This story begins at Rustlers Valley, when I turned thirty-one in 1992. Before the tipi village, before everything — a photographer loses his studio to fire and finds himself drawn toward a new kind of life.

Arriving at Rustlers Valley on December 4, 1994, in a white VW Kombi with a border collie and a parrot. The community that would define 25 years of his life.

Three attempts before the vision arrived. In a tipi in the Maluti Mountains, around a fire with 25 people, the Shipibo patterns came — and things were never the same again.

He arrived at 4 a.m. on the grass outside the Sweat Lodge, just as Venus, the Morning Star, began to rise in the sky. We never made it back to the birthing pool.

On the word “shaman,” the difference between belief and knowing, and why it is the community’s unity and focus, not the shaman alone, that produces healing.

A week-long ritual of devotion in Florianópolis, Brazil. The harvesting, the hammering, the cooking, the closing ceremony — and what it means to lovingly create something sacred.

Over a year of suffering, misdiagnosis, and failed treatments — and then seven days of Yawanawa tobacco paste. A personal account of healing cutaneous leishmaniasis the traditional way.

The great Zulu sangoma, storyteller, and guardian of ancient African knowledge. The most powerful person I have ever encountered — and what he taught me about listening.