I’ve always had a sense of adventure and a gypsy heart that loves to rove.
In the late 70s, around my seventh birthday, it was a ‘B’ film at the cinema that truly initiated my Call to the Wild.
Two mischievous bear cubs playing in pristine wilderness captured my imagination and sowed a seed that somehow I knew could only be watered through my immersion in wild nature.
Travel brings me immense joy. Yet it’s what awakens within me that kindled and continues to fuel a great love affair with Global wanderings – especially those where I lose myself in the awe and beauty of nature.
My year ‘Around the World’ in my early 20s was driven by both my burning desire to explore and by a more desperate desire to heal an inner malaise that manifested as depression, back pain and feeling completely lost within myself.
Two decades on, connected with my heart and a stronger sense of self, my travels are more intuitively guided.
I do it for sheer pleasure. And to deepen into my purpose, receive messages from the land, and break open to be cleansed and renewed by the river of life.
For as long as I can remember I’ve felt a magnetic pull west and at the end of 2012, clear intuitive insight made my decision to book my flight to LA an easy, albeit scary one.
My journey had a central theme: to live my natural rhythm in harmony with nature.
A vague sense of what this might mean had begun to take shape, but little did I know the magic that would unfold as I followed my intuition through California, Arizona, Texas and Nicaragua to Costa Rica.
Drum beats
After 3 slow months of waiting while I completed a contract, the day came in the spring of 2013 for me to begin what was meant to be a 6-month odyssey.
On previous travels, I’d been an avid planner. My itineraries were always crammed with every adventurous activity, sacred site and place of special interest so I didn’t miss out on anything.
But this time I was barrelling into the unknown, letting my newly awakened intuition take the lead. Not something I was comfortable with, but something I ached to experience.
With a bulging ruck-sack full of stuff I would need, and even more of what I might need, I set off on my travels.
Landing state-side my fears and doubts ambushed me. ‘What on earth was I doing here?’ The whole idea seemed crazy.
As I sat and intuitively connected with where to begin, a friend’s words floated into my mind. ‘If in doubt, head for Venice Beach.’
He’d spent many days in his addiction years feeling at home on the streets there. His colourful stories of the people he’d met and the escapades he’d got up to had piqued my intrigue.
Sweating profusely as I negotiated getting on and off buses under the weight of my rucksack, I finally made it to the beach-front hostel I’d picked as my place to ‘land’. Whilst apprehensive, I decided it would be a great place to meet people.
My 4-bed dorm, with its big window overlooking the street artists and musicians flaunting their wares and pumping their beats below, wasn’t the most relaxing place to begin my journey, but I loved being in the heart of the buzz.
Chatting to other travellers, whose tales I devoured, I discovered there was a drum circle the following night just along the beach.
As an ecstatic awakening dance facilitator with a bias towards tribal tracks, I couldn’t wait to take part.
Whilst I love experiencing the rhythms of different cultures and places, there’s something special I’ve come to appreciate about the drum.
Wherever we are in the world, whoever we’re with, its tone and rhythm unite us, beyond place and culture, to our ancestral heart.
The following night, as the sun set over the ocean and the waves lapped at the shore, I danced wild and free. It was as if my body was being played by the drums that encircled me.
I lost all sense of myself, becoming one with the harmonious beats filling the air, finally re-emerging hours later as the circle dispersed, spent but exhilarated.
And with that, I felt like I’d been initiated on my journey.
Following my ‘golden thread’
In the autumn of 2014, I had a beautiful experience where my heart danced in acknowledgement that all of those moments I’d faithfully, yet seemingly blindly, followed a golden thread, had landed me in the vision for the whole of my life at that time.
From the drum circles on Venice beach to a book on my bedside table in a rustic cabin in Topanga Canyon about our wilderness origins showing us the way forward.
From holding ecstatic dances on sacred Native American land and in the jungle, to living in a tiny conscious community in Santa Monica.
From fascinating conversations with people at breakfast in a hostel in San Fransisco attending a First Nations and sustainability conference to be-friending a ‘man of the earth’ in Mount Shasta and a wise woman in Nicaragua.
From messages from the redwoods in northern California to exploring national monuments in the Navajo Nation and touring with a guide in the Hopi Lands to changing my flight out of Texas to go to Costa Rica instead of Mexico the day before I was due to fly.
In the Costa Rican jungle in July 2013, I found my heaven on earth. I fell in love – with the place and with a man.
A man with a big heart and passionate enthusiasm for enjoying life and living sustainably. A man who opened me up to let love in and to love back with the whole of my being.
It transpired that he had a villa in a sustainable eco-village further down the coast. My ‘beautiful experience’ in the autumn of 2014, was chatting with a kindred spirit in that village, which was now my home.
The pieces of the jigsaw puzzle had gradually slotted into place.
And the thread that was weaving my whole life together was an understanding of why we must awaken the sacred feminine within us. Unify it with our inner masculine and fully come home to our essential, true nature, for our people and planet to thrive.
The flame of desire had ignited within me, not just for me to connect fully with and live my true nature, but to help others do the same.
Living my true nature
Early in my journey, whilst in Topanga Canyon, a yearning to explore the surrounding wilderness took hold. Relatively fresh out of city life, I was put off by accounts I’d read of mountain lions, rattlesnakes, bears and warnings not to go onto the trails alone.
Acknowledging my fears, I ventured out, encouraged by my landlady, whose parting comment made me laugh: ‘…and if you’re lucky, you might see a snake.’
Lucky isn’t how I’d have felt back then. Yet having subsequently lived in the jungle, not only do those fears seem ridiculous, but I understand where my host was coming from.
In our modern culture, our disconnection with the natural world and instinctual nature heightens a sense of separateness and propensity for fear-based living, where a false perception of safety and security intertwines with material obsession. And a spiritual depravity creates emptiness.
I love nature. It’s my sanctuary. Yet despite my worldly travels, I hadn’t realised how cosseted I still was.
That would all change…
When I set out, I’d had no idea my heart would lead me into the jungle, to live in spectacular natural beauty and re-vitalise as I breathed some of the most pure, oxygen-rich air on the planet…
And get to ride a quad bike up and down the mountain to town! Usually, the only other ‘traffic’ – a herd of cows and local horsemen.
After 10 months of living in Costa Rica, I was enjoying the pura vida lifestyle for which the country is famed.
‘Pura vida’ means ‘pure life’ and it represents the simple, happy, go-lucky, ‘no worries’ way of life Costa Ricans embody.
I slowed down. Immersed in the rhythms of the rainforest I began to harmonise with them.
My sleep cycles synched with my environment and I enjoyed living naturally, eating fresh local food, grown in our eco-community.
I became more aware of and comfortable with my cycles and rhythms – recognising my ebb and flow and honouring the needs of my body, mind and soul.
As the constriction of my controlling ways and needing to be continually busy eased, I softened and felt more free.
I was more receptive. My creativity flourished. My action was more inspired.
I’d rebirthed with my instinctual nature renewed. Being more present and grounded my fears of what I might meet in the jungle loosened so I could relish with awe the bounty of my surroundings, whilst staying alert.
Simplicity was a recurring theme. It seemed to aid a de-layering and unlearning to reach what’s real, inside and out.
My heart continuously guided me to let go of my attachments, especially to material possessions, and with it the false sense of security they’d given me.
Each time I let go of things externally, I felt a whole lot lighter internally.
I gained a powerful understanding of what it means to live my true nature, one that continues to deepen.
Letting go of the old to welcome the new
Repeatedly choosing to take a leap of faith on my journey rewarded me time and again.
In each place I visited on my way to Central America there were a myriad of good reasons to stay. But I began to experience a familiar ‘inner knowing’ when it was time to move on.
It was my resistance to letting go that made it hard to let go. My mind questioned whether I could create something as wonderful, if not better, again.
The tension was sometimes horrific, as my persistent trying to work things out muffled the whisper of my heart.
My heart always wanted me to take a risk, to ‘play not stay’, to be prepared to screw up, to be adventurous, to shake things up…
Yet my ego is cunning. It has many strategies to keep me safe, physical illness and injury being a favourite.
The morning I was due to say farewell to the City of Angels I woke up shaky and nauseous. Delving into it I discovered I was scared of being abandoned… at which point relief washed over me.
A little unexpected, but I got that to find my true self I had to be prepared to lose my current self. And the only person who could abandon me was me. With that, I was ready for my next adventure.
I came to learn an important lesson: when the truth of the highest part of me is revealed it drops deep inside and what to do and where to go becomes obvious. There’s always something new and amazing on the horizon when I choose to go for it.
Coming home To myself
The closer I got to receiving the whole vision for my life, the greater my resistance.
At the beginning of 2014, when it was all coming together, I had a life-threatening accident, rolling my quad down a mountain track.
Whilst miraculously nothing was broken, and even more miraculously, as a witness afterwards said to me, I didn’t end up crushed by the quad, I was bed-bound and out of action for weeks.
Yet I still held my vision. It took a while for me to bounce back, but I created it. And it was more magnificent than I had imagined.
On all my travels I meet more of myself in the people, the places and experiences in different destinations.
And through the beauty, tragedy and diversity I encounter, a greater understanding and compassion for the whole of life grows within me.
My journeys have instigated many deep dives into the dark recesses of my being that I’ve never been invited to reach in my everyday life.
Each time I emerge into the light more alive, more wise and more connected with life. False masks are released and I come home to myself time and again as I expand into each new vision for my life.
