In the Tantric Buddhist tradition I studied for many years, it is said that after death, a person’s spirit lingers near those left behind. Sometimes it remains close out of love; sometimes out of attachment, anger, confusion, or unfinished business.

The teachings describe a spirit experiencing anguish at suddenly being without a body, still perceiving loved ones immersed in grief, yet no longer able to communicate with them.

My teachers encouraged us to reassure the departed through offerings of their favorite foods, scents, flowers, incense and music, and by speaking to them as if they were still with us. These acts of remembrance ared said to help the spirit relax and travel more peacefully through the Ocean of Death.

Years later, after studying with Malidoma Patrice Somé of the Dagara people of Burkina Faso, West Africa, and participating with him in community grief rituals, my understanding of death expanded. The Tibetan teachings merged with something more visceral: dancing for the dead, the dying, and the sick.

When my heart broke from the devastating ending of a relationship, followed shortly afterward by my mother’s suicide more than twenty years ago, I threw myself headfirst into the fire of grief and have danced continuously ever since.

During the years (2004-2008) I offered the Gypsie Nation dances in Hawai’i, Washington, Montana, Colorado and New Mexico, I danced five or six times a week. Every dance became an offering of gratitude and love to my ancestors.

Today I dance in Santa Fe and along my travels in the US, Europe and New Zealand, where community dances go by many names: ecstatic dance, free-form dance, open floor dances, dance church. They are consciously held spaces that are substance-free, fragrance-free, and where conversation is suspended on the dance floor.

I frequently take a road trip through the Bay Area, up to Seattle, and back to Santa Fe to visit aging friends. Along the way I dance in Salt Lake City, South Lake Tahoe, Sausalito, Nevada City, Mt Shasta, Ashland, and Seattle.

I enter every dance carrying someone in my heart.

More than forty years ago, a loud voice from Spirits told me that if I entered dance with a clear intention, my distractions would lessen and my energy would become less self-absorbed, and therefore freer.

I have followed that instruction ever since.

Over the decades, dancing wherever I have lived or traveled, I have repeatedly experienced profound states of bliss while dancing for the dead or the dying. I have watched the fierce energy of grief transform itself into joy through the chaos and beauty of communal dance rituals.

Dancing my grief, dancing for those I love and have loved, has become my deepest spiritual practice.

What I sense is that the bliss generated in the body can be offered to those who have crossed over. That somehow the deceased may partake in that medicine and be nourished by it as they travel through death.

My teachers often said that bliss experienced through meditation, love, or ecstatic states travels farther than we can imagine, reaching the furthest edges of an infinite universe.

A couple of months ago, my beloved captain Riccardo, died unexpectedly.

I learned of his death only hours after it happened and two hours before a dance.

What an honor it was to dedicate that dance to him!

Riccardo was a man I cherished deeply. We spent months together at sea and shared many intimate conversations during long passages.

Since his death, I have danced more than a dozen times for him.

Because he was such an extraordinary navigator, I jokingly asked his Spirit to take charge of navigation during my dances—to ensure that the force of my movement would not harm me or anyone else.

And to help guide the aging rigging of this pirate body through the gravity-defying acrobatics that sometimes arise when trance takes over!

Every dance for Riccardo was sublime, tender, luminous, and profound beyond words.

And every day since his passing, I feel him living inside me. I recognize his upright bearing, his noble stance, his kindness, and his lightness of spirit.

Dancing with the dead, the sick or the dying contains a regenerative power that nearly every indigenous culture seems to have understood.

Across traditions, ritual dance serves to honor the departed, soothe their anguish, support those left behind, and maintain harmony between the realm of the living and the realm of the ancestors.

The village dance was community medicine.

It celebrated life. It prayed to the ancestors for guidance. It asked the spirits of nature for sustenance. It gave grief a place to move.

Beyond the liberation that comes through vigorous movement and trance-inducing rhythms, these dances can also open unexpected doors: insights, visions, and sometimes what feels like communication from those who have gone before us.

The people I have encountered throughout my life, and for whom I have danced after their deaths, have become a kind of retinue.

They seem to delight in the village dance.

They help activate the bliss that soothes the anguish of the departed and softens the paralysis of grief among the living.

And perhaps most importantly, they have kept me safe.

For there are moments in dance—especially in the fires of trance—when the pull of the beyond feels irresistible, when the body seems to leave ordinary reality behind and move as though floating through space.

In those moments, I have often felt the ancestors close at hand, steadying my course, watching over me, and gently guiding me back toward life.

Travel safely, my beloved Riccardo.

I will keep dancing for you and for your family, and do my best to send you enough wind to power your sails toward your new destination.

Thank you for blessing us with your grace (see Ricardo’s Radiance).

And stay in touch.

I am still listening.

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Riccardo Benoni was a beloved Italian friend and superyacht captain with whom I had the pleasure to sail for several months. He died suddenly at 44 years old.

I met Riccardo in 2024 in Panama, when he took me on as crew to cross the Pacific. He and his partner, Elletra—also a captain—were delivering a brand-new Solaris 50 to New Zealand with their two young children, then aged two and five.

They had just crossed the Atlantic after departing from Mallorca, Spain, where they live. I joined the boat along with Emanuela, a close friend of the family and an experienced sailor.

During a week of engine and systems maintenance, Elletra and Emanuela provisioned the boat meticulously, ensuring that each meal was nothing short of a feast.

After time at Shelter Bay Marina, we set off—through the Panama Canal and on to the Galápagos.

From there, Elletra flew back to Europe for work, leaving Riccardo, Emanuela, and me to take the children across the Pacific—a 19-day trade-wind crossing to the Marquesas Islands.

Riccardo’s masterful weather routing and sailing made the crossing both comfortable and fast.

We averaged 160 nautical miles per day—a strong cruising pace for a yacht of that size. At night, we reduced sail for safety. During the day, we often set a Code Zero sail, perfectly suited to the trade winds.

With Emanuela in the galley—a professional cook on superyachts—we dined remarkably well. Evenings began with aperitivo—prosciutto, parmesan, olives, mini pizzas—followed by pasta cooked al dente, as only Italians can do.

I fell in love with Parmigiano during that crossing—a treasonous act for a Frenchman—and gained ten pounds in the process.

Riccardo, beyond being a captain, was a constant presence in his children’s lives. When we caught fish, he prepared perfect tuna steaks at sunset. There is nothing quite like a fine dinner, in swim shorts, in the middle of the Pacific.

Emanuela cared for the children’s daily needs, ensuring Luna kept up with her schooling, while I assisted Zeno in building elaborate cushion forts in the cockpit. The galley even had a yoga swing that the kids used like circus performers; miraculously, nothing was damaged and no one was hurt.

On the long Pacific swells, Zeno would run laps around the spacious cockpit, at times appearing to float before crashing down in bursts of fearless energy—his spirit mirroring Riccardo’s: daring, precise, and efficient.

Shortly after arriving in the Marquesas, a near-fatal accident left Emanuela incapacitated (see Chaos and Bliss off the Marquesas Islands).

I was asked to continue with the boat, now heading to the Tuamotus and Tahiti, from where Elletra (who had rejoined us in the Marquesas) and the children would make their way back to Spain.

With the kids constantly snacking and living aboard in close quarters, I spent much of my time cleaning and maintaining the boat. My crewmates nicknamed me Cinderella.

Crewing with professional captains teaches you how to maintain a vessel in pristine condition. These yachts are floating showpieces—expected to perform and to impress.

On land, we visited playgrounds whenever we could. At five, Luna spoke Italian, Spanish, and English fluently. Within minutes, she would find a friend and spend the afternoon hand in hand. Zeno moved with fearless energy, shaped by life at sea.

Living together on a boat reveals who people are. From the beginning, Riccardo’s warmth drew me into his world.

He carried himself with a refined, almost aristocratic politeness, combined with deep technical mastery earned over years working with elite superyacht builders, riggers, and racers.

I watched him juggle captaincy, fatherhood, partnership, and business—handling logistics, coordinating medical care for Emanuela —while remaining fully present, especially with his children.

He was generous with his knowledge, never failing to help fellow sailors, offering advice, hands-on assistance, or simply sharing his vast network of contacts and favorite anchorages across the globe.

With five Atlantic crossings, two Pacific crossings, two Indian Ocean crossings, and two full circumnavigations via the canals, Riccardo possessed extraordinary knowledge—of weather systems, rigging, sail technology, electronics, rope work, and mechanical engineering.

But what touched me most was his trust in me—a rare kind of trust I had only experienced with true masters: seasoned fishing captains in Alaska or retired military officers I had worked with.

I continued sailing for months with a man who loved the sea as deeply as he loved people, bringing the boat to Fiji and New Zealand, her final destination.

My heart aches knowing I will never again hug this giant-hearted man, never again sail beside him to distant islands of the South Pacific.

I loved Riccardo deeply—as a friend, a brother. Long watches, shared work, and life at sea create a profound bond.

His presence inspired respect and loyalty, while giving me the opportunity to be of service—to a vessel, a crew, and a captain I deeply admired.

Even routine tasks—servicing an engine, tuning winches—became acts of gratitude. Every question I asked was met with patience.

I remember nights on deck—clipped into my harness, crawling forward to rig a boom preventer while Riccardo steered with quiet precision. He approached even cruising with the mindset of a racer, constantly fine-tuning and seeking the small gains that make a difference over thousands of miles.

He was an exceptional sailor and a devoted friend, always finding time to stay connected, to share moments, to make others feel included.

Not long after I returned to the U.S., Riccardo and Elletra announced they were expecting their third child—and that they were getting married.

I was honored to be in Mallorca, capturing their celebration on film and creating something lasting for their family and friends.

It has been a month since Riccardo passed.

I have been dancing for him ever since and kept a nightly fire vigil for 21 days, joined by friends who had never even met him.

Grief is a wild and unpredictable sea.

But I am grateful—to dance, to pray, to celebrate the life of this remarkable man, and to accompany him, in my own way, on his final passage.

May his family be wrapped in a tide of love as enduring and abundant as the love he shared throughout his all-too-brief life.

You will be deeply missed, Riccardo.

You are loved.

You will be remembered.

May your spirit continue to grace us with its radiant presence.

WEDDING VIDEOS

Elettra & Riccardo 9.5.25 Aperitivo al Mare (Cocktails at the Beach)

Elettra & Riccardo. 9.6.25 Cerimonia d’Amore (Wedding Ceremony)

Elettra & Riccardo 9.7.25 Relax a Bordo Piscina (Relax by the Pool)

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Over the years, I’ve written plenty for business, newspaper articles, op-eds, grants, project blogs, and now Substack.

I’ve always written in a simple style, focusing on describing things accurately and letting the resonance of my heart come through the words I choose.

I observe, I feel, I reflect, and I write when I am inspired—the expression of my love and care for the world.

Writing is a form of magic.

Some authors write in a way that is shamanic. It induces a psychedelic-type effect on the brain that helps the reader perceive more subtle dimensions, within or without.

When the heart-to-word-to-heart connection is unimpeded, and the intent of the writer stays intact, the writing has the potential to reach a reader’s heart and consciousness.

I am currently working on a piece about pornography, a topic I’ve wanted to tackle for many years—because I have lived its effects, and I see the drain porn represents on the human spirit.

Pornography is a $100 billion industry, larger than many nations’ GDPs. There are approximately 1.5 billion daily porn-related searches worldwide, men (70–80%) and women (20–30%) logging in for the same private ritual: a tidal wave of fractured attention and stolen heart energy.

It’s an extremely sensitive topic. It’s almost everyone’s little secret while we pretend to live normal lives—family life, work life—or, for the youth, while they discover their sexuality.

Knowing the statistics, remembering my own entanglement with porn, sensing its imprint on my youth and sexuality (a landscape I’m still learning to inhabit), and recognizing that many of my readers may still be under its spell—a form of hypnosis that drains vitality and fractures the mind—makes writing about it an especially delicate act.

While crafting that piece, I spent a few weeks wrestling with AI.

I got temporarily smitten by how fresh and clever my writing read when “upgraded” by a machine tool. Then saturation hit: endless versions, rewrites, overwrites—more convoluted attempts to make a new loaf of bread from the same dough, each new ingredient turning the experiment into a mess.

It stalled me long enough that I decided to put the piece on hold.

I became alarmed, frazzled, and drained after days of reprocessing material that ended up looking glossy and punchy, yet hollow—stripped of its genuine essence, my heart’s gift to the world.

Because if my words don’t carry the true essence of my feelings and reflections, they will bounce off most people’s schizophrenic bunker of denial and resistance.

My effort to put my heart out—to simply share what I’ve lived and continue to recover from—will become ineffective.

When I look at AI funders, it raises real questions about motives and subtle modifications—about how, in my case, the tool can, through altering the “energetics” of my writing, deflect or muffle impact, rendering my heartfelt intent dull.

ChatGPT is a for-profit enterprise ($50 billion raised, with a $300 billion market valuation) funded by Microsoft, Peter Thiel (Palantir), JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley, and has Paul Nakasone—former NSA Director (2018–2024) and head of U.S. Cyber Command—on its board.

Grok is built by xAI, a for-profit outfit started by Elon Musk ($30 billion raised, with a $200 billion valuation), funded by Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, Fidelity, Nvidia, BlackRock, Morgan Stanley, Kingdom Holding (Saudi Prince Alwaleed), and the Qatar Investment Authority.

Both ChatGPT and Grok exceed the GDPs of many world economies.

So yes, I wonder how, in processing my writing for editing and publication, AI manufactures a new energetic signature from my original intent—just enough to strip or blur it.

Capturing true arrows of love and life, then blowing a thin wind of slickness over them so the arrow misses its mark.

Even if people like, share, or praise my writing—amplified fluff is still fluff.

It sobered me—and reminded me that while I keep healing from my upbringing and the programming of institutions and media, I have to stay awake and vigilant.

The human spirit is delicate and has been battered through eons of manipulation, exploitation, and brainwashing—turning more and more people into hollowed-out souls, consumers of bad everything: food, air, water, porn, news, entertainment.

All tools have a double edge. A knife, a gun, a chainsaw, even a pen—physical or figurative—can kill you. They can liberate. They can domesticate.

AI models are trained on curated data and optimized for goals set by their backers (banks, surveillance enterprises, and defense contractors), amplifying their economic and ideological worldview.

Most text in news and ads today has been AI-polished—made ultra-slick for scrollers, quietly manipulating the subconscious and dulling critical thought.

I question how word choice, repetition, rhythmic phrasing, sentence length, emotional triggers, and visual cues induce a trance, foster blind acceptance, and dull the senses.

When we rely on AI to create—or drift through the endless scroll of headlines, feeds, and weaponized memes—we must stay awake, or the world we strive to mend—the world that needs the radiance of our human heart—may harden into an insidious prison, ruled by invisible powers that numb our human spirit and erode what’s left of its connection to Nature and the Divine.

The AI world is slick and seductive—stay alert!

Stewed in Self-Love

Seven years ago, I settled on a thirty-acre farm, ninety minutes from Santa Fe, New Mexico. I drove to the city weekly for dance and shopping, but I couldn’t imagine having a lover who wasn’t a “country bumpkin,” willing to visit the farm regularly. None came along.

It wasn’t planned — seven long years of celibacy. I took the journey as one of self-love: reflecting deeply on past relationships, now that the dust had settled. I recommitted to stop consuming porn, a habit I’d cycled through on and off in my life. The journey wasn’t without serious bumps, but looking back, I see how truly worthwhile it was.

Two years ago, after I sold the farm, I had a two-night stand with a woman whose beauty I’d cherished for years. Her desire pulled me in, she reveled in her own pleasure, yet I was left unsettled, aching for a hunger that mirrored my own. When I opened up about the imbalance in our sexual connection, she withdrew.

“I don’t have the bandwidth for this,” she said.

And with that, she was gone.

I was left stunned, reeling in a what-the-fuck wonderland. Why did the taste of union sting so sharply? Why did the heart, after so much solitude, feel both thrilled and sucker-punched?

Turning Inward

For a year afterward, I turned inward again, pouring my energy into dance, yoga, my garden, and learning to make love to life itself. My practice became one of self-communion—breathing through desire, loving myself.

Then I left land altogether and took to the sea. Months of sailing through the Pacific—Panama, Galápagos, Tuamotus, Tahiti, Fiji—each island a mirror for my shifting interior. There was beauty everywhere, yet beneath the turquoise, something in me was growing dull. No woman was tickling my fancy, or the ones who did were unavailable or a bit too young. No dance floors or shared movement during my journey. Just endless water and the low hum of longing.

Healing Crisis

When I finally disembarked in New Zealand, I was weak. My ankles ached as if I had gout, my back stiffened, and my energy felt trapped beneath my skin. I dove into yoga classes and conscious dance festivals, chasing vitality. But my body began speaking louder than my will.

One afternoon, during a conscious dance workshop, my back seized up completely, and I couldn’t move. Lying there on the floor, I joked to the others:

“My desire is killing me.”

Desire had become both medicine and poison.

Even though I danced often in New Zealand—and while dancing, my energy would rise and the pain disappear—outside those moments, I found myself limping, utterly tired, and wondering if the end of my life was near.

At a Holotropic breathwork workshop a couple of weeks later, I had a vivid vision: I lay on my back, a woman straddling me, both of us crying as we made love—grief and bliss woven in a profound union my heart yearns for.

Something ancient wanted to rise again.

The next day, I had a session with an Ayurvedic doctor. After telling him about my ailments, he kindly asked if I was in a relationship. I told him I had been celibate for seven years—minus the two-night stand that left me reeling.

“You’re a good-looking man. You should be making love, kissing many women. What are you afraid of?”

I didn’t have an answer.

He added: “When the heart and mind are in conflict, it can wreak havoc on the body.”

Perhaps I feared repeating past mistakes, ignoring telling signs, and slipping into unfulfilling partnerships once more.

Maybe I’d become too protective of an energy I’d grown to hold as precious, not to be shared lightly — something sacred.

Whatever it was, his question hit a nerve.

Return to Dance

Back home in the U.S., my energy began to return. I eased back into the embrace of community dances, the place where my body speaks more honestly than words ever can.

After forty years of dancing, the movements keep coming from somewhere deep and mysterious. They are erotic without aim, sacred without effort. The dance floor is where I meet the divine in motion.

In that space, currents of attraction swirl, pulses of desire move like fire between souls. Sometimes, that fire creates confusion. I meet women who spark, but for karmic reasons, we are not meant to mate, or to mate for long.

Those near misses often rub against old scabs, arising frustrations, reminding me how thin the skin of healing can be.

When my back locked up in New Zealand, it was as if my Kundalini — the creative serpent of life — had coiled too tightly.

The pain was its cry for release.

The Second Lover

Back in Santa Fe, I reconnected with a friend I’d danced closely with before my South Pacific journey. She shared that she was no longer in the relationship she’d been in when we first met. Over weeks of dancing, we grew intimate with each other’s bodies, our movements stirring much desire in me. I felt a readiness to open up sexually. After a while, I told her I was ripe like a peach, swelling with youthful desire.

She hesitated for some time, showing affection and a wish to see me, but frequently acted conflicted, like a teenager struggling with her feelings, heart turmoil, and sexual entanglements.

My desire kept overriding my sense of something odd.

When she finally decided to ravish me, our bodies already knew the conversation. From the first embrace, there was no performance—just tenderness and mutual desire.

My years of stored energy flowed like molted lava. It was as though my body had been reintroduced to the sun.

This chapter was also brief. After three glorious days of lovemaking, she pulled back. She said she wasn’t ready, cried, and felt utterly confused. And then confessed she was involved with another man.

Strangely, I felt little anger, some disappointment, but mostly compassion. I knew it wasn’t about me. Like the flash-in-the-pan lover the year before, she awakened something in me and then vanished.

She left me with a finer taste of woman, of pleasure, of surrender — a reminder that love can be brief and still holy.

After that encounter, my writing—which had been prolific upon returning from New Zealand, with five stories published in a couple of weeks—suddenly stopped.

It was as if my creativity had been whacked.

The Healing Power of Dance

In the weeks that followed, I kept dancing—three times a week, each dance an affirmation.

Dance has been my teacher for four decades. It’s how I’ve metabolized grief, depression, illness, and physical injuries into liquid joy. I’ve danced in deserts, beaches, meadows, forests, caves, gymnasiums, churches, dance halls, discos, parades, and sacred ceremonies.

When the world has collapsed around me, dance has rebuilt me, and made me fall in love with myself again. It was also the foundation of the four-year-long dance initiative I founded: Gypsie Nation-Village Dance Rituals for Planetary Medicine.

The internal processes during dance feel like a perfectly measured cocktail of psychoactive magic—crafted by the body itself. Endorphins surge, hormones shift, and the whole physiology begins to shimmer, as if awakening to its own sacred design.

This alchemy is essential for both physical endurance and spiritual exploration. It allows me to edge closer to my physical limits while opening doorways to transcendent experiences.

I jokingly call it “the best spiritual workout I know.”

Opening Doorways

Conscious, ecstatic, sacred dance offers a window into human potential. It’s a space where we can explore the delicate interplay of feminine and masculine energies, within and without.

My moments of being “danced” by energies beyond understanding — described by shamanic cultures as ancestral or otherworldly — can be intoxicating, profoundly healing, and sometimes deeply erotic.

Through all this, I’ve learned that celibacy and eroticism are not opposites—they are ripples of the same wave.

Island Renewal

After two months on the island of Mallorca, Spain, a shift unfurls inside me.

My dance and yoga breathe with bliss and power. My body hums with joy.

I’m inspired. I meet women who awaken my desire.

And my writing is flowing once more.

The ancestral energies that whisper through my heart, my dance, and my words seem to ask that I remain available to mystery and that I let desire be a river returning me to Source.

They also urge me to stay vigilant, for lingering patterns and wounds draw human manifestations in this dance of awakening, poised to spark profound realizations.

When I trust that river and listen deeply, every step, every embrace, and every story I write becomes a mirror and an offering.

This is how I ride desire home.

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Before Nirvana and Pearl Jam, before the grunge explosion put Seattle on the map, there was The Metropolis: a 300-seat, all-ages punk club where misfits, musicians, and dreamers converged to create something raw, chaotic, and unforgettable. This is the story of how it all came together—and how it changed me.

I was recently interviewed for a YouTube documentary about The Metropolis, the club I opened in 1983 in Seattle. For those who remember—or anyone steeped in punk history—the lineup reads like a who’s who of the underground: Butthole Surfers, Hüsker Dü, The Replacements, Scream (with a young Dave Grohl), The Accüsed, Deranged Diction (pre-Pearl Jam), D.O.A., The Fastbacks, Malfunkshun (pre-Mother Love Bone), Melvins, Mr. Epp (pre-Mudhoney), The Rejectors, The U-Men, Wipers, Violent Femmes, Mutabaruka, Rank-n-File, Bad Brains, Jah Wobble, Shockabilly, Barbara Paige, John Cale (founder of the Velvet Underground), and many more. A full list of 117 shows is archived here.

From Drift to Fire

Before The Metropolis, I was adrift. I had moved to San Francisco to get my pilot’s license, planning to work as a spotter in Alaska, where I’d already spent five seasons as a commercial fisherman. I had cash from fishing and teaching skiing in a French resort. I was good at making money—but creatively, I was bankrupt.

I lived in the Tenderloin District, surrounded by drugs, sleazy bars, prostitutes, and street life. I dabbled in black-and-white photography and befriended some of the local homeless I photographed. But mostly, I drank, drifted, and consumed. Too much money, too little purpose.

It caught up with me one Halloween night, after mixing alcohol, coffee, mushrooms, and pot in heroic quantities. I had a full psychotic break, spending the night in a cold shower to keep from burning up. Fresh out of flight school (no drug tests back then!), I packed my 1962 pink Cadillac, grabbed an alcoholic homeless Cuban who wanted to head north, and drove to Seattle.

A Spark in Pioneer Square

Seattle felt like home; I had spent many months there after fishing seasons. Within weeks, I met a group of young creatives making music videos—MTV had just launched. With money in my pocket, I rented an old tavern in Pioneer Square. Within months, we transformed it into a 300-seat, all-ages club.

For one glorious year, we booked some of the most electric punk and alternative acts touring the U.S. and Canada. But as Pioneer Square gentrified, the landlord pulled the plug on our month-to-month lease, and The Metropolis closed.

Four decades later, people still talk about it. Journalists and historians call it “the birthplace of grunge.” I’ve been interviewed for exhibits like Nirvana: Taking Punk to the Masses at the Museum of Pop Culture, and for a Showtime documentary (not yet released) on the Seattle music scene in the ’80s and ’90s.

Each time, I reflect: how did this club come to be—and why did it work?

The Mechanics of Inspiration

I was 25, restless, flush with fishing money, and tired of pampering my own belly button. I found the venue almost by accident: a space with a long history as theaters and clubs since the early 1900s.

I teamed up with Gordon Doucette, a local musician (Red Masque) who knew the scene and the city’s hostility toward punk venues. We built a stage, installed secondhand theater lights, and navigated fire codes and occupancy permits. The original video collective faded away—but the idea of a club, suggested by Gordon, had already caught fire.

Word spread fast. Volunteers, artists, DJs, musicians, and sound people showed up, eager to build a place they could call their own.

A Home for the Misfits

Seattle clubs were 21 and over. The Metropolis was different: no booze, all ages, and open arms for outcasts. Many remember it simply as home.

We held regular meetings to decide which bands to book—long before the internet, when people traded fanzines and cassette demos by mail. The acts that came through weren’t polished; they were raw, political, and hungry. Kids piled into the mosh pit to scream, sweat, and feel alive in the middle of the Reagan’s/Bush era—a time that offered them little and censored a lot.

The club ran for a full year without a single police citation or major injury. The one time a patron tried to stab me, I threw him against a passing bus—and both of us survived unscathed! My years fishing in Alaska had given me a thick skin.

I wasn’t your typical punk—I had short hair, I was tough but fair, and I had a few mosh pit experiences of my own in London, San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York. Above all, I understood the pent-up energy that boils in teenagers’ veins when the world around them is stale and unwelcoming.

Commanding the Chaos

Running The Metropolis felt a lot like being on a boat. I’d spent years at sea with seasoned captains who passed down grit and discipline. I brought that same energy to the club—firm, watchful, and protective.

I was lucky to have guardian angels at my side: Anthony Medeiros, another fisherman who handled the door and security, and Susan Silver, our band liaison, who would later marry Chris Cornell, and manage Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, and other local bands.

Seattle in the early ’80s was still gray and industrial, years before the tech boom. The Metropolis became a pulse of color and rebellion. It wasn’t just a club; it was a refuge.

Creativity Unleashed

I was only a few years older than most of the crowd, but I ran the place with the mix of discipline and heart I’d learned on the water and in the mountains. Between managing shows, handling security, and keeping the ship from hitting reefs, I also made most of the posters. What began as a petrified attempt at visual art grew into a flood of graphic creativity—some of those posters later appeared in art publications.

The Metropolis cracked something open in me. It was my first true creative awakening.

After the Curtain Fell

When The Metropolis closed, I kept producing shows, booking bands like the Violent Femmes, Snakefinger, Minutemen, Black Flag, NoMeansNo, Raven, and Anthrax. A few flops wiped me out financially, so I stepped back from the music industry.

But the fire was lit. Soon after, I opened Free Mars, a vegetarian café and art gallery that thrived for three and a half years—an idea born directly from the confidence and inspiration The Metropolis gave me. Eventually, a heartbreak pushed me to sell the café and retreat in solitude in the San Juan Islands (read My Alcatraz on Sinclair Island).

Looking Back

If I’ve learned anything from that era, and from 40 years of creating unusual projects, it’s this: creativity isn’t a polite guest—it’s a force. When ignored, it festers. When unleashed, it can turn an old tavern into a cultural spark that still flickers forty years later.

To be inspired originally meant “to have breath or spirit put into you.” Over time, that evolved into “to be filled with creative or divine influence.”

That energy propels one to create the unusual—or the necessary—at certain times in history.

The Metropolis wasn’t about money, fame, or even music alone. It was about a community of misfits emerging together—a place where inspiration hit like a power chord and refused to be silenced.

I’m sitting on the guardrail of the Pont Alexandre in Paris. It’s four o’clock in the morning.

I look down at the water between my feet—a slow-moving, filthy soup swirling with bits and pieces of everything you can buy up river.

I peer into the depths and wonder: Is this really how I want to end my life?
Has it been so miserable that it warrants drowning in something I can’t even bring myself to call water?

I start looking back, searching my past for an answer.

Have I lived the life I wanted to live?

As a child, I knew that life was about freedom.
I didn’t want to be a policeman, a doctor, or a banker.
I wanted to be free.

Free to live as I chose.
Free to be whoever I was in each moment.
Free to speak my truth.
Free to create whatever my imagination called me to.

Did I become the man I dreamed of becoming?

Did I live a life of honor?
Of service?
Did I love as deeply as I believed one could love?

Did I cherish children?
Did I honor my elders?
Was I the kind of brother, son, friend, and uncle I aspired to be?
Was I honest—with others and with myself?
Did I care for the Earth the way I know one ought to care?
Did I treat her as my mother?

The questions stack up, and I feel ashamed to answer them.
There are so many ways I have failed.

Tears come, unbidden.
My heart swells with regrets and memories—
Lovers whose bodies I remember, but whose names I’ve forgotten.

Did I honor the visions handed to me?

Did I give up too easily when things got hard?
Did I walk away in disdain—afraid that, in confronting my enemy, I would destroy them?
Did I fail to hold my ground, lacking any tools but my fists?

I cry a river of salty tears as I revisit my life in vivid detail.
I see that I always wanted to be good, helpful, courageous, honorable.
I see the moments I failed to say thank you to the events that crushed me—
Not recognizing them as my most profound teachers.
I see the times I didn’t ask questions, questions only I can now answer.

I cry until the metal curtains of the bakeries rattle open, announcing the start of a new day. The sweet scent of industrial croissants pulls me gently from my river-trance.

Am I ready to jump, when my life is still riddled with conflict—
But also pregnant with creative possibilities?

The darkness thins.
The subway roars beneath the city, reminding me that a fresh day has begun.

I glance once more between my feet.

My life is not finished.

As much as I stray from my visions, chasing the glitter of gold,
I remain true to my deepest desire—to be free.

Free to choose, like in this moment—to accept that I have done my very best.
That there is still time to grow, to forgive, to walk with my chin high
for all the excellent work I have done on this planet.

I notice one of my shoelaces is undone.
It reminds me of my life.

I look again at the river.
Seagulls are having breakfast, doing what seagulls do—
Enjoying life, and the river that sustains them.

My tears dry quickly in the morning sun.
I finish crossing the bridge that dark thoughts, in the quiet of night, had interrupted.

And I smile.

I have been given a second chance—
To love a river
that my humanness had momentarily forgotten to see as sacred.

(Written May 2017 as fiction. Published today in memory of my Mother who passed away 22 years ago on this day)

A friend at dance recently asked what it truly feels like to experience the trance effect of African drums. Though I’d been exploring this phenomenon intuitively for years, I’d never tried to articulate it—until now. After a moment of reflection, I said it feels like leaning against a heavy door that suddenly gives way. The momentum of resisting surrender to the music, once released, can hurl you into moments of unbelievable freedom and ecstasy.

I have no formal dance training—classical, modern, or ethnic. I’ve always loved dancing, though there were times when emotional blocks kept me from fully embracing music and movement. I’ve attended many African and Middle Eastern celebrations, marveling at how dancers—young, old, large, small—seemed to fly, as if carried by invisible threads spun by the music. The master drummers like puppeteers, holding dancers in a magical web of rhythm.

“Wow, if only I could do that,” my Western conditioning would whisper. “They’ve been dancing since childhood—it’s in their genes.” That mindset robbed me of the freedom to truly enjoy my body and the communal unity others seemed to share.

Not anymore.

Imagine my surprise when, one day, I found myself—for a fraction of a second—inside that same space of surrender and ecstasy. What had I released to get there? And what in the music opened that door? While this trance-like state is well known in indigenous cultures, scientists now explain it through the concept of polyrhythmic music.

Our bodies, despite being mapped by science, remain profoundly mysterious. In my movement journey—and life in general—I’ve come to see my purpose as remembering my true self, peeling away mental obstructions, and unveiling the magnificence already within. From this perspective, I already know. I’ve simply forgotten, led to believe I need more technique, more knowledge.

But over and over again, I’ve been shown: everything is already in our bones and cells. With enough trust and patience, I believe we can recall many things we think we don’t know, things no one can teach us, or things we feel incapable of learning or doing.

So what does this mean for movement? It means that a genuine desire to discover and surrender to the music can yield astonishing results. The main challenge is navigating our self-judgment and conditioning. For clarity, I’ll call this resistance the wall.

My heart often aches for those stuck behind it. It’s like watching poor people window-shopping at Christmas, with no hope of affording such splendid clothes or gadgets. I also feel that this wall—personal and collective—interferes with my own trance. This is why indigenous rituals are so effective: the collective intention creates openings in the wall that’s inherent to our human condition.

So how do we begin to dissolve it? How do we support one another in moving through it—and bring back the treasures from the other side: joy, timelessness, and mystery? How do we re-teach ourselves what we’ve forgotten beneath the noise and distractions of the industrial age? How do we reclaim our birthright to be playful, foolish, and fully alive?

I would answer these questions by inviting you to release society’s obsession with perfection. There is no “right” way. Forget about style and technique. Just meet the music with your body—all of it. Go where the rhythm lives. Let your intuition lead. Go with friends. Share your fears. Support each other with patience and love.

Like in meditation, observe your mind’s chatter and judgments—both of yourself and others. Notice how these thoughts shape your movements. Then reaffirm your commitment to freedom. Your intention will gradually bring you closer to the wall. You’ll begin to feel its gooey texture—and one day, it will give way.

This approach will inevitably stir emotional baggage. You may grieve, rage, or dance seductively. Let it all unfold. As in healing work, facing what we fear reveals what we’re ready to release. Dance with your demons—literally. When you invite them to move with you, they stop holding you back. They might even start cheering you on.

With willingness and curiosity, I’ve come to recognize the texture of my own wall. It shifts and reveals new layers. I try to meet whatever arises. I notice how my desire to "look good" restricts my movements. Still, I take risks—I show off, I break patterns. Spirit doesn’t wait behind well-rehearsed moves. It hides in the ridiculous, the disjointed, the unexpected. It arrives when I fully commit, even for a split second.

And when it does, I know. The sensations are beyond my usual range. The balance, the connectedness—it startles me. It delights and scares me all at once. Again, I’m in that paradox.

Once I cross into trance—or ecstasy, or whatever you call it—I find it difficult to stay for more than a few seconds. It becomes an interplay between the known and the unknown, a dissolving and reassembling of my perception. Remarkably, it is invigorating. The only effort is in letting go. Once there, something else takes over. It dances me. I feel weightless. My movements expand. My senses sharpen. On the other side of the wall, there is no effort—only fire, joy, and life.

Fear pulls me back. It snaps me into the known like a rubber band. But I’ve learned that in certain environments—night rituals in nature, large crowds, spaces where no one is watching—I can stay in that state longer.

Choose your environments wisely. Hide in dark corners. Wear costumes. Dance where no one knows your name. Be foolish far from home. Trick yourself into freedom. Be unreasonably imaginative. Grant yourself outrageous permission.

And dance barefoot. I think that’s one of the secrets.

So—just now—I went through another wall: the writer’s wall. The same one I’ve been describing all along. I didn’t think I could write. I was terrified to expose my thoughts, scarred by my school years and paralyzed by fear of judgment. I avoided the page with all kinds of reasons and excuses. But once I surrendered, something bigger than me took over. The words flowed. It was effortless. Nourishing. I followed the impulse and let the spirit do its work.

For more on this subject, read: The Rhythm of Spirit Possession: An Entrancing Legacy

I remember the first time Dad bought a sailing dinghy — a 1950s French design, a seventeen-foot Ponant. He’d learned to sail near our hometown. One of his friends had a Ponant and needed a teammate to race with at a nearby lake sailing club.

Every summer, my parents rented a different vacation home for July, August, and the first two weeks of September. They chose tiny coastal villages with sandy beaches and a children’s beach club nearby.

By the time my Dad bought the Ponant, our family had grown to five children, and that boat was perfect for taking the whole family out on the water. I remember the time we all crossed the bay to picnic on a tiny island — a place with nobody on it.

I devoured books like Robinson Crusoe and The Count of Monte Cristo, so going to a deserted island felt truly magical.

The Ponant had a tiny forward storage area — just big enough for me and my younger sister to squeeze in and pretend we were in our own cabins. The fiberglass was very itchy in there, I remember. I also peed in it once, figuring nobody would notice in all the standing water.

I must have been seven or eight during that first excursion. I was too young to go sailing much after that because my Dad liked to race, and my older brothers were more useful to him as teammates — their weight made a difference in balance and stability.

A few years later, Dad bought a beautiful 470, an Olympic-series sailing dinghy. I was now old enough to sail with him or, when he was back home working, to take it out by myself. At the time, it was one of the fastest production dinghies available.

Then came the 505 — a step up — and later the Hobby Cat.

Every summer, my father would drop off the family and the boat at a new vacation rental in Brittany, on the Atlantic Coast or the Mediterranean, and then return home to work for the rest of the summer.

During that time, I had the boat all to myself. My older brothers were gone, and my younger sister hadn’t fallen in love with the water the way I had, nor did she enjoy my sailing style (fast and faster)!

Not only did I conquer wild conditions — strong winds and heavy waves — always testing the limits of a superb sailing machine, but I also used the dinghy on calm days to explore hidden coves, dropping a tiny anchor and spearfishing for hours.

My Dad liked to race and kept his 470 in his workshop back home when it wasn't in use. I may have been 12 or 13 when we started to sail together regularly. I was a bit of a twig back then — not much help on the trapeze — when a crew hangs off a cable outside the hull to keep it from capsizing.

In heavy wind, I was handed the tiller, and my 170-pound dad provided ballast on the trapeze. So from a very young age, I was helmsman, barking orders and making decisions during regatta maneuvers — when to launch the spinnaker or jibe safely around a marking buoy.

At home and elsewhere, my dad was often yelling at me for something — for being a wild and rambunctious kid — but at the helm of a race boat, I came alive, a miniature Jack Sparrow, boldly in command.

These were formative years for me.

I was entrusted with a boat.

I never got into trouble — except for the time I went sailing solo, raised the spinnaker, hopped on the trapeze for a wild ride, and capsized. I fell into the sail and spinnaker, and got all tangled up. As I drifted dangerously toward the reefs, I must have spent an hour freeing myself and untangling lines. Eventually, by leaning on the centerboard, I righted the boat. The damage was minimal — a broken spinnaker pole and a small rip in the spinnaker — but it could have been much more serious.

Pushing the edge… always.

When I was about to turn 18, my Dad sold the 470 and bought a Finn — another Olympic-series sailing dinghy — but this time a single-hander. My Dad had reclaimed his own “boat turf” and had a few more years of serious sailing.

The freedom I experienced — having a boat all to myself for 4–6 weeks each summer starting at 13 — was remarkable. I was captain; I was free to go wherever I wished. Sometimes I’d be gone for hours, exploring the coastline, spearfishing, or sneaking close to private coves where rich women were sunbathing nude.

My Dad — however rigid and controlling — trusted me with his beautiful boat, just as he later trusted me with his car.

Now, reflecting back after his death last year, I realize what a huge step it must have been for him to let his 13-year-old son take the boat and disappear for hours on his own.

I was proud then to raise the sails, push off from the shore, and let the wind carry me away.

What a feeling of freedom it was.

As I write this, I’m letting it sink in.

I’m sending waves of gratitude to my Dad, wherever he is now. May all that held him back be gone with the fresh wind of karma. May we meet again someday and sail together, this time with more laughing than yelling.

You left without saying goodbye.

You cursed me many times during our disputes.

I came to see you a few months before you passed.

I held your hand and stroked your hair.

I pushed you in a wheelchair.

Not sure you recognized me.

But you seemed at peace with me being there.

I’m glad I came from far away to say goodbye and wish you safe travels.

I am grateful you brought me into this world, fed me, clothed me, and taught me to strive for excellence.

It takes time to digest these things, and I always think of you when I dance, repair my truck, or build and fix things.

I appreciate bugs, cows, berries, flowers — and all kinds of beauty.

Like women.

We were so much alike.

Except I like to let my hair — and sometimes my beard — grow wild…

Thanks, Dad!

I’m carrying the torch now!

I am a good captain of my life…

During my foray into developing Nodilus, a social utility fostering regenerative culture, I began a love affair with composting. At the time, I lived car-free in Santa Fe, biking around town with a trailer to gather food waste from natural grocers and coffee shops.

I had just presented a folksy slideshow at a city forum about engaging neighborhoods to compost collectively and inspiring adolescents to gather food scraps using bikes and trailers they would build themselves. In my spare time, I volunteered as a bike mechanic at the ChainBreaker, a nonprofit helping homeless and low-income people build bikes from recycled parts. In my presentation, there was a slide of me in funny animal pajamas, napping on one of my backyard compost piles. A well-done compost pile, when starting to mature, is warm and smells sweet like forest humus. My friend Barbara, a yoga teacher, called me after seeing the slide on Facebook: “You have to meet my boyfriend Juaquin. He just returned from a two-year stint teaching kids gardening for the New York State school district.”

It was at an open house at the Santa Fe Waldorf School where I first encountered Juaquin. A handsome man in his late sixties, he was dressed like a gentleman gardener in stylish clothes, fine leather gloves, and polished shoes. He was busy making elaborate double-dug beds along the school’s walking paths.

I was immediately taken by his grace and vibrant energy. Having just begun planting my own garden, I was blown away by the precision and beauty of his earthwork. He took me to his tool shed, where he showed me his collection of hand gardening tools—a dozen stainless steel spades and digging forks with ash handles, all impeccably cared for. I was sold.

Juaquin had grown up in Brooklyn, the son of a bagel business owner. He worked as a public pool lifeguard until a friend asked him to go to Florida. Thus began his wild adventures, which led him to hippie culture, psychedelics, California, and his mentor, the renowned British Biodynamic teacher Alan Chadwick.

Juaquin invited me to work with him on a project he was building for a kindergarten. For two weeks, we double-dug garden beds down a slope, transforming compacted, dry soil into fluffy, rich garden beds. Even though I was 17 years younger and in good shape, I couldn’t keep up with Juaquin—his life force seemed inexhaustible. While teaching me proper digging postures, he instructed me in soil science and composting techniques, sharing wild stories about his life. Despite the exhausting work, I was smitten by Juaquin and kept showing up to soak up his knowledge.

A few weeks later, he invited me to Mexico, where his girlfriend liked to spend winters by the beach in her motorhome. Juaquin had worked in San Pancho, Nayarit, a small beach town, and knew the people running its community center. He envisioned a big community garden there. It took me a couple of days to decide, but I wrapped up my struggling Nodilus project and trusted my instinct.

Arriving in San Pancho with just a backpack, I headed to the beach at sunset and coincidentally ran into a friend from Santa Fe. She offered me a room in her rented house. “Gee, nice landing!” I thought.

The next day, I met Juaquin and Barbara. Both looked like movie stars as we toured the town and the EntreAmigos Community Center. Located in abandoned warehouses, the center was run by an American woman and her Colombian artist collaborator. It featured computer rooms, daycare, a gift shop and craft spaces, hosting a variety of creative and educational activities.

With a group of volunteers, we began sorting and labeling an overwhelming variety of seeds. This marked the beginning of my realization that Juaquin’s approach mirrored Nature—abundant and generous. If a garden bed could accommodate 1,000 plants, he’d grow 10,000, ensuring plenty to share, or replace as needed.

The proposed garden site was barren dirt with sparse weeds. To create planting soil, we sourced local ingredients: sand from a nearby river, silt deposited during floods, and horse manure from a polo club, all mixed with meticulous care. Juaquin recovered hundreds of wooden seedling flats from a greenhouse he’d previously built for the town. Weeks of religiously mixing soil followed, ensuring every seed had the proper environment to thrive.

Building the garden was a Herculean effort. Volunteers transported sandbags across a stream, sifted manure, and fenced the area with fishing nets to keep out iguanas and horses. Reclaiming a city-designated compost site—cluttered with mattresses, car doors, glass and beer cans—took weeks of grueling work. Eventually, the putrid dump was transformed into a magnificent maze of flood-resistant beds.

Within a few weeks, the 6,000-square-foot El Jardin de Guadalupe began producing lettuce, flower, basil, mustard greens and chard, sold at the community center and local restaurants. When Juaquin and Barbara returned to Santa Fe three months later, they left me in charge. Alone, I managed the garden—watering, harvesting, and coordinating volunteers—in a deep six-month immersion into large-scale biodynamic gardening.

Upon returning to Santa Fe, I started Dandelion Ranch, a quarter-acre community garden, applying what I’d learned in San Pancho. Juaquin’s workshops and advice at that garden were instrumental in its success. Together, we also assisted at the Synergia Ranch Farm, a two-acre commercial operation supplying restaurants, grocery stores, and two farmers' markets. My days began at dawn, harvesting and packing produce, then delivering it to customers before returning to work at the community garden. My nearly two years of apprenticeship with Juaquin laid the foundation for successfully launching Gaia Gardens, an urban farm in Santa Fe.

Under Juaquin’s loving mentorship, I mastered large-scale composting, greenhouse propagation, and biodynamic planting. Most importantly, I learned patience. “You understand techniques of production and work hard, but you don’t understand rhythms yet,” he’d say. It took time to grasp his wisdom—working with plants requires opening one’s heart and attuning to Nature’s cycles.

Juaquin’s approach was both maddening and inspiring. He’d start an overwhelming number of plant seedlings, insisting, “We don’t grow plants; we grow soil. Plants make soil. Feed the soil, and the plants thrive.” His boundless enthusiasm and storytelling kept volunteers engaged and gardens flourishing.

Now 84, Juaquin lives in California, tending a two-acre garden on his son’s properties near Healdsburg. He’s created an oasis of vegetable, flowers, fruit trees, berries, and olives, donating the harvest to food banks and trading with local restaurants. Despite his modesty, Juaquin’s life exemplifies living well while enriching others’ lives.

Meeting Juaquin at 52 transformed my life. His guidance turned me from a novice gardener into a farmer, capable of running community and educational farms. His honesty and vulnerability—“I am scared. I don’t know what I’m doing”—were deeply humanizing, yet he always created magnificent gardens.

“Our best shot is to become the finest compost for the next generation,” he once said. His passion for teaching and generosity of spirit continue to inspire me.

I’m very grateful to have met such a unique and perpetually youthful individual.

juaquinlawrencehershman.com

This is the story of my encounters with Owl, a journey that began when I was about 15 years-old.

It all started one afternoon when my parents were visiting friends in the countryside. Their son had a .22 rifle with a scope, much like the one my Dad used to shoot rats in his auto shop. Although I had held a .22 rifle before, I had never fired one.

I asked the son if I could shoot it, and he said yes. Not wanting to shoot horizontally and risk hitting a neighbor or a house in the distance, I chose to shoot upward instead. There was a massive pine tree on the property, so I stood under its canopy, pointing the rifle toward the branches above. I couldn’t wait to feel the kick of the rifle and the thrill of firing it.

Looking through the scope, I aimed at a shape high in the tree. It was evening, and the light under the tree was dim. I could barely discern the shape, but my brain registered it as an owl. I hesitated, but then overrode my intuition and fired the first shot.

The shape remained motionless in my scope. My mind reasoned that if it had been an owl, the sound of the shot, or the whoosh of the bullet, would have startled it. But it didn’t move.

So I fired again.

A soft thud followed and, to my horror, a young owl fell at my feet, a bullet hole through its heart, blood gushing over its pristine feathers.

In that moment, it felt as though my own heart dropped and sealed shut. The impact on my consciousness was devastating. Me—a lover of life and all its creatures—had just killed one of the forest's most precious, quiet inhabitants.

I returned the gun, likely tossed the owl into the bushes to hide what I’d done, and never spoke of it to anyone. Shame consumed me, and the memory buried itself deep as life swept me forward. For years, I had no encounters, or dreams, about owls.

Twenty-five years later, during an Ayahuasca ceremony in Peru, I had a striking vision of an owl flying toward me and landing in a hollow in my heart.

When I came out of the ceremony, I shared the vision with the group and finally told the story of killing that young owl 25 years earlier. I cried, releasing tears I had held back for a long time. It felt as though the owl was forgiving me for my transgression.

A couple months later, when Bush Jr. was going to be inaugurated as US President after a divisive vote recount in Florida, I invited a couple friends to watch the ceremony. I remember vividly how, at one point, an owl flew out of my heart, entered the TV screen and landed on Dick Cheney’s (Secretary of Defense) shoulder, then off onto Ashcroft’s (Attorney General).

After returning to the Pacific Northwest, my new partner and I decided to move to a land trust farm, an hour outside Seattle. I’ll never forget the first time I visited the 20-acre property. In broad daylight, an owl sat perched on a log fifty feet away, staring straight at our group as we walked along the forest's edge.

After moving there, I had another encounter. While walking through the woods with friends, an owl suddenly dive-bombed us, flying just inches above my head. I stopped, stunned, and looked up to see the owl perched on a branch, staring directly at me. I asked my friends if they had noticed the bird, but they hadn’t. The owl's silent flight made it invisible to them until I pointed it out.

Years later, my relationship fell apart and I left the farm. I was devastated, my heart shattered, and I found myself spiraling into despair. A month later, my mother—visiting from France—was hit by a fast-moving car while crossing an unlit pedestrian crossing. The light was green for traffic, and she was dressed in black. It was most likely a suicide; she had been deeply depressed and unwilling to suffer any longer.

To cope with my grief, I moved to Hawai’i and began the Gypsie Nation project: community dance rituals dedicated to planetary healing. For 18 months, I danced nearly every day in honor of my mother, making daily offering of flowers to the Ocean and to the Volcano.

I lived in a camper truck, offering four dances a week around the island. During my nightly drives, I often saw Pueos, the white Hawaiian owls, gliding silently through the darkness. A few dive-bombed my truck in broad daylight. On nights with a bright moon, I’d sleep at Kapa’a State Park on the Koala Coast, where I would regularly see owls circling above me.

One full-moon night, I suggested to my new girlfriend—who had told me she also had many owl encounters—that we camp at Kapa’a. We parked the truck, walked up the road, and laid on the asphalt to stargaze. Within moments, a massive owl hovered just four feet above our faces. It locked eyes with us for several seconds before vanishing into the night. “Did you see that?” I asked. She had, and we were both astonished.

When I returned to Seattle a couple of years later, I went dancing in the Fremont Solstice Parade, something I had done for many years. My costume that year was simple: I painted my body and adorned my mask with a single owl tail feather.

A few months later, while driving on the freeway from Seattle to Taos, New Mexico, to set up a new Gypsie Nation dance, I thought about that costume and the owl feather, trying to imagine what I would wear for the next parade. At that exact moment, something caught my eye—a pile of feathers by the side of the road. I pulled over to find a dead barn owl, its body struck by a car.

I carefully bagged the bird and placed it in my truck. Wanting to preserve its feathers, I bought salt at the next gas station, buried the owl in it, and stored it under my truck hood. In the chaos of setting up the dance, I forgot about it for a couple days until flies began to swirl around my vehicle.

Once the bird’s flesh had dehydrated and the smell was gone, I removed its wings and saved every feather. These feathers would later become dance ornaments—sacred reminders of my ongoing connection with Owl.

During one of my long-distance hikes in the Gila Wilderness of New Mexico, I heard the haunting hoot of an owl. I had just set up camp in a canyon and began walking through the woods, following the sound. Before long, I spotted an owl perched on a tree branch—my first great horned owl sighting.

A few years later, while traveling through northern Utah scouting for a new farm property, I came across a bird that had been hit by a car. I pulled over, and as I approached the small bundle of ruffled feathers, it hissed at me. The poor thing couldn’t move—its wings were mangled.

It was an adolescent great horned owl. I gently threw a t-shirt over it, carefully carried the injured bird to my truck, and made it as comfortable as I could in a pile of soft clothes. It was completely broken but eerily calm, staring straight into my eyes.

“I’m going to find you help,” I said, determined, as I searched for the nearest animal shelter that would take her in. I was just passing Dinosaur National Monument and the closest one was a hundred miles away. During the drive, I spoke to the owl the entire time, recording a video of this extraordinary encounter.

When I finally reached the shelter, a park ranger examined the owl. “Broken wings,” I explained. Without much ceremony, he grabbed her, placed her roughly into a cage, and returned to his desk.

I was shocked and walked back to my truck, torn about whether I should turn around and take the owl with me. But I didn’t. I drove away, my heart aching for hours. Even though I wasn’t equipped to care for its injuries, at least it could have died in my arms, loved and comforted until its last breath.

Later that month, near Albuquerque, I found another owl—a baby barn owl—killed on the side of the road. I took one wing and a talon as keepsakes, and gave her a proper burial.

When I moved to Dilia, along the Pecos River, owl became a regular presence. I would tell our campground visitors to watch out for chicken hawks, red-tailed hawks, falcons, barn owls and great horned owls. One camper captured a photograph of a great horned owl perched on the roof of my cabin.

That same owl often perched on a fence post in my driveway. On many afternoons, when I returned from errands in Santa Fe, I’d spot it sitting there, regal and unbothered, watching over the land, waiting for me.

How do you find meaning in numerous encounters with one particular animal? Through my introspections, medicine journeys, vision quests and visions, I have come to understand that nature speaks to us in myriads of ways. Some people have remarkable experiences with animals, spirits, trees and elements. Nature, as one organism, is obviously sentient, so each of its parts, from rocks to bacteria, must be able to communicate with us.

Traditional societies often attribute specific meanings and powers to animal encounters, viewing them as messengers or guides. This perspective isn't merely superstition - it represents generations of careful observation and accumulated wisdom about the natural world. These cultural interpretations have helped communities maintain balanced relationships with their environments for thousands of years.

When wild animals repeatedly come to us, does the encounter deliver a particular message or energy to us that we need? Is it possible that the energy transmitted from Nature in the form of these encounters goes directly to our heart? That it initiates a process in our way of being—perhaps to make us better equipped as humans to do the work of Nature, taking care of her so she can continue taking care of us?

I honestly don’t know. But as I write this, I can't help but feel that, given the state of our planet, the Earth must be crying out for attention if she's to continue supporting the billions of us living upon her.

I wonder if my overactive mind—saturated (by my own doing!) with geopolitical news and images of war, famine, and destruction—has been blocking my heart, preventing me from receiving the creative, healing energies that the Earth is undoubtedly offering. Am I too attuned to her suffering, and not open enough to her love and creativity?

The owl hasn’t visited me in a long time— not since I left the farm two years ago. But writing these words reminds me to slow down, to open my heart and eyes, and to truly receive the life around me—a gift from Mother Earth herself, inviting me to walk in beauty, as the Navajo say.

Perhaps the real question isn’t whether nature is sending us messages, but whether we are quiet and open enough to receive them.

As I typed the last word, a neighbor’s cat wandered into the garden where I’m staying in New Zealand. She was hunting for birds and didn’t notice me at first. The porch door was open, so I made a soft sound to catch her attention without startling her. She looked up, then sauntered in, completely relaxed, rubbing herself against my leg. Without hesitation, she followed me into my bedroom as I reached for my camera.

This creature walked in at a perfect moment, and brought with her all her beauty, wildness and tenderness. She trusted me, a stranger, and in doing so, offered me a burst of love and a taste of sensuality.

Exactly what I needed to finish editing this story and send it out with a soft heart.

French school was brutal when I was growing up. The amount of information they crammed into our heads was no different than the corn force-fed to ducks and geese, to fatten their liver and make foie gras. I never puked in class, but could have—the curriculum being so packed and indigestible.

Each year, my grades in literature and philosophy were abysmal. Teachers would announce our grades aloud while handing back essays, and I usually had to wait until the end because my scores were always below average.

We were expected to read an endless stream of French authors, having to write dissertations on topics I couldn’t care less about. I was miserable. Worse still, I was shamed in front of my peers and constantly stressed about my grades.

At home, my mother, an avid reader of fine literature, had me do dictations in the hope of elevating my intellect (and grades!). There too, I failed miserably at both orthography and grammar. My mother’s frustration with my lack of literary enthusiasm, combined with her disapproval of my slurping soup with obvious enjoyment, often led her to call me a 'peasant.' For her, it was an insult. But to me, imagining the life of a peasant, compared to being raised in a big city bourgeois neighborhood, actually seemed kind of appealing!

Thankfully, I somewhat excelled in math, physics, English, and, of course, sports. Those were my saving grace and helped me compensate for the beating I took in other subjects.

However, the stigma I developed around writing lasted for years.

When I started my first business venture at twenty-four, I had to write letters, proposals, and advertisements, and I often froze in front of a blank page. The turning point came much later, in 1991, when a dancer friend asked me to describe the phenomenon of trance (soon to be published on my Substack). I remember sitting down to write that first real essay, and being amazed that I could express myself sincerely without fear of being graded, or shamed.

Over the next few years, I wrote sporadically, mostly corporate marketing and branding material for a company I had created. Later, when I launched the Gypsie Nation project, my writing took on a new dimension. I wanted to ensure that participants in the dance rituals were properly informed and had the best chance of benefiting. Articulating that world—guiding people back toward an indigenous way of being—helped me find my stride. I poured my heart into the Gypsie Nation materials, and in doing so, developed confidence in my ability to describe esoteric, emotional and intimate experiences.

During a year-long sabbatical that took me through France, Morocco, Ghana, and the New Mexico wilderness, I maintained blogs documenting my intimate journey through betrayal, grief, loneliness and communion with nature (see: Swimming in the Ethnosphere and Finally Feral).

When I later created community gardens and Gaia Gardens, a large urban farm in Santa Fe, I wrote daily blog updates to keep my audience up-to-speed about our activities and needs.

When facing opposition from the City of Santa Fe—due to outdated technical regulations prohibiting a farm stand to operate in a residential neighborhood—I began writing passionately to defend our cause. My efforts resulted in several op-eds in the Santa Fe New Mexican and Albuquerque Journal newspapers, and articles in the Green Fire Times, a local environmental magazine. I had an essay published in the 2023 New Farmer’s Almanac (Chelsea Green Publishing)

After closing the urban farm and moving to the countryside, I began writing grants to fund educational programs. Many nights were spent trying to meet deadlines while also managing a busy property.

After selling the farm in 2022, I decided to fully commit to writing. I spent a couple of months on retreat at a friend’s villa in Ojai, California, where each day I rode my bike to the coffee shop and wrote a total of approximately twenty thousand words—roughly one-third to one-quarter of an average novel. While I found the first two chapters promising, much of the remainder felt mediocre, so I chose to set it aside. ​Nonetheless, I sensed a theme emerging—an initiation into manhood centered around the element of water.

When I started sailing a couple of years ago, I felt inspired to share parts of my journey. I went back through what I had written during my California trip, and found good material in the lot. This led me to publish thirteen essays on Substack since June 2024, a digital platform that allows me to reach a broad audience. Writing and editing for Substack has taken me deeper into the craft.

As challenging as writing can be, I’ve come to embrace it as a practice—a daily ritual, much like yoga or dance. The more I write, the better I become at releasing the barriers—fears, judgments and expectations—that hinder me from letting a story flow naturally from my heart. And as more people connect with my words, I feel increasingly inspired to share my experiences.

Writing has helped me process trauma from years of psychological abuse, both at home and at school, healing deep wounds of my childhood, a time when expressing what was in my heart was neither encouraged nor valued.

Chance arrived shortly after I moved to the farm in rural New Mexico. He looked like a fox on fire, with a thick red coat, piercing eyes, and the gait of a hunter. Clovis, a black Labrador, had already been there for a few weeks, and these two—running away from neighboring ranches—were obviously friends. They immediately settled in without a glitch.

At first, I thought their presence was temporary. Skeptical of dog food, I made them scrambled eggs with buttered toast twice a day. It was more of a “feed them and they will stay” than a “build it and they will come” situation. Living by a river on thirty acres, surrounded by thousands of acres of pastures, I was keen to keep these dogs as wild as possible, letting them roam free. And roam they did, disappearing every morning to patrol their turf and socialize, or fight, with other ranch dogs.

Chance had a sweet wildness about him that made me laugh constantly. He was also quite rambunctious, regularly jumping on me with excitement, scratching my over-baked, paper-thin farmer's skin. My forearms were often bloodied and scarred from his rough, powerful claws. Farm dogs don't get manicured—they just run, dig, and claw their way into perfection.

Chance was a true racing machine, accelerating at an Olympic rate and able to sustain thirty-five miles an hour while chasing my truck every time I left the farm. Clovis was fast, too, but just like a truck, it took him a little longer to reach top speed. I had to be quick when I left, or they would follow me all the way to the highway half a mile away, which would likely have meant their demise.

Chance never let me out of his sight, a sure sign of a protector spirit. He followed me across the river, swam in strong currents, and loved being in water. Both Clovis and Chance slept in my barn tool shed, and I often cuddled with them at night, wearing a one-piece reindeer pajama. They absolutely cherished my furry disguise, and getting them to sleep was like trying to settle sugar-pumped kids after a birthday party.

Jack, Chance's brother, would come around trying to assert dominance, but Chance would have none of it. They were the same size, but Chance was the brainy one, in addition to being a remarkable athlete. I chased Jack away because his constant posturing was disturbing our peace.

Chance soon figured out how to climb the steep steel staircase leading to my living quarters above the barn. After finding him covered in snow one morning, I let him stay in my place. He was content to sleep on a cot by the door. Clovis, curious and a bit jealous, climbed the stairs one day but couldn't go back down. The steel steps, designed to scrape the mud off one's boots, were too painful for his tender paws. I carried his seventy pounds down, a strenuous and dangerous feat, holding him with one arm while gripping the railing with the other. It was one of my most bonding moments with Clovis.

Cleopatra, a gorgeous full-tailed Doberman from a neighboring ranch, soon moved into the tool shed and displaced Chance and Clovis, immediately asserting her dominance over the pack. Within a week, however, she stopped eating and started losing weight. I thought she had worms and gave her some medicine. When I left the farm for a couple of days, I came back to find her on the brink of death. I rushed her to a vet in Santa Fe, ninety miles away, with her head on my lap, crying, fearing I would lose her. After a five-hour surgery to remove ten inches of her twisted, infected colon, Cleopatra pulled through. A true survivor.

A year later, Blublu, a tiny Chihuahua I found lost and wounded during an epic summer monsoon, joined the pack. He squeezed himself comfortably into our ever-expanding family. Rico, a Blue Heeler from another ranch, temporarily joined the pack. He was a complete nut, the epitome of eccentric joy—a truly happy dog. Rico left one day after I scolded him for chasing my neighbor's cows and horses. I was crushed, knowing I'd been a bit rough with him.

I quickly discovered that living with semi-wild dogs who had never seen a leash meant I needed to tap into my alpha instincts to keep the pack in harmony. Two months after Rico vanished, he showed up one day, bouncing down the farm road, happy to see everyone. I hugged him profusely, noticing how good he smelled—he’d obviously moved in with someone who gave him a bubble bath. I soon realized he’d returned to his original owner, a woman who worked in the city. As much as he liked our family pack, he got more attention where he came from. I was deeply relieved when he returned, as if to say goodbye—his owner moved back to Albuquerque soon after. I can hardly imagine Rico living in the city. The one time I tried to put a leash on him to take him back, he chewed through the rope in five minutes!

Keeping all these dogs—more came and were chased away—was a lot of work, but they delighted all our visitors. Our Airbnb reviews were filled with comments about the dogs, attracting more dog-loving customers to the farm. These dogs, in a way, made me money and probably helped pay their food bills. We cooked large pots of rice, adding canned dog meat, turmeric, carrots, garlic, nutritional yeast, and vinegar to keep these beasts healthy and worm-free. After all, they roamed and ate pieces of carcasses from cows that died on the range. Once, Cleopatra and Clovis dragged an aborted calf from a neighbor's ranch and feasted on it for days, until every bone was gone. I was impressed.

Grooming these dogs to keep them free of ticks and fleas was a constant effort that involved all the farm residents. It may sound gross—ticks filled with blood—but the many-times-a-day ritual was a sure way to bond deeply with these animals. Without human care, dogs in this part of the country often die young, poisoned by the bloodsuckers.

The four males were unneutered and roamed freely, and Blublu (I had just planted a field of Chihuahua blue corn when I found him!) had, by all standards, the biggest penis, which seemed to deeply impress the other three dogs, who themselves were quite well-endowed. Driving along the county road, I’d often spot puppies bearing a strange resemblance to some of my wild roamers.

One day, Chance vanished for a couple of days, only to return limping and looking unbearably uncomfortable. He’d obviously been romping, and his penis had become stuck in an awkward position. I calmed him down with Bach Pet Rescue Remedy and helped him tuck his dick back inside. Another deeply bonding experience!

All the dogs survived close encounters with porcupines, rattlesnakes, and, for Cleopatra, an attack from a bobcat. She had deep lacerations on her butt and chest—so deep, you could see her lungs’ outer membrane. Unable to afford another visit to the vet, we dressed her wounds with iodine and Trementina, a traditional New Mexican ointment made from piñon sap, beeswax, and herbs. We kept her inside and nursed her back to health.

One day, while plucking fleas and ticks from Chance, he kept twisting and jerking, making my job difficult. Frustrated, I grabbed him by the fur on his back and threw him outside in a fit of anger. I still remember the sound he made from the pain of being handled so roughly. Chance disappeared for the rest of the day and didn’t return that night. He was gone.

I was mortified and remorseful. I couldn’t even tell my crew what had happened. I was ashamed of myself. The next evening, sitting at the bottom of my stairs, I saw Chance coming down the road. My heart leapt, and I opened my arms wide to welcome him back. We cuddled for a long time, and I apologized profusely for mistreating him. I was relieved.

But the next day, Chance was gone again, never to be seen again. Every day, I waited for his return, but it never came. My heart broke more with each passing day. Too ashamed to share my grief, I suffered in silence, pouring my love on the remainder of the pack, who seemed to understand and showed me great sympathy.

One morning, I came down to the barn at dawn and noticed an unusual glare on Clovis’s face. As I turned on the lights, my heart sank—dozens of porcupine quills were embedded in his face and mouth. Cleopatra, too, had suffered the same fate and was hiding in the back of the barn. I had no money for a vet, and Clovis had never set foot in a vehicle. I posted an SOS on Facebook, and a young farmer friend immediately volunteered to come get my dogs with her van and crates, taking them to her vet. The dogs were saved, and my friend, besides driving a hundred and twenty miles that day, insisted on paying the bill. It helped that my dogs were Airbnb and Facebook celebrities!

When I sold the farm a couple of years later, I had five weeks to prepare. I posted on social media and put up flyers looking for a new home for the dogs. I wasn’t willing to separate them or take them away from their turf. Just when I thought I might have to camp on BLM land until I found them a new home, the property buyer offered to keep the dogs. A miracle at the time. She also agreed to let me visit them whenever I wanted. I came to see them three times after the sale, but eventually, the buyer asked for her privacy, saying the dogs were fine. Another tear in my already broken heart.

I was writing to a friend recently and attached an image of Chance, standing in a shallow pool in the Pecos River, just having traced a beautiful signature in the water with his tail. As I told the story of his disappearance, a wave of grief surged in my chest, and I began sobbing—the deepest cry I’d had since he disappeared. I let myself feel the pain, an intense mix of sadness, remorse, and shame.

In that moment, Chance’s spirit came to me. He reassured me that it was meant to be—that he gave me unconditional love as well as this lesson to help me on my journey. He said he was always looking after me. I felt peace and release.

A visitor once asked me what the most significant insight I’d gained from living on the farm was. I paused for a moment and said, "Living twenty-four seven with a pack of dogs has significantly altered my consciousness." She chuckled and asked again, but I repeated my answer.

I still think of my dogs all the time. They were my family—my everyday companions, my protectors, my comedians, and my most loyal friends. Breaking away from the pack was excruciating.

To this day, every dog I encounter is a member of a family I cherish. Warm, receptive, attentive, sweet, and funny—and, when given the chance, and unleashed, they quickly return to the natural order of a pack, with their human alpha an integral part of the hierarchy. Through aches, fears, and grief, I have learned and grown immeasurably from my time with these dogs. Each one had a distinct spirit, sent to protect me, keep me company, and teach me lessons I might not have learned from humans.

I am deeply grateful for having the courage to open my heart to them, and I trust that wherever they are now, they still dream of me, and of all the wild and tender moments we shared together.

A couple years ago, while discussing with my homeopath the strange body aches I was experiencing, she suggested doing a long water fast, and told me to look at the health benefits people were deriving from it. I did a bit of reading on the topic, was intrigued, but did not feel ready.

While recently visiting Fiji by sailboat, I decided to spend a few weeks on land doing a work exchange with a host running two backpackers’ lodges in Suva and Levuka, as well as a tiny island resort.

When my host asked me to relieve the island caretaker for a week, I decided to use this opportunity to be alone on an island to do a seven-day water fast.

Even though people would consider me healthy, lean and in good shape, I have suffered strange pains in the past couple years, in my ankles and lower back in particular.

I brought plenty of Artesian bottled water with me as I did not trust the water from the roof catchments, as well as liquid trace minerals. A local fisherman took me to the island and the caretaker went home for a break. I was now alone on the island, in the company of three resident dogs.

By the time I got settled in the cabin, it had been twenty four hours since my last meal. My first day of fasting was spent traveling by bus and taxi, and was easy and uneventful.

Water fasting being a means to give the digestive system a break and allow the body to heal, I was eager to begin the journey.

I woke up the next day with cramped calves and lumbar area, and a mild headache. After drinking a warm glass of water with lemon, I started stretching my body.

With no agenda, and being committed to doing this fast, I decided to engage in every activity mindfully, whether walking, collecting trash or cooking for the dogs. I took my time for everything, watching my mind. Strangely, most of the time, my state of mind was pretty blend and simply focused on acknowledging, observing and questioning the aching.

When the digestive system is given a chance to rest, like in a long water fast, the organs go through a purge. Liver and kidneys start releasing toxins into the colon, which in turn get into the bloodstream and can induce discomfort and aches.

That alone can make one break the fast and start eating, since food is a source of comfort and pleasure.

Everyday was pretty much the same in terms of aches, but I leaned into the pain and did not panic. I was tempted to drink fresh coconut water, but did not do it upon reading that the calories would trigger the liver into a digestive mode again, thus breaking the fast, and lessening its potential benefits.

I walked around the island picking plastic bottles, raked leaves around the property, and dragged dead palm tree branches to shore up the sea wall.

I did a couple yoga practices a day and took copious naps whenever I felt like it. I held inversions and twists for five minutes or longer, getting deeper into my stretching and yogic breathing than ever before.

I also started becoming aware of the whole fascia around my legs, chest and torso, an intricate web of filaments holding the flesh body wrapped around one’s skeleton, and focused on relaxing a much broader network of tissues around my muscles and organs.

Even though I stretched quite profoundly, having some of the best yoga practices I’ve ever had, my aches, especially in my back, did not get any better. That also could have been a source of discouragement, and could have forced me to break the fast. I kept leaning into the pain with trust and curiosity. Having a long history of dealing with back spasms and recurring sciatica, I have faith in my body’s ability to heal.

I did not have any creative urges during my fast, nor any libido, which could also be confronting for some!

Being on an island with no food (yes with coconuts and papayas but they would both break the fast), is certainly more conducing to undertake a long fast and enduring its possible discomfort, than living close to a coffee shop or grocery store. Or simply at home with ample temptations in one’s fridge or pantry!

Having no other food than rice to feed the dogs, I fished with a cast net everyday, a difficult task that, remarkably, took my attention away from my body aches.

How frustrating to cast a net over a perfect school of sardines and having the net land in a miserable twist, bringing home a few tiny sardines after two hour of waddling in waist-deep water!

I cooked rice, green papaya and sardines over a wood fire, with the dogs watching with great trepidation.

Hunger, body aches, fogginess, headaches, sluggishness, fears and judgements were met with trust and determination. I was curious about the effects of this fast and kept my expectations to a minimum.

I slept, stretched, napped, swam, fished and did some cleaning work, giving my body some movements.

Seven days of fasting, and two days of re-introducing food into my body in the form of vegetable broth, and later fresh coconut water and a very ripe papaya, was an ideal situation.

The past couple years, after selling the farm, have been focused on recovering a certain joie de vivre, finding inspiration and acquiring wisdom and vitality, to keep giving the World all the care it needs.

The stress and effects of having toxicity accumulated in the digestive organs and colon can only impair one’s ability to feel good, energized and creative.

As much as this fast was decided on the spur-of-the moment, it was a success, and I’m now trying to digest its benefits. One seems to be an increased lightness of being, and a relaxed and joyful state.

A long water fast is not for the faint of heart, but the better prepared and the more supportive the setting you create for yourself, the better chance you have to navigate your detox with ease and confidence, as well as to successfully re-introduce food when you break your fast.

For more information on water fasting…

What happens to your body during a water fast.

Articles and coaching for water fasts

Inspired to write after selling the farm in 2022, I headed to California for a retreat. I also started looking for properties online as I was still itching to initiate another land-based community project.

I logged into Yacht World one day, out of curiosity, and immediately got transfixed by sailboats, and how much my money could buy. I did not indulge for too long, not wanting to get distracted, or caught in a fantasy. Strangely, ever since I stopped commercial fishing in 1988, I never thought of going back to sea, my five years on the ocean having somehow cured my dreams of sailing the world.

Back in Santa Fe a couple months later, with no inspiration on my radar, I caught the boat fever again, some of it prompted by a friend refitting his sailboat in New Orleans. I started researching about affordable ocean-capable boats, took copious notes, and soon was headed to Louisiana to help my friend get his boat ready.

After working for a few days in the overwhelming humidity of the gulf coast, I began my boat search, driving through Mississippi, Alabama and then Florida. Having never visited the gulf coast, I relished some of the old marinas and pristine white beaches until I reached the Sunshine State, which was a bit difficult for me to bare. Being the bohemian that I am, traveling in a 1999 Tacoma with a camper top, I felt quite out of place, as well as out of fashion!

My morning routine consisted of researching boat listings in the area, checking their reputation and known issues, and making appointments with brokers. I soon identified boats between thirty and forty feet that fitted my budget and needs.

Sailboat Data lists the characteristics of production sailboats; displacement (weight), draft, capsize coefficient, hull speed, sail surface, engine type that the boats originally came with, water, fuel and waste water capacity, comfort ratio, production years and number of hulls made.

After looking at a few boats in Tampa and St. Petersburg, I visited my first boatyard in Placida. During Hurricane Ian, many boats that were stored there fell over, and people were busy repairing the damage.

I crossed over to Lake Okeechobee to visit the Indiantown Marina where a couple hundred boats were on the hard, some being worked on, or stored during the off season, and others just weathering away, seemingly abandoned by their owners, whose passion to be at sea, or financial fortune, had faded away.

I started to get familiarized with the different brands of boats, and quickly discovered how friendly the boating community was, people often willing to share their knowledge and experience.

Driving all the way to the northern part of Maine, I stopped at every boatyard I could find. Some of them, like Bert Jarbin Yacht Yard, or Herrington Harbor near Annapolis, Maryland, cover dozens of acres. Besides looking at boats within my budget, I also got to see outrageous multi-million dollars super yachts.

My boat search yielded some interesting encounters. In Florida, I befriended a long-time captain who worked for the UN, and owned a sixty foot ketch. I stayed in touch with him along my journey, often asking his opinion regarding boats I was interested in.

In Beaufort, South Carolina, I met an older Danish seaman fixing his boat. A friendly and talkative fellow, I though I would pick his brain and invited him to dinner. He showed up drunk, was obnoxious with the waitress, and talked nonstop about his days in the merchant marine. In kind of a sneaky way, he offered to sell me his boat for an amount within my budget. That was, after telling me in the morning that he was planning to cross the Atlantic, and cruise the Mediterranean once his boat was finished! Curious to check the configuration of his classic Southern Cross 35, I visited his boat the next day. It was a mess and the fellow was disappointed that I wasn’t naive enough to fall for his offer!

In Deltaville, a lovely boat haven located on the Chesapeake Bay, forty miles from the Atlantic Ocean, I looked at a Pearson 40, also known as the Whale Body, designed by naval architect William Shaw, a centerboard boat well suited for the Bahamas with its shallow draft.

The boat was in extraordinary shape and was loaded with tons of equipment like a life raft, watermaker, diesel generator, new sails and more. I was very impressed and, of course, very tempted! Compared to other boats I had so far looked at, it was a lot for forty thousand dollars! I read a favorable review in Sailing Magazine, by famed sailor and writer John Kretschmer, and spent two more days in Deltaville, doing further research. After speaking with the owner again, he confessed that it was the perfect Bahamas’ boat, but not the best for sailing around the world. I had money burning a hole in my pocket and was eager to buy a boat, so my two days checking that Pearson were a bit torturous.

At the same marina, I met a young woman who had bought a Fast Passage 39. While sailing the Chesapeake Bay, she experienced engine trouble and hauled out the boat for repairs. She went back to California for work, and during her absence, the cockpit drains got clogged by leaves, resulting in rains flooding the cabin, ruining the wood work and electrical wiring. She had been rebuilding the damaged interior for the past three years and, when I visited her upon my return from Maine a month later, she had pulled the engine out, and was rebuilding it, with new pistons, rings, valves and crankshaft. I was blown away by her determination to rebuild her boat.

In New Jersey, I looked at a Contest 36 that was on my list since I left Santa Fe. A one owner, immaculately maintained vessel, I got very close to making an offer, but got cold feet because the boat needed new sails and navigation instruments, and the engine needed to be rebuilt.

It’s easy to get mesmerized by the beauty of a boat that forty-thousand dollars can buy, but it’s humbling to learn how much it takes to refit it before undertaking any long passage. A boat must be hauled out at a yard for weeks or months, while everything gets checked, repaired or replaced; engine, standing rigging (cables holding the mast), running rigging (ropes to trim sails), chainplates (the steel plates joining the standing rigging to the hull), rudder, etc. In most older boats, navigation instruments should be upgraded, as well as sails and electrical wiring replaced.

In essence, it is not uncommon to spend twenty to thirty-thousand dollars on a refit after purchasing a thirty year-old boat for forty-thousand dollars. Without refitting a boat, one risks to encounter serious breakdowns during rough seas. Loosing engine power, dismasting, or an electrical failure near shore is dramatic enough, but when it happens on the open ocean, it can be catastrophic.

From knowing very little about sailboats, I began an education into which boats I should look at, what to check when inspecting a boat, and what questions to ask. Unfortunately, yacht brokers, just like car salespeople, usually know very little about a boat’s history, I found out. Even when speaking with boat owners, I was often leery of their answers regarding engine hours and rigging maintenance.

I came close to buying a boat a few times, with reputable brands like Cape Dorie, Contesa, Seasprite, Hallberg-Rassy, Tayana and Contest.

All along that journey, I kept imagining myself on a thirty-five foot boat. What would I do all day? Visit exotic places? Knowing how I’ve never liked being a tourist, I began questioning my desire to buy a boat. Was I trying to escape the land of enchantment (they call it the land of entrapment), feeling like my time in New Mexico had come to an end?

Upon returning to Florida, where I had planned to visit a few more boats, my intuition told me that I wasn’t ready to buy a sailboat. That maybe, I should go cruising on other people’s boat for a while, and discover whether boat life was really for me.

So I beelined from Jacksonville to Santa Fe.

That two-months, eleven-hundred miles journey was just the beginning of a deep dive into the cruising world. Back in Santa Fe, I signed up on a crew finder website, and within a month, received an offer to sail from Seattle to Los Angeles on a beautiful yacht. I’ve now logged over 6,000 miles on four different boats, recently sailing from Panama to French Polynesia, then Fiji, and I will soon be heading to New Zealand.

I’ve been lucky to find crew positions, some of them paid, on gorgeous boats, with great captains and crew mates. It’s given me a good taste of boat life, including cruising with young kids for three months, staying at fun marinas and quaint tropical anchorages, and doing long passages. The boats I’ve crewed on have been in the fifty to sixty-foot range, and quite luxurious. Needless to say that I’ve been getting a bit spoiled!

I’m really glad I did not buy a boat! This boat search, and cruising the South Pacific for six months, has confirmed what everyone says-sailing is an expensive hobby!

For the time being, I will most likely continue to seek crew positions on interesting boats, while also doing work trades in far away places, like I have been doing in Tahiti, Huahine and Fiji. During these stays on land, mingling with the local population, I let myself be inspired by a different way of life.

Sometimes, I long for a homestead, where I can have a garden and animals, and be able to sleep in my own bed.

Nothing wrong with dreaming, right?

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As I returned to the farm and was greeted by my dogs at the property gate, I smelled antifreeze. I knew there was trouble under the hood! I popped it open and saw the crack on top of the radiator, water squirting all over the engine compartment.

The farm being ninety miles from Santa Fe and thirty-five miles from Las Vegas, it’s kind of tough to go get parts with a leaky radiator. I lived by myself and my only other vehicle was a bobcat with steel tracks, in other words, a little tank with a top speed of ten miles an hour.

I remembered I had a roll of steel epoxy in my shop somewhere, a compound used to fix a cracked exhaust or engine block. In the morning I sanded the airline crack, and applied the epoxy putty, hoping that it would hold.

The next day, with ten gallons of spare water, I set out in a snow storm for Santa Fe, where my friend David was waiting to help me install a new radiator. My truck being four wheel drive and equiped with four studded tires, my worry was not about whether I would make it through the snow, but whether the radiator patch would hold. We made it, and driving through the snow storm with hardly anyone on the road was magical. Getting into town, I spent six bucks at the car wash, to avoid bringing a load of slushed ice into David’s garage.

He was waiting, the garage door open, air compressor on, gloves and tools ready. David’s been my friend since the Gaia Gardens’ days. He lived with his mother across the street from the old urban farm, and I used to bring them a bag of fresh produce every week. David has been a mechanic all his life and, over the years, has helped me work on all my trucks and cars. The man has always been there when I needed him.

My father was a mechanic, so was my grandfather. They worked together. As a kid, and until I left the house, I was at their shop everyday, tinkering with everything — bicycles, roller blades, skis, dinghies, home-made radios, mopeds, cars and even rockets! I quit making rockets after one gave me a nasty black eye during a faulty lift-off.

I love to work with people who, like me, are used to work on engines, machinery, houses and appliances. Over the years we’ve learned how to do things ourselves. We also know that working together gets a lot more done. Like putting a new radiator in my truck.

It's now seventeen degree Fahrenheit. My ass is iced, my hair is getting caked with oil from the drip of an older, but still perfectly sound engine. We left the garage door open as we need to crawl in and out from under the truck, removing hoses and front grill, to dismantle the radiator. At one point, I pull David's t-shirt over his ass because his crack is showing signs of distress. No big deal! When guys like us work together, our sweat, snot or blood sometimes drips on everything, like on David, while I’m holding a flashlight above him, and he’s torquing away below the truck.

I keep sockets and screws organized, staging at all times so we don't loose parts, sequences, tools or our temper. Breathing, moving to stay warm. David puffs on a cigarette. I used to smoke a long time ago. A working man's quick puff, working, hunting or fishing, is a small price to pay to keep a working man happy!

Done! Start her up! Fresh coolant, belts and pulleys, fan, battery-all checked. Two-hour pit stop, and done before sunset.

I love guys like David. And there are many around. Old school, honest, a heart of gold, and easy to work with. I have other friends like him I can hike, bike, bird watch, garden, dance, build or repair houses with.

What a wonderful afternoon with a friend! Thank you David! You've saved my ass many times! Bless your Mom for having raised such a good man and good mechanic!

Bless men like us who know how to get shit done, like to do it together because it's easier and more fun, and understand that it builds friendships lasting a lifetime.

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Sitting in a concrete amphitheater listening to boring lectures for hours on end was too much for my spirit to take, so I quit college after a couple years. With four hundred bucks in my pocket, I bought a hundred dollars one-way ticket from London to San Francisco.

After working as a carpenter near Lake Tahoe in California, and smoking way too much weed, I decided to go north. I was quite disillusioned with the world at the time, and beside reading accounts of famous sailors, I was also fascinated by people living deep in the bush. So I headed for Alaska.

I bought books about building log cabins, and heard it was easy to stake a land claim in the Yukon. Hitchhiking along the Alaskan Highway, I began hearing stories about how good the money was in commercial fishing. My escape into the Yukon got derailed!

Arriving in Homer in late July, I started pacing the docks, not knowing which boat was fishing for what. Many other youngsters were also hoping to get on a boat. “It’s too late in the season, nobody is hiring” they told me. I asked a burly fellow on a large vessel if he needed a deck hand. “ Can you steer a boat?” he asked. I told him I had been sailing my whole adolescence and was familiar with being on boats. “Jump in, we’ll drop you off in Kodiak. You’ll have a better chance of getting a job there”.

The boat was a tender, buying the catch from fishing boats in remote areas. Came night time, the captain showed me what compass heading to maintain, and retired to his cabin. The sea got rough and I got terribly seasick during my four-hour watch, but kept the boat heading in the right direction. So much for the romance of being on a boat in Alaska!

In Kodiak too, I learned there were no fishing jobs that late in the season. However, canneries were hiring and I got a job stacking halibuts in huge walk-in freezers. I slept in the woods for a few days until Gordy Clodfelter, an old fisherman, picked me up hitchhiking, and offered me room and board for twenty bucks a day.

His house was filled with drunkards staying up all night, playing poker and drinking watered-down whiskey. Gordy barked orders at his girlfriend, a former gogo dancer and drunk herself, referring her as “Fat Ass”, when, strangely, she was one very skinny old lady.

I worked fourteen-hour days for a few weeks, got paid overtime and went south to Central America to spend the rest of the year, before going back to France to teach skiing. Before leaving, Gordy told me he would have a job for me the next season and gave me his address.

The following year, I wrote Gordy to confirm I was coming to fish, but never heard back from him. When I showed up at his door step in the spring, he told me he already had a crew. And what a crew! The same guys who were gambling at his house, all between fifty and seventy years-old.

Gordy mentioned a skipper looking for a deck hand, warned me that he wasn’t very good but that I needed to pay my dues. Jerry was an Iowa farmer, and leased a boat and fishing permit from one of the canneries. He was the epitome of the redneck; racist, obnoxious, trying one day to convince me that Wonder Bread was the best of breads because of all the nutrition added to it! I never argued with him after that.

On our first set, in a calm bay, the power take off wouldn’t engage, so with the net fully out, we had no hydraulics to bring it aboard. All night, the three deckhands pulled the heavy net back on deck, inch-by-inch. We did not catch any fish, and my hands and arms were trashed. Back at the cannery, we found out that all it took was a tiny adjustment for the power take-off to work properly. Great skipper!

Within a couple weeks, the skiffman, the crew in charge of towing the end of the net around the school of fish, quit. I took his job and was excited because that job is very technical and gets paid more. I learned quickly but we were only fishing inside a sheltered bay. Back at the cannery, I was hearing that boats fishing on Alitak beach were catching a lot of red salmon. At the time, the cannery was paying $1.25/lb for reds, whereas the pink salmon we were catching in the bay was getting $0.30/lbs.

We finally headed to Alitak beach and it was a whole other world. Many boats were taking turns laying their nets, with sometimes two hours of waiting between sets. The breakers were dangerous and I heard that a skiffman had recently lost his life there, drowning after his skiff got flipped in the breakers.

Still quite green at the complex maneuvers of purse seining, I was cautious and kept my distance from the treacherous breakers. However, our catch wasn’t that good because the fish was traveling between the shoreline and the breakers.

Within days, I became more daring and took the skiff beyond the breaker line. After a few days at Alitak beach, the waves got bigger. Unfortunately, I got a bit too close to shore one morning and a huge wave flipped my skiff like a pancake. I went flying, the skiff landing on my head and nearly splitting my skull. I swam to shore with a gigantic goose egbut not other injuries. It was quite a sobering experience to say the least!

A week later, while returning to the cannery inside Alitak bay, I noticed what looked like the rigging of a sunken boat in a cove. As we came a little closer, I realized that it was the boat Gordy was skippering that season, an old wooden seiner leased from the cannery. Probably drunk, the crew had anchored too close to shore, so when the tide went out, the boat rested on its side and filled up with water when the tide came back. Maybe it was better that I did not get a job with Gordy!

When Fish & Game took a count of salmon in the rivers, and fishing was off, I made friends with other fishermen, hoping to get on a better boat the following year. Bruce Feldman was a school teacher and a carpenter, and owned his own boat and fishing permit. I ended up working for him for the next two seasons and made really good money, our boat joining the ranks of the high liners-the boats catching the most fish.

Bruce was a good fisherman and an excellent mechanic. I was his skiffman and became good at my job. Unfortunately, Bruce retired to spend more time with his young daughters. His sister Tina and her husband, who had been working with Tom Nelson, a famous skipper, decided to buy Bruce’s boat and permit. When Tom Nelson offered me a job as his deckhand and cook, it was an opportunity I couldn’t pass. Tom was a legendary skipper who people called Sockeye, an other name for red salmon.

Tom was in his seventies, a short and slender man from Alaskan and Norwegian ancestry. He was not only a remarkable crab, herring and salmon fisherman, he was also a notorious gambler. I heard stories of his leaving canneries with body guards, after having bilked Filipino workers of thousands of dollars in poker tournaments.

After each fishing trip, once the boat docked, he would put on his best clothes and say to me: “ Frenchy, you are now in charge!”, and disappear until the next opening, off to town to gamble and womanize. He was a heavy drinker but never drank on the boat. I would sit next to him in the wheel house and watch him scan the horizon for fish. He could spot the smallest ripple on the surface and knew exactly which direction the school was going. He talked very little. He always asked me to deep fry, pickle or sun dry the cod, flounder, crab and octopus that was caught in the net, so the boat’s rigging was often adorned with strips of halibut or salmon. Sometimes, he would anchor near a native village to go gambling, returning with armloads of smoked chum, or dog salmon, a gift from one of his native cousins.

Tom was very kind to me and was deeply surprised when I did not go back fishing with him the following year. He even showed up at the Metropolis in Seattle, the punk club I had opened, wondering how I was making money running an all-ages, no-alcohol venue. I explained to him that I wished to create good things and that making money was not the only thing in life. He seemed sad and perplex that evening.

Even though Tom was part Alaskan native, there was never any prayers or offerings during our fishing sprees. The season I worked for him, while fishing around a cape that he knew well, we caught over one hundred sharks. Their teeth getting caught in the meshes, it becomes impossible to hoist the net, so we shot them with an AK47, and hoisted them by the tail with the winch. My job, as the shark was swinging from one side of the boat to the other, was to cut the shark’s tail with a machete, a task I had to close my heart to accomplish because the shark, even though shot several times, was still alive. They would land in the water, tail-less, slowly sinking to the bottom in a trail of blood, soon to be food for the crabs.

This experience haunted me for years. For the five seasons I fished, it was all about money. No prayers, no ceremonies of gratitude, just a full throttle race into greed. During some fishing openings, there were sometimes so many boats trying to cast their nets that some skippers resorted to shooting at each other.

I fished from 1978 to 1982, twice taking boats from Seattle to the Bering sea and back. I went back one more season in 1988 after selling Free Mars, the vegetarian restaurant I opened after closing the Metropolis. I had several accidents that year, the last one almost costing me my life. It was time to quit.

These wild years of fishing were deeply formative, and were for me a sort of initiation into manhood. But the scars on my soul persist, and now that I travel the world on sailboats, I remember to give thanks for the waters that hold me and for all the beautiful creatures living below the surface.

When you respect yourself and treat yourself as sacred, you will respect all things and know all things around you are sacred. – Johnny Moses

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For many people, the notion of sailing is very romantic, and for good reasons. Getting away from civilization, being moved by the wind and visiting exotic locations only accessible by boat are but a few. As a teenager, I was an avid reader of famous sailors’ stories. Jacques Cousteau and Éric Tabarly were some of my heroes. My Dad had a sailing dinghy for years, and I often used it by myself during my two-months school holidays, exploring secluded coves near the many picturesque fishing harbors where my parents rented a summer house. I dreamt of becoming a sailor one day and went to biology university to become an oceanographer. Unfortunately, I wanted action and was not suited to sit in a concrete amphitheater listening to boring lectures, so I quit, and ended up going to Alaska to fish commercially for five summers. After that, I got swept into the madness of a creative entrepreneur, spending twenty-three years in the Pacific Northwest, never again setting foot on a boat. Until two years ago, when after a decade of organic farming in the Southwest desert, I sold the farm, heard the call of the wild and decided to go sailing the world.

I am currently in the Marquesas Islands, French Polynesia, after an eighteen-day Pacific crossing from the Galapagos Islands, and will be exploring the Tuamotu Archipelago and Society Islands for the next few weeks before heading to Fiji.

I find sailing fascinating for the fact that it can be very challenging. For one thing, you share a very small space with several other people, and in my current situation, with two young kids (two and five years-old). Six bodies on four hundred square feet is a confinement that can push many of your buttons!

I’ve always had a hard time with sitting meditation, but I find the opportunity to watch my mind and control my emotions/reactions while sailing quite unique. Cruising on different boats for almost a year, I have marveled at my ability to stay calm, positive, pleasant and joyous. I have been finding grace in being in service to a boat, its captain and crew. Keeping things tidy, being present, attentive and impeccable have become a sort of spiritual practice. I sweep the deck as if it were a temple and pamper the boat as if it was my beloved child. I am attentive to every detail from provisioning, engine maintenance, nourishing the crew and welcoming guests aboard. The amount of focus required to keep a boat safe and in good shape is substantial. Just like in devotional spiritual practice, the mental effort takes your attention away from oneself, bringing a sort of peace and lightness. The mind becomes quieter.

And then, the shit hits the fan and all hell breaks loose, and there’s no time for indecision and smallness. In these moments, the elements rally to humble you as if the Gods were testing your courage and endurance before letting you into their world.

Just a few weeks ago, while sailing close to Tahuata, an island with tall cliffs, we got slammed by a freak gust that made the boat broach, the force of the wind overpowering the helmsman. We quickly proceeded to reduce our amount of sails and, during the maneuver, another gust made the boat crash jibe, which means the six hundred pounds boom flung from one side of the boat to the other with incredible speed. At this moment, the main sheet (rope) that connects the boom to the deck becomes a deadly weapon if you are in its way. Unfortunately, one of our crew, a tough and experienced Italian sailor, got caught by the sheet and was thrown against the steering console with unbelievable force. When I turned around and saw her slumped and bloody, I thought the sheet had cut her throat! I held her in my arms for three hours, comforting her the best I could, fearing we were going to loose her as I suspected serious internal injuries.

In these remote islands, there are no Coast Guards. The captain communicated with local emergency services to get her evacuated, and a local fishing boat got dispatched late into the night, bringing a nurse, with oxygen and morphine, along with four burly fishermen. Our mate was in such pain that we couldn’t lift her onto the stretcher. It took an hour, and six strong fellows, to get her to sit up, then stand up, before we could carefully move her onto the fishing boat that took her to the infirmary of a nearby island. The next morning, she got flown to a hospital by helicopter. She suffered eight broken ribs with fourteen fractures, a head cut and massive bruising from the impact.

We are now anchored in a tiny harbor on Hiva Oa, in the Marquesas Islands. All is calm and peaceful, a contrast to the chaos of a few days ago, when an otherwise gorgeous day of sailing between islands turned into a nightmare. In these moments, nothing else matters but the safety of the boat, the children and the wounded mate. The self withdraws in a place where personal discomfort and needs disappear.

The accident that happened could have struck one of the kids, or the captain. With only three adults as crew at the time, and one crew down, our hands were full. Sailing is not for the faint of heart!

But we made it. The captain and I had prefect communication, he on the radio with a doctor, digging into our emergency medical kit to find strong pain killers, me holding my crewmate, reassuring her and loving her with all my might.

When I was a fisherman in Alaska, I was in several accidents that could have killed me. The last one saw me airlifted to a nearby hospital with a dislocated collar bone. That accident happened on a perfectly calm sea and sunny day, when fish was rolling in, and greed made me arrogant and careless.

Even though by then, I had five years of commercial fishing experience, I nearly drowned when I got thrown overboard from a skiff at full speed. Taking a long sabbatical after that, I reflected on my experiences and understood that the Ocean was angry at me for taking fish without prayers or gratitude.

I quit fishing and to make amends, I did not eat flesh for thirty years, and when I caught my first salmon while sailing along the Pacific Coast last fall (read the Sailing Lesson), I ate it with great reverence. When I reeled in my first tuna while recently crossing the Pacific, I made sure I cut its heart out and ate it ceremoniously.

Being on the Ocean can be wild and also monotonous during long passages. Even though modern boats have many fancy gadgets, we are still but a tiny shell that can be thrashed around when the sea swells and the wind blows.

Then you get to remote places and drop anchor, take the dinghy out to go to shore, walk on pristine beaches and swim in crystal clear waters, or visit tiny out-of-time communities. The landfalls make all the discomfort of long passages fade away. You are near land again. You can relax and sleep more comfortably, and for longer hours! You are safe.

Kind of, because the wind can pick up, your anchor can drag, and it’s all hands on deck again, sometimes in the middle of the night, sometimes very close to other boats, or way too close to shore!

I was at sea for months on end when I was in my twenties, often taking boats from Seattle to the Bering Sea, and back. I was pretty unconscious then, focused on making money, and on not getting killed by rough seas and dangerous equipment.

This past year returning to sea has deeply intrigued me. Boat life can be quite a fertile environment for developing awareness, patience and compassion. It’s like being in a tiny ashram on the water.

Except that there is no dogma.

Just you, the mighty ocean, the unpredictable elements and your mind.

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Lyon, the city of my birth in France, lays at the confluence of the Rhône and Saône rivers. In my youth, I walked and biked by these large rivers daily, taking them for granted. Dammed for navigation, they were to me but dirty and sluggish bodies of water. In my early teens, I would grab my fishing rod after school and go catch whatever fish I could get, often using maggots from rotten cheese as bait, something illegal I could get away with because I was just a kid. I would even lay (also illegal) bottom lines overnight, catching large fishes call Ombre, way too bony for my mother’s taste, so I gave away my catch to other fishermen, not so lucky because they had to follow the fishing regulations. My Father was an avid angler and often took me trout fishing on the weekend. I wanted to chat with him but had to be utterly quiet for hours on end, which got me more intimate with eddies, frogs, dragonflies and willows For many years, I swam, fished and kayaked down rivers without having much spiritual connection with them.

When I bought the farm in rural New Mexico, the Pecos River bordering the property, was a decisive factor. A mile from the county road, the river was like taking a step back in time. I acquired the farm in November and the river, at the time, was a gentle sliver of glistening beauty, with swirling waterholes and red cliffs that awakened my childhood innocence and lust for wonder. That first winter, I walked daily across the pastures and sat quietly on the sandy river shores, taking in the gentle sound of the water. I was seeking inspiration for my new land-based project.

One day, out of nowhere, while sitting quietly by the river, I heard a gentle feminine voice say; “I am a being”. It did not startled me but went deep into my heart. For the first time in my life, a River spoke to me. Given my interest in indigenous worldview, I took it as a blessing to be addressed by something that, all my life, I had looked at as an object.

It’s the only thing that the River ever said to me. Of course, I have read many accounts of indigenous people viewing trees, rocks, animal and plants as their relatives, but that voice had a profound effect on me. During my five years on the land, I would make frequent visits to the river bringing offerings of blue corn flour, praying for guidance, or asking for protections for recently deceased friends. I even released a beaver pelt that someone had gifted me, asking Beaver for forgiveness for the greed of my fir-trapping French ancestors!

There was a decent snow pack the first year, so when spring came, the river turned into a different creature. From a clear and glistening stream, she was now six feet higher and thirty feet wider, brown, thick and roaring. I called her the Chocolate Goddess in that form. The large boulders I enjoyed basking on during the winter were now submerged and her mighty flow commanded a new respect and awe.

Stray dogs started showing up at the farm, some of them in bad shape. They were so spirited and fun that I kept a few. Within a year, I was living with three, and sometimes five, wild dogs, as the word must have gone out that the food at the farm was excellent. I frequently took these new companions to the river for a dunk during the hot summer months. Together, we laid on the shores, dreaming of a world that words cannot describe. An ancient world where time doesn’t exist, where life moves slowly and simply, where game is abundant and not so afraid of man.

A river in the desert is like a green highway for birds as they find food, coolness and shelter from the big cottonwoods and golden willows adorning its bank. During the winter, the area is heavily populated by migrating birds like Canadian geese, sandhill cranes and a great variety of ducks, red winged black birds and colorful finches of all types. Others, like blue heron, cranes, hawks and great horned owls are residents year-round. The sight of these birds flying low would also transport me in ancient times. Their quacks constantly rekindling in me a feeling of what it means to be indigenous-one with the land. That “being” that the river said she was, supports so much abundance. A great being indeed, one that I got to appreciate in her swelling brown and shrinking to a nothing but a few puddles. A great presence in my back yard that I now miss since I sold the farm. But each time I pass by a river, I remember that voice, a gentle reminder to perceive the world with my heart, something our distant ancestors must have been very familiar with.

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Starting from a diversion dam across the Pecos River, the ditch is an intricate 13-mile infrastructure, slowly meandering down the valley, along rocky cliffs and over arroyos, the natural dry river beds evacuating rain waters coming from the surrounding hills. The ditch was build two hundred years ago with great care and ingenuity, boasting numerous stone and wood bridges, a tunnel along a cliff to protect it from falling rocks, and a dozen large gates used to flush the ditch of sand and silt, as well as to help relieve pressure during storm surges. Needless to say that it took me a while, several years indeed, to not only grasp the layout of such intricate waterway, but to understand how to manage it and protect it from breakdowns.

During the winter months, my daily walks along the empty ditch brought me in touch with the phenomenal work that the Spaniards undertook. In the solitude and quietness of my inspections and clean ups, I was not only in awe of the effort and number of people that such construction must have entailed, but I fell in love with a ditch that has sustained this valley and many generations since 1820.

The love affair wasn't without pain and sacrifice. My time working on the ditch took me away from the farm activities for hours on end, often in bitter cold weather, wrestling with heavy blockages of branches, trash and mud. The remarkable flora and bird life along the ditch, along with a deep sense of service to the community, kept me on the job. I knew it was important for me, and essential to the well-being of the community, that I learned all I could about the upkeep of the life blood of this valley.

The Limpia, the annual communal cleaning of the ditch, is a tradition that brought, and still brings, many ranching and farming communities together in the early spring, when ditches are closed for cleaning and repairs. In areas where the tradition has been maintained, or revived, people gather with shovels and saws to clear trees and obstacles impairing the flow of water.

Attending my first Limpia, I was surprised that only a few of the thirty-five parciantes (those who have water rights) showed up. The ditch association bylaws clearly stipulates that it’s a requirement to participate, or send a Peon or pay a fine. While doing my cleaning duties that day, I came upon a group of elders who were taking measurements to replace a Desague, as the large flushing/regulating gates are called. Nick, a farmer in his seventies, turned to me and said: “After us, there’s nobody to do this.” At this moment, I knew my job was going to entail bringing more participation to the cleaning of the ditch.

A few years back, when I ran Gaia Gardens, an urban farm in Santa Fe, and was attending a monthly session of the County’s Food Policy Council, an Hispanic man in his mid-fifties shared a story that touched me deeply, and prepared me for what Nick alluded to. The man recounted that, as a teenager, his family moved to Arizona, but every spring, they came back to New Mexico to support the family farm and help their cousins with the cleaning of the ditch. Each year, the boys walked by the “ritual” shovel, and if they reached its height, were allowed to go work with the men. The man shared that, around thirteen years of age, he knew he had grown plenty, and was looking forward to joining his elder cousins that year and prove himself. To his greatest disappointment, his cousins had bought a backhoe and didn’t need extra help. The man, standing in front of an audience of farmers and food policy experts, then said, shedding tears: “I missed my chance to become a man. I was robbed of my initiation.”

Every winter, I took on the organization of the Limpia, creating announcements, cooking traditional stews of beans and elk, often getting praises from elders commenting that the food tasted like what their mothers used to make.

Great efforts were put on reviving a tradition that in our valley, had fallen away, people caring no more, too busy to show up, or kept away because of discord within the community. My efforts at reviving the Limpia, and trying to bring local children into it, were often not rewarded by much participation from locals or city folks. As a result, our farm crew ate leftovers from the Limpia's abundant feasts for days on end.

For five years, I never got discouraged, and kept offering the best food, and sending the most eloquent invitations. Deep down, I sensed that my selflessness and devotion were not only part of an initiation that every young man in the past had to go through to become an adult and a member of the community, but that my tears and sweat, and sometimes blood, were a show of gratitude and respect to the countless people who built this ditch, and made of this otherwise parched landscape, an oasis.

The summer monsoons, and my growing understanding of the vulnerability of the ditch, kept me vigilant of the weather patterns. In the desert, heavy rains create dangerous surges that can make the ditch breach its bank, requiring its closing to undertake at times, expensive repairs. Being at the farm all the time, unlike many of the other parciantes who have jobs in the city, I agreed to be on call to open the Desagues, to lessen the flow of water and prevent damage to the ditch.

It was late in the evening during my first year on the job, and a storm was raging when I was first called on an emergency. Having to drive far and wide on the land grant’s complex dirt roads at night, I thought it wise to call my eighty year-old neighbor to come with me. On the way over, the clay roads had literally melted, and it was as if driving on sheer ice. In four wheel drive, I had very little control over the steering and was gliding down the road as if on a sled. Was I going to veer off the road and get stuck? My early years living in the French Alps and driving on icy roads served me well.

Once we reached the Desague at the beginning of the ditch, it took Kiko and I twenty minutes to fully open the gate, puffing over the large rusty wheel in the darkness and rain. I was glad we were able to reach the gate and protect the ditch, but was very doubtful that my truck would make it back up the slippery road.

In the lowest gear on my truck, with tires completed caked with clay, we inched our way at the most excruciating slow pace, getting dangerously stuck in a rut at one point. I had to look to the side of the road with my flash light to make sure we were actually moving, because the four wheels were slipping. We finally made it out and I was grateful to the Japanese engineer who designed this truck, truly geared for working on muddy farms!

I attended Church the next day and told the elders after mass that Kiko and I went to open a Desague the night before. They looked at each other with amazement and one of them said: "we never go there during a storm because nobody ever gets out". I had to go back a couple years later during an epic hailstorm, accompanied that time by the Mayordomo, and with another truck I had built especially for that job, equipped with mud tires, elevated and reinforced suspension, and heavy duty work light.

The hailstorm was so intense that I could barely see the road, which looked like a raging river. With a co-pilot knowing the land grant like the palm of his hands, we sped throughout the four-mile trip like drivers of a Paris-Dakar race. I was afraid my newly built work truck was going to fall apart so rough was the road. Aside from a damaged suspension air bag, the truck held tight. Not only was I grateful to come out unscathed but was appreciative of my upbringing as the son and grandson of professional car mechanics!

Like all love affairs, it was not without pains and conflicts. At our monthly board meetings, it seems that old family feuds that had never healed, kept parciantes in constant bickering, more concerned about protecting their individual turfs than caring about the overall well-being of the community. I was reelected twice as Commissioner and tried my very best to keep the ditch in good shape for the next generation. I hope that the ancestors who built it with such care were pleased with my efforts and devotion.

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 I walked into the field ready for harvest and the red winged black birds were there, chomping on my Chihuahua blue corn. For the past two weeks, I had yelled at the happy fellows for pissing me off by eating the fruits of my labor, and was ready to again. But instead of a scream, my heart opened to a sense of gratitude for the ability to feed wildlife. 

I worked a two-acre field pretty much alone last summer, growing blue corn, bolita beans and winter squash, waiting for volunteers to come farm in community, like our ancestors have done. I spent several days with a young Hopi man who shared songs, stories, and wisdom from his elders, like “tend your corn every day as if they are your children”. I seeded by hand with a couple friends following me to close the furrows, laid four-and-a-half miles of drip lines, and was able to get germination before the irrigation ditch went dry.

Hail, monsoon rains, and winds knocked over the corn several times. Hilling the fallen stalks, weeding, and the heat wore me out. I took long naps in between hoeing sessions. All other farm work was put on hold and I went into “management mode,” as one of my elders recommended.

A handful of friends came to weed, but I harvested, husked the corn and winnowed the beans pretty much alone for ten weeks, yielding fifteen hundred pounds of corn, five hundred pound of squash and four hundred of beans. After six years of primarily large-scale urban farming and four years on this farm, last summer was a brutal initiation. I felt a great sense of accomplishment, but also was exhausted. Not having young people learning by my side brought me great sadness.

I started this nonprofit farm along the Pecos River, ninety miles from Santa Fe, New Mexico, after running a popular two-acre urban farm in the city. I built a campground. I became commissioner of the irrigation association managing our thirteen-mile long ditch, wrote grants to teach kids the culture of the Acequia-the communal care of the irrigation ditch. Several essays I wrote on the topic of repopulating farmland were published in well-read regional papers.

I spent the winter alone, making gallons of soups with the crops I grew, and resumed construction on a farm building I established when I moved here. I repeatedly invited my previous urban farm audience to come participate in the simple chores of a farmstead and explore the potential of this farm as a community-building center. A friend made a lot of ice cream and cacao brownies for visitors. But to my great dismay, hardly anybody came. Instead, people cheered me up on Facebook. I oddly felt like the lone star of a survivor-type reality show!. In March 2022, I turned 64, and had to admit that my strategy—“if you build it, they will come”—had failed. Continuously waiting for people to participate in a community endeavor didn’t make sense.  

So it is with sadness and a sense of relief that I am putting the property up for sale. I am pleased with what I have accomplished and learned while stewarding this beautiful piece of land. The trees, berry bushes, and cover crops I planted, and the food I grew, fed a lot of wildlife. I gave myself wholeheartedly to both the project and the local community. I have no regrets.

The nonprofit was created as a community land trust, with a mission of exploring the creation of a permanent agrarian settlement, one of the principle tenets of Permaculture. Most people idealize a back-to-the-land lifestyle but don’t seem to understand that affordable farmland isn’t located at the edge of a city, and that practice tending the commons and growing a surplus of food, another tenet of Permaculture, is necessary. All of this takes great effort, resources, courage, discipline, commitment, and ingenuity.  If it was easy, there would be plenty of flourishing agrarian communities in the countryside.

I lost ten pounds during the summer, but since I ate almost all the ice cream and brownies we had made for visitors, I am back to my normal weight and ready for my next adventures as a young elder. My wish is that the next owner of this farm benefits from all the work I did, and finds a way to preserve agricultural land for future generations. I believe we must create new communal settlements, where farmland is cared for, food grown, children raised, and people cared for through sickness and death. 

This essay was published in the 2023 New Farmer’s Almanac Chelsea Green Publishing

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