The Quantum Harvest Gathering
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Host & Curator
Brant Richards
Host & Designer
Dana Borlongan
For five days this September, eight of us will gather at Hacienda San Andrés—an estate built in 1532 below the majestic Mexican volcano, Popocatépetl. Guided by local keepers of the wisdom and rituals of the fire and the forest, we will cook barbacoa in an earthen pit, sweat in a temazcal ceremony as the Nahua have done for centuries, and forage the volcano's slopes for a feast in the fields. But the breathtaking analog beauty of this landscape is ultimately just the container for the real work: finding each other. Each night, we will convene around a single fire-lit table to ask how we might consciously integrate accelerating technology with deep human wisdom to build a future of collective flourishing rather than fragmentation. With only eight seats available, this journey is an invitation to stop theorizing about the abundant life and spend a week actually remembering how to live it.
A private transfer leaves Mexico City, the peace of the mountain air replacing the hustle of the city streets.
A fire is lit, the table is set, and the first dinner is shared. Over slow food and generous wine, the faces around you come into view. Tonight asks nothing of you but to arrive, in body and in spirit.
Guided by a keeper of the tradition, we honor the animal and give thanks for its life, then learn to season it, prepare the earthen pit, and set the barbacoa to slow-cook in the ground. It will cook beneath the earth until tomorrow's feast.
As the barbacoa progresses, we enter the temazcal, the ancient sweat lodge the Nahua have used for centuries as a ritual of release and renewal. Inside, in fire, breath, and darkness, under the care of a temazcalero who guides the ceremony, the heat draws out what isn't ours to carry, and returns us, lighter, to ourselves.
We walk the valley’s ancient barter market with a local historian, learning how trade flowed long before money existed. Fed by the volcanic soil of Popocatépetl, the region grows some of the most abundant, varied produce in central Mexico, and the stalls overflow with it. Here we gather the ingredients for the afternoon’s cooking.
Chef Marco, whose two acclaimed farm-to-table restaurants are fed by this very land, guides us in pressing tortillas and grinding salsas by hand. Then the barbacoa is lifted steaming from the earth, and the week’s feast is laid out in the open air, at a table set in the fields where the tortillas’ corn grew.
We climb the wooded flanks of Popocatépetl with a native guide who reads the land like a first language. September is mushroom season here, and they sprout from the forest floor in abundance, alongside the wild plants that nourish, flavor, and heal. Then, a comida en el campo, the old country feast: cazuelas of slow-cooked food, eaten on blankets in the open, the whole valley below.
Back in the garden she planted with her own hands, Mariana, co-owner of the hacienda, teaches the older healing knowledge: how tended plants become the tinctures, salves, and teas that calm the mind and steady the body.
We gather one last time over breakfast, unhurried, with no one in a rush to scatter. We arrived as strangers; we leave rested, nourished, quietly changed, together.
Each evening, the table gathers us back. Chef Marco takes us on a firelit, wine-coupled journey through Mexico's many culinary cultures. And we tend the conversations as carefully as the cuisine, curating them to open a little further as the week goes on, inviting ever more curiosity, vulnerability, and freedom to imagine aloud.
$4,700 covers your entire experience from the moment we meet you in Mexico City on Sunday until we return you on Thursday.
Your own suite: bedroom, living room, and bath, within the original hacienda stone.
Breakfast as you like it each morning, three lunches out in the landscape, and four chef dinners, each from a different Mexican culinary region.
All beverages throughout, wine and spirits included.
The barbacoa, the temazcal, the ancient barter market, cooking by hand with Chef Marco, the mushroom forage on Popocatépetl, and plant medicine in Mariana's garden.
Private group transfers from Mexico City and to every experience.
Every tip, for all guides, experts, and hacienda staff.
A set chosen to frame and deepen the journey.
Not included: airfare to Mexico City, personal spa and laundry, travel insurance, and anything you carry home from the market.
Brant has spent three decades in the friction between the machine code of reality and the human search for meaning — a Stanford Symbolic Systems mind who helped build the world’s first fully renewable-powered microgrid, and an artist and curator who has hosted over 100 dinners, retreats, and gatherings that foster belonging, open hearts, and nourish the spirit. His work focuses on cultivating the wisdom and community required to ensure that humanity's innovations benefit the flourishing of all.
Dana designs what she calls unrepeatable journeys. Over more than a decade creating private gatherings for royal households and heads of industry, she learned that the thousand small choices a guest never sees are what separate a beautiful trip from one that changes something. She comes to this as a partner at the table, building moments that catch you off guard with awe.
"Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive. And it is only by this meeting that a new world is born."
Anaïs NinFull payment of $4,700 secures your seat. Half is non-refundable; the other half is refundable if you cancel before August 15, after which the full amount is non-refundable.
People who’ve built something real and are turning from accumulating toward contributing, at home with technology and with older, slower wisdom, ready for what comes next to actually matter. Most of all, people who want a room where they can show up whole and meet others doing the same. It isn’t for those looking to network, to be sold to, or to be handled. There’s no stage here, no audience, no transaction, only eight people who give as much as they receive.
Hacienda San Andrés sits in the shadow of Popocatépetl, about two hours south of Mexico City. Fly into Mexico City International (MEX); we depart from a meeting point in the city on Sunday at 2pm, and a private transfer carries you the rest of the way. We return you to the city on Thursday by 2pm. Door to door — all you have to do is get yourself to Mexico City.
Your own suite within the original 1532 stone, bedroom, sitting room, and private bath, wrapped in a slower, centuries-old world built for rest.
Of course. Every guest is given their own suite, and couples are warmly welcome to share one. The price is the same either way, $4,700 per person. You’re paying for your place in the circle, not the bed, so there’s no supplement for a private suite and no discount for sharing. Come as you are.
Gentle. The one real exertion is the Wednesday forest walk on the volcano’s flanks, taken at an unhurried pace. The temazcal is intense by nature, heat, breath, darkness, but you move through it at your own pace, under the care of a temazcalero, and you’re free to step out whenever you need.
No. The week has a rhythm, but nothing is mandatory. Come to what calls you; rest when you need to.
Herbal, not psychedelic. Nothing psychoactive.
Yes. The kitchen is happy to work around vegetarian diets, allergies, and most restrictions — just tell us when you apply.
Wine and spirits flow generously at dinner, but they’re never the point. Non-drinkers are just as at home here.
Eight people, plus the two of us, hand-selected one conversation at a time. We host as participants, in the circle rather than above it.
Request an invitation using the form on this page. We read every application personally, and if it feels like a fit, we’ll set up a short call before anything is confirmed. The circle is composed by hand, so the conversation matters more than the form.
Full payment of $4,700 secures your seat. Half is non-refundable; the other half is refundable if you cancel before August 15, after which the full amount is non-refundable.