Photographs

Starting With Africa

I’ve stayed with Navaho and Blackfeet Nation Americans who experienced Earth as a conscious being, but I found few others in America’s general population who believed the same.

I found the opposite true in West Africa. There, it seemed everyone I stayed with believed Earth is a conscious being. For them it was a matter of fact, as if known since infancy that “spirit beings” were in land, animals, plants, and water, and that the spirit of Earth formed a kinship with them all.

My travels took me through many regions, some desperately impoverished, some showing the consequence of war. However, my primary experience was in rural areas with people who had abundant food and strong cultures.

Mirrors were scarce where I stayed, and I went so long without seeing myself in one that when I finally did, seeing my pale skin was a shock. At some point, I’d stopped thinking in terms of black and white and only viewed the wide variety of skin tones as beautiful.

Person after person I met lived connected to Earth’s physical and spiritual world in a way that I’d only experienced when emersed in wild mountains, sea or desert.

Never had I experienced so many people attuned to a continuous cycle of life, death, rebirth, and the joy of giving and receiving. Believing they were a part of a conscious Earth was normal to them. Some spoke with trees and plants.

The people in the rural areas I hiked gave equal value to spiritual and physical creation; a continuum of different aspects of the same world.

Ancestors were such a part of daily life that even the distinction between life and death was blurred. Like leaves growing then falling from a tree; death fed life and life fed death.

When you believe Earth is a living being in a living universe being constantly created by the Creator, it affects every aspect of your daily life.

Secure in their relationship with Creation, laughter came easily.

Particularly around today’s Ghana, I found a rich and ancient history of gender equality. I saw vestiges of it in several places, but historically women held equal roles in their societies’ religious, political, social, and economic welfare alongside men. Differences were celebrated as two parts of a whole.

Recalling my experience in the abandoned storm cellar I described in the Prologue, the connection these Africans had with the “one body,” comforted me beyond words.

It was these people who inspired me to continue traveling around the world in search of others who lived with the pulse of nature in their veins.

Blissfully naive, I had no idea how much my African friends prepared me for what was to come.

These photographs were taken with a film camera. I carried the film in a backpack for months while traveling through extreme hot, cold and wet before it was developed.

I have photographs of people who befriended me on all seven continents, but it was my experience in Africa about Earth as a conscious, living being that inspired me to travel the globe.

The first knowledge I had about the historical world where women and man once had equivalent authority in West Africa was from this woman. She sat across from me on a slow train from the Senegal and Mali border to Bamako, Mali.

I fell behind these men of the Nso people in the Northwest region of Cameroon. They gathered in the courtyard of their village lodge.

The line of men formed a circle in front of their village lodge and, to the sound of a drum, moved in a dance that vibrated the ground.

I met this gentleman on a trail and he excitedly asked me to follow him. He led me to this tree, ran up to a branch, reached out with his hand to touch the trunk, and said, “Family tree,” and went silent as he spoke with it, an act as normal as breathing for him.

Many women, like this one in Ghana, showed confidence in themselves and their relationships with their world that I wasn’t expecting. Her strength glowed as if from genetic memory.

This seamstress was another person I met on a remote trail. She was taking her exquisite creations to the town I’d left that morning.

The region around Calabar, Nigeria was still recovering from a civil war fought between the Biafran ethnic group of southeast Nigeria and the Nigerian government. After two-and-a-half years of war, almost two million Biafran civilians died. Children were prized throughout West Africa but even more so in Calabar.

This woman, along with other people, baggage and me, was a passenger in the back of a typical bush taxi pickup truck. When we came to the path that led to her home, she insisted I see it. The driver said he’d wait, so I followed her up a winding path and came to a mudbrick home overlooking the valley. She went in and returned with a pineapple, brimming with joy as she gave it to me.

This woman (note the beautiful feather headdress she wore) and her baby sat next to me in the back of another bush taxi pickup truck. When we got to the path leading to her home, she asked if I would come to see her home. Once more, the driver of this bush taxi – encouraged by the other passengers – agreed to wait. Never have I seen a husband happier to greet his wife. Only after doing so did he turn to me. While he and I visited she went into their house and came out with a wonderful gift of two eggs.

These village elders calmly watched me approach, then stepped forward and welcomed me to their village.

These men came out of the village meeting house that was decorated with carved posts The chief wore a beautiful glass bead necklace, approached me squarely and did not offer to shake my hand. He then smiled broadly. Several others, all wearing beaded hats and a cutlass, soon welcomed me with smiles as well.

This young man was racing up and down the hill in front of his house with his well-made wooden scooter. He stopped so I could take this picture.

I’m sure this woman and child had never encountered a person of European descent walking the trails between villages before. The little girl studied me, unblinking. The older one offered me some of the sweet cane they’d collected, and then continued walking down the trail.

I met many children also secure in their place in the world. These were playing in the ocean waves of Côte d’Ivoire and ran ashore to investigate the stranger on their beach.

I heard of a “mystical lake” near Bamenda, Cameroon. It took all day but would have taken longer if this gentleman hadn’t directed me to its path among all the others. It turned out to be Lake Oku in the largest Afromontane forest left in West Africa. I’d have never found it without constant help along the trail. As soon as one guide had to move on, soon another took their place – all day.

This coffee farmer’s land was four hours walk from his home, and he watered his plants every day. After tending his plants we hiked to this “magic lake” that filled the bottom of a dormant volcano.

Countries hiked over a total of three-plus years around the globe; meeting strong, caring guardians of Earth and each other in every one.