The trainees have now been immersed in the wilderness for 8 weeks. Every day they are utilizing the essential survival skills they have learned, in order to face the challenges that arise. These skills include choosing the most ideal campsite, accumulating comfort points, wilderness navigation, weather forecasting, wilderness first aid, bow-drill fire making, primitive cooking without pots or utensils, empathetic communication, functioning seamlessly as a pack, and much, much more.

As they move from camp to camp, they carry everything they need with them on their pack frames. They are getting better at transforming their difficulties into learning opportunities. When only one trainee was able to produce a coal to start a fire, they created the Fire Challenge, where each one of them took on the responsibility of creating two fires for the clan. If there was no fire, there was no cooked food. This Challenge truly motivated them and brought out their best; everyone can now create a bow drill fire.

Throughout this time, they are meeting the Three Thresholds to Wilderness Attunement head-on. First is the Psychological Threshold, where they come face-to-face with themselves because they don’t have their accustomed distractions to fall back on. Second is the Tolerance Threshold, which looms when the discomforts of nomadic life in the wilds eat away at their dispositions. Once they work through the first two thresholds, they are greeted by the Gifting Threshold. Here they begin to realize the ebb and flow of living in the natural realm: that rain, mosquitoes, and biting flies come and go, that hunger is eventually sated. Tired muscles get rested, low spirits are lifted, and at some point, someone successfully builds a fire.

These first three thresholds are personal; each trainee must overcome them individually. The Fourth Threshold is different—it is social and typically looms after two moons (months) or so, when an individual starts truly missing friends and loved ones. Memories can sustain someone for only so long. The trainees successfully embrace the Fourth Threshold when they move out of the I-me-mine way of being and cross over to fully embrace themselves, one another, and the woodland community which hosts them on their journey.

This is no easy task. It requires the willingness and ability to fully accept themselves and others unconditionally. In this sense, it could be considered the first threshold of another level, because crossing over allows them to become a functioning organ within the organism.

The trainees are now in the midst of the Fourth Threshold. Tension surrounds two of the trainees in particular. One of them is efficient and goal oriented, and the other often struggles to keep up with the group. It’s not as much about skill level as it is about the underlying psychological patterns they both learned during childhood that are now taking center stage: super-responsible child who grew up too soon meets the child who was treated as inadequate. The more that Super-Responsible pressures Feeling Inadequate, the slower they go and the more agitated they both get.

In civil society, their conflict may be regarded as nothing more than incompatibility, and they could easily go their separate ways. But in the wild, everyone is needed—there is no choice but to work it out. This is forcing them to look more deeply at themselves and each other, to see why they react the way they do, and to find the gifts the other has to offer. If they are able to make the journey from their minds to their hearts and meet there, their clan may be able to thrive on the gifts the relationship brings, and together they will find their place within the realm of the Wild Relations.

To hear more about their experiences from the trainees themselves, you can listen to the latest recording below. And of course, stay tuned for more adventures…