A Wild Call

Why I sailed the Atlantic, got lost in jungle, but found my way to the Lost City of the Kogis, and a moment that crystalised the three secrets of happiness

Now that the whole trip’s done – the storm-tossed Atlantic crossing;  the week groaning on that foul floor in Haiti;   the moments of pain,  the moments too of real joy – it seems obvious:  I started out trying to help save the planet;  I ended up learning how to be happy,  how to cope.   And now I can.

Example…

**

March,  2023,  high up in Colombian jungle,  I was trekking back to the Jaguar Plantation,  where I’d been planting trees,  hoping to tempt the jaguar,  back to its former lands.  (We hadn’t seen the jaguar,  but we sensed she was out there somewhere,  thinking,  I’ll come back,  when there’s more shade).  It was early evening, I was tip-toeing along a high wall. 

To the left,  flowed a small canal;  to the right,  a steep drop fell to the jungle.   I was just thinking,  Is this safe?,  when,  going round a huge fallen tree,  clutching a handy root,  I saw a large white and brown furred creature,  crouching at the stream.

Is it a jaguar?  Will it attack? 

Of course these thoughts shot,  quick as parakeets,  through my head.

But at the same time,  I felt calm,  safe. 

How can this be? 

**

All previous week,  I’d been planting Sangregado trees.

Any tree is great. (A tree will never make a phone call on a train,  or send you an e-mail marked URGENT so you’re forced to ignore it.  With an unfussy quiet,  trees just stand,  breathing in carbon,  breathing out oxygen -  the spirit of life.  The Sioux call trees The Standing Brothers,  which I love).  But the sangregado is especially magic.  Like the Silver Birch,  it’s a pioneer tree.  In its shade,  other plants sprout,  bugs buzz - the soil bounds back to life.  Sangregado means ‘blood of the cattle’ because,  if cut,  it bleeds red resin – as if passing cattle have cut themselves,  or the tree itself were weeping red tears.  

The previous week I’d planted two hundred of them,  which felt great. While planting,  you get a work-out of arms,  back,  legs,  and digging into the soil,  you release mycobacterium vaccae which stimulates release of serotonin,  and soothes anxiety.  

But then, that weekend,  a terrifying,  then remarkable,  then sublime series of events had occurred,  which involved me hiking towards the Lost City of the Kogis,  the secretive people,  who,  for the last year,  I’d been obsessively seeking.  As Alan Ereira writes,

Most indigenous people wanted what the white man could offer – but the Kogi are different.  They chose to stay separate.

**

But that weekend, I’d reached a Kogi village, where a Mama,  a Kogi shaman, explained three key beliefs…

1) They call The Lost City teijuna,  the origin place.

2)Everything has spirit - each person, each tree, and also the planet itself,  whose spirit they see a real being,  who they call The Mother -  who,  if you help her,  and give her gifts,  will help you in return.

3)By meditating deeply,  you can access aluna – the world of spirit,  and ideas – and thus can achieve deep change.

Did I manage?

**

I can also include a picture of myself,  shortly after the meditation finished. Might readers try to access aluna yourself – to use your imaginations?  

Can you sense how I’m feeling in the picture – like a man who’d been on a massive journey,  one driven by concern for the world itself as much as his place in it - who’s just had a great weight lifted from his shoulders,  and been shown his future direction? 

I was keenly aware that this very moment had been born in aluna.  It had started with a wild call.  It had been dreamed up,  imagined into action…