Iona Pilgrimage
where pilgrimage becomes a rite of belonging
Waymarkers
Iona Pilgrimage
July 2-9, 2027
Come walk the ancient paths.
Come remember what is holy.
Come be transformed through the rites of pilgrimage.
Enter into the rites of pilgrimage through a sacred journey to the Isle of Iona—a threshold place where land, sea, and Spirit meet. This intimate, women-only pilgrimage is a living container shaped by the archetypal stages of the pilgrimage round, woven together with Celtic Christian wisdom and eco-spiritual practice. Here, the rites of pilgrimage become a trinitarian braid of story, soul, and Earth—guiding you into a deep, embodied awakening to the sacred ecology within and around you.
Early Bird Registration Price: $3500.00
Regular Rate Registration Price: $3700.00
“Place is the pilgrim’s text. The land itself holds the wisdom, the wounds, and the wonder that guide us toward transformation. Pilgrimage is not about going somewhere else—it’s about becoming more fully at home in the sacredness of here.”
— Mary DeJong
Are you feeling called to trace ancient steps—to discover, and remember, your wild and precious life?
Do you long for a deeper connection with the Divine through the wild and wondrous world?
Perhaps you stand at a threshold, yearning for a way to mark a transition with meaning, ritual, and memory.
Enter into the rites of pilgrimage on the sacred Isle of Iona—a transformative women’s pilgrimage retreat set at the wild edges of sea and sky. Held within a supportive circle of women, this journey weaves together Celtic spirituality, eco-spirituality, and ancient pilgrimage practices to create a powerful rite of passage for modern seekers.
This is not a typical vacation—it is a spiritual initiation. As you walk the rugged beauty of Iona, you are invited into deep listening—both to the land and to your own inner landscape. Through ritual, story, solitude, and shared reflection, the rites of pilgrimage awaken memory, imagination, and a renewed sense of purpose.
Rooted in the archetypal stages of pilgrimage—departure, crossing, encounter, and return—this retreat offers a profound pathway into personal and ecological transformation. You will engage the “wild text” of creation, discovering eco-spirituality as a way of reading both Earth and sacred tradition anew. Here, soul and soil, seasons and spirit, are remembered as deeply interconnected.
This immersive pilgrimage experience invites you into wonder, reverence, and belonging. It is a call to reawaken your relationship with the Earth and to embody a more connected, conscious way of living.
You will not leave unchanged.
You will return home with a deeper sense of connection, clarity, and calling—
carrying the rhythm of this sacred place within you.
What is Included
Refuge & Nourishment
Lodging
8 days / 7 nights on the sacred Isle of Iona—staying at the Iona Pods, a contemporary expression of the Celtic hermitage: simple, welcoming, and thoughtfully designed for easeful access to the wild elements of sea, sky, and land.Meals
Enjoy 7 nourishing breakfasts and 6 evening meals lovingly prepared by the team at The Rookery Cafe—a bespoke island café known for its delicious, comforting, locally inspired fare. Breakfasts will be enjoyed onsite at the Iona Pods; evening meals are served within the welcoming setting of the Iona Heritage Centre, housed in the historic former Church of Scotland manse.Please note: Lunches are not included and can be enjoyed at your leisure around the island. One evening meal, shared at the Columba Hotel, will also be at your own expense.
Pilgrimage Experiences
This journey is richly layered with opportunities to encounter the island’s history, ecology, and sacred story:
Guided Visits & Local Encounters
Explore the living heritage of Iona through visits to the Abbey, nearby islands such as Staffa, teachings on local geography, and time with island artisans. All excursions are optional, though some require moderate mobility and are not fully ADA accessible.Daily Circle & Ritual Space
Through shared circle, we will engage the archetypal stages of pilgrimage, Celtic spirituality, and eco-spiritual practice. Daily guided reflections and journaling invitations will help you listen inwardly, moving from outer landscape into your inner wild terrain. You will be invited into the ancient inquiry: “Pilgrim, what ails thee?” Gatherings will take place across the island—in wild coastal stretches, near St Oran's Chapel, and other sacred sites—holding space for ceremony, descent, and transformation.Personal Time & Silence
Each day honors spaciousness for solitude, rest, and direct relationship with the land. This is essential to the rites of pilgrimage—allowing your soul to speak in its own time.Guided Walks & Wild Exploration
You will be invited beyond the well-worn paths into hidden coves, quiet beaches, and untamed edges—places where the island reveals its deeper beauty.
Preparation & Integration
From the moment you register, you will be supported with thoughtful guidance for both the practical and spiritual dimensions of your journey. You will receive detailed travel information, along with reflections and resources to prepare you for the stages of pilgrimage—and to help you integrate what unfolds upon your return home.
Personal Pilgrimage Preparation Call Included in your journey is a one-hour, one-on-one preparatory session with Mary—an intimate space to begin your pilgrimage before you ever set foot on Iona. Together, you will gently enter the ancient inquiry, “Pilgrim, what ails thee?”, deepening your intention and attuning to what is ready to be transformed. This session also offers personalized guidance for your travel plans and space to ask any questions, ensuring you arrive grounded, prepared, and already in motion along the path.
“Help me to journey beyond the familiar...and break fresh ground with You.”
Your Island Sanctuary
Pictures used with permission from the Iona Pods
During our pilgrimage, we will dwell within the quiet simplicity of the Iona Pods—a place intentionally designed with the pilgrim in mind. Echoing the form and spirit of ancient Celtic monastic cells and the nearby Iona Abbey, each pod offers a modern-day hermitage: a small, sacred space for rest, reflection, and integration.
Set upon a family-held croft, the Iona Pods overlook the sound toward Mull’s mountains, with wide skies and ever-changing light. Whether you are sipping tea at your doorway, gathering near the fire pit, or watching the sun soften over Dùn Ì, this place invites a deep exhale.
Here, your lodging becomes part of the rites of pilgrimage—an invitation into stillness, solitude, and presence within a landscape long known for its thin places.
Hermitage-Inspired Comfort
Each pod is double occupancy, offering gentle, restorative comfort after days shaped by walking, ritual, and deep listening. Many pods open to views of sea or garden, where the rhythms of wind and wave accompany your rest.
Standard pods include a kettle, microwave, mini-fridge, and hot plate, with communal facilities for toilets, showers, and washing-up. All bedding and linens are provided, allowing you to arrive with ease and settle into the rhythm of island life.
These spaces are intentionally simple—designed not for excess, but for presence.
Feeding the Body, Mind, and Spirit
Nourishment from Land & Table
We are delighted to partner with The Rookery Cafe, whose care and culinary craft will nourish us throughout our journey.
Each morning begins with a shared breakfast—berries, grains, and warm drinks—offering grounding and gentle connection at the start of the day. In the evenings, we gather in The Rookery’s dining room, reserved for our group, to receive thoughtfully prepared, locally inspired meals.
Menus will be seasonal and set, with vegetarian and vegan options available. While not all dietary preferences can be accommodated, you are welcome to supplement with personal items stored in your pod or sourced from the island shop.
This rhythm of shared meals becomes its own quiet ritual—rooting us in gratitude, community, and the abundance of the land.
Pictures shared with permission from The Rookery. See more of their culinary delights on their Instagram page.
Grounded Teaching & Council Circles
Our days together are shaped and held by the power of the circle. Pilgrimage itself is a circular journey—you begin at home, and you return home, changed. In the same way, each day unfolds in a sacred rhythm: we open in morning circle with teaching and reflection, and we close in evening circle through the sacred practice of Council.
In these Daily Circle Sessions, we enter the living heart of the rites of pilgrimage—exploring the archetypal movements of the Heroine’s Journey, rediscovering the depth of Celtic spirituality, and awakening a renewed imagination through eco-spiritual practice. Through prayer, ritual, and rewilding practices, we remember our belonging to the Earth and to one another.
Most of our circles will be held within the sheltering space of the Iona Pods—a place we return to each day as a kind of communal hearth. At times, we will also gather out on the land itself: along the teal-tinted north shore, near St Oran's Chapel, and in other sacred pockets of the island where the landscape becomes our teacher.
Our evenings are grounded in The Sacred Art of Council—a contemplative, relational practice of speaking and listening from the heart. In Council, we slow down. We listen without judgment. We release the need to fix or advise, and instead practice presence, empathy, and “not knowing.” It is a space of deep witnessing, where each voice is honored and each story held with care.
In this rhythm of circle—morning and evening, speaking and listening, inner and outer—you are gently guided into a deeper conversation with your own soul, the community around you, and the living world that holds you.
Soulful Excursions & Wild Wanders
Our time on Iona is enriched through a series of thoughtfully curated encounters that deepen your relationship to this sacred, storied landscape. These are not simply tours—they are extensions of the rites of pilgrimage, inviting you to meet the island through history, ecology, creativity, and wonder.
We will step into the living tradition of Iona Abbey, meet the Nunnery’s Sheela-na-Gig, walk the ancient paths with local guides who carry the island’s stories, and venture out to Staffa—where sea, stone, and sky converge in awe at Fingal’s Cave and the nesting puffins. Along the way, you will receive insight into Iona’s unique geology, encounter the meaning woven into place names and coastal lore, and meet local artists whose work is shaped by deep ancestral connection to this land.
You will also be invited into participatory, place-based experiences: walking the labyrinth and shoreline of St Columba's Bay, transforming a found stone into a simple wearable talisman, and engaging the island’s creative pulse through its folk art traditions—including teachings connected to the Gaelic lineage of Aosdàna, the poetic keepers of story and memory.
Throughout the week, guided walks will lead you beyond well-worn paths to hidden coves, quiet beaches, and wild edges—places where the island reveals its more intimate beauty. These hikes are offered most days and invite a moderate level of physical activity.
While these experiences are a treasured part of the pilgrimage, all excursions are optional. Please note that some walks and locations are not fully ADA accessible.
Spaciousness is also essential to the journey. Each day includes time for personal solitude, with one full day devoted to silence and contemplation—allowing the land itself to speak.
Together, these encounters form a living tapestry—where Celtic spirituality, pilgrimage, ecospirituality, and sacred rewilding are not only explored, but embodied. Through them, the island becomes both teacher and threshold, guiding you into a deeper, more intimate experience of belonging within the living world.
Sacred Ritual & Personal Ceremony
As an essential thread of the rites of pilgrimage, you will be invited into personal ritual and ceremony—gentle, intentional practices that help weave your outer journey into the depths of your inner life. Here, the path beneath your feet becomes a mirror of the path within, guiding you from landscape into soulscape.
Through daily reflection and poetic inquiry, you will be encouraged to listen closely and give voice to what is stirring within you. This is ritual not as performance, but as presence—an elemental way of praying, noticing, and responding. With the land as companion and the wind as witness, you will engage the ancient question carried by pilgrims across time:
“What ails thee?”
You will also be guided in shaping your own Celtic-inspired encircling prayers and blessings—simple, sacred words that gather and hold your life with intention. These personal rituals become vessels of integration, helping to root your experience into body, memory, and story.
In this way, the pilgrimage is not left behind—it is carried within you.
Sample Schedule
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Pilgrims arrive to Iona after making their long way across the mainland by train, water crossings through the Inner Hebrides by ferry, and islands by bus. We encounter the ancient pilgrimage question, “Pilgrim, what ails thee?”
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Morning Teaching Circle on Celtic Spirituality and self-guided tours at the Iona Abbey and the Iona Heritage Museum. We will be introduced to the variety of ancient stones that are unique to Iona.
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All journeys of transformation require an initiation, and the Island Pilgrimage to Columba’s Bay connects us to the role of grief in this process through Columba’s story of exile and our own personal losses. This day-long pilgrimage walk will include invitations into personal ceremony, and meeting with an island artisan who will transform your found treasure into a wearable keepsake.
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Morning Circle teaching on Rewilding; restoring our whole relationship with the Wild. We will look to saints who were in deep relationship with animals—Columba and his horse, Cuthbert and the otters, Brigid and the Oyster Catcher. An afternoon excursion to Staffa Island will invite our own deepening into relationship with our wild kin.
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Morning Circle teaching on eco-spirituality and the sacramentality of land and the Celtic idea of nature as the original scripture. In the afternoon we will take a walking tour of the North End of Iona, taking time on the sandy beaches an navigating the variety of coast line and learning of the stories wildlife and history and place names of this well known part of Iona.
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We enter into a day-long silence, to be in deeper conversation with our soul and the Spirit of this Place. Personal rituals and ceremonies will be invited as a way to make a commitment it will “kill you to break,” in the words of the poet, David Whyte. We break our silence through breaking bread together at the Columba Hotel together.
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Our Morning circle will engage the rites of pilgrimage stage of The Return, and the role of “Bringing Back the Boon.” We will be guided by the Hasidic tale of Isaac’s Dream as we wonder about what dreams are brought back Home? We will have an afternoon session with Aosdana’s Mhairi Killin and learn about her art and craft, and share a wee dram as well! !
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Your Iona Pilgrimage commences and we understand that we must sometimes travel far to find home at your feet. The return home begins.
Praise For The Iona Pilgrimage
“I found meaning not only in the time on Iona, but also in the preparation for the journey and the return to home.”
— Former Pilgrim
“I was drawn into depth with Mary’s presence, skill and care, into breadth with her programing and invited guests and into the sacredness and beauty of the land by walkabouts.”
— Former Pilgrim
“The Waymarkers’ Iona Pilgrimage was an awesome experience! It was my retirement gift to myself. It was interesting, scenic, freeing, and fun! Mary did a wonderful job guiding us through this magical landscape and the pilgrimage process. It was intimate, personal, connecting, caring, supportive, and a grand adventure! Don’t miss it!”
“Waymarkers’ Iona Pilgrimage offered a time of deep tranquility, peace, and contemplation that is not easily accessible via urban life. There is something profoundly important in intentionally planning a pilgrimage and time away from the places we frequent daily at home. Away, we are able to remember who we are separate from our roles, hear our voices more fully, and readjust our pace and way of being in the world.”
— Former Pilgrim
Meet Your Guide
Mary DeJong
Mary DeJong is the founder of Waymarkers and an urban naturalist based in Seattle’s Rainier Valley. She integrates spiritual ecology, eco-theology, eco-psychology, deep ecology, and Celtic spirituality into a living practice of sacred place-making and ecological awakening. With a Master’s in Theology & Culture from The Seattle School of Theology & Psychology, post-graduate certificates from Yale University in Ecology & Religion, and advanced studies in ecopsychology and mythology at Pacifica Graduate Institute, Mary brings a richly interdisciplinary lens to the exploration of human belonging within the more-than-human world.
Influenced by Celtic saints, mythic traditions, and the emerging field of ecopsychology, Mary has been leading pilgrimage groups to Iona, Scotland since 2004. These journeys, alongside her rewilding retreats in the Pacific Northwest, invite participants into deep communion with land, soul, and the sacred dimensions of place. Her work is rooted in over twenty-five years of study and practice within Celtic Christian spirituality—her maternal ancestral tradition—and is further shaped by her training as a graduate of the School of Celtic Consciousness, founded by John Philip Newell.
Mary’s teaching emphasizes the recovery of the sacred within creation, the re-storying of human relationship with the Earth, and the cultivation of what she calls a Theology of Place. This work is also embodied in her local practice of ecological restoration in a neighborhood woodland, where she leads community-based restoration events and facilitates encounters with the wider community of life. Through pilgrimage, story, and ecological practice, Mary guides others toward a renewed and intimate participation in the sacred wild.
Getting Here
Getting to the Isle of Iona involves taking a ferry from the mainland to the Isle of Mull, driving or taking a bus across Mull to Fionnphort, and boarding a short 10-minute passenger ferry to Iona. The primary route is via Caledonian MacBrayne ferries from Oban to Craignure, followed by a 35-mile drive.
Key Steps to Iona:
Step 1: Get to Oban. Travel by car, train, or bus to the ferry terminal in Oban on the west coast of Scotland.
Step 2: Ferry to Isle of Mull.
Take the CalMac ferry from Oban to Craignure (approx. 45-60 minutes).
Step 3: Travel to Fionnphort. From Craignure, drive west, take a bus, or use a taxi about 35 miles (approx. 1 hour) to Fionnphort on the southwest tip of Mull.
Step 4: Ferry to Iona. Take the regular 10-minute passenger ferry from Fionnphort to Iona.
A detailed itinerary is provided to all registered pilgrims.
The Fine Print
Early Bird Registration Price: $3500.00
Regular Rate Registration Price: $3700.00
You reserve your spot on the 2027 Waymarkers Iona Pilrgrimage by registering with your $500 non-refundable/non-transferable deposit.
By registering before December 31, 2026, you will secure the Early Bird rate of $3500.00 with payment balance be due by March 1, 2027.
If you register with your $500 nonrefundable deposit after December 31, 2026, you will secure the Regular registration rate of $3700.00 and you will owe the payment balance by April 1, 2027. Trip balances will include a 3% electronic processing fee.
When you register for the Waymarkers Iona Pilgrimage, you are committing to the following requirements:
You are a minimum age of 18 years.
You will need a passport to travel to Scotland. U.S. citizens will need to procure an Electronic Travel Authorization (ETA). EU citizens can enter visa-free. You are responsible for checking with your local Scottish embassy for requirements.
You are committing to abide by the World Health Organization and local Scottish authorities recommendations for how to travel safely and well.
While there is one taxi on the island of Iona, walking is our primary mode of transportation. We will be walking to/from the Iona Hostel for most of our excursions and experiences. This pilgrimage will also require some hiking and walking over rough and muddy ground. You will need to be able to walk 2-6 miles comfortably over very uneven terrain and be able to climb stairs and over things. The day of the Iona Island Pilgrimage will require being able to walk eight miles over the course of the day. Much of our programming is not ADA accessible due to the nature of the island.
While there is intentional programming and effort to ensure that everyone has independent time and reflective solitude, much of this journey is taken within the company of others. Please be ready to graciously share sleeping quarters, meals, and one another's hearts and stories.
This journey invites a profound presencing and self-awareness, both of which are invited into growth as we engage the pilgrimage circuit. Your registration indicates that you are of sound mind and body, able to engage in both physical activity and soulful circle times that support the collective of our group experience.