 "Steven Foster the most prominent teacher, scholar and author on using wilderness for personal growth through rites of passage and modern day vision questing, passed away on May 6, 2003, at age 64 from a genetic lung disorder. A former English and Humanities Professor, Dr. Foster left academia in the early 1970s to seek a more meaningful life. Ultimately, in 1976 he and his wife, Meredith Little, founded a non-profit organization in the San Francisco Bay Area called "Rites of Passage", to take "at risk" youth on modern-day wilderness vision quests to celebrate their passage from childhood to adulthood.
In 1982, Steven and Meredith moved to Big Pine, California and founded The School of Lost Borders to focus on training rites of passage and wilderness vision quest guides, and Lost Borders Press to publish their work. Since then they trained more than 1,000 individuals from all over the world in diverse skills related to wilderness vision questing and rites of passage in nature, and impacted thousands more through the subsequent efforts of their trainees. . . . Lost Border's courses increasingly drew international participants, and Steven and Meredith were invited to teach in many other countries - their last international presentation was at the Jung Institute in Zurich, Switzerland. . . ." (excerpt from John C. Hendee, Editor in Chief, in the International Journal of Wilderness, vol 9, no. 2).
Steven was also a poet and song writer, banjo player, flint knapper, basket maker, son, husband, father, grandfather, and grizzled veteran of countless forays into the deserts and mountains near his home in the Eastern Sierra. He was no stranger to solitude, hardship, exposure, and the desert wilderness.
Only light can make a tree
and light can make a bone
Mother light gave birth to me
and light will take me home.
-- Steven, December 2002
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 Meredith Little and her husband, Steven Foster, co-founded Rites of Passage Inc. in 1976 and The School of Lost Borders in 1981 – pioneering the methods and dynamics of modern pan-cultural passage rites in the wilderness, and “field therapy”. The essence of their work is captured in articles, chapters, an award-winning documentary film, and a multitude of books. Since Steven’s death in 2003, she continues both nationally and internationally to guide and train others in this work. Along with Dr. Scott Eberle, she has also co-founded a new arm of Lost Borders entitled “The Practice of Living and Dying”. In this partnership with Scott, she hopes to crack open the taboos surrounding Death, and help restore dying to its natural place in the cycles of living. She is also the director of Lost Borders International and owner of Lost Borders Press. Meredith@lostborderspress.com
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 Dr. Scott Eberle is a physician specializing in end-of-life care, Scott serves as medical director for Hospice of Petaluma in his hometown of Petaluma, California. Having first learned the science of medicine at U.C. San Francisco medical school, he then learned the art of medicine from countless people living and dying with AIDS in the 1980s and 1990s. He survived this difficult time by regularly seeking sanctuary, either in monasteries or in the natural world, completing over 150 retreats during a 15-year period. He recently ended a 16-year career as an an AIDS specialist so he could focus his energies on hospice work and "The Practice of Living and Dying" work he does with Meredith. As he has written in his new book, The Final Crossing: "So now I am a physician who specializes in supporting life transitions. I am a hospice doctor who sits with the dying in their homes, and I am a rite-of-passage guide who sits with 'the dying' out in the desert."
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 Virginia “Gigi” Coyle. Council trainer, wilderness rites of passage guide and trainer, she is a co-author of The Box and The Way of Council. Gigi helped create and oversee the Ojai Foundation, an educational retreat sanctuary for youth and adults. She has worked extensively in the areas of citizen diplomacy, community development, permaculture and interspecies communication projects, such as directing the first release of dolphins back to the wild. She is currently director of the Nature of Council component of The School of Lost Borders, as well as co-director, with her husband Win Phelps, of the Youth component.
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 Jack Zimmerman, PhD, is an educational consultant, counselor, and intrepid survivor of transformational relationship. He is coauthor of The Way of Council, and Flesh and Spirit (with his wife Jaquelyn McCandless), and former director of the Ojai Foundation in Southern California where Jaquelyn and he offer "Mystery of Eros" intensives for couples. For more than 23 years, they have been loving and tormenting each other while exploring and teaching the inseparability of sex and spirit. www.ojaifoundation.org
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 Jeffrey Duvall is the author of the well received book Stories of Men Meaning and Prayer, written in conjunction with James Churches. He has been co-leading with the Men’s Council Project and the Men’s Leadership Alliance, a soul based men’s Art of Leadership Training Program for eighteen years in Colorado. He also guides men’s healing and inspiration retreats around the country as an inquiry into the beauty of manhood, life potential, expression of personal mythology and healing of the heart. He is a wilderness rites of passage guide for youth and adults and assists individuals and groups in creating community rituals and blessing ways. Jeffrey is also a Four Gateways Coach© based in the healing studies of Dr. Thomas Daly world elder, teacher and visionary. Jeffrey lives with his wife and son in Colorado. www.jeffreyduvall.com
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 Trebbe Johnson is the director of Vision Arrow, an organization offering journeys to explore wildness and allurement in nature and self. She leads vision quests, workshops, and ceremonies worldwide. Her writings about myth, nature, and spirit have appeared in many media, from her narrative poem "The Fruit of Eve," which received a Poetry Society of America award; to her Telly Award - winning video "Only One Earth," produced for the United Nations celebration of Earth Day; to "Yards," her essay about the wildernesss of suburbia, for which she received a Pushcart Prize honorable mention. A passionate explorer of both inner and outer nature, Trebbe has camped alone in the Arctic wilderness, studied classical Indian dance, and co-guided a camel caravan with the Tuareg people in the Sahara Desert. She lives with her husband, Andrew Gardner, a potter and rustic furniture maker, in rural northeastern Pennsylvania. www.visionarrow.com www.trebbejohnson.com
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 Bill Plotkin, Ph.D., is a depth psychologist, wilderness guide, and one of the leaders in the field of contemporary, nature-based personal development and initiation programs. He holds a doctorate in psychology from the University of Colorado at Boulder and was previously on the teaching and research faculty at the State University of New York where he studied dreams and non-ordinary states achieved through meditation, biofeedback, and hypnosis.
Bill is the founding director of Animas Valley Institute in southwest Colorado, a nonprofit organization of over twenty guides that has been leading nature-based soul-initiation programs since 1980. Each year, AVI’s staff guide hundreds of people—professionals, artists, therapists, parents, teachers, and high-school and college students—on journeys into the inner/outer wilderness. Bill also conducts five-day soulcraft seminars at retreat centers throughout the United States as well as a training and apprenticeship program for soulcraft guides. Bill has written many articles and book chapters on psychotherapy, consciousness, and wilderness rites. He is currently completing a book on soulcentric human development wherein he proposes tasks and archetypes for the eight stages of life when we allow soul and nature to guide us in our growth. www.animas.org
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 Elizabeth Brensinger is a writer, workshop facilitator, vision quest guide and consultant. She holds a Master of Public Health degree and is a former award-winning journalist. In 1993 Liz co-founded Red Road Enterprises, which offers personal and spiritual growth adventures from a home base in eastern Pennsylvania, as well as consulting services to non-profit organizations.
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 Producer/Director Kim Shelton has been a documentary filmmaker for the past 25 years. Her award-winning films, The Highly Exalted, Cowboy Poets, Tuscarora, Lost Borders, and A Great Wonder have been broadcast both nationally and internationally. More information about them can be found on the following web sites: bullfrogfilms.com, folkstreams.net and agreatwonder.com.
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 Jack Crimmins is a poet who lives in California. He has published six chapbooks including The Far Hill and Desert Edge. His poems have also been published in small press journals and Lynn Andrews' books on shamanism. He has worked as a wilderness guide and as a licensed psychotherapist. He was one of the original co-directors of the Rites of Passage, Inc. Youth Program in the late 1970's and early 1980's.
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Patrick L. Clary, MD, is Board Certified in Family Practice and in Hospice and Palliative Medicine. Educated at Georgetown College and later at Georgetown’s School of Medicine, his first professional training was in poetry as a student of Roland Flint. Dying for Beginners grew out of discussions with Steven Foster and Meredith Little starting in 2003, when he led a group of hospice workers to Death Valley to participate in a Vision Fast. His poetry has been published in The New England Journal of Medicine, CoEvolution Quarterly, Patient Care, Journal of Palliative Medicine, JAMA and Journal of Medical Humanities, as well as in anthologies, literary magazines and two previous collections: Notes for a Loveletter, and Old Friends. A conscientious objector on the basis of Quaker beliefs, he served as a medic with US Infantry Units in Vietnam 1969-70. He is Past President of the New Hampshire Hospice and Palliative Care Organization and remains active in end-of-life care by with roles in teaching, and advocacy.
Web sites related to his work and writing:
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 Jennifer Hart: Jennifer's friends describe her as "author, mother, lover and cool person". She lives in the woods outside of Ashland, Oregon doing her best to stay fully alive while listening to the voices of Those Who Have Gone Before, or her Intuition. After experiencing the deaths of her brother-in-law, Steven Foster and her son, Marley Pratt just weeks apart, Jennifer has spent her time delving into the meaning of life and death, writing from her heart, supporting her daughter's dreams, and living a life full of laughter and tears. Her calling is to help her international family rediscover the art of supportive networking, the deep communal feelings and inherent sacredness of joy and loss, and the care for the dying which incorporates the wisdom of the old ways. www.MarleyRides.com
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 Camille Adair, Producer and Director, brings with her more than twenty years of experience in the healing arts, workshop facilitation, hospice and healthcare.
She is an active member of the hospice and palliative healthcare community, having served as a hospice nurse, educator and professional consultant. Camille is a pioneer in the field of sustainable healthcare, integrating medicine with the intimacy of the human experience.
Camille hosted an international podcast show "A Lifelong Practice." She is in the process of creating a Solace-based podcast/blog and online writing groups. She continues to vision and manifest projects that serve communities and individuals in art of transitioning throughout the life cycle.
www.SolaceTheMovie.com
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