On The Farm
I spent the past two weeks in Perú, far from the snow and cold of home. While I usually have a small group with me, this trip was just for me, reconnecting with friends and family— I have two goddaughters, Hilayne, 27, whom I have known since she was 7, and Urpi, who is an exuberant 7 year old—the photo is a day of visitation with her family in the high Andes. (I’m the one underneath the pile of kids.) It was also an opportunity to reconnect with the beautiful Andes mountains and the amazing flora and fauna of the Peruvian summer. All photos used in this newsletter edition are from the trip.
Hilayne, who has trained to be a tour guide, took me hiking at 14,000 feet in the ancient ruins of Chinchero, where we had a small ceremony at a sacred site. Then we had a real treat—a hummingbird sanctuary in Urubamba that was breathtaking. You simply cannot be anything but joyful when surrounded by these amazing birds, from the tiniest, about as big as the end joint on your little finger, to the rare gigantic hummingbirds, about as big as a pigeon. What an amazing adventure!
Come Join the Fun and Adventure!
In June, 2023, I will resume taking small groups to Peru. We will be spending a week in the Sacred Valley, doing day trips in the process of acclimating to higher altitudes that will include the hummingbird sanctuary. This will include an overnight stay at Machu Picchu and visits to some of the most beautiful sites in the Sacred Valley.
The second week will be at Lake Titicaca. This amazing place has such cultural variety. We will visit the Uros floating islands and stay in homes on Taquile. Lake Titicaca is considered the navel of the world, and rimmed by the Bolivian Andes, is breathtaking.
Because I am officially a member of three families in the Sacred Valley, thanks to my goddaughters, everyone who travels with me gets the family welcome. The trip includes as much native immersion in the culture of the Quechua and Amara people as possible. The group will be limited to 12 persons, so there can be flexibility to accommodate your special interests, your special needs, including food, textiles, nature, and ceremony. Trip costs will be available by August 1, 2022, and October 31, 2022, is the deadline for applying for the trip. Airline costs are not included. I will try to develop a Facebook page for the trip so you can see the beautiful possibilities for exploration.
New Services
Among the services that are not widely known, are the check-ins for hospice, for adoption, or for monitoring surgical/illness recovery. Here’s how it works.
You let me know that you want to do the check-in service. I give you my text number and when you need to check-in with your animal friend for hospice or for monitoring surgical or illness recovery, you just text me up to 3 questions. I will connect with the animal as soon as I can and text you the answers. I won’t bill you until the animal has passed or recovered, and then I tally up the total for billing. This saves a lot of money, because you aren’t charged for every communication separately.
If you are adopting a new family member and you want to interview the candidates with questions from the WHOLE family or herd, including the animals, just send me photos of the candidates with name, age and sex, and up to 5 questions you would like to know. For example, “Do you bark a lot?”, “Do you like to climb furniture?”, “What kind of family are you looking for?”, “Do you like children?”, or even to a cat, “Would you consider living with a dog or two?”. These kinds of pre-adoption questions can assure that you find a really good fit for your home and family.
Earth Day
Shamanism Without Borders is having an Earth Day event, TENDING TO THE ANIMALS, on April 22, 2022, sponsored by the Society for Shamanic Practice. There will be six presentations online by reknown shamanic practitioners regarding how they work remotely to heal land, water, animals who are in distress from war zones, pollution, loss of habitat, and other critical issues. You can register for this event at:
https://shamanicpractice.org/2022-earth-day-event-tending-to-the-animals-with-swb/
Bookshelf
There is a beautiful book out that is a sensitive guide to preserving the world and ourselves in it. In SACRED INSTRUCTIONS: Indigenous wisdom for living spirit-based change, Sherri Mitchell draws from her Penobscot native culture to bring us closer to understanding the Earth from a spiritual perspective, and to ourselves as an integral part of a collective spirit that includes all our relations.
Mitchell shares the basic native teachings and foundational beliefs that she was raised with, that can help us restore to our sacred purpose individually and together. She takes us from where we’ve been to a clear vision of where we could go. She presents the four foundations for building a world of self sufficient societies—water, food, energy, and education, and in clear and compassionate language, brings us to our choices for a better world for our children.