Buds bursting

I look over at Felix and his frizzy blonde locks, bobbing as he laughs from his cross-legged seat on the ground. Under his overalls squirms a kitten, running lumps through the material as it tries to fight its way out.

The kitten has been brought here from the neighbouring village, on a motorboat, in someone's pocket, to kill the rats.

The rats have been brought here by the recent addition of human food to this land.

The humans have been attracted by the unusual flatness of the terrain; hard to find on the shores of Lago Atitlan but a necessity for an eco-village.


From the almost-whole shack - the only building on the land as of yet and the base of operations for Green New World (GNW) - the future seems tiny with long-distance perspective. But it is growing, fast.


GNW, a charity focused on providing much-needed help to the ailing lake, have just purchased the land and are finding their feet. Through them I have already helped with a basic-level sewage project for San Marcos, stopping at least some of the raw effluent from running into the lake. Now, I find myself on the side of a mountain, observing the fetal stages of a proposed eco-village. Like many in the area, it hopes to set an example to the locals by providing easy, green solutions to traditional problems such as farming and washing.

Right now, they lack even basic facilities.

Without these, much-needed volunteers are repelled. Without volunteers, the project struggles.

I don't have long but I want to help. I lay stones for the kitchen floor and cover myself in clay in a long day of digging and hauling in the toilet pit. Once in use, the toilet will be kept dry with sawdust to allow decomposition. Once full, the pit will be closed off. Unbelievably, after two years, a full pit of sewage will turn to rich compost that can even be used to grow vegetables. Such a simple idea, and yet the lake is about to go toxic from hundreds of years of human waste settling on the bottom.

We drink creek water through a clay filter and I try to understand where it all went so wrong.

I realise how much I love the simplicity. There is no electricity and our only music is the whisper of the wind through the avocado trees. We eat from the forest floor and piss amongst the coffee leaves. I haven't seen a mirror in days.

In the silence of the forest I find my retreat.

Although I'd originally planned on committing a month to a meditation centre, I realised quickly that organised spirituality is exactly the kind of practice that I reject, no matter how good the intention. Instead, I practise yoga underneath a morning mist that breathes lightly over me, fishermen my only observers, paddling dugout canoes with tender strokes.

Sitting here, the view of the lake sparkling between the trees, I understand that it is nature, pure and simple, that gives me my truth.

The trees whisper an ancient language. The bees fly lines of interconnection. The rain washes webs of oneness, united and yet barely noticed by those who are a part of it all.


The earth speaks to me in musty tones, humidly rising warm through my being.

I resonate.

Searching for Dragons

Dan turns up at the end of July. Film-maker Dan, with whom I spent February and most of May. Dan, the man with the van, who left us in June to continue "searching for dragons" on the final leg of his 4.5 year journey to Panama.



Now he is returning, finally. You can tell by his energy, which no longer scouts but feels buried into the idea of home. He pauses long enough to meet Nantzin, who is one of the last jewels in a necklace of synchronicity that has taken him from Alaska to Panama and half-way back again.


A year ago someone told him to seek out a shaman named Don Lauro. Don Lauro, born to the Mayan heartlands of Mexico, was taken to Tibet as a child by monks. There, he became Red Dragon, the famous martial artist. Now, he owns Las Montañas Sagradas (the sacred mountains) to the south of San Cristóbal, seeding a sustainable community of permaculture and flowing fields, where he heals the flocking public with his powerful energy.


For one reason or another, Dan never met him. However, when Dan meets Nantzin, on his way out of San Cristobal, she unwittingly informs him of her plans to see a shaman named Don Lauro the next day.


Dan is accustomed by now to the strange synchronicities of fate. Given the first pointers to this man a year ago, he seems relieved to be able to close this circle. I am not surprised when, the next day, I find him and his assistant Forbes still in town, waiting out this seemingly prophesied meeting.


I am invited along to the meeting. After a month or two of stagnancy, I begin to feel wheels turning again. Dan has a strange ability to make one feel like every moment is meant to be.


We sit around the kitchen table and put together an offering, based on the teachings of Dan's adoptive Blackfoot (native american) father back in Canada. We burn sage and sweetgrass, cleansing ourselves and imprinting prayers for Don Lauro's family into the red-wrapped bundle of copal and tobacco. Then we wait.


Don Lauro is sheathed in mystery. Everyone we ask replies with a mysticism that suggests him to be more like a spirit than a man, appearing here and there when least expected and never available to be found.


We wait for three days. Four visits.


While we wait I explore Don Lauro's kingdom. Domed buildings lurk under bright, alpine growth sparked with rainbow ribbons. A small garden, working the best of permaculture, is a secret uncovered from the back of the kitchen. The place is mostly empty.


We celebrate the beginning of the Mayan new year with some of the residents. We gather around a sacred fire, into which we throw seeds, candles and all the dirt from under the fingernails of our souls. We emerge renewed to the year of Red Overtone Moon - a modern interpretation on the classical Mayan calendar system, suggesting this year to be the catalyst for uncovering the 'great teacher' within, who will guide us to our rightful path.


The days pass easily and I feel a resonance with the place that comes from more than just the legend. I ask about staying, but space is at a premium and the only option is to live in a tent on the very top of the mountain, where the rainy season sloshes down in giant balls of hail.


I think about my options as we wait.


The company of three unexpected friends does me good. They can see that something I'm doing right now is not quite settling right with me, and they encourage me to rediscover myself through the things I already know within.


Although it does not seem quite the right situation for me here, it makes me realise what it is I'm looking for. The waiting in itself has given me direction. I jump up and down: 'Life is good again!'


Nothing like a bit of sitting still to organise one's head.


Don Lauro turns up at the end of the third day. He is short, round, with slitted eyes and far too few teeth. He shouts at dogs and moves quickly; a man clearly distracted by larger dragons than ours.


We are relieved. We don't really know what to say. We hand him the offering.


He bows at each of us in turn and tells us his house is our house.


Before we can say anything else, he leaves.


We are left with an anti-climax that makes us laugh and shake our heads.


Dan is not worried. "He is a man, just like us. Just because some people show up, feeling that this meeting is destined, does not oblige him to do anything other than greet us graciously as he did."


I consider the life of a famous shaman, sought out by people from all ends of the earth who expect deliveries of wisdom and deeper meaning, and in doing so realise that the wisdom lies in seeing that we are all the same.

Even shamen are just men.