Life Passages
Counseling Mentoring Wilderness Work
Counseling Mentoring Wilderness Work
The Nature of My Counseling Practice
I offer a mix of traditional counseling, life coaching, and mentoring, all
while drawing upon insights borne from three decades of working with
people with serious illness and two decades serving as a wilderness
guide in the desert. Perhaps most uniquely, I do this counseling with
a rites-of-passage view, understanding that physical dying is the
greatest rite of passage—a culmination of all “the small deaths”
we must navigate throughout a lifetime.
I consider this work to be a kind of spiritual mentoring, as I support
others who are looking to deepen a relationship with both their
inner nature and Outer Nature. I consider my primary task here
to be tracking a client's “soul story,” as that person opens more deeply
to who they are and how they want to show up in the world.
For some, an added dimension of our work together may be the offering of guidance and support as they look to become either an end-of-life practitioner or a wilderness guide.
while drawing upon insights borne from three decades of working with
people with serious illness and two decades serving as a wilderness
guide in the desert. Perhaps most uniquely, I do this counseling with
a rites-of-passage view, understanding that physical dying is the
greatest rite of passage—a culmination of all “the small deaths”
we must navigate throughout a lifetime.
I consider this work to be a kind of spiritual mentoring, as I support
others who are looking to deepen a relationship with both their
inner nature and Outer Nature. I consider my primary task here
to be tracking a client's “soul story,” as that person opens more deeply
to who they are and how they want to show up in the world.
For some, an added dimension of our work together may be the offering of guidance and support as they look to become either an end-of-life practitioner or a wilderness guide.
Four Seasons of Storytelling:
Following Your Own Life Thread
Throughout 2025, I've been offering a new program called Three Seasons of Storytelling, which has brought together a cohort of people who meet every month to explore themes drawn from my own memoir, The Soul's Red Thread (see below for more about this book). This has not been a book club, but rather a chance for participants to tell their own life stories. The program has been such a great success that in 2026 I'll be calling in two different cohorts and this time for four seasons instead of three. Both groups are almost full.
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The Redwood Cohort
enrolling through EarthWays
This North Bay-based group will meet in person every month from January 2026 to December 2026.
For more information or to enroll: Four Seasons of Storytelling - EarthWays
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The Eagle Cohort
enrolling through the School of Lost Borders
This cohort invites people from all over the world to meet once in the Bay Area for a weeklong session in September of 2026. All other meetings, going from June 2026 to April 2027, will be held on Zoom.
For more information or to enroll: Four Seasons of Storytelling – School of Lost Borders
Note: A person joining the Eagle Cohort should have the motivation and discipline
to do a monthly day walk on their own prior to each Zoom gathering.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Following Your Own Life Thread
Throughout 2025, I've been offering a new program called Three Seasons of Storytelling, which has brought together a cohort of people who meet every month to explore themes drawn from my own memoir, The Soul's Red Thread (see below for more about this book). This has not been a book club, but rather a chance for participants to tell their own life stories. The program has been such a great success that in 2026 I'll be calling in two different cohorts and this time for four seasons instead of three. Both groups are almost full.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The Redwood Cohort
enrolling through EarthWays
This North Bay-based group will meet in person every month from January 2026 to December 2026.
For more information or to enroll: Four Seasons of Storytelling - EarthWays
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The Eagle Cohort
enrolling through the School of Lost Borders
This cohort invites people from all over the world to meet once in the Bay Area for a weeklong session in September of 2026. All other meetings, going from June 2026 to April 2027, will be held on Zoom.
For more information or to enroll: Four Seasons of Storytelling – School of Lost Borders
Note: A person joining the Eagle Cohort should have the motivation and discipline
to do a monthly day walk on their own prior to each Zoom gathering.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
from the book's back cover
This book’s story spans a half-century. It begins when the author,
Scott Eberle, leaves his home at age seventeen, full of hopes and hormones. It ends with him about to turn sixty-seven, standing on a bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean as a fogbank is billowing in. Scott is healthy, and yet age alone has him aware that the White Shroud of Death is also on the horizon, soon to roll in.
This fifty-year story—a passage from adolescence to elderhood—is both conventional and unconventional. Scott is, at once, a pragmatic physician serving others in the ordinary world and a seeker of mystical states that are only found in the High Country of the Mind and Heart.
On this long passage, Scott follows his own life thread, The Soul’s Red Thread. This leads him to the bedsides of people who are dying, where he begins to learn some of life’s deepest lessons. It guides him out onto a desert mountain, first to do his own four-day vision fast and then to become a desert guide for others. It takes him deep inside on extended meditation retreats, where he travels to the darkest recesses of his psyche, ultimately meeting his greatest monster. And late in life, it takes him on a guided medicine journey where Mother Psilocybin serves as truth serum for the soul, revealing more lessons to be learned as he continues walking toward death’s horizon.
My Background
I am a wilderness guide, a physician, an educator, and an author.
I worked for nearly 20 years as an AIDS specialist and more than 30 years as a hospice physician. During the traditional part of my physician career, now ended, I sat with hundreds of people who either were struggling with a serious illness or were making their own final crossing.
In 2001, I also started working as a wilderness guide. Two years later, in 2003, I joined the guiding staff at School of Lost Borders. I've guided a wide array of wilderness programs, with two special interests. The first is exploring how the three phases of a wilderness rites of passage -- death, in between worlds, rebirth -- are informed by my many years of sitting with people who were physically dying. This the topic of my first book, The Final Crossing: Learning to Die in Order to Live. My second interest, drawn from being a longtime student of Buddhism, is seeing how a person can cultivate an open, spacious heart-mind, both by being alone in a wide-open desert and by sitting quietly on a meditation cushion. Both of these interests make up a major part of my new book The Soul's Red Thread: Memoirs of a Guide.
I worked for nearly 20 years as an AIDS specialist and more than 30 years as a hospice physician. During the traditional part of my physician career, now ended, I sat with hundreds of people who either were struggling with a serious illness or were making their own final crossing.
In 2001, I also started working as a wilderness guide. Two years later, in 2003, I joined the guiding staff at School of Lost Borders. I've guided a wide array of wilderness programs, with two special interests. The first is exploring how the three phases of a wilderness rites of passage -- death, in between worlds, rebirth -- are informed by my many years of sitting with people who were physically dying. This the topic of my first book, The Final Crossing: Learning to Die in Order to Live. My second interest, drawn from being a longtime student of Buddhism, is seeing how a person can cultivate an open, spacious heart-mind, both by being alone in a wide-open desert and by sitting quietly on a meditation cushion. Both of these interests make up a major part of my new book The Soul's Red Thread: Memoirs of a Guide.
