The Book of the Vision Quest: Personal Transformation in the Wilderness [Paperback]

This book is published by Fireside Books, a part of the Simon&Schuster empire. They are also the publisher of "Coyote Medicine", which I panned pretty heavily in a review last year for being unsubstantial and largely anecdotal in its evidences. "Vision Quest" is also anecdotal, which means that Foster and Little could have cut and paste, publishing those stories they saw fit to tell their side, and leave out the rest. However, there are two things that are quite different about their style which makes this book a smashing success. First, they held nothing back, so far as I can tell. Some of their customer's journeys weren't success stories at all. Some were clear failures, and some were still just hanging on to bare existence. Their message still came through. The second point is that these stories can only be told in this fashion. Science is not clearly in the picture here - skirting the edge. There's no way one can publish statistics on this topic, saying "of so many voyagers, x percent achieved total succees". No, this book is about mythology. And as false as the stories are that comprise mythology, their lessons are deeply engrained in the body - no, the spirit - of every one who dares to be human.

Reading "Kinds of Minds", by Daniel Dennett, may make some of what I speak of more clear. Humans differ from other animals because of our recursive patterns of thought. This recursion - the ability to subject the mind to analysis by that same mind - is both a blessing (in that it helped with our survival), and a curse (in that endless recursion into a black hole of despair is a definite possibility). Your mythos is the terminator to this endless analysis. Some call this "God". Some of us have no name for it, but all the same, it must be there. Foster and Little recognize this, and at the same time, they are quite sensitive to the lives on the edge of our grand society who need, but do not have, this connection.

Knowing full well that the connection itself does not assure a comfortable place, they nonetheless have created a venue for people to make this voyage of self discovery. This book is a brief recounting of many of those voyages. It is also an invitation to the rest of us to follow wherever that path leads.

Read this book.

I only considered a vision quest a sci-fi novelty, something good for stories, not real life. This book changed that perception forever. The author describes the process and the results many people found as they went through thier own vision quest.

I plan on going on one in 2001 through a related organization. This book clearly communicated a possible solution to that 'missing something' many people feel these days.

The only minor criticism I have is that in my opinon, the authors poetic, mystic and self-agrandizing descriptions and metaphors go a little overboard - a little heavy-handed for my taste... perhaps that's only since I haven't been on a vision quest, I don't know. This in no way diminishes the clear and no-holes-barred message delivered straight and to the point for the majority of the book. Don't let this stop you - it's worth every penny and more...