A Big, Beautiful Burst of Light: My First Year Leading Rites of Passage
It was the heart of night, pitch black and quiet except for the crackle of the fire in front of me. I sat somewhat slouched in my camping chair, hugged from behind by the thick darkness of the pine forest, fighting sleepiness as I watched the coals breathe in rhythm with the flames.
All of a sudden, a huge flash of light lit up the entire campsite around me, illuminating the cabin, the trees, the rocks - a burst of daylight in the deep night. It lasted for maybe two seconds. I jumped up from my camping chair - definitely awake now - so confused about what was happening. Did someone with a huge flashlight stumble into our camp? Was that the spotlight from some silent helicopter overhead? Now on my feet, I turned to look behind me to follow where I thought I’d seen the light disappear. When I looked over the trees, I caught with my eye a massive ball of light with a long tail sailing below the horizon. It wasn’t until the next day that I read an article that a meteor had passed over Colorado around 3:30am.“Wow” I said out loud, in disbelief. I just stood there for a minute or two, dumbfounded and in awe of what I had just experienced.
My mind jumped to the teenage boy who was on his 24-hour solo on the mountain 100 yards from me. Was he awake? Did he see what I just saw?! What did he experience? Was he scared or confused, excited or in awe of nature’s power? I was so curious to know.
What that boy - now young man - experienced on his solo is a sacred, personal thing, and it’s not my place to tell his story. What I can say, though, is this: I learned the next morning that yes, he was mostly awake, in a literal, physical sense, but he was definitely, for sure, awake-ned, spiritually, in that moment, in witnessing the huge flash of light in the middle of the night. It initiated a whole slew of insights, reflections, and realizations about things in his life that were important to him and ways he wanted to change to become a fuller version of himself. It was beautiful to hear about the catalyst that this force of nature was in his process of becoming a young man.
Of course, there is no way I could have planned something like that. As one of my mentors says - you can’t buy that on Amazon. Or another way of putting it - you can’t make that shit up. I learned that night that I, Jackson, am not actually the one initiating these young men into their next phase of life. Yes - I am actively encouraging, challenging, and supporting them in the process, working with them and their families to create a container that can hold them. But it is the elements and forces of nature that actually open the door and allow a person to experience themselves and life in a pure, direct way. Putting ourselves in the potent, vital arena of the wilderness opens up the possibility for real magic, healing, connection, insight, and learning to take place. It invigorates a part of us as human beings that is primordial, ancestral, deep inside our DNA. We get the opportunity to see who we are - our light and our shadow. Even though so much of our inherited wisdom and old ways of being is latent inside us, it is still very much accessible, waiting for opportunities like ceremony and initiation to wake up and reactivate.
On a personal level, that moment was a real moment of affirmation for me in doing this work. I had volunteered for several years helping out with Rites of Passages for teenage boys, helping support vision quests, and spending solo time on the mountain myself. When one of my mentors introduced me to the family whose son would be my first mentee, I still wasn’t so sure I was ready to be a mentor. But I trusted the movement of life and said yes - having experienced in those volunteer moments and in my own vision quests a real calling to do this work supporting teenagers in the transition to young adulthood. Experiencing that beautiful, powerful burst of light in the dead of night as I tended fire for this young rite of passage initiate on my first ever ROP - it confirmed for me that I was in the right place, doing my work in the world. It gave me confidence. In my worldview, nature had signaled to me and mirrored back that what was happening was good, and that, as life allows it, it should continue…