Returning to the Earth: Summer Wilderness Retreats at SWI
There is a quiet kind of wisdom that lives beyond the noise of our daily lives. It waits in the trees, in the rhythm of water, in the stillness that we rarely give ourselves permission to enter. This summer, we invite you to step into that space through our wilderness programs, designed to reconnect you with the natural world and, just as importantly, with yourself.
A Season of Deep Listening
Our summer offerings include three immersive retreats, each rooted in earth-based practices and the understanding that healing and clarity often arise when we slow down enough to truly listen. The Women’s Threshold Retreat is a beautiful place to start - it’s a gentle corridor that opens to a Vision Quest and continues through to Mirroring Training. Whether you are new to this work or feeling called to go deeper, each of these experiences are crafted to meet you where you are.
The Women’s Threshold Retreat
June 9–14 | Bitely, Michigan
The Women’s Threshold Retreat is the perfect place to begin your journey into earth medicine. Held at a secluded cabin in Bitely, Michigan, and surrounded by the flowing waters of the Pere Marquette River and endless acres of state forest, this retreat offers a gentle and supportive introduction to wilderness-based healing practices.
Here, you will be guided into a deeper relationship with nature through teachings of the medicine wheel, an ancient framework that mirrors the cycles and transitions of our human experience. Rather than something to learn intellectually, the medicine wheel becomes something you feel, observe, and live during your time on the land.
This retreat includes a 24-hour solo fast in nature, held with care and preparation, this experience invites you to step into solitude, listen deeply, and begin to cultivate your own inner knowing.
What You Can Expect
Throughout the retreat, your days will unfold in a rhythm that honors both structure and spaciousness. There will be gentle teachings on the medicine wheel and earth-based spirituality, guided practices for grounding and presence, and time for solitude, reflection, and journaling. You will gather in community circles for sharing and integration, be nourished with thoughtful meals, and held with care through your 24-hour solo fast in nature. There is a wood-fired sauna and hot tub on the property for you to enjoy during integration periods.
This retreat is about softening, remembering, and allowing the natural world to mirror something true within you.
An Invitation
If you have been feeling the quiet pull toward something deeper, something more rooted, the Threshold retreat is an invitation to begin. You do not need prior experience. You only need a willingness to show up, to listen, and to trust what unfolds.
For those who feel the call, this work does not end here. The Women’s Threshold Retreat is the beginning of a longer arc of initiation, one that can open into the deeper container of a Vision Quest and continue through Mirroring Training. In this way, the circle keeps flowing, offering ongoing support, reflection, and a place to return as you walk your path.
The land is patient. And something within you already knows the way.
