You have not been more than a mile from a paved road in years, and your phone has been within reach every waking hour of that time. You know it, and you have not done anything about it, because there is never a good week. Field is the part of membership that puts a date on it. Four times a year we go out. The rest of the year is preparation.
The number of days matters more than the miles. Researchers sent fifty-six people backpacking for four days with no electronics and gave them a creative problem-solving test on the fourth morning (Atchley, Strayer and Atchley, PLoS ONE, 2012). They scored fifty percent higher than a matched group tested before leaving. A Saturday hike does not do that. Something changes around the third day that does not happen sooner, and it is the reason each experience runs long enough to get there.
An experience is several days in wild country with the men in your circle, built around two or three domains, the ones you chose when you applied. One trip might be Hunt and Endurance: patience in weather, distance under load, cold water before breakfast. Another might be Mind and Heart: sitting at first light, breathwork, a remote viewing session after dark. The land is the classroom and patience is the skill. Phones go in a bag on the first morning and come out on the last.
Everything else in membership exists so that you arrive ready. The monthly evenings, the lab, the teammate you check in with each week, and the virtual experiences through the app: all of it is preparation, so the days in the field are spent on the work instead of on getting into shape for it. You come out with the two or three domains you picked worked deeper than a year of reading about them, and with men who saw you do it.
The first experience is fully refundable if it is not right. That is the only sales pitch.
What men tell us afterward is that they slept, that they thought about nothing for the first time in years, and that they came home with something to say to the people who were waiting.
Next experience: October, Northern California.
Atchley, Strayer & Atchley, PLoS ONE (2012)
Related: Hunt and Survival, Endurance, Mind