The Way of the Forest
Five separate returns to the School to face five different quest challenges
The Way of the Forest invites you to explore the five relationships that shape your life across five separate returns to the School, each culminating in a quest to undertake on your own or with others. Each Forest Walker is offered a quest, but invited to make it their own.
The Rhythm of Each Return
Day 1 — Arrival
We return to the School, reconnect with one another, settle into the place and prepare for a new encounter.
Days 2–3 — Exploration
Two days to explore the relationship at the heart of this encounter together. The end of Day 3 is dedicated to preparing for the quest ahead. You are invited to consider what the School proposes, what it means for you, and how you wish to undertake it.
Days 4–5 — Questing
On Day 4, usually in the morning, the quest begins. It often continues through the night. By midday on Day 5, we return to the School to gather, recount our experiences, listen, reflect and share what we have discovered.
Day 6 — Departure
We close the encounter and return to our lives, preparing to integrate what we have experienced.
The Five Quests Offered to You
I. Time Alone in Nature
The first quest invites you to spend a day and night alone in nature.
You will choose among suitable locations identified by the School, whether a forest clearing or a safe place on open ground. We provide tents, sleeping bags and the necessary equipment, unless you have your own.
You will be offered activities and prompts to explore during your time alone, but you can also choose to sit in silence, write, listen to the forest, or simply rest.
The following morning, after preparing your own breakfast, you walk back to the School, where you are welcomed with a special ceremony.
II. A Journey in Pairs
For the second quest, you travel in pairs towards a destination you have chosen together, from a range of possibilities proposed by the School.
Along the way, you are invited to experiment with relational power dynamics of your choosing. For instance, one might become the Ruler and the other the Courtier: on the outward journey, the Ruler makes the agreed decisions, while the Courtier follows.
At your destination, you are invited to undertake a fire vigil together.
On the return journey, the roles are reversed.
III. Collective Creating
For the third quest, the School invites you to imagine, design and undertake a collective project that contributes something to the place or its surroundings.
This could involve creating a painting, building a platform, or helping a nearby farm with a specific project.
Your group decides what to do, how to organise itself and how to work together.
The finished creation matters just as much as the relationships that emerge through the process of creating it together.
IV. Moving with the Season
The fourth quest follows the rhythms of the land.
Depending on the season, you might be invited to forage for wild foods, plant trees, care for the vegetable garden, harvest wheat, gather fruit, or spend a quiet night observing deer and other wildlife from a suitable place in the forest.
Through attention, work, patience and encounter, we explore what it means to participate in a living world while relinquishing the illusion that we can control it.
V. The Unknown
The fifth quest turns towards mystery: the sacred, the unknown, mortality, ancestry, meaning, faith, doubt and the great questions of existence.
The quest begins with a shared ritual. From there, you are invited to design your own path into the unknown.
Some may undertake a pilgrimage to a monastery or sacred place. Others might honour their ancestors through ceremony, spend extended time in silence or contemplation, or join a spiritual practice offered by an invited practitioner. A shamanic journey, prayer, meditation, artistic expression or philosophical contemplation may offer different ways of approaching the unknown.
On the evening of Day 5, we return to one another for a closing ritual, marking the completion of the fifth quest and celebrating the end of our walk through the Forest.
You choose and create your quests
Each quest is an invitation. You are encouraged to shape it around what you need and want to explore. There are practical boundaries and shared responsibilities, but no prescribed way to undertake a quest, nor a single right way to interpret what you experience.
Between the encounters
Between residential encounters, you will be invited to do some homework: reflections and small experiments to help you bring what you have learned into everyday life and prepare for the next encounter.
Practical Information
Format
The Way of the Forest includes five six-day encounters, each devoted to one relationship and culminating in a quest. Participants can adapt and recraft each quest. Appropriate preparation, alternatives and practical safety arrangements are part of the programme.
Number of participants and languages
Usually 10–15 participants, working together in English, Italian, French or Spanish, depending on the shared language of the group.
Dates
Visit Join for information about upcoming dates, once confirmed.