USA
A land for the bold.
A land that changed my perspective on the world.
Monument valley, Navajo nation reserve, Arizona
The United States of America changed me.
2019 was a pivotal year in my life. It was the year I began changing from a 24 year old instagram content traveller, to… well; the man I am today, and the man I continue to be, and become.
In 2019, there was rapid travel in the first half of the year - I went to Singapore, the Arctic, and then 5 weeks in the USA, all before the month of May was complete. By the time I arrived back in New Zealand, I had 2 weeks to pack my life into a Mazda and travel to my new home, Queenstown.
I liken this experience of rapid travel to a cramming of socks and underwear into the top drawer of a set of drawers. One after the other, the experiences, just like socks, stacked up inside the drawer, which appeared to have an incredible depth and ability to store such items! The thing was, I was moving so quickly (and having some deep and life-changing experiences), that I never got a chance to take the socks out and wear them, get to know them, and enjoy them! I was having a blast on these trips, seeing things I could only ever imagine, but I needed time to process, and that’s what Queenstown became for me,
but that’s another story.
I had been on a good run. In cricketers terms, I was batting on a good wicket. A few years earlier, I had decided I wanted to travel the world, but there was one catch… I wanted to do it for free!
So I had a goal, I wanted to travel, but I wanted to do it for free... A quick breakdown of possibilities and potentialities led me to one quick solution - become a content creator and get a sizeable following on Instagram. A few of the other travel catalogues will tell you more about that story… namely the Arctic.
A few years had gone by since the dawn of my creative social media career, and I had achieved my goal, except it was even better than I thought - I was getting paid to travel. Yeah! Beers on me.
One of the collaborative partners I had been working with was Busabout - a travel company that provided the service of hop on-hop off bus travel around Europe, and at the time, the soon to be USA loop. Busabout had loved my work with them in Europe, so they asked me to hop on board a bus going from LA to New York to do some filming for them. I said, yes!
So, why North America?
ROUTE 66, USA
Some of the Busabout 2019 travel crew who travelled from
LA to New York.
The people, and the place.
The land and culture of North America is simply put, incredibly important in the context of the world we live in. In my opinion, more so now, than ever. It’s a place that has been built in recent times to support the vision of a free culture - a land that can provide the opportunity for people to live an “American Dream”. Be who you want to be, live how you want to live, and make it! Make it for you, and your family, and your friends. From the founding of this Great Nation, it was clear that the United States of America had a different idea about what life could be, and I think the First Amendments of The Bill of Rights (a founding document) honours that.
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”
To me, it’s like a signpost. A very large signpost, that was set up hundreds of years ago (1791) and laid a deep and strong foundation for the positive growth of freedom, of creativity, of possibility and of evolution. This signpost says: here, you can exercise freely your speech (ideas), and you can assemble with others to peaceably share this speech at any point in time. To me, this is a very important signpost.
It was the art, the music, the expression, the boldness, the theatre, the drama, the individuality and the shear amount of diversity I experienced in the United States of America that sent a 24 year old boy home with a bunch of internal processing to do about the big question in life…
Who am I?
Lying in a hotel room in Santa Fe, New Mexico, asking myself
“Is this real?”
It wasn’t just the modern culture of North America that was having an impact on me.
During this trip, I realised something that I had always known deep within, and this was so monumental to my psyche at the time, that I had moments of truly questioning my existence. Who was I… where was I… and why was I there? I was remembering.
At one point, I vividly remember lying on the bed of a hotel room in Santa Fe, having an out-of-body experience with myself, remembering being a Shaman. I even Googled “what is a Shaman?” as at the time, I didn’t know what it was, but something deep inside me told me it was very relevant to the cross-over of sensations, realities and emotions I was having at that time. Just being in Santa Fe was stirring the waters inside of me.
Monument valley, Arizona
The Grand Canyon, Arizona
It was the land that started speaking to me first.
We took a route through the Mid-Southwest of the States, so this included leaving California for Nevada, then Arizona, then New Mexico, then Texas.
As I left the sandy beaches and modern art culture of L.A, the hot and dry, almost barren - yet alive, landscape of the desert lands rolled before my eyes as we travelled along the famous Route 66.
My first experience with the Native-American reservation land was at Monument Valley, located in the Navajo Nation reservation in Arizona. Whether or not I ‘knew’ it at the time, simply being at these locations was affecting me.
A memory was stirring in my soul, and I felt like I had been here before.
At the time, I was listening to and researching a book by Graham Hancock called “America Before”, which is about the ancient past-times of the Americas, and pre-dates modern historical accounts of people on the Americas by thousands of years. Hours and hours of stories, all while looking out at the landscapes rolling by in front of me. I was transforming through story, but I wasn’t just hearing it, I was living it.
And then the moment I will never forget.
This moment comes to me from time to time. Every year, I am reminded of it.
I was now in Texas. A small town called Amarillo, close to the border of New Mexico. It was one of the many nights out we had on the tour, and I had been drinking some beer that evening. Many of us know what the concoction of liquor can do, and the Native Americans all too well. It was on this night that I met a man that I do still wonder if he was physically there or not. He was one of those characters who appears partly physical, but with such a vast spirit, that his memory feels almost translucent.
The conversation was deep, in parts it was heavy. A local Mexican man, only young - about my age, was telling me how he wasn’t welcome in that town, and to my shocked ears, how he considered himself a second-class citizen, and based on what others had said about him, he considered himself ‘scum’. I was both dismayed and shocked to hear these words from his mouth, and I was sure to re-assure him that he was every bit as important as the rest of us, and that he mattered.
Despite the heat that this conversation had, it felt as though the group that was taking part in it were enraptured in the presence of each-other. It was one of those moments where you’re all in. Every part of you is there, and the attention is palpable.
I notice this happens when important things are being discussed, or people’s souls are speaking. Something fiery comes alive, and a truth comes through that might otherwise be kept silent. I’ve always noticed that Liquor tends to fuel these sorts of open-hearted, honest sharing moments, and for that reason, I don’t have a negative view on Liquor, but instead see it as a gateway for people who are otherwise afraid to share things. Of course I desire a world where we can go to these places without the need for a drink, but I truly acknowledge the role of medicines across history and culture as a fundamental practice for encouraging a deeper human experience. I see things such as Cannabis, some forms of Liquor, and other plant medicines as facilitators for such things to happen. We live in a world that is changing rapidly, but in many ways it closes people from themselves, and naturally, as the evolutionary sort of race humans are, we will seek ways to express ourselves despite the conditions we are in.
Something deep had come upon us, and I was now in direct conversation with a mega-man.
This man was of an incredible blood lineage,
a mixture of Native American and Scottish. It was as though the dingy bar in small town Texas no longer existed, and instead a tribal gathering of elders was commencing. I was speaking to him, he was speaking to me, and every one of our ancestors, and that whisper became a growl of truth and the heart that shakes you to the bone.
What words were said, I can’t truly remember, but I knew exactly what we were ‘speaking’ about, and so did he. It was an ancient prophecy, one that I had become familiar with in my studies and stories of the Hopi tribe in my ‘America Before’ research.
This prophecy somewhat defines me, and my reason for being here on Earth at this time. When I first heard it again, I knew what it meant, and I remembered it. As many of us do.
"When the Earth is ravaged and the animals are dying, a new tribe of people shall come unto the earth from many colours, classes and creeds, and who by their actions and deeds, shall make the Earth green again. They shall be known as the Warriors of the Rainbow"
And of the might and life-shatteringly significance of this moment, this ancient conversation with this powerfully fore-headed brother, the only words I do remember him speaking are this…
“Well then, what are we gonna do about it?"
ELATED AND ELEVATED
Take a journey that reminds you life is what you make it, and life is also how you respond to situations every, single, second.