Wild Threshold Crossing
A 48-hour solo fast
Dec 5 - 11, 2026
Is it time to make a strong gesture to yourself and to mystery that you are ready to ask some of the deepest questions of your life? Is it time to take a leap into the unknown and find out what is possible when you cast off all familiarity and enter into a conversation with wild nature and the wilds of your soul?
“I am clearing a space
here, where the trees stand back.
I am making a circle so open
the moon will fall in love
and stroke these grasses with her silver.
I am setting stones in the four directions,
stones that have called my name
from mountaintops and riverbeds, canyons and mesas.
Here I will stand with my hands empty,
mind gaping under the moon.
I know there is another way to live.
When I find it, the angels
will cry out in rapture,
each cell of my body
will be a rose, a star. ”
The Wild Threshold Crossing is a 7-day program centred on two days and two nights of solo fasting in nature – a wild solo in the tradition of the vision fast, as old as human culture itself. It is potent, distilled, and deliberately offered as an accessible entry point into this ancient practice for those who cannot step away from daily life for longer periods, or for those newer to the practice. The same threshold is crossed. The same mystery is met.
Since earliest times, people from earth-based cultures have received profound insight about themselves and their world by means of a multi-day solo fast in nature, seeking personal truth, emotional release, and spiritual knowledge. This is that tradition, made available within the constraints of modern life. Stepping into the threshold circle, we take pause of the day-to-day, and begin the larger conversation the world is waiting to have with us.
What makes this journey possible is the village that holds it, tenderly protecting each other’s courage. For the days before and after the solo time, we live together simply with the land — waking with the sun, tending fire, sharing meals, working with our hands and our hearts. It is in this ordinary rhythm of intentional community that something ancient stirs: the memory of what it means to belong, to be held, to prepare and return together. This village medicine is not incidental to the quest; it is an essential part of our re-membering wholeness.
The journey follows the three classic phases of a passage rite. In Preparation, we come together as a community, listen to each other's stories, and clarify what is asking to be honoured through this passage — what wildness wants to be heard, what parts of us are ready to be welcomed home. In the Threshold, each person goes alone into the wilderness — without food, without distraction — held by the land and by guides at base camp. The threshold time is for self-generated ceremony, for becoming intimately receptive to your own life, for experiencing both the challenge and the beauty of taking your place amongst your relations as a simple human animal on this Earth. In Incorporation, we return to the circle, share the stories of our time alone, and have them witnessed and mirrored back by those who made the journey with us. This story council can be one of the most touching parts of the entire program — to be seen and affirmed by those who have walked beside you.
This is not merely a program for personal development. To step into the wilderness with our hearts raw and open to the wild — to offer your questions to the sky and the soil and the silence — is an act of devotion. A prayer, not for yourself alone, but in service to the wider web of life.
“The experience was beyond transformative. We were so well held by our incredible team of guides that offered infinite wisdom and presence that allowed deep trust in the process. The actual quest was one magical part but it was the ritual, sharing and community that came before and after that enabled the transformation. Returning with a deep sense of wholeness and gratitude. ”
Who is this program for?
This ceremony is for those who are ready to step out of their comfort zone and make space for deep listening. We offer this as an accessible entry point and alternative to our longer Vision Quest for those who who cannot take eleven days, or who are not yet ready for a four-day fast — and as a complete and potent rite in its own right.
Email emily@naturesapprentice.com.au with any questions.
“This was an unforgettable, incomparable, deeply connective and soul-full experience. Every single moment, is a moment of remembering, a deepening of purpose and a coming home to the person you’re meant to be.”
Facilitators:
Yonke van Geloven
Yonke is a farmer, permaculturalist, and passionate nature connection facilitator and vision quest guide based on Dja Dja Wurrung Country, central Victoria. As a single mother of three, she stewards a 20-acre permaculture property where she weaves together regenerative land practices, storytelling, and community ritual. Her work invites others into deeper relationship with the land and their own wild selves.
Yonke’s facilitation style is grounded, playful, and deeply intuitive. She completed Nature’s Apprentice Nature-Based Leadership Training in 2021 and brings a wealth of lived experience in bushcraft, fibre arts, and earth-based ceremony. She is especially passionate about guiding others to reconnect with ancestral skills and the rhythms of the natural world, inviting people to slow down, listen, and remember their place in the great web of life. Yonke was a participant on season 3 of Alone Australia.
Mitch Stent
Mitch is a rites of passage guide, corporate wellbeing facilitator and soul-centric development apprentice. Less formally, he’s a backyard bicycle mechanic, a bit of a poet, and a mainstay on any dance floor. With nearly 10 years of transformational group facilitation and program design across both the not-for-profit and corporate sectors, Mitch has made the irreversible crossing into the wilds of soul-centric development and vision quest ceremony guiding. He feels most fully ‘here’ while being in service to the brave ones turning towards themselves through these pathways. Mitch is devoted to weaving soulful maturation into modern culture so that we might collectively remember how to become good ancestors. He has a deep faith both in the inherent goodness and singular gifts seeded within each person, as well as the mysterious, often heartbreaking, and ultimately life-giving ways in which Mystery seems to orchestrate our lives to draw them out of us.
Al Jeffery
Al is an integrative psychotherapist, regenerative leadership guide, wanderer and writer endlessly fascinated by the relationship between minds, cultures and Life herself. With family lines from India, Portugal, Ireland and Scotland, and growing up in the ferny hills of the Dandenong Ranges, he’s always carried a deep appreciation for Eastern, Western and place-based ways of seeing and knowing. He’s spent the last 12 years guiding individuals and groups through change, and apprenticing to various teachers and systems of practice such as contemplative psychology, social process design and facilitation, wilderness rites, Insight Meditation and in the last 4 years, the Indo-Tibetan Bön tradition.
Currently, he lives in Thornbury, Naarm and is committed to supporting Naarm’s transition to a life-affirming culture. He co-runs Turning Ground as a lighthouse and lab for place-based personal and cultural renewal. He also serves on the Council at Meditation Australia and semi-regularly teaches meditation in retreat settings.
Bone-deep sure of the need to re-plant our selves, our minds and our cultures back into the breathing earth, if you feel the call, he can’t wait to share in this threshold marking with you.
Emily Coats
Emily is a facilitator of deep nature connection practices, ancestral skills and soulcentric nature-based ceremony. Recently returned from seven months alone in the wild, she feels the world is always speaking to us, if only we have the capacity to listen. With an innate empathy for other humans and wild nature, and one ear attuned to what Stephen Harrod Buhner calls the 'metaphysical background of the world', Emily has found her passion in guiding others into deeper conversation with the mysteries of wild nature and the wild terrain of their own soul. Alongside studies in transpersonal counselling and vision quest guiding, Emily's most potent training has been the opportunity since 2021 to work alongside Claire at Nature's Apprentice. Emily lives on Wurundjeri Country, having returned in 2018 to her birth lands after a decade in the UK. Before joining Nature’s Apprentice Emily spun magic with numbers and data as an environmental policy analyst and wove force fields against big oil as an activist and campaigner.
Testimonials from previous 48-hour solo programs
“An experience like this can change your life. There is so much medicine to be had in a wild threshold like this and I’m so grateful to have had the opportunity to experience that. My heart was cracked open the most it ever has been and my soul was nourished to the brim. I want more.”
“It’s hard to put into words what exactly transpired on quest, what I can say is that it felt like exactly what was needed. The process is powerful, and the skilfull support of the guides only amplified the richness of this experience. ”
“Even if you are not sure why you are called to sign up for this, or unsure what threshold you are approaching.. go anyway. You are approaching a threshold in yourself, it will be revealed to you through the Land and the Skies and the Community if you allow it.”
“If you are curious to tend to your innate Wild One; if you are being called to the Wild, I would highly recommend a Vision Quest with Nature’s Apprentice. I felt held and supported every step of the way; encouraged to embody my raw, wild Spirit. Welcomed, heard and witnessed by the group with compassion and kindness. I re-emerged from Quest not only with a deeper intimacy with nature but with a new family. Those who were once strangers; now my kin: people who have witnessed and loved my in my most tender and vulnerable states and who I have held, seen and supported in theirs. The experience will reach far beyond your expectations.”
“What I appreciate most about questing is the opportunity to dive deep on issues and internal struggles I’ve been ignoring. Quest provides the support for deep introspection with absolutely zero distraction, such a rarity in today’s world! The ceremony and ritual around the Quest feels supportive and honouring. It’s a big thing to do, but worth it.”
Program info:
The program will be held on wild land within 4 hours of Melbourne. A reasonable level of fitness is required. Accommodation is tent camping at base camp. Previous experience with spiritual retreats and camping is not essential. A beautiful selection of whole food and mostly organic meals will be served during preparation and incorporation. An essential element to questing is both the physical and spiritual preparation, so if you feel the call, please be in touch as soon as possible to complete the application process, although late registrations are also accepted upon application. The program is limited to a maximum of 16 participants.
Email emily@naturesapprentice.com.au with any questions.
Cost:
The full cost of the 7 day program includes all food, accommodation, guide fees and materials.
Early Bird before August 5th: $1,200 ($300 deposit required by August 5th, remainder of payment by October 5th)
Full Price: $1,350
Deposit $300
A scholarship place is also available. To learn more and apply, please email us with a little about your circumstances and interest in this program.
Is it time to make a strong gesture to yourself and to mystery that you are ready to ask some of the deepest questions of your life? Is it time to take a leap into the unknown and find out what is possible when you cast off all familiarity and enter into a conversation with wild nature and the wilds of your soul?
The Wild Threshold Crossing is a 7-day program centred on two days and two nights of solo fasting in nature – a wild solo in the tradition of the vision fast, as old as human culture itself.
“I am incredibly grateful to have had the opportunity to explore and share some of my inner most desires and soulful knowings in such beautifully held councils with such incredible humans. I felt totally open and free to be myself and to speak from my heart, which is not something I feel safe enough to do in the mainstream world I inhabit. Thank you. ”
Application Process
This program requires a significant commitment and we encourage you to really feel into whether it’s right for you before booking in. Also have a good read of our cancellation policy below. It has been updated for this program, and we will be adhering to it to ensure a full program of registrations.
It takes some time to prepare for a wilderness solo. So even though our programs generally sell out, we often can’t fill places if we receive last minute cancellations - which is a shame given how many people are hungry to do this work.
Please start by paying the deposit ($300).
You will then be sent a registration/medical form. Receipt and approval of this form will secure your place. If your form is not approved your deposit will be fully refunded.
If accepted, you will then be sent full information about the Quest, including physical and spiritual preparation, and asked to pay the remainder of the fee by 2 months before program start date (October 5th). If deposit was paid before August 5th, this will be the early bird price, otherwise it will be the full price. If full payment is not received in this time, your place will be forfeited, unless you have spoken to us to arrange a payment plan.
If you are joining within 2 months of the program start date, full payment will be required within two weeks of approval of registration form.
Email emily@naturesapprentice.com.au with any questions.
Cancellation Policy
We understand that all kinds of things come up that thwart the best of plans. If you do need to withdraw from the program, please give us as much notice as possible to give us the best chance of finding someone else, and so we (and you) don’t end up out of pocket.
A) If you cancel more than 60 days before program start (before 5th October), your deposit is not refundable, but you have the option to transfer it to a future program for a fee of $50. If you have already paid the full amount, it will be refunded, minus the deposit.
B) If you cancel between 7 and 60 days before program start, and:
we can fill your place, we will similarly refund the program fee minus the deposit, and give you the option to transfer your deposit to a future program for $50.
we can’t fill your place, we will not refund the program fee or the deposit, and you won’t have the option to transfer to a future course, except in exceptional circumstances. If you have not already paid in full you will be required to pay.
C) If you cancel fewer than 7 days before program start, we will not endeavour to fill your place and will not be able to refund any of the amount.
“This experience for me really is a gift that keeps on giving, and I’m sure it can only ripple out in positive ways outside of myself. I look forward to continue being part of this kind of community of wild nature loving people. Thank you.”
Is it time to make a strong gesture to yourself and to mystery that you are ready to ask some of the deepest questions of your life? Is it time to take a leap into the unknown and find out what is possible when you cast off all familiarity and enter into a conversation with wild nature and the wilds of your soul?
The Wild Threshold Crossing is a 7-day program centred on two days and two nights of solo fasting in nature – a wild solo in the tradition of the vision fast, as old as human culture itself.