s experience—their body, heart, mind, and spirit. The best stories reveal our shared humanity—our essential nature as beings who are physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual. And one of the most powerful ways to access those stories is by returning to nature, raw and unfiltered.

We invite you into a ceremonial space where storytelling and deep listening become tools for transformation. As we “myth” ourselves into being, we also express ourselves into becoming. Through story, we remember who we are—and we discover the courage, clarity, and resilience to grow beyond who we’ve been.

For those of us who hold space for others—whether as guides, therapists, leaders, or community members—learning how to truly hear and reflect the stories shared with us is a vital skill. It’s how we help others (and ourselves) live lives that are deeper, richer, and more aligned with the needs of our communities and the earth.

You are so warmly welcomed to join us for:

CA MIRRORING THE FOUR SHIELDS OF HUMAN NATURE: THE ART OF STORYTELLING AND LISTENING

As with all ceremonies at the School of Lost Borders, this experience invites you to cross your edges—to step beyond the familiar and into a place where transformation becomes possible.

Sep 21st, 2026 - Sep 26th, 2026 in Big Pine, CA with Kim Belair, Gretchen (Grae) Gerlach

Full info at:
https://schooloflostborders.org/programs_courses/ca-mirroring-the-four-shields-of-human-nature-the-art-of-storytelling-and-listening-2026/

06/05/2026

"home isn’t the place
out there
a harbor of safety
in a raw and broken world

home is the place
in here
where hearth fires
are kindled by
wild inclusion
for every outlawed
part of self
every failure, every wound
and all the unclaimed genius
are knocking at the door
let them in

there is no homecoming
like a heart and a body
who have decided to be whole"

~ Angi Sullins

06/03/2026

“Nobody is free until everybody is free.” – Fannie Lou Hamer

Join us for a week on the land this September to come together within the mess and the muck, the prayer and possibility. This Composting Whiteness & Cultivating Solidarity program pulls at the thread of one of the foundational pieces of the School of Lost Borders - the Big Lie. A lie that tells us we are separate from the earth and one another. The destruction this lie continues to have is all around us, and within. As initiated adults in today’s world, what is our responsibility to tend to this harm? And what is ours to do as white folks to reckon with the reverberations of racism, the legacies of oppression and the severing of our ancestral and cultural roots?

This is an invitation towards deeper initiation and accountability. During this program we will listen to the land, get out of our own way, open the questions we carry to mystery, and be led by something larger. We come not as experts or teachers, but as co-conspirators who invite the big questions in the spirit of unlearning, creativity, and radical possibility. We come to compost what must be released and co-create a more liberated, joyful and thriving future for all.

COMPOSTING WHITENESS & CULTIVATING SOLIDARITY
Sep 8th, 2026 - Sep 15th, 2026 in Payahuunaduu (AKA Owens Valley, CA) ~ Near town of Big Pine with Kelly McClelland and Will Scott

You are so warmly welcomed. Full info here: https://schooloflostborders.org/programs_courses/composting-whiteness-and-cultivatin-solidarity-2026/

06/02/2026

"Days pass when I forget the mystery.
Problems insoluble and problems offering
their own ignored solutions
jostle for my attention, they crowd its antechamber
along with a host of diversions, my courtiers, wearing
their colored clothes; cap and bells.
And then
once more the quiet mystery
is present to me, the throng's clamor
recedes: the mystery
that there is anything, anything at all,
let alone cosmos, joy, memory, everything,
rather than void...."

from Primary Wonder by Denise Levertov

05/28/2026

JOIN A COMMUNITY OF Q***R MEN IN CEREMONY WITH THE EARTH

If you are ready and feeling the call to step into the fullness of who you are as a Q***r Man, then please join us for a deep ceremony of personal work and collective healing and liberation. The Q***r Men's Summer Fast in Colorado is the first ever of its kind and will provide a space for q***r men to discover their full soulful and spiritual belonging with community, one another and the Earth.

Your q***r existence is a precious gift and deeply needed in these times. We warmly invite you and we humbly call you to join us.

This will be the first time a group of all q***r men will be joining together on the land for a full two week rite of passage program. Join us in a supportive circle, surrounded by the tallest peaks of Colorado and sleeping beneath a sky full of stars. This ceremonial rite of passage is created specifically for anyone identifying as a Q***r Man, if you have questions about your belonging in this group, please reach out!

Want to Learn More? Come meet the guides and ask your questions.
We’re hosting a virtual Info Session on Monday, June 8th, 5:15 PT/6:15pm MT.
Registration link:
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/kvLVhV_KS12r25LP5ROMEw

Full booking info at https://schooloflostborders.org/programs_courses/ca-mens-rite-of-passage-2026/

Aug 2nd, 2026 - Aug 16th, 2026 at Wild Mountain, Colorado with Sam Balka and ***r ***rpride Pedro McMillan

We can't wait to welcome you out on the land in August!

Address

Big Pine, CA
93513

Telephone

+17609383333

Website

http://www.schooloflostborders.org/fundraiser

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