By Jesse Wolf Hardin

One of the most frequent questions we’re asked is when and how we each came to be here in this fairy-tale canyon, 250 miles from the nearest city, and light years from what we or our parents expected us to be. The seeds for what has come to be the Animá Lifeways & Herbal School, Animá Healing Arts Health & Herbal Clinic, wildlife refuge and botanical sanctuary, began not with some grand and far-sighted vision, but with an insistent, gnawing call-to-home.

I was only 22 yrs. old when I first drove what is called the greater Gila Bioregion, the southernmost high mountain range in the American Southwest, a mountain range of Aspen and pine and dramatic rock cliffs, loosely laced together by the life-giving rivers where the ancient Mogollon Indians planted their maize and made their prayers. I came seeking my roots in the fairly named Land of Enchantment, the actual and mythological New Mexico, the land of adobe casas and renegade cowboys, artists and flamenco dancers, bloody kneed Penitentes, Hopi traditionalists, low-riding cruisers and out of work magicians... oddballs with the wherewithal. But also I came back for the land, the land that had been absent since I was taken out of the state as a baby, absent from the cities and suburbs where I had grown up. I came for the wildness of sharp-eyed sniffing rabbits and swooping redtail hawks, and the promises found in every Western movie of a landscape that by its very nature encouraged, abetted and begat freedom. And I came foolish, without the common sense to fix the four wheel drive Jeep pickup with the overweight, gypsy-shaped, wood shingle camper, or the practical savvy to figure out one end of a fence stretcher from another when it came time to try my hand at the long hours and short pay of a ranch hand. But I was, if anything, “directed,” which is a nice way to say obsessed, drawn like the proverbial filings to a magnet by the pull of not just a wondrous state but a particular, exact and exacting place. As with the children’s game of “warmer, warmer,” I felt myself not only heated but awakened the nearer I came to what I later realized was this canyon, and more disconnected and chilled the further away I got in search of income and shelter.

Clearly I was learning what I needed, and being shaped for an as yet unrecognized mission. Over the following four years my paintings were featured at Santa Fe art shows, with world-beat bands backing me while I “rapped” about the inspiration and lessons of nature, and I then opened up what was the first mystical or even nontypical gallery on the plaza of old Taos, quickly a nexus for writers, activists and spiritual seekers from Siberian shamans to explorative Franciscan Monks... but I never quit thinking about the land I’d been first pulled to. The coffee shop philosophers and wild visionaries could not substitute for full-on wilderness and a personal association with the legacy of the Old Ones. The beauty of Blue Lake or the snow packed Pecos could, literally, never “take the place” of the red volcanic rocks and wildflower pageants, diverse fauna and provocative energies of the Gila. They beckoned me to purpose as well as place, permeated my dreams and distracted me in my waking hours, until in 1980 I succumbed to the siren whisperings and permanently closed the gallery doors.

Nobody in cowboy-clad Catron County had ever seen anything like it when I showed up in a converted 1958 Oneida school-bus, my antiauthoritarian hair blowing, like Bob Dylan said, in the wind. With barely enough money to live on, I nonetheless immediately started a search for land to buy, not only convinced but committed to find the exact spot that would be the source of my insight and the place of both my pleasure and work. What was by then no less than an arduous and adventurous quest – for a holy grail of belonging and purpose – centered around the village of Reserve, affectionately called “Reverse” because of its delightfully backward propensities, a tiny cluster of private properties inhabited by less than 400 escapees from the dominant paradigm, and surrounded by 3.5 million acres of undeveloped National Forest in all its sensual and savage, generous and spiritual manifestations. Within that diverse geography of history and hope, there could only be one section where I could most be myself, most hear what I needed to hear, and begin to serve in the ways that I was meant. Only one womb-like canyon, carved and massaged by one winding river, and only a certain hallowed bend.

I had little money and no credit, guide or map. One possible way to find my way there, I decided, was to set aside my identity as an artist and take a menial labor job working for an unsavory Christian Scientist real estate agent who specialized in remote properties. It was likely only a coincidence that his last name was that of the birds nesting in the cliffs I had dreamed about but not yet seen, their offspring bravely making their first brave flights from hundred of feet up in spit and mud nests. Closer than ever to where I belonged, making $3.50 an hour working for Swallows.

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The swallow I came under the wing of, was actually called a “snake in the grass” by many… and yet turned out to be crucial in getting us the land now known as Animá Center. Dan Swallows was one of only two or three real estate agents within a hundred mile radius at the time, in a county that now hosts a half dozen or more. Agents are often dishonest, in my experience, unprincipled people who would gladly help turn heritage ranches or wilderness paradises into mobile home lots if it would make them a buck. In my intemperate youth, I was known to refer to the majority of the fellows in this profession as “land pimps” and worse. It nonetheless occurred to me, that working at the side of an agent could mean being among the first to hear about a new parcel the moment it was listed. This was especially important in the Gila bioregion of S.W. New Mexico, where over 80 percent of the area is state or federal land. In 1979 the few private parcels were still mostly in the hands of Anglo and Hispanic families that had been here for generations, leaving little for sale. And even if some of the ranches had been broken up already, I certainly wasn’t interested in anyplace where the mark of inglorious and often artless civilization could follow. I was looking for what is popularly called an “inholding,” a piece of undeveloped private property surrounded on all 4 sides by National Forest. Nor would just any inholding do, but only a special river canyon I felt sure existed, the singular place that I had so long imagined, dreamed of, and felt called home by.

An hour after hearing Swallows was hiring unskilled labor, I was at the door of his Cruzville ranch house ready for work. He said he’d start me at $3.00 an hour, less than minimum wage but, as he pointed out, over twice what he could get an undocumented Mexican for. A few months before, I had been making up to $1000 per framed oil painting, and although the high cost of Taos gallery rent ate up nearly everything I made, my 3 dollar wage was still quite a blow. Setting pride aside for the greater cause, I parked our school bus camper in his back 40, as far as I could get it into the trees, and put on a pair of borrowed coveralls. Unfortunately, nothing in my past had equipped me with the kinds of practical skills required to handle even the most menial labor on a ranch. While other youngsters were playing with their daddy’s hammers, I was busy reading classical literature and picturing myself in the roles of adventurer, outlaw, scientist or explorer. When other teens were happily learning how to adjust four-barrel carburetors under the hoods of their first cars, I was a runaway on the streets, a self fashioned street philosopher painting wildlife and wild sword-bearing women on the sides of custom vans and motorcycle gas tanks, riding a chopped BSA that I always needed someone else to fix. I always made money by exploiting my creative talents, and the closest I got to being a laborer was playing a double bass Rogers drum kit in various rock n’ roll bands. I knew things, by golly! And so you can imagine my great disappointment at finding out that I didn’t know how to run a plow, know how to weld the casing on a water pump, or even know how to hit a nail on the head more than one out of five times.

Swallows kept trying me at different chores for the first month, including gluing together PVC plumbing at the bottom of a 6’ deep ditch. It was while on my knees in the ditch, that I first heard a truck drive up, and a soft spoken man describe an isolated piece of property that he wanted help selling. With the two of them standing just out of my sight, I could make out every word: “You gotta find me some city rube,” the old man said. “It’s only got one rough trail leading into it, you’ve got to cross the same river 7 times, anyone would play hell trying to develop it. I can’t figure who’d want such a thing.”

The boy at the bottom of the ditch, that’s who… doing his best to keep his long pony-tail out of the PVC glue.

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I had begun the search for land with two cohorts from my Taos art gallery days, the mountain man aesthetic John Drake and adventurous Corbett Wilson. But when Corbett “flaked-out” on John, John figured the search was over and headed back to his Wyoming horse ranch. Now I was the only one left, bereft of resources, yet still wildly intent on the quest for a home. From the moment Emil the rancher had driven up, I had felt a tingle, as though the place he talked about selling was somehow magically the fated one. My heart started racing and it was all I could do not to shout with joy and expectation. As soon as he had he said his goodbyes to my real estate, I climbed out of the hole where I had been working. I was already trying to figure out how to pay for it, before the dust roused by the departing truck had settled back down again.

Within hours I had arrived at the spot Swallows had marked on the map, a section of dirt road that led to the mouth of a canyon where the San Francisco River coiled from one side of the canyon cliffs to the other, dissolving into wilderness beyond. That maiden walk in was indescribable, both what I saw and what I so deeply felt, awakening a deeper connection to myself through connection to a place. If ever I experienced what they call “déjà vu,” it was then, as each bend in the canyon appeared as I had imagined, and the water lapped at my feet with the familiarity of eons. The landscape was of course stunning, as impacted as the two miles of national forest property leading into it was from a century of cattle grazing... hosting the very rock formations, pines and giant cottonwoods of daylight visions and long held dreams. There were no fences or landmarks to indicate the boundaries of the private inholding I hungered for, and yet when I finally stopped to camp it was well within the parcel, and only yards from where I would park my school bus camper following its final earthen voyage. “Whatever it takes,” I heard myself promising, when I was finally able to relax enough to sleep.

The price seemed insurmountable even if, as Swallows thought, I could get the owner to carry the title and give me a full 15 years in which to pay, given that I had neither savings, credit nor cash, and had moved to an area where it was impossible to make any income on such “foolishness” as artwork. I nevertheless went ahead, fueled not by the recklessness of my youth, but by the power of an already irrevocable commitment. Unwilling to wait until matters were decided, I jumped in the bus and drove it – pedal to the metal – through the 7 formidable river crossings and straight up a twisty trail to the mesa where to this day it sits. From its windows I watch the river wind below on its way to Arizona, and contemplate my course of action in the glow of the sun-lit crimson cliffs.

As it turned out, the initial step in purchasing land is often an official signed Offer To Buy. But before submitting one, I was required to deposit with the agent a set and sizable amount of money. They call this “Earnest Money,” since it tends to guarantee the earnestness of the buyer. Such funds are counted towards the down payment if an offer is accepted, but are forfeit if the seller were to accept and then buyer failed to raise the rest of the proffered payment. Just getting the thousand dollar Earnest was a stretch. My sympathetic parents had no money to loan, and the only established credit I had was with the friends and associates who knew and believed in me, thus within a few weeks time I had already borrowed as much as possible from everyone I knew. Next were the forced sales of everything salable, beginning with the paintings I had done, sold to distant friends and clients at a fraction of their onetime gallery price. Then my motorcycle, a treasured bit of hardware that I equated more with freedom than with transportation, and still there was not enough. To make up the difference I decided to take a huge chance and sell the engine out of the school bus I lived in, to a wonderfully helpful fellow I met named Jess.

Years later I was surprised while reading about ancient Viking history. Apparently there were times when the Norse raiders disembarked from their ships only to find themselves unexpectedly surrounded my numerically superior forces. There were time when, rather than withdraw, the chieftains would set fire to their sails. Then, with their backs to the sea, the sword wielding raiders would inevitably fight all the harder. With no exit possible, there would be no half-hearted swings. In my own way, I also had ensured my utmost efforts. Not only would I have no money to leave on, but I would also have no way to get my bus back out, and no vehicle in which to leave. From the moment Emil agreed, I knew I would only have a scant few months in which to raise many thousands of dollars, or else I would lose it all. And the canyon, I already knew, was for more than me.

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Coming up with the down payment for what became the Animá land put me through unbelievable stress, as did every single semi-annual payment over the course of fifteen years. A child of the 60’s (60 B.C.!), I had always chosen free time over dependable income and illusory security, and even my art and music were geared towards awakening personal and global change rather than taking those forms that could actually make me some money. My role models were not the shallow cultural icons of the day, but those who did much with nothing, from cantankerous mountain men to visionary holy men, and I had always quit every job as soon as assured income began to take the edge off my risk taking, or slow my learning, experiencing and growth. I focused on music and art not only because of my natural talents, and their potential beauty or ability to touch hearts and open minds, but because I knew neither would ever make me so secure as to become less motivated and alert. Now I took dangerous and unpleasant jobs that paid well, as well as menial work like pouring adobe bricks that paid almost nothing. Instead of insisting on meaning and enjoyment from my employment as before, I now accepted every opportunity that could help nudge me a little closer to sealing the deal. What I might otherwise have thought of as an unpalatable compromise, I now looked at as simply the necessary trials on the way to what I was meant to do, and where I was meant to be.

It was less than one week from the deadline spelled out in the offer, before the final dollars were raised, in a celebration that included counting several years worth of change and stuffing it into paper rolls. Still another hurdle seemed to arise, when I heard in town that the conservative owner had previously refused to sell a different parcel after hearing that the would-be buyer had long hair. Needless to say, I was as attached to my flowing locks as Samson, and hadn’t been to a barber since I was a teenager. It was a flag, a symbol of my attraction to previous centuries and backwoods lifestyles, and one that I had more than once defended from scissors-wielding drunks. I loved the feel of a fast horse or sleek motorcycle with my hair in the wind, and took comfort in fingering a braid when there were reasons to be sad. But with the first hint that it could jeopardize the signing of the contract, I took a quick swipe with my custom Ruana knife, and the braid hit the floor.

Emil and I put our respective signatures on the contract in the Winter of ‘80/’81, by which time I had already bonded to the property to the point that it would have felt like death to give it up. When not working, I spent every minute exploring the canyon and its surrounding mountains, acquainting myself with the flora and fauna, quieting my busy mind enough to start hearing the subtle chords of river canyon life and the beckoning of the spirits of place. Already I felt as if I were leaving a part of myself when I left its caress, and like I was coming home as soon as I was pointed back. The Native American saying about “you can’t own the land, it owns us” was always something I accepted, but never had it felt so real and personal. No matter how much money I paid year after year, the canyon could never really belong to me. I, however, increasingly belonged to it. The twist was that the closer I got to the land, the harder it was for me to go out year after year to earn the latest payment. Allowing other people to buy a portion from me helped, but also ended up endangering the property in one way or other, and ownership would have reverted to Emil on two separate occasions if not for old friend John Drake interceding and committing.

With nearly everything going towards the cost of the land, it was over five years before I could afford another vehicle. For the first twelve months of that I walked not only the two mile trail to the road but also the eight additional miles of pavement to town, carrying a backpack for groceries, and sometimes packing a car battery out for a fast charge just so I could hear a little recorded music. There were other prices for being here as well, beginning with loss of my artist identity and the conscious community I’d known in Taos. The loss of my wife, who never could understand what was so special about the canyon, followed by the loss of the daughter that begged her mom to let her stay. A decade of girlfriends saying they wanted to live in the wilderness, but always going away. Knowing I’d never be able to afford health insurance, and that I’d be lucky to cover gas and food.

There was never a seconds doubt however, in all that time, that it was worth it... and never a morning at home that I did not wake up filled with a depth of gratitude for being here greater than I had ever known. It’s possible for someone arriving here to act as if they had hustled it, and claim the land as a prize of their cleverness. Even given all the hoops I had to jump through and all the struggles and dramas I suffered in order to pay for it, I still sensed that I was not the facilitator so much as an agent of some larger plan or process... that I was the recipient of a great and wondrous gift. And with every blessing seemed to come an assignment, a clear and impelling means for giving back.

Initially it seemed no more complex than a special opportunity to get grounded, nourished, stretched and strengthened, a chance for true wholeness and home. This stretching deserved at least my openness in return. In gratitude for wholeness, I gave my pledge to utilize every part and facility. And for the gift of home, I gave attentive devotion and unshakable loyalty. Secondly, I recognized the rarity and power of the canyon’s wildness, the way the river crossings helped prevent development as well as casual intrusions, how special it was to have multiple ecosystems in a single property involving from desert communities to high elevation pines, and what a dream come true it was for a young man who had spent too much hard time on the streets. In exchange, I would give care and protection, helping by planting native shoots and seeds, removing the cattle that graze the surrounding National Forest, encouraging the repatriation of the countless creatures meant like me to be here. It was not long before the full significance of the third gift sunk in, the legacy of the ancient Sweet Medicine (Mogollon) people who first settled this watershed. Not only was the entire property an archaeological site, but first my intuition and then the explorations of visiting archaeologists pointed to it being the hallowed ceremonial center for an entire region. That element, too, would receive my protection in turn, as well as my promise to honor that legacy by living out my purpose as full and honorably as the most committed of those who came before.

It was several years before I acknowledged the fourth level or gift, the life changing experiences and enriching insights that this section of the canyon in particular seems to excite. Stories and lessons started pouring through faster than I could write them down, interconnected truths needing a voice, an avenue, an outlet. Among my infrequent guests, even the most resistant or disenchanted found that submerged feelings and issues would come up, prompting self evaluation and sometimes important change. What’s more, an eclectic assortment of characters started stumbling onto this long-held place of power, while on a search for something they usually couldn’t name. Folks who had once purchased artwork, somehow rooted me out, asking not for more paintings but for advice and counsel. The gift of the land, I saw, included a deep knowing vital not just to myself but to human kind and all that we as humans affect. And the appropriate if problematic way to give back, would be to pass on what I learned here. At times that would mean staying home and spending impossible amounts of hours on a laptop computer, while other times it would require that I hit the road to inspire and speak.

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Starting in 1985, my time away from the Canyon involved not only raising land payment money, but also passing on to others what it so generously and adamantly taught. From California to Vermont, I put on over 250 shows, combining spoken word presentation with live music. Most often we would begin with a blessing by a local indigenous elder, then move through pieces that evoked moods as well as presented ideas, and into heavy rhythm numbers where my hand drums set the crowds to dancing. Bands that backed me up ranged from high dollar professionals to busking street musicians, and I adapted my message and tone to work with diverse styles. One night I might perform with a country western band, followed by several shows with a blues-rock band, and then a weekend of cool reggae. At certain conferences or campuses I would give a non-musical presentation, alongside firebrands like Terry Tempest Williams, Gary Snyder, David Brower and Winona LaDuke , other times with the musical accompaniment of the likes of African drummer Baba Olatungi, all male rockers Little Women, the women’s band Joyful Noise, California’s Joanne Rand, folky heart-throb Dana Lyons and the baritone mountain man Walkin’ Jim Stoltz. Always we donated much of the proceeds to whatever local cause we supported, from habitat preservation groups to those organizing for local community autonomy... and my remaining share went to paying Emil, the seller of our Sanctuary. The greatest reward, nonetheless, came not in dollars but smiles and tears, hugs and applause, the gratitude of people who felt moved to re-embrace the vitality of their lives, to join in common cause with others of shared values, to honor instead of conceal their love for natural places and more natural ways of being. The Canyon was speaking, inspiring and healing, far from its river’s shores.

The problem was that the more I was in demand, the more I found myself away from the place that informed, nourished and sustained me, from the place where every insight and tool I taught seemed to arise. Given how much I talked on stage about relationship with the land, I began to feel hypocritical – almost like a speaker on the topic of marital bliss, who is seldom home to tend to his marriage. Realistically, I was not being disingenuous by traveling to teach, but life was certainly getting out of balance, with there being more days where I was out giving than days in the Canyon taking it in.

As a result, in 1993 I pulled in the reins, refocusing on restoring and “growing” myself, with the restoration project here, and reaching out to the world not through guest appearances but through still more articles and books. Whereas I had previously written only for the so called alternative audience, I now began to weave the same values and insights into works written for widely divergent audiences: into sensory-awakening essays on cooking, idea-challenging history pieces, sense of place and the importance of purpose into articles on Old West firearms, pieces on stewardship in the back-to-the-landers’ Mother Earth News as well as the cowboy’s Range Magazine. The first of the books written here were released, and I began to respond to the influx of seekers and students by developing a form for that.

That form was The Earthen Spirituality Project, so named to recognize the inspiritedness of everything in creation, as well to honor the deep and revelatory connection between certain individuals of seemingly every persuasion – from Atheist to Christian, Pagan to Buddhist, and from urban to rural – and the rest of the natural world of which even the most civilized of us is still a part. It was with some naivety that I underplayed the ways in which the word “spiritual” could be hot button and a liability, making it easy for the uninformed to confuse our utterly nonreligious teachings with everything from “Nature Worship” to the often escapist “New Age.” No doubt there were people who never contacted us because of that, who could otherwise have benefitted. The Project nevertheless afforded an increasing number of folks specific opportunities they took advantage of. At first these were counsel sessions with me (personalized insights and provocations), retreats (unstructured time here, to replenish the self), and primitive vision quests (periods of ritual exposure and privation, such as Native Americans and even Anglo-Saxons underwent). All such opportunities, then as now, were offered free, on a donations basis, ensuring our intention as well as making it possible to exclude no one for lack of funds.

Because of this policy, and my not touring anymore, finances became more difficult again. At one low point I had sold 10 acres to a gal whose well intended but often reckless activism dearly cost the work here and jeopardized the Canyon. A subsequent buyer built the cabin that has since been called the “Gifting Lodge,” then “flaked out” as we say, and if Canyon acolyte Ron Sutcliffe had not come forward and paid the fellow off, the portion where the Lodge sits could have ended up on the open market instead of being given back to the Sanctuary. With no money for building materials, I didn’t get our Animá den – a humble 12’ X 20’ one-room office, internet, counsel area and art studio – built until 1990. In the accompanying photo, you can see the den as well as the now-covered school-bus kitchen to its left, taken from the other side of the river (about 230 yards away), at approximately the same height.

Loba had arrived in 1993, the first person besides myself to ever come to stay. Before that, no girlfriend, friend and student had demonstrated a need to remain, or the necessary level of devotion to both place and cause. It wasn’t me but vision of New Mexico that had spurred her to leave trendy San Francisco and search out a fated lifetime home. From the start her effect on people was significant, and even when she couldn’t put a lesson into words she was somehow able to impart much of what a visitor needed. While I looked into the secret chambers of their hearts, imparted sometimes hard truths, asked them to take responsibility and watched if they lived their truths or neglected their hopes and dreams, Loba emanated acceptance and caring, and modeled engagement, compassion and delight. Some who tried to block out the counsel they most needed to hear, still found in her meals and the way she serves them, inspiration that would slowly reshape and revitalize their lives.

Loba made it easier for me to be home writing and teaching, but she also made possible and timely the creation here of a women’s center. Long before she got here, there was a higher percentage of female questers and students than male, and those who came often spoke of how important safe woman-space proved in their emotional healing. From 1996 on, we have scheduled specific times for Summer coed events, while reserving for women the time and space between. It was in 2000 that Loba facilitated the first ever group event in the Canyon, The Wild Women’s Gathering, and since then we have hosted up to 6 events per season (May through September), with from 6 to 16 participants average from all over the world. It would be four more years until the coming of Kiva Rose, and an increase in Supporters that would mean our being able to do more for the land – and help more people – than ever.

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Even before Kiva and Loba, the Sanctuary depended on more than myself for its survival – as a wild place, and a place of teaching. Names pop to mind like John, Gena, Redtail and Ron, who each in their own way and time contributed to paying for the land. And then there were those others who gave in order to help further our message and programs, once I got over my pride and started accepting financial help towards this work. The director of the Kingsley School for troubled youth near Washington D.C., Jim O’Connor, brought some of his charges out to the School for counsel after watching my presentations, performances and workshops for several years. It was he who made the first donation, after insisting it was hard-headed of me to refuse help when my life was dedicated to helping others. And it was Jim who introduced us to our second ever – and now longest lasting – Supporters, the Nick Morgan family. There have been a number of Supporters since, some of whom gave regularly for a matter of months or years, others who gifted us only once but at a special time when we really needed it to cover some unexpected expense. It’s is only because others give, that we have been able to restore this land and offer these services without ever insisting on payment for anything that we do.

The intuitive explorations, clarifications, perceptual tools and counsel for action that arose during hundreds of teaching and counsel sessions, were organized in the late 1990’s into the book we now call The Way Of Animá. For any of you who don’t know, these short sections and aphorisms were arranged by topic, so that one could turn to a particular subject relating to their personal quandary or inquiry, such as Trust & Discernment, Love & Self Love, Honor & Integrity, Illness & Death, and Finding Purpose. By 2000, a lifetime of understandings had begun to coalesce into a cohesive holistic way of thinking, being and living. Then in the Winter of 2005, with the excited encouragement and awesome assistance of Kiva Rose, Animá was launched as an effective organized system, school and tradition. The accent over the “A,” by the way, was meant to help with pronunciation, but also to distinguish the teaching from the general term, the archaic or even Freudian lower-case anima. For any who might be unfamiliar with it, you can read detailed definitions in the materials and essays on the Animá Lifeways & Herbal School.

With the change in name, came an increase and shift in events, with each more focused and filling a different need, as well as a new expanded website with far more resources, and eventually our blogs. Most important of all may be the developing of comprehensive Animá Lifeways & Herbal School Correspondence Courses, for the first time making it possible for people anywhere to work closely with us without having to necessarily ever come here. The Animá Tradition of Herbalism has become an integral element of and vehicle for sharing the broader implications and benefits of Animá, and is mostly thanks to Kiva Rose’s passionate studies, experience and effort. No other healing system or modality so clearly bridges personal physical healing with taking responsibility for helping heal and even co-create our world.

In 2007 Kiva prepared a grant with Denise Smith of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Partners In Wildlife program, the same program that had funded the building of a cattle-exclusion fence all around the property several years before. The grant reimburses us for any plants, seeds, tools and so forth needed for the further improvement of Animá Center property as wildlife habitat. Plant species have been selected that provide fodder for the local wild animals, but also for their ability to stabilize the river banks, or because simply because they are native types that were once here and should be here again to restore the overall balance. She has also taken it upon herself to reintroduce native plant medicines, species that besides serving the ecosystem, also have known medicinal uses. We’ve since joined the important United Plant Savers organization (www.unitedplantsavers.org) in support of their efforts to halt the plant extinctions and promote ecologically sustainable harvesting.

Fascinating to us, are the ways in which Animá students and alumni are also staying directly in touch with each other, forming alliances, working groups and discussion circles, and thus re-creating a tribal (intimate, devoted, with shared values, purpose and work) community of folks living as far away as New Zealand. More and more they are finding others to do activism and healing with, to go on nature walks and enjoy the many simple, fine things in life.

One thing that donations don’t cover – and perhaps never will – is medical and dental expenses for the School's residents. We each committed to this place and mission with full knowledge that we would be without health insurance, and that we would be relying on natural forms of healing to survive to a natural old age. My liver condition has appeared as one of the most serious challenges so far, affecting my sleep, with anything that is stressful (from urban shopping center crowds to worry over not doing all we can to alleviate some personal or global ailment) making the symptoms worse. I, who have defined myself my doing the seemingly impossible for so long, have learned from the condition how to calm and pace myself, to expect a little less and rest a little more... things I could well have benefitted by when I first came here nearly three decades ago.

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Health issues are just one thing that brings to mind the value of prevention and the preciousness of life, as well as the fact of our mortal spans... and the vital importance of preparing for the Sanctuary land, its ecological well being and archaeological integrity, the legacy of the ancient ones and the lessons that have come to be known as Animá – insights and tools that will be ever more important in the coming decades of overpopulation, personal desensitizing and dumbing down, political repression, and a culture that is in dire danger of devolving into tasteless diversion and superficial pabulum. Never will the tools – of self knowledge and awareness, compassion and passionate response, self confidence and sense of interconnection, natural being and the natural world – be more essential or timely for our kind... and never will what human kind does have more definitively impacted the rest of creation. And those who follow will be able to say, that never was it so vital that there still be wild healthful places like the Canyon for the plants and animals that remain, or that there be places of power such as the Animá Center where they can go to rediscover, restore and redirect their selves.

To this end, it is our intention to find a pro-bono lawyer to assist us with setting up a nonprofit land trust, to preserve the teaching center as well as the biota. Any and all suggestions are welcomed in this regard, as we need a defense against what will surely be future pressures from developers, road builders, litigation, and intrusive legislation. Secondly, there is need for successive generations of folks as inspired by this place and purpose as we, including an expanding circle of allies, supporters and teachers who carry the effort forward in their own states, countries, and time. And we will also have to make room in the Canyon for additional lifetime Canyon residents of all ages including the very young. This work was not meant to done alone, though we have to do it as though and even if were were to do it by ourselves always. It is meant that each caring resident or guardian help monitor the intentions, methods and results, each person doing their best to ensure that the crucial founding principals are honored through any of the Center’s inevitable changes in form. Each would ensure that the others can see beyond their own fears and needs, and do not neglect or dilute the integrity of this mission and land. Each would have varying personal gifts, that would make their contribution unique, and work in concert with others to advance and deepen. And one or more could abandon or betray this, or unexpectedly sicken or die, with their still being others “holding place,” and keeping things going. It would be a terrible mistake for anyone here to ever imagine we don’t need help, or to fail to not only tend the present but prepare for the future.

Any future residents of the Canyon will likely be drawn from our student and apprenticeship programs, with one of the most important qualifications being that no place else can satisfy or fulfill them, that they feel most their selves when here, and carry the Canyon in their hearts when away... that when they do go for however long and for whatever reasons, they ache to return. The second most important qualification will be their ability to devote. The myriad other requirements can mostly be learned, including awareness, discernment, teaching techniques and homesteading skills. The deep ways they feel, their insistence on bettering themselves and their world, the things they have suffered as well as learned, even their sense of loneliness or frustrations with aspects of society will prove to have been significant preparation for the huge role they assume here.

So it was with me, I can see as I look back. What had once seemed like wrong-headed choices or unnecessary diversions, appear essential in hindsight. I thought my childhood years in military school were wasted, though the teachers allowed me to advance as fast as I wanted and basically showed me that I didn’t need school (only desire, intuition and books) in order to learn; the conformism showed me the absurdity and artlessness of uniformity; the inequality inherent in militarism convinced me that all real authority derives from our selves and the permission we give ourselves to determine and act on what’s right; the tears of the children shamed by their parents for losing to me in spelling bees and shooting matches, helped turn me off to glory at the expense of others. Running away from home and school at 14 long seemed like a mistake, but being on the streets showed me the underside of our economy and the social unfairness, prejudice and police brutality that I would never have known in my suburban cocoon. I could not communicate with so many kinds of people, if not for the time spent traveling, nor could I have kept my commitment to stay here even without friends or a lover, if I had not already won and lost many loves, and realized that others can and should never be the sole source of our satisfaction or our sole reason for being. Even being beat on by druggie biker thugs resulted in my developing an attitude and skills that I needed twenty years later when defending the canyon from threats of violence. The disturbing dreams and arresting visions that once made me feel a little crazy, were indeed the signs and omens that led me home.

Some guests talk about complex challenges and situations in their life that they are ready to change, others can express only a general desire to reconnect with the canyon that nonetheless speaks of something primary, sincere and deep, and it is partly for them that both I, my associates and this place exist. And in truth, there is nothing else I want to be doing, besides what I already am, only more so, reaching, stirring, awakening, informing, helping heal and empower ever more people... while necessarily establishing a lasting lineage of Canyon caretakership, continued learning, deep feeling, radical envisioning and insistent doing equal to the greatest individual efforts and shared missions in all of history. Animá was never just an idea, nor only a piece of land. All the magic around it would seem to indicate that what I knew in my heart upon first putting my name on the contract to buy it... that it is meant to be an evolving tradition that lasts so long as there is even a fractional minority seeking out a more real and realized existence, and a place honored and protected not just for a lifetime, but forever. Such is the future we plant our seeds for, grown in the rich ground of our histories, fed in the now by our ceaseless helpful efforts, watered with tears and laughter, and rivers of love.

Animá Lifeways & Herbal School Website: www.animacenter.org

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