2024-2025 Retreat
December 28, 2024 - January 3, 2025
A Message from the 2024-2025 Retreat:
I have recently returned from co-facilitating the Annual Tassajara Wildland Firefighter Retreat .
The retreat originated in 2019 when wildland firefighters who had helped protect Tassajara from fires over many years and been inspired by the deep practice they felt there, reached out to Tassajara leadership with a request to be able to come together in the valley to find refuge, rest and renewal and to learn mindfulness and meditation practices and tools to meet the ever increasing stress and dangers of their work.
Firefighters have enthusiastically described this yearly seven day offering as life-changing, deeply healing and transformative. Gathering each day in the retreat hall, an intimate community forms where it becomes safe to share difficult experiences and feelings and to find support for integrating new practices into work on the firelines, into fire culture and into daily life.
Throughout the week, as firefighters, residents, staff, and volunteers joined together to share delicious meals, authentic and real conversation, and the pace and pulse of life in the valley, a collective sense of intention and wholeheartedness arose that culminated in a final meeting in the dining room. All present experienced a palpable sense of many hearts beating as one, as Tassajara glowed with warm hand to warm hand practice relationship, a blending like milk and water in the activity of the way.
This was wondrously embodied and actualized on New Years Day as the 21 firefighters from all over the country became as one body and moved Mel Weitsman’s Memorial stone (500-700 lb estimate) up the steep grade to the Suzuki Roshi Memorial Site above Tassajara and set it in place as a giving-back for all they had learned and experienced. The beautiful stone moved up the narrow trail with collective care, harmony, ease and joy. Pictures and video are included - it was amazing and inspiring to witness!
Infinite gratitude to Tassajara and to San Francisco Zen Center, to generous volunteers and donors who make this retreat possible, to Lee and Marc Lesser co-facilators, to the firefighter retreat leaders, and to all wildland firefighters past, present, and future, who bring this practice opportunity to life--and to the mountains and stream, and the many beings of the valley.
It gives me great hope for the world.
Deep bows and warm smiles, Hoka Chris Fortin
What is the Wildland Firefighter Retreat?
The San Francisco Zen Center is offering this mindfulness-based retreat for Wildland Firefighters as a way to give back to these communities and to support our first responders. This 7-day retreat is intended to help provide refuge, rest and renewal as well as trauma-sensitive training in mindfulness, meditation and Sensory Awareness.
There will be a day of work to help to care for Tassajara and to integrate mindfulness practice into fire prevention and working on the land.
The retreat will have ample time to bathe in the hot springs, walk the wilderness trails (as weather permits), be nourished with home cooked meals, and relax in the quiet of this ancient valley.
And we will have the unique opportunity of seeing in the New Year together around a huge bonfire in this sacred valley.
There will also be 3 follow-up monthly Zoom calls in small groups after the retreat.
Your Facilitators
Lee Klinger Lesser
I lived at Tassajara as a Zen Student from 1980 - 1983. I have been leading workshops in the mindfulness practice of Sensory Awareness since 1976. My teacher of Sensory Awareness, Charlotte Selver, introduced me to Zen Center. She was good friends with Suzuki Roshi, the founder of Zen Center. For over 40 years, I have experienced how these practices enhance and enrich each other. I deeply trust in all of the life experience that is bringing us together for this groundbreaking work with you and I am grateful to be a part of it.
Chris Fortin
Hi everyone,
I live in the Russian River watershed, in the redwoods of Sonoma County CA. We have a big garden and orchard, it’s paradise - and we’re in fire country. We've been evacuated twice, the Walbridge fire was just up the road last year. My sister lost her Santa Rosa home, actually the whole neighborhood burned to the ground, in the Kincaid Fire of 2019. So, what you do is up close and personal and I’m deeply grateful for each of you and the work that you do. I have been practicing zen since 1976 and am a zen priest and dharma teacher transmitted by Zoketsu Norman Fischer in the Everyday Zen/Suzuki Roshi linage. I lead zen sanghas , retreats and workshops . I worked for many years as a licensed psychotherapist specializing in trauma and as a spiritual counselor integrating psychotherapy and spirituality.
Marc Lesser
I was a resident of the San Francisco Zen Center for 10 years, and was director of Tassajara, Zen Mountain Center. I'm a Zen priest and teacher with an MBA degree, and have launched and been CEO of three companies. I'm passionate about integrating Zen practice and mindfulness practice with leadership and business for the purpose of supporting positive change, internally and externally. I love spending time with my family, going for long walks, and watching almost any sport. I've written five books about mindful leadership, and wonder what's next - in writing, working, and living.