From my Kombi camper on the slopes of the mountain overlooking the spectacular valley, I had a view of Heaven. I was broke but had a front garden that money could not buy.
Rustlers Valley was an infamous South African community that sprang up in 1992 with the Annual Rustlers Valley Mountain Music Festival, later to become the Rustlers Easter Festival, which drew thousands of people by 1998. “Where the f#@* is Rustlers Valley?” was the first advertising campaign, and it worked well. Many people came. It became the centre for an organic shamanic community that stretched throughout South Africa, with links to the UK, Brazil, and the USA, a hub where many alternative cultures gathered to share their medicine. Suddenly in a very conservative South Africa, people were appearing who were not very visible before.
It was a time of absolute anarchy, we called it “mystical anarchy”, when many people felt as I did and were questioning our world. I connected with many teachers from emerging shamanic cultures, those who follow traditional and cultural teachings and those who were awakening to the concept of the inner shaman, learning through experience.
This was a “Free Zone,” advertised that anything goes and the police were only welcome if they attended as paying participants. It also had the reputation of being a “Sacred Place” where local Sangomas and Traditional Healers came on pilgrimages to communicate with the Ancestors.
Arriving: December 4, 1994
I was travelling in a white VW Kombi van, rebuilt and kitted out as a travel van with a bed, a fridge, and a gas stove. With me was my dog, a beautiful tricolour border collie called Aquila, and a parrot called Cupid, which my sister had asked me to take care of as it had taken to attacking her. Everything I owned was in the car.
I had slept the previous night in my car in a town called Harrismith and came into the valley in the early morning, driving along the deserted dirt road over the pass. I could see the features of a unique mountain. It looks like a dragon when one walks on top. It has a rock surface that looks like dragon scales.
The morning was crisp and cold. The sun was glowing over the sandstone mountain peaks, and the whole image was spectacular. I remember thinking that this was like entering another universe. The light was surreal, and the whips of mist were catching the rays of the rising sun and sending out rainbows of sparkle and colours over the dew-laden mountains.
As I rounded the corner toward the Rustlers gates, four South African policemen in full combat gear stepped in front of my car. They had a sticker in their sights that said “Hemp will save the planet.” They poked around, hassled me a bit, but were more interested in the talking parrot than trying to bust me. They let me continue, and I arrived where I would live for the next 25 years.
The Firekeeper and the Tipi Project
To be able to stay, I had to negotiate with the owner of the farm. I would be the firekeeper and had to make sure there were always fires burning at the festivals and gatherings that happened there frequently. After a while, I became known as the firekeeper.
I proposed to the farm owner that I would like to recreate a Native American Tipi village. I would source the tipis and the poles, and network with the dwellers, thus adding to the vibe of the festivals. He accepted. Over the next 15 years, I would set up tipis wherever we went: Splashy Fen Festival, Shongweni Festival, Grahamstown Festival, and three festivals a year at Rustlers Valley during Christmas, Easter, and Spring Equinox.
I did not have any money. A fire in Cape Town had taken everything — my photographic studio, my darkrooms, years of work. I had arrived as a fashion photographer without a camera. So I decided to let it go. I made a new contract with the universe. My tools were a didgeridoo which I was learning to play, and a djembe drum, which I had made myself.
For the next six years, I lived in a tipi in the mountains without a job or a bank account. By December 1996, I had built a tipi circle around a 36-point medicine wheel made with huge standing stones, 30 metres in circumference, based on Sun Bear’s “Dancing with the Wheel.” The circle had tipis at a 60-metre circumference. It was beautiful. And it was in one of these tipis in the circle around the medicine wheel that I experienced my first contact with Ayahuasca. Opening my world to a whole new level of perception.
“Rustlers Valley was a place where the veil between the worlds was extremely thin.”
The End of an Era
Rustlers Valley was a place where the veil between the worlds was extremely thin. Unfortunately, this is no longer true. The fire in 2007 which burned down the entire infrastructure of Rustlers Valley mountain lodge, closed that portal. The farm was sold soon after. It was clear to me that it was the people who had created this sacred space and that all spaces are sacred, that working with the love of community was what created this space. Without the community, it was spectacular but no longer the Rustlers Valley we knew.
The farm was sold. The new owners changed the name from “Rustlers Valley” to “Eagle Valley.” The magic had ended. I left in 2014.