Veteran led · Land based · Built for return

The mountain
is not the point.
The return is.

Some questions follow us home long after the uniform comes off. Who am I now? What is mine to do? Where do I belong? Veteran Rites brings Veterans and military families together through an online course, wilderness rites of passage and continuing community. We prepare for the crossing, meet what we carry on the land and bring the work into everyday life.

Find Your Next Step Explore our programs

Opening photograph: Matt Johnston · 2026

A tall wooden staff stands above gathered objects and antlers in the coulee, beneath blue sky and clouds.

The Arc

One continuing passage.

The work begins before the land and continues in ordinary life.

Preparation

Begin with care, readiness and freely chosen intention.

Severance

Step away from familiar roles and make room for the passage.

Threshold

Enter a held crossing on the land. Its meaning remains yours.

Incorporation

Carry the experience into relationships, choices and ordinary life.

Four movements of one Arc.

Understand the passage →

Why Veteran Rites exists

Military service initiates. Separation rarely brings us all the way home.

Service can give clear answers about identity, purpose, and belonging. Leaving can strip away the structure holding those answers in place.

We do not offer a return to who you were before. You have lived too much for that. We make room for the whole human being: what service gave, what it took, what no longer serves, and what remains yours to carry.

Veteran Rites is Veteran led and nonreligious. The work involves body, mind, story, relationship, community, land, responsibility, and the natural world.

Watch: Who Am I Without the Uniform?

Lay down what no longer serves.

Remember what it means to be human in a body.

Remember what it means to be human in community.

Start where you are

Find your way into the work.

People gathered in a circle in a meadow beside the forest.

For Veterans

Explore preparation, ceremony and continuing community. Begin with a conversation about what fits.

Start here →

Sunlit basalt cliffs and sagebrush beneath broad clouds, with a fence at the right edge.

For supporters

Help make preparation, wilderness ceremony and continuing connection accessible.

Ways to give →

Photograph: Matt Johnston · 2026

A purple flower blooms among pale leaves and branching shrubs.

For partners

Connect Veterans with the work, share resources or help strengthen the community that welcomes them home.

Talk about partnership →

Photograph: Matt Johnston · 2026

Already part of the community? Find gatherings and continuing resources.

Two members of the Veteran Rites community embracing on the land

Welcome home

A path for what comes next.

We welcome Veterans carrying questions of identity, purpose and belonging. Prepare in relationship, enter ceremony on the land, and bring the experience into everyday life.

Ceremony was never the destination. The measure is what becomes possible in family, work, community, conflict, service, and the first ordinary Tuesday after coming home.

Explore the Rite of Return

The life after ceremony

“Vision is not vision until we are able to take it back into our lives and live it.”

Meredith Little

Wilderness Vision Questing and the Four Shields of Human Nature, 1996 lecture booklet, printed p. 5.

Three offerings · One continuing return

Three offerings.
One continuing return.

Roots of Resilience

A six-week online course you can take on its own. It is also required preparation for the Rite of Return.

Explore Roots

Rite of Return

A 12-day outdoor ceremony with a four-day and four-night solo food fast at its center, followed by food, rest and welcome. Incorporation brings the encounter into relationships and everyday life after you return.

Explore the Rite

Circles of Return

Gatherings for structured speaking and listening, shared experience and continuing community. Each Circle has its own welcome and attendance details.

Find a Circle

The Four Shields

A living map.
Not a label.

Seasons help us notice the different parts of being human.

New beginnings. Belonging in a body. Honest reflection. Service in community. The Four Shields offer a way to locate ourselves without reducing a person to one part of the map.

This teaching comes through Steven Foster and Meredith Little and the School of Lost Borders, carried in Veteran Rites practice. It is distinct from our four-part Arc.