the Young Men's Journey

Our signature week-long retreat, centered in the 

Monongahela National Forest near Spruce Knob, WV, USA

For ages 13-18.

Investment for the 2024 Young Men’s Journey is $2,195.

Spaces Available in our Summer Intensive!

Final Enrollments due by July 10th.

Questions?

Email John Wepner

THE FATHER AND SON JOURNEY

A new journey track to re-establish and strengthen an essential bond between fathers and sons.

The Young Men’s Journey no long requires a negative COVID TEST for your attendance. We trust you’ll test if you are symptomatic. 

What To Expect

Want to learn more about yourself and build important life skills – ex. self-confidence?  Consider taking our weeklong wilderness journey for young men.  Here’s what you can expect…

Our Home Base

Find what is unique and significant in our wilderness journeys for young men.  Get all the logistical info you’ll need to know.

Journey Preparation

Ready to enroll or already registered?  Begin your Young Men’s Journey 2023 adventure by reviewing your journey preparations here…

An Invitation

Our summer weeklong intensive is for those who want to experience a very unique and life-changing adventure, to learn about a life lived with deeper meaning and vitality. Adventures take place that create opportunities for a significant shift – to move you beyond personal limitations and augment the track your life is on. Opportunities are created to move your life forward, to learn more deeply about yourself, and how you relate to others more authentically.

We trust that a young men’s journey will help in facing what is most essential inside yourself and demonstrate a future worth living into.

Young men hiking

An Orientation To The Journey

In 2024, the Young Men’s Hero’s Journey ® Summer Intensive will provide young men with the best of what we have to offer – our weeklong intensive wilderness journey. This experience has been designed to deeply engage the particular needs that young men face at this essential developmental stage, moving from a boy to a man. What we do during these wilderness experiences is actually live into the journey myth of the hero for the purpose of living a more meaningful life in connection with self and others.

The archetypal myth of the Hero’s Journey ® is an ageless and timeless immersion into the transformative currents of personal and planetary evolution. We do this through group council space and outdoor adventure elements. It calls us away from the familiar horizons of home and habit, and to venture forth into the unknown territories within us. It calls us to the adventure of finding and living into our one true, authentic, and vital life.

Through consistently ‘do-able’ action, we wake up the potential that lives within the consciousness of our human bodies and minds. On the journey, with each particular group activity, there is always the individual choice in how to engage or not. When these choices are made with others in a conscious way, it can lead to awakening a vital life within. Joseph Campbell says, “A vital person vitalizes the world.”

Meet Your Guide - John Wepner

Meet Your Guide - John Wepner

Young Men's Journey Program Director

JOHN WEPNER is a licensed psychotherapist. He has a private practice in Hickory, NC where he works and lives with his wife and two children.

John brings himself, along with supportive staff, to provide an enlivening and grounding container to face the challenges and adventures ahead for each personal journey, and rooting the work in a living, dynamic, emotional and psychological in-depth group.

John is passionate about helping young adults navigate the tumultuous years of adolescence and early adulthood to be able to do so with more confidence, purpose, and embodied vitality.

“In my opinion, my HJ experience was one of the most challenging and rewarding experiences I have had in my life. I have now a new perspective of my self that will lead me to grow as a person and live my life differently and better. Thank-you to all the HJ Staff for this great experience. I will be coming back soon for more magic.”

Agustin

Argentina, age 17

I learned more life lessons and values here than I have in my eleven years of school, and I have never grown so close to a group of fellow young men in my life (including any baseball teams). The most important thing I’ve taken away from this Journey are patience and understanding.”

James

Pennsylvania, age 17

Join The Journey Today

Be The Hero Of Your Own Life