Women’s Wilderness Quest

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.
— Mary Oliver, “Wild Geese”

There are ways of being in the world that women often learn early: to care for others, to accommodate, to hold things together. We learn to read the room, to anticipate needs, to make ourselves useful. We may become skilled at giving, achieving, nurturing, and performing—and sometimes lose touch with the quieter questions underneath it all:

What do I want? Who am I, apart from who I have learned to be for others?

These questions are not unique to women. Yet there are particular ways that women can become separated from their own authority, desires, bodies, voices, and visions. Expectations can be subtle or overt, woven into family, culture, relationships, work, and the stories we carry about what it means to be “good.”

Sometimes the work of finding our way back to ourselves begins with stepping away.

A wilderness quest offers a rare opportunity to leave behind the familiar structures of daily life and enter a place where there is nothing to accomplish and no one to please. Alone in the natural world, fasting and listening, we are invited to encounter ourselves without the usual distractions and expectations.

The wilderness does not ask us to perform. It asks us to pay attention.

In the silence and spaciousness of the natural world, something deeper can emerge: a truth that has been waiting, a longing we have been too busy to hear, a grief that needs room to feel, a vision of what might come next. We may discover that some of what we have carried can be laid down. We may remember desires we set aside, strengths we underestimated, or parts of ourselves that have been waiting to come fully alive.

We do not do this work alone. Alongside the solitude of the individual quest is the experience of being held in community with other women. Before and after the time alone, we gather to share stories, witness each other, listen deeply, and celebrate one another.

Through ceremony, presence, creativity, story, and time spent in intimate relationship with the natural world, a women’s wilderness quest creates space for healing and renewal. It offers a chance to step outside the identities and expectations that have shaped us and listen for the life that is calling us forward.

We invite all women to answer the call. Whether you are standing at a major threshold or simply feel that something in your life is asking for your attention, the wilderness can be a mirror, a teacher, and a place of return to the life that is yours to live.

With gratitude for all the women who have walked this path – and for all those who will.

Susan Wofsy
Women’s Wilderness Quest Guide