Project Description

A PATH OF PURPOSE

RITE OF
PASSAGE:
SPAIN

October 16-25, 2026

We are amidst a collective rite of passage.

This is a time of tremendous transition – full of challenges and ripe with possibility.
Our lives are shifting, the climate is changing, global currents are stirring.

Old structures are breaking down calling for new ones to emerge.

You yourself may be going through a life change or a reorientation.

Your personal or professional life may be beckoning for a renewed path, vision or commitment.

This is a powerful moment for change.

What is this time asking of you?

What is your individual and collective responsibility to tend to our communities, cultures and planet?

How can your personal and professional leadership be rooted in wholeness and integrity?

Significant life transitions invite our hearts, minds and bodies to open to new ways of being.

What is no longer serving you? What needs to be let go? What seeds do you want to plant for the future?

This program is a ceremony to explore and celebrate your commitment to yourself, your dreams, your communities and the wider world.

Are you ready to cross the threshold?

Program details

  • Program: October 16-25, 2026

  • Group Size: 8-10

  • Activity: Vision Fast, incl. 3-day Solo Ceremony

  • Location: The Pyrenees, Spain

  • Investment: 2,500€ – 4,000€, Deposit: 300€

Program documents

  • Program description
    will be here

ApPlication details

  • The deadline for applications for this program is TBC.

PROGRAM GUIDES

PROGRAM OVERVIEW

A 9-day program held in the Pyrenees Mountains, a few hours from Barcelona, Spain.

what is rite of passage?

Rites of passage are ceremonies to help individuals navigate significant life and/or identity transitions by fostering deep self-reflection, relationship with nature and a responsibility to our human and earth communities. From these connections, we cultivate a healthy sense of purpose and our role in society and the larger ecosystem.

cerEmonIAL ARC

During the 9-day ceremony, we will go through 3 phases:

  • Preparation & Intention-Setting (group time for the first 3 days)
  • Solo Time, 3 Day & Night Fast (alone time out on the land)
  • Incorporation, Return, & Storytelling (group time for the final 3 days)

Participants prepare by consciously separating from their daily lives and distractions, reflecting on who they once were and their lives as they knew them. They reflect on what needs to be released in order to move forward with more integrity and wholeness. They begin to sense into who they are becoming and what is unfolding in this next chapter of their lives.  

Severance is a time to let go of that which is ready to be released in order to prepare for new life. We dive into stories and set intentions to prepare the ground for the possibility of change and transformation. This is also a time of preparation to ensure that all participants are ready to safely embark on three days of solitude in nature.

The heart of the ceremony — a solitary period in nature (lasting 3 days and 3 nights) where participants go without company, food (often*), and distractions in order to carry their intentions more fully.

During this precious time, they exist between their old life and the life yet to come, seeking insight and guidance. This is where the mysterious dance between inner and outer nature unfolds, encouraging what’s dying to release, and what’s emerging to come forth with greater clarity and conviction. Participants will have a buddy check system and the guides will be holding basecamp to ensure safety.

The place where purpose meets the path — a time of embodying what was experienced during the solo through story sharing, reflection and orientation towards returning home.

As each story is shared, the whole group learns and grows. The guides listen and reflect the story of each ceremony back to the participants, offering insights on how it weaves into their world and how to embody it more wholly. This phase focuses on integrating the changes and insights gained in order to bring them home into one’s life and community.

*You can choose or choose not to fast as it aligns with your intention and the wellness of your body and psyche. All parts of this ceremony are centered around choice and invitation.

the VISION FAST Ceremony

This is a contemporary rite of passage that aims to meet the archetypal human impulse towards initiation, rooted in indigenous teachings and offered through the lineage of the school of lost borders.

The ceremony centers around a time of solitude in nature — a time of slowing down, quieting, and listening. To go into nature to seek guidance, insight and instruction is something humans have done for time immemorial. It is our own inner nature that is revealed when we remember to listen to the wild earth around us.

As we do so, we invite the memory living in our own bones and bodies to awaken, revealing a more whole picture of who we are. We encourage you to uncover practices that may exist in your own lineages, cultures, myths and stories.

GIFTS OF THE CEREMONY

While we can’t say exactly what will transpire during each participant’s ceremony, we do know this process is deeply impactful and common themes arise, such as:

Self-Discovery: Clarifying one’s purpose, unique gifts and their vital role in their communities and as part of this planet

Healing: Addressing and releasing limiting beliefs, past traumas and supporting the wellness of our world

Empowerment: Rooting into who you truly are beyond outside expectations, gaining confidence to embrace new life roles

Community & Belonging: Strengthening bonds through shared ceremonial experiences and truly being of service. This includes the responsibility of giving your gifts away and living the dreams gleaned from your ceremony

Nature Connection: Fostering a relationship with the natural world, sensing into and understanding that we are a part of the earth and that our lives depend on it

THE GUIDES

Kelly
McCLELLAND

Guide

“What if we answered the call of our deepest heart’s longing? The cry of the earth and the winds of change? What if we were inspired by mystery and surrendered to our life’s greatest purpose? How would this shape our lives? How would our world be different?

Kelly McClelland (she/they) is a bi-lingual (English & Spanish) rite of passage guide with the School of Lost Borders, nature-based psychotherapist and global educator. Kelly is part of the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Councils for the School of Lost Borders and the Wilderness Guides Council (a global rites of passage collective). She guides social and environmental justice programs in Central and South America and has offered outdoor programs for Corporate and Senior leadership teams, higher-education, and youth for over a decade.

As a guide, she brings realness, an open heart and a commitment to radical solidarity and ancestral recovery. Kelly believes rites of passage can serve as a liberatory practice – that our ceremonies can tend to our lands, culture, and kin. That they can help us embody the truth of who we are and weave connection and accountability with our planet and our communities.

Infusing earth-connection with business and technology, Kelly has worked over 15 years in the marketing industry, leading global award-winning advertising campaigns, organizational strategy, and branding projects. Currently, Kelly is the Creative Director for Kinship, a social innovation project focused on raising a cultural narrative of repairing our relationship with the web of life.

Peter
van der Vlis 

Founder/Managing Director 

“I’m inspired by the way nature’s magic transforms people“

Peter van der Vlis (he/him) is a co-founder of TrailHaven, and a former co-founder of Aberkyn (a global leadership development firm now part of McKinsey & Company). He holds an MSc in Information Technology from Delft Technical University and an MBA from INSEAD. His education in executive coaching took place at the MMS Institute. In 2016-2017, Peter certified as Wilderness Guide Level 1 with the Wilderness Guide Association.​ In 2024, Peter enrolled in the Vision Fast training program from School of Lost Borders, and will complete their Mirroring Training in April 2025.

Peter has facilitated wilderness trails since 2005, initially with the Foundation for Natural Leadership. Later, at Aberkyn, Peter co-created Aberkyn Wilderness Trails – designing experiential learning outdoor programs, taking senior leaders out into nature to reconnect with self, each other and nature.

Nowadays, at TrailHaven, Peter’s work is fully focused on bringing the magic of nature back into leaders’ lives. He loves the slowing down that TrailHaven promotes, allowing the brain to become focused after letting go of all distractions, such as phones and alcohol, and ultimately again becoming fully intuitive, generative, with access to deep internal wisdom and knowing – which helps to resolve problems instinctively and effortlessly.

Peter lives in the Netherlands, with his wife, their 3 studying sons almost having left the home. He enjoys staying fit, nature photography, tending to Bonsai trees and the feeling of freedom when riding his motorbike.

Will
Scott

Guide

“Perhaps the greatest misstep in the history of humanity was when some of us forgot that we are nature. What a gift it is to be a part of the remembering.”

Will Scott (he/him) began guiding nature-based rites of passage in 2001 and has remained committed to the work of honoring life’s transitions ever since, believing it to hold one of the many keys for healing in these troubled times. He has worked as a guide with Youth and Adult programs at the School of Lost Borders since 2007, and has been a trainer with School since 2016.

Will is also a co-founder of Weaving Earth Center for Relational Education. Weaving Earth (WE) offers transformative education at the confluence of personal, social and environmental systems change, as well as training and consultation for individuals, businesses and organizations. Will works as part of the executive team at WE and is also the Adult Programs Director.

Will’s lineage comes primarily from the Celtic regions of Europe — representing both persecutors and the persecuted. Reckoning with this heritage and its present-day impacts is a critical part of his work, informing a life of inquiry into how the descendants of conquest might begin to rebalance their human and more-than-human relationships. He is a wildlife tracker, naturalist, bird lover, mentor, artist, uncle, friend, and committed change-maker.

WHETHER YOU’RE SEEKING A QUICK RESET OR A LONG-TERM JOURNEY,
WE’RE HERE TO CO-DESIGN THE PATH WITH YOU.

CONTACT US