Fieldwork Diaries

Every culture holds stories that keep the world alive.
This section is where I gather those threads—insights from ancient traditions, indigenous wisdom, and sacred practices that have shaped how humans understand life, healing, and the cosmos.

You’ll find explorations of rituals, cosmologies, and ways of living that invite us to see Earth not as a resource, but as a relative. Some posts may feel like travel notes of the spirit—journeys through time, place, and perspective.

These diaries are not meant as final answers but as windows—openings into how diverse traditions hold wisdom that can still guide us today.

Here, the stories become bridges: between past and present, science and spirit, self and Earth.

Sometimes, I stumble across a culture so deeply rooted in harmony with the Earth that it stops me in my tracks. The Kogi people of Colombia are one of those cultures.

High in the Sierra Nevada mountains, they call themselves the “Elder Brothers” and us—the industrialized world—the “Younger Brothers.” They believe they were entrusted with protecting the balance of the Earth, while we’ve been given the freedom to explore and build. But they’ve been watching us, quietly, for centuries… and they’ve grown concerned.

The Kogi say the Earth is alive, conscious, and communicating—and I can’t help but feel how deeply true that is when I walk in nature. To them, rivers are veins, mountains are organs, and forests are the lungs of a living being. And they believe our collective forgetting of this truth is the root of the imbalance we see all around us.

What strikes me most is their approach to knowledge. They don’t separate science, spirit, and ecology—they see them as one living system. The Kogi practice deep listening, connecting to the “Mother” through ceremony, silence, and intention. It’s not about taking from the Earth, but being in dialogue with her.

It makes me wonder… if we remembered how to listen, what might the Earth tell us?

I find myself imagining a different kind of future—one where we relearn what the Kogi never forgot: That we are not above nature, not separate from it, but threads woven into the same living fabric.

Maybe, just maybe, if we slow down enough to listen, we can begin to mend what’s been broken. 

“The Earth speaks in rivers and roots, in winds and stones. The question is—are we listening?”

Lately, I’ve been sitting with the Andean wisdom of Ayni—this beautiful, living promise of sacred reciprocity.

The more I think about it, the more I realize how far modern life has carried us from this knowing. In the Andes, every seed planted is preceded by an offering, every river crossed acknowledged with gratitude, every relationship—between people, land, sky, and spirit—seen as part of an endless circle of giving and receiving. Nothing exists in isolation.

Ayni isn’t just about balance; it’s about relationship. It reminds us that we are woven into a vast, breathing tapestry where every choice, every gesture, every act ripples outward. To take without giving is to disturb the pattern—not just in nature but within ourselves.

I find myself wondering how differently the world might look if we remembered this.

• If we paused before consuming, asking, What am I giving back? 
• If we treated the Earth not as a resource, but as a relative. 
• If we recognized that healing doesn’t happen in isolation—it’s a collective remembering. 

Sometimes I think we already feel this truth in our bones, even if we don’t have the words for it. That small ache we carry when we see forests burning, oceans rising, or species disappearing—it’s the body knowing that something sacred has been broken.

But Ayni offers hope. It invites us back into rhythm. It whispers: Give back to what gives to you. Restore what sustains you. Live as though every breath is part of the same living whole.

Perhaps this is the quiet revolution we need—not grand gestures, but small acts of care, practiced over and over, until we remember what it feels like to belong.

“We belong to a living Earth, a breathing cosmos, a shared home where nothing stands alone and nothing is ever truly lost.”

There are places where time does not move forward but spirals inward, where the earth remembers what we have forgotten. Among the Aboriginal peoples of Australia, this is called the Dreamtime — a living dimension where the boundaries between past, present, and future dissolve. It is not a memory of creation; it is creation still unfolding, moment by moment, breath by breath.

The Dreamtime teaches that the world is sung into being. Every mountain, river, and tree carries a song — and to know the song is to belong to the land. In this worldview, we are not separate observers walking upon the earth but participants in a vast, ongoing act of creation. Our stories, actions, and thoughts ripple outward, weaving us into the greater fabric of existence.

In listening to these teachings, something stirs deep within us. Perhaps we sense that we, too, are songlines in motion, carrying within our bodies an ancient memory of harmony — a way of being where giving and receiving are one breath, one rhythm. Dreamtime whispers that reality is not fixed, that our perception can shift the world, and that to walk gently is to keep the songs alive.

And maybe, in a time when humanity teeters on the edges of disconnection, this ancient knowing returns as both invitation and reminder: to care for the land as if it were kin, to speak with reverence, to remember that the universe itself is dreaming through us.

There is a prayer whispered softly at the close of Lakota ceremonies:
Mitákuye Oyás’iŋ — all my relations.

It is more than words.
It is a remembering.

It reminds us that beneath the surface of things, there is no true separation. That the same breath moving through the bison on the prairie moves through the forests, the waters, the clouds — and through us.

Somewhere along the way, much of the modern world forgot this. We carved borders into lands and hearts, split the living whole into categories: human and “nature,” animate and “inanimate,” self and other. But the Lakota prayer calls us home to an older knowing — one where kinship extends beyond blood, beyond species, beyond time itself.

When we whisper all my relations, we honor the bison grazing the Black Hills, the rivers carving valleys, the microbes weaving life beneath the soil. We acknowledge the ancestors whose songs we carry and the descendants whose world we are shaping. We step back into the living tapestry where everything touches everything else.

And perhaps this is the medicine our fragmented world is quietly asking for. To remember:

• That no action exists in isolation. 
• That the Earth is not a backdrop, but a breathing relative. 
• That healing ourselves without healing our kin — human and more-than-human — is an impossible task. 

Today, when systems are breaking and thresholds are being crossed, Mitákuye Oyás’iŋ is not simply a cultural teaching — it is a map back to balance.

“To live as if all things are related is not idealism;
it is alignment with the truth of existence.”

Maybe this is where transformation begins: in the still, quiet spaces where we pause to recognize the threads binding us together. Where gratitude spills into action, and action becomes ceremony.

Perhaps we are being called — not just to believe we are connected —
but to live as if we are.