I was 27 when I wrote this in 2000. I haven’t altered it, even though I’d like to, because I want to keep its original integrity intact.

As I continue building this space, I’ll link to backstories and forward stories that spiral out from here. Expect extraordinary synchronicities, doppelgängers, and the strange weaving of time itself. Hyperlinks will carry you both backward and forward through the story, letting you move in whatever direction calls to you.

There’s more to this story. Part two and part three unfolded later, when I returned to Dominica and ultimately gave my daughter the middle name Moses.

Yellow flowers

The story of the babas, a bush doctor, and my left leg.

This is a story that begins with yellow flowers and has no true ending. It is a journey into my own personal mythology, and how I fit the little puzzle pieces of this mystery into some comprehensible storyline. It is non-linear, multi-dimensional and dealing with the unraveling understanding of my own karma and destiny, so please do bear with me as you read this as it is an attempt to make sense of the connections that thread through this here story.

My tale begins during my first venture around the world with myself. I had come to the Holy Land of India due to my utter fascination with the divine bovine, the holy cow. Laugh if you will, I often do, and often about cows. I love these beings wholeheartedly. I believe they are the incarnation of the great mother goddess in this universe, I was compelled to see the land where she is honored and adored. With this as my focus, I was never disappointed, disillusioned or dismayed as many soul-searchers are in India. Beautiful cows are everywhere, and the only problem at all was that you had to be very careful where you step so that you don’t slide in either the proverbial or the actual holy shit.

It was about 3 weeks of being in India when I met my first “sadhu”, a wandering, ascetic, holy man. Sadhus are holy men who dress in robes of orange and whose entire life is a sacred pilgrimage. In this story, I switch between the terms of “sadhu” and “baba” when referring for these dreadlocked mystics.

I had come to the holy city of Tiruvanamalai to stand witness and pay respect to the sacred mountain, Arunachala. I knew it was about to be the holy holiday of Shivaratri, a day that celebrated one of the great blue gods of India, the lord Shiva. It so happens the Shiva is the god that most of the baba’s revere, and it is Shiva who is seen as a dreadlocked god, one who smokes the holy plant of marijuana freely. If you are thinking that Shiva sounds like a Rastafarian, I must say please read on.

I had just read a great story of how this mountain called ARUNACHALA was actually the lord Shiva in earthly manifestation. I had also read that this mountain was celestially the element fire. I could expand on how I first began to understand the power invested in fire here but that would be going on a whole other tangent. Let’s just say I was entering a huge initiation. And I felt it in every cell of my body.

Many of the world’s most enlightened spiritual teachers have come from the lineage of the sweet sage, Ramana Maharshi, who dwelled on this very mountain. This great sage was so humble he said he owed everything he was or had to this mountain. He also claimed that his favorite cow, named Lakshmi, was a completely enlightened being and had escaped the karmic cycle of birth and death. This really made me adore him, of course. 

The teachers I have met personally from this lineage have changed my entire perspective on life. The main teaching is simplified as “you are that”, meaning that you are that which you seek. We are all embodiments of the divine oneness we call “god” in this illusionary world, there is no one else. As these simply teachings touched my heart of hearts, and this mountain was seen as the inspiration of it all, I was truly on a pilgrimage myself. To the eye, it looks like no more than a dirt hill. But the sensations it created in my heart and my body made this feel like a spiritual Everest. 

I remember the first time I saw the sweet sadhu I would later call “Chaibaba”. I was in satsang with the late Papaji’s wife. Satsang is a term that means roughly “being witness to the divine” and Papaji was an incredibly strong and enlightened student and teacher of Ramana Maharshi’s wisdom. He passed a few years ago but now his wife was the one transmitting the essence of their awakenings. 

So, I was with her and her following when the baba came to pay respects. He was quite extravagant in his “baba”-ness and such a cute character that I was really taken. He was a tiny man with really long dreadlocks that he wrapped high on his head. He wore a simple orange wrap and covered his dark body in ashes from his holy fire. During the discussions, he was honored extravagantly by Meera quite exuberantly. He was nothing short of a movie star baba. So cute. 

Soon, I synchronistically found a girlfriend who took me to his fire pit where he did his nightly “puja” ceremonies. A “puja” is a sacred fire ritual that is quite expansive, ceremonial, and devotional. Around his fire at nights we would all chant, pray and take part of his ritual of offering countless sacred items to the fire, one by one, to be consumed. Over the course of a few days, I realized that Indians and western travelers alike were attracted to this little man and the incredible hospitality he offered while living with absolutely nothing.

I learned that the babas of India live a life of absolute simplicity. They travel to holy sites (there are millions in India) with a few pieces of cloth, their large metal trident, and their water. They own nothing else. They definitely look a bit like the Greek god Neptune, Rastafarian style. I know that there have been sadhus in India for thousands of years who have survived solely by the grandeur of their spirit and the hospitality of all who chose to serve them. I guess the thousands of years that the Indians have had the caste system and all, the sadhus were also a working part of the system. The folks all gave alms and food and all the holy babas were taken care of. I guess the population explosion has made it so that many of the sadhus are starving and begging. It’s really sad. What’s even sadder is that there is definitely a population of “bad babas”…men who aren’t truly devoted to the purity of spirit that their garb reflects. 

Anyhow, they all get along and survive on their faith and the spirit that guides them. This first baba, who I would later call “Chaibaba”, was one of the truest babas I met all through my journeys. A tight group of us formed around him within a few days. We were a motley crew to say the least. We were 2 American girls, one English Sai Baba devote, one Indian Rajaneesh devotee who was about to become a sadhu, and one amazing baba who I called “ No Name Swami Badillion.” Many nights around the fire there were up to 40 people, but this was the core family that Chaibaba formed, and we were the ones who walked 13 kilometers around Arunachala together doing pradakshina until dawn on Shivaratri.

Chaibaba spoke no English whatsoever, except the comical fact that he knew how to say “double print”. As I said, he was a movie star baba, and I guess folks love to take photos of him, and he likes to get a copy for his own collection. Funny. Anyhow…he was here in Arunachala to pay respects to Ramana and also to do a forty-night ritual of pujas every night on the holy mountain where he set up his little “camp”. He kept true to the “chai, chillum, chapati” regimen that babas are famous for maintaining. That means that he drinks plenty of chai, the Indian spice tea, he smokes his holy ganga out of his chillum, and the only food he takes is late at night when he has chapati with a bit of hot-ass curry.

Once you became a friend of Chaibaba (this little man drank a lot of chai), he would become the Jewish mother you never had. He was so inclusive, caring, and warm. He named everyone with an Indian name that he himself could remember. I became “Bhavani-giri” to everyone in town. It is such an interesting relationship because in order to really hang out with a baba, you must help support them. So everytime you come to his site you should bring either preparations for his puja (and he sure sacrificed an awful lot to that consuming fire) or something for his cook to whip up for dinner for everyone. His cook was a thoroughly enlightened man named Ganesh who happily served Chaibaba with unwavering devotion. The food he cooked up was so spicy hot it was almost inedible, but after following the same routine as Chaibaba, you were ready for some grub at about 11 p.m.

Chaibaba also had a really special black dog. In India, dogs aren’t really taken care of like they are here, but they always aim to please. They just kinda adopt you for a while or you adopt them. When anyone would leave to go home from his fire, the dog would lead you home and protect you from all the other “guard” dogs. All you would have to do is reward her with a biscuit. She would also come into the lake with us in the afternoon and swim with us. A very special dog. I think we each had a different name for her. I called her Nandi after Shiva’s most devoted friend, his little male cow.

The other baba there that I called “No Name Swami Badillion” was probably my favorite baba of all my experiences in India or Nepal. Okay I have a lot of favorites, but this man was really special. He was the Merry Prankster- Bob Marley – Winnie the Pooh baba man. He would never tell me his name and so I called him “No Name” which he would argue was still a name. The badillion part of his name comes from a wonderfully silly organization I was involved with in Oregon called the Phurst Church of Phun. We all have names ending in badillion because there are a million badillions and I really have no idea what in the world that means but we have a lot of fun celebrating the holy fool and this baba was foolish in the best possible way. He spoke brilliant English and after hanging with him for a few weeks we had so many hilarious jokes that would grow and evolve and were completely in the category of “you had to be there”. He was a humble, happy man and I would have built an ashram for him had I the money. He would sing “Shiva Shiva Shambo” nonstop and had such a regal and dignified stride as he walked along. I truly loved and admired that man.

The thoughtful things that No Name Swami Badillion would say would be exact lyrics of Bob Marley, yet he had no idea who he was! It was a beautiful night when I got my hands on a reggae tape for him to listen to…I think it really blew his mind. It was absolutely amazing to me at that time to realize how similar the babas were to the little I knew of the Rastafarians. The dreadlocks, the holy smoke, the simple lifestyle, the return to nature, the male dominance, and the interesting gods.To me, Shiva is actually much more believable than Hallie Salassie but that is a whole other story that has no real context here.

The English chap who was a Sai baba devotee in our little family was developing a crush on me, and I was a bit uneasy about it because I truly liked him, but only as a brother really. It was kinda the “Luke Skywalker complex”, but still, I was unsure about what I was to do so I made a secret pact with myself. I decided that if something happened with him that involved yellow flowers than it would be a sign. It would mean love. It would mean that I should go for it. Otherwise I was safe just being friends. 

I kept this to myself, of course, and for my six-month journey through India I would always be on the lookout for these yellow flowers. Now, if you have ever been to India, you know there are flowers just about everywhere, and that the most adorable children are trying to sell you necklaces of them at every temple, which are found every few steps in any direction. These flowers came to me, but not for many months to come….

There is much more to tell of Arunachala. I met so many divine souls: an American gay baba named Leaf who had been in India for 20 years, a star sister named Chandra, a gorgeous drummer named Happy, and an Indiana Jones hottie named Balarama who was doing underwater research for Graham Hancock. We all drummed and chanted early into the morning all the time, and would go to the caves to mediate all day. It was a hard decision to leave, but we all took a caravan together to Bangalore to bring Chaibaba to see the great living goddess, Ammachi. She is popularly known as the hugging saint, most of us had been blessed with her hugs before and felt quite compelled to all go together.

Chaibaba had never met her, and we all felt it would be a great honor to bring his sweet soul to her arms for them to hug one another. He came dressed in his movie star glamour, and he was the only baba there in the thousands upon thousands who came to have satsang with Amma. He sat right at the front and at one point he played his drum very loudly. When he came to her glorious feet, she saw him and gleefully laughed before taking him in her bountiful lap. It was a sight to behold.

A few months after our little family dispersed in Bangalore, I found a bunch of these same folks I had met in Arunachala when I went to another mountain in the south called Kodaikonal with a dear sister I found named Meri. It is worth mentioning that the first time I ever met Meri, we were in a magical place called Hampi that looks like primordial Mars. We were to be initiated into first degree Reiki by an angel of a girl who only asked for a modest donation. It was quite an experience. Anyhow, we had decided to share a place together in Hampi afterwards, as I had an awesome round hut on the side of town where you had to take little round boats across a river to get home and she wanted to save some money. We knew instantly that we were sisters. It was pretty awesome. 

The thread here has to do with that really special black dog. After our initiation, both Meri and I got pretty damn sick. Everyone always wants to know if you get sick in India, and this was my one real episode of it coming out of both ends at one time. Many folks also get pretty sick after a Reiki initiation, as it is said to purify your body. Thank goddess I had aced the skill of squatting over a pit to take a shit. If it wasn’t for my skills of aim, I might have had a much worse experience! Anyhow, Meri and I were just hilarious, getting up every 10 minutes to clear some orifice of something stinky. We had egg burps; it was pretty fucking nasty but a wonderful bonding experience.

Anyhow, Meri was having exceptional dreams and delusions due to her high fever and all. She shared them with me in vivid detail when we were finally lucid again. This one dream affected her so strongly that she felt compelled to draw a picture of a very special black dog upon her recovery. Apparently, this black dog became her guide to the underworld while she had assumed the persona of Scully from X-files.

He was her faithful guardian, and when she found Moulder and told him finally that she loved him, the black dog was there to comfort her when Moulder replied with a smug, “I know”. Silly, eh? But you know I was thinking all the while of this dreamy black dog named Nandi from Arunachala. Later I realized that the Egyptian god Anubis is a black dog who is the guardian of the underworld in their mythology.

Meri and I went on all sorts of wild adventures together. I believe we were adventure mates for two months, but in India time that is a lot like forever. We had so much fun together. We spent our first full day in a post office trying to send a parcel together. We learned together how important it was to never try to do more than one thing a day in India. We laughed each evening at how funny our day had been. We were dolphins together in the ocean swimming naked, we were rebellious ashramites singing “Sri Ram Jai Ram Jai Jai Ram”, and we finally came to the hill station of Kodaikonal together. We came in search of magical mystery mushrooms and a hope of some fresh, cool air. India was getting hotter than hell, and as women, you’ve got to wear a bunch of clothes to be considered decent. It made us pretty bitchy to have to wear so many clothes in 120-degree weather. It would make you bitchy too.

It was there that I was reunited with the other folks from Arunachala. We all lived together for a few weeks in a remote mountain village, sang songs, and did lots of yoga. Anyhow, the reason I mention it is because I found out there that the really special black dog that followed around Chaibaba became No Name Swami Badillion’s companion and it had puppies soon after we left. I was really tempted to go back and adopt one. Instead I headed up north to the tiny island of Om Kareshwar with a fairy boy with purple toenails that I met on the train who it turns out I already knew from Oregon.

For brevity’s sake I will skip the next several months of hilarious stories and synchronicities throughout the motherland of India to keep some thread seaming through this story I made my way to the north to the holy town of Rishikesh. Yes, that’s the place where the Beatles came, it is on the most sacred river of all India, the mother Ganges. By this time, I felt pretty confident in this maddening country, removed from all time and sense. Due to both my anthropological fascination and my gypsy roots, I had grown to know many babas throughout my travels, and had really begun to feel very comfortable with them and their lifestyle. Rishekesh had the biggest population of babas I had seen yet. The more tribal feel these babas possessed downright astounded me. Many of them reminded me of royal African kings. 

I met this one baba whose name I have blocked out but let’s just call him the “bad baba”. Bad baba seemed like a pretty okay guy. He spoke pretty good English, he was informative, and he was definitely friendly. He offered to take me to the big temple on the hill where baby elephants were rumored to play, and I agreed. After looking around for a while, we got into a discussion about the life of sadhu. He offered to give me a bead that is symbolic of taking the oath of purity and devotion that the sadhus take. Now, I was definitely interested in their lifestyle, but as it is predominantly men who are holy men, I never seriously entertained the idea of taking any oath. 

I was flattered that he was offering to be my teacher, and of course he wanted to give yet another Indian name, but I politely but firmly refused his offer. Why not? He wanted to know. I explained to him the truth that one day I hope to be a mother. That wipes out celibacy definitely. And although I learned much from their life of simplicity, I explained that I hoped to have a home for my child one day down the road. He thought about this for a while and seemed to respect my decision. But then he surprised me by telling me that if I really wanted a child, he would be glad to offer his services to me. He explained to me that although it is his religion to be celibate, he would make this very huge sacrifice for me. I told him bluntly that I was not interested. Yet, he pursued. He explained to me how the goddess Lakshmi and the god Vishnu made the “godchild” in elephant form, the god Ganesha. “We can make a godchild,” he told me. Again, I politely refused. Thank you but NO THANK YOU. Anyhow, I left him shortly and went on with my day, praying I wouldn’t ever have to see that weirdo again.

That night, I was returning to my dirty ashram where I was staying, and he was waiting for me by my gate. He asked if I wouldn’t mind to sit across the way at the banks of the Ganges and talk awhile. I didn’t want to have bad feeling for the guy, so I said okay, and we walked a minute or so and sat down on the rocky beach of the holy river. He began his pleading once again with me. “It will only take five minutes,” he told me. I almost laughed at that point. I said “no” as many ways as I knew how, including spelling it out and asking him which part of it he didn’t understand. I wasn’t feeling physically afraid or worried, but it became clear that he was not going to give up. 

I decided to leave. So I stood up and I realized that my leg was completely paralyzed. No feeling, no sensation, it was like it belonged to somebody else. I was extremely afraid at this point, but didn’t want to show it. I tried to stand up again and somehow dragged myself back home to my dingy but safe home in the ashram where I sat and wrote in my journal for a hour. I was convinced I was cursed by that baba. I am a “happy-la-la Kumbaya” kind of gal and that is not my normal type of assumption, believe me. But I had no doubt. I felt a sense of evil and I was a bit freaked out to say the least.

The whole next week I had funky sensations in that leg. I was hyper aware of all of the sensations in my left leg. In fact, that leg is the true thread throughout this story of mine. I will share how it is all connected, don’t worry. I could feel my flip- flops so acutely as I walked that whole week, it was pretty surreal. I wish I could say there were yellow flowers on those flip-flops but I can’t.

I was in the dingy little dungeon of a place where I liked to get my meals when I was introduced to a baba that was of the royal African king variety. He was gorgeous. Upon our introduction, he proceeded to tell me a wonderful tale about how he met Prince on an airplane from Amsterdam to America. It was a fabulous story, and I would have definitely thought he was bullshitting if it hadn’t been such a detailed and hilarious account. 

Apparently, he was flown by some friend to deliver a lot of hashish. The story goes that Prince boarded the plane somewhere in Europe that I can’t recall and claimed that this regal baba was in his seat, in the first class, no less. This baba called Prince a “gay boy” and later, after the pilot came out to settle their dispute, this baba put his feet in Prince’s face. This is about the biggest insult a person can perform from India, as the feet are really considered dirty and unholy. Anyhow, they ended up friends by the end of the long flight and apparently, this baba even rode in Prince’s purple jet to Minneapolis and stayed in his purple mansion. So this baba was definitely memorable to say the least. 

The baba’s name, yes he did have a real name, was PrakashRaj-Giri. This loosely translates as “King of light from mountain.” We became good companions, him and I. He was respectful, intelligent and funny. We liked each other a lot. He also asked me to become his student; he wanted to train me in his sadhu ways. This time I was truly flattered as I really had a generous amount of respect for him also. He brought me to meet two different women who had taken on the lifestyle of a baba. One lived independently in a remote cave for 8 years that looked like a fairy’s paradise and the other girl served her master like a dog. It was definitely an interesting contrast.

He also asked me to join him on a trek to “the cows mouth,” Gau Mokht, the source of the holy river Ganges. Although I was on my quest for the holy cow, I was on my way to Nepal and my time and money left was sparse so I had to decline. Looking back, I kinda wish I had taken that pilgrimage for love and reverence I have for the both the holy cow and the other great mother goddess of the Hindus, the river Ganges.

On my last day in that crazy town of bizarre babas, I was sitting by the river Ganges watching all of the Indians washing, praying, playing, and being. I was in a contemplative mood and I sat there for hours. I saw these two children put on the most lavish display of play possible. They were splashing and giggling all around me, being as cute as they could possibly be. Then when they were done, they put on their clothes and I recognized them as the two beggar children who were extremely aggressive to everyone who passed on their territory of the swinging bridge.

It amazed me how they put on their clothes and were instantly transformed into the sad, desperate children they needed to be for work when I had just witnessed them as the epitome of joy itself. This saddened and confused me. They asked me frantically for money they felt they earned for the display they put on for me. Another confirmation that India represented so clearly was the Leela of this universe; the divine play of this reality, where we are all players. The cosmic joke is so alive in India. I found that if you don’t laugh, you’d just never stop crying.

So there I was, just baffled and feeling like I might just weep all this confusion into the Ganges when a little girl about 2 or 3 years old walks up to me. She was striking. Her hair had been shaved from some ritual and she was decorated with the heavy black eyeliner that all the little Indian children wear for some kind of protection from one god or another. She was dressed in a pale yellow fluffy little girl dress with a bow and lace and she approached me with the confidence and presence of a master. In her hand she held yellow flowers that she handed to me.

For about ten absolutely surreal minutes, she proceeded to talk to me boldly in Hindi about god knows what. But she sure had a lot to say to me. She looked me squarely in the eye and I truly felt as if the world was standing still. This little girl held my yellow flowers! She was a manifestation of the great mother goddess in my eyes, and I felt more blessed than I can find words to express. She left me baffled with the yellow flowers in my hand and the tears finally came with an absolute surrender of gratitude dancing in my being. 

When I finally came back to reality, I felt compelled to look behind me and there was PrakashRaj-Giri. Just standing there, watching. He had witnessed the entire event. I’ll never know if he had orchestrated the entire ordeal but I certainly felt like he had to have been a part of the divinity that played out. I saw him there like the bodyguard in “Annie”, the protective, loving, and magical man behind the scenes. 

That same day, we took a long walk on the sandy shores of the Ganges and at some point he wanted to take a break because his left leg was hurting him. It was the same leg that I had felt had been paralyzed a week or so before. He was a Naga Baba, and these babas take on a severe penitence before becoming a baba. For him, it was standing on one leg for 8 years straight. His leg just hasn’t been the same since. I knew that day that something karmic was happening with this leg of mine. 

We parted that day and I left for Varanasi and then Nepal. Lots of funny stories there but I’d like to keep to the themes here. On my birthday, I hung out in the Bob Marley café in Kathmandu with my lover, Babu, and a few days later I took off for a month in Thailand before going home to America. I didn’t really want to be in Thailand at all but I originally got a really cheap flight that included a stop in Bangkok so I went there with my last $200 or so. 

I went to the islands where I thought I could live the cheapest on pineapples and sunshine, and there I found some awesome soul sisters I had met in Nepal. This was another amazing synchronistic event, as both of these girls had traveled with a wonderful friend of mine from Oregon, who I never even knew was traveling. We discovered each other in Nepal but then again at a “solstice party” dancing ecstatically around a fire. One of the sisters was interested in joining me to go to a Thai monastery called Wat Suan Mokh. After a few weeks of paradisiacal island living, we took off together to this beautiful Buddhist monastery to attend a ten day silent retreat. I had already completed one ten-day silent retreat in California, so I expected it to be the same blissful experience that I experienced that first time. I was hoping I could get my head straight after all these crazy experiences and get my heart ready to go back to America. I was definitely ambivalent about coming home to the very white and homogeneous land I somehow got born into.

It was kind of silly to think it would be the same experience having just traveled to the other side of the world and about to go back. It was completely different. But I was still alone with myself and my little funny head and that is always pretty profound and healing. The significant part of this experience is that the entire time during that retreat, the words of Bob Marley were sounding over and over again in my little head. I came to the conclusion that Bob Marley wasn’t only a baba, he was a Buddhist also. The words to “Redemption Song” were my mantra, and I must confess I broke one of the rules and one day put on my headphones to hear that one song. “Emancipate yourself from mental slavery, none but ourselves can free our minds.”

When I found myself back in America I had the same kinda shitty experience everyone has when coming back to our big old concrete, materialistic jungle after being abroad. It was rough. Coming back to my old life, I wanted things to be both exactly the same and completely different at the same time. Although I felt completely different myself, I didn’t know how to express these changes that were bubbling inside of me. It was difficult to assimilate my experiences into capsules that people would want to hear. My friends did the best they could do at the time to support me, but I found myself being really disappointed in the ones I was counting on the most. 

I was working three jobs to make up for all that fun I had, and I was frying myself completely. I found myself getting pretty depressed and I signed up for another ten day silent retreat at the California center to get my head back on and to get a little needed perspective.

After a pretty painful yet insightful ten days, I realized that I really needed to make some changes in my life if I was going to be a “happy la-la kumbaya” Claire again. I went home, packed my bags and prayed for guidance. I went to a friend for a tarot reading and the cards told me clearly that I needed to go back to the mediation center to volunteer for a while. He said that I might even meet a love there.

It was during my second week of working there that I met a nice fellow from England who volunteered to shovel some goat shit onto the apple orchard with me. We got along wonderfully and he proceeded to tell me about the business he was forming on a phenomenal little tropical island with a friend. He said it was the most beautiful place he had ever been in his life. He also mentioned that they might need someone to answer their phones for them. I happily volunteered and after two months of sweet email correspondence, he and his partner flew me out to the island of Dominica with a job as their marketing manager.

After four months at a mediation center, I felt like a nun. I had huge doses of wildflowers, silence, and dragonflies. It was probably the first time since my teens that I went without any ganga, tobacco, or alcohol. I ate huge amounts of spouts and learned to do 101 yummy things with tofu. I was just oozing with good feelings and I felt truly blessed to have this amazing opportunity handed to me. I had no experience but they didn’t seem to mind. I really feel like they thought they were hiring some sort of nun, as that was my vibe the last several months.

When I arrived I was absolutely awe stricken. The island was a jungle paradise, and the people there were alive with the joy of life itself. Music is blaring from each little village, playing calypso infused beats that hypnotically play over and over again. The folks always had a smile and a friendly “good day” for you, and these people just love to dance. 

It should be mentioned that Bob Marley is King to these folks. His image and lyrics are inscribed everywhere on this island. What is also worth noting is that the folks all exclaim “FIRE!” all the time. It is an expression to them that resounds of power and strength. And as this tropical island is volcanic, I also felt the rumblings of the fire I found at Arunachala was pumping my blood.

The boys welcomed me into their house that was a round open aired mansion that was an old disco called the Manicou. A manicou, in case you are wondering, is an opossum-type creature that is really kinda mean and ugly. But our home was a dream, with tons of tropical fruit trees in our expansive backyard. We had almond, orange, lime, grapefruit, banana, cashew, guava, mango, and papaya trees in addition to our vegetable garden. My favorite was a grandmother mango tree that was probably over 200 years old who graced our little Eden, and she carried all of my prayers down to the crystal core of the earth.

Our view over the lush, jungle mountains was breathtaking. You really had to see this place to believe it. A huge bonus also was an awesome trans woman named Mickey who was our cleaning lady twice a week, apparently she came with the house. For two months I lived and worked with these two very charming English guys. They lived like royalty and took care of my every need. We had a blast. And then things got very strange and heated and we peacefully made our separate ways. 

When I say things got strange, I am definitely trying to brush over a long gruesome story. I admit it, but if I delve into that little soap opera I would be going away from my theme here. And yes, I do have one. Let’s just say things got heated on that volcanic island and things shift a lot. I think this is true of all volcanic lands. I was sad to leave our little village called Trafalgar, and I was a little worried how I would support myself without my job and little money- but I had heaps of faith and has always taken me further than any practicality ever has. Thank Goddess!!!

At the exact right time, I found a sister on the island named Emilie. I had been really searching for a good girlfriend because it was trying living and working 24/7 with two very well to do boys that were definitely from a different planet from me. She needed a girlfriend too and we were definitely each other’s angels. Emilie was from France and had already been to the island for a few months and had all sorts of amazing things to show me. And we were definitely from the same planet. 

She told me often about a bushdoctor healer named Moses who lived a majestic piece of land on the other side of the island. I had heard a few people mention this man, and I was really excited to go out to meet him and see his amazing river I had heard so much about. We hitched about five different rides in order to get to the town closest to his place.

When we arrived in Delices, we walked from the village down a hill on a lush pathway to find Moses’s land. From the top of the hill all you can see are abundant banana plantations but the song of the river was already audible. We found Moses by his fire; he had a huge pot of soup ready for as if he expected us. Later I would learn that his mother who had reared 14 children taught him well to always prepare enough food for visitors.

But with one look at this man, I knew the grandeur of his spirit. His eyes were the kindest and wisest I had ever met.

About 25 minutes away from Moses’ home was the grand waterfall called Victoria Falls, and Emilie was anxious to show it to me. I was pretty beat from our full day of traveling, but felt compelled to go anyhow. It was getting to be dusk and it had just stopped raining. Moses urged us to wait till the first thing in the morning to go when the rocks would be dry and we could catch the sunlight through the falls. 

I definitely could have waited but I didn’t want to disappoint Emilie, so we went with Moses gorgeous son, Junior, as our guide. We had to hike through the river several times and leap on wet rocks and at one point I slipped and fell. I was really tired and shaky at the point, but we were half way there and I didn’t want to make everyone turn back so I persevered. But I was in some serious pain, truth be told. 

When we reached the falls, I understood why she was so excited, they were absolutely phenomenal. Raw power pumping out of that falls. The water that was gushing out was actually from the boiling lake in the middle of the island. This water was charged with sulfur, which the Dominicans use to heal almost everything imaginable. As this water ran by Mose’s land it is called the White River due to its tinted hue. 

We followed that river back to where it makes a T to the clear Jack River. It is at this joining is where the land Moses’ family has lived for generations. When we arrived, Moses had some hot herbal “bush tea” ready for us with a special concoction of plants that bloomed all around his hut. 

Moses home was built by his own hands and was originally designed to be the Nyambinhgi Rastafarian meeting house. This is where the community of Rastafarians gather to drum, chant, and commune. It is round and open aired as my house in Trafalgar was; yet this one had an ancient and quite rustic feel to it. The ground was laid with big river rocks, and the twelve posts of the house have scribed the names of the twelve tribes of Israel on them. It was constructed with the intention of healing and community, and all those who enter feel those values. Resting about 50 feet above the river and surrounded by gardens upon gardens of every imaginable herb, fruit, and vegetable; I truly felt as if I was in heaven.

That night, Emilie and I shared the one bed in the hut while Moses went up a few hundred yards to sleep in the home he had built for his two boys. That night my leg felt like it was absolutely broken. I couldn’t roll over due to the intense pain. I could hardly sleep at all because I was so worried about my leg and the pain was pretty unbearable. The sounds of the river were so loud that night; I felt an intensity that made me feel as if I was tripping on acid. 

Upon waking at dawn, I inspected my leg again and saw that it still only looked like a scratch and there was no visible bruising or anything. When I told Emilie, she told me that perhaps it was because of the intensity of the healing powers of the river and of the home where we slept. We realized that it could be that the healing was catalyzed and extremely accelerated and therefore acute. When I told Moses, he heated up some water with salt and lemon and cleaned my wound thoroughly and carefully before we had to leave.

But before we left for civilization, Moses brought out some old papers he had on some mystical tenets of Rastafarianism. He wanted to show these to me as we had discussed the absurdity of the Gregorian calendar and I was sharing with him my interest on the Mayan time keeping devices. While I read these papers, I was astounded that Rastafarian’s mysticism was linked to esoteric schools of thought around the world. These articles linked astrology, the Kabbalah, and Egyptian mysteries all to the Rastafarian belief system. I was shocked. 

From the little I knew of these other traditions, I knew this was something big. What was especially fascinating to me was the mentioning of the Goddess Hathor several times throughout these papers. Hathor is my most beloved deity, the celestial cow-goddess of the Egyptians. In fact I have been wearing her on an amulet on my neck for years now. At that moment I felt like things were really lining up.

I can’t remember the actual moment that I realized that Moses appeared to me to be a divine reflection of the qualities I loved so much in my Indian sadhu friends. Yet, I immediately gathered that his lifestyle was nearly exactly like the Indian ascetics, and his devotion to Jah was as genuine and heartfelt as the all baba’s prayers to Lord Shiva. It was a divine revelation when I one day I realized that he embodied the hospitality of Chaibaba, the sweetness and silliness of No Name Swami badillion, and the royalty of spirit of PrakashRaj-Giri.

During the next several weeks, Emilie and I journeyed all about the island, with the luck of having a couple of house sitting opportunities so we could keep our expenditures down. We frequented a little café where the lovely Rastafarian elder named Blow prepared “Ital” soups for the vegetarian and health-conscious Rastafarian community. We would sip this delicious soup out of a calabash bowl and sit below a heavenly, ever-blooming mango tree. As there is only one table, we would meet new friends everyday and sit there for hours on end. 

We found out that the annual Inter-Caribbean Summit this year was to be held in Dominica in a couple of weeks. The week-long meeting was to be held in a brand new public secondary school in the historically rich to the Rastafarians, Grand Bay. This was quite an event, considering that only 25 years before, to even bear dreadlocks was illegal and cops were allowed to shoot them dead on sight. 

It was our intention to escort Moses there as we knew he had no transport and he really had to be persuaded to ever leave his land. We decided to go check out the scene first and then hitchhike up to get him, but we were thrilled to finally find him there at the summit as we were just about to leave to go get him. He had already gotten settled into one of the classrooms with several other Rastafarian brothers to stay the duration of the week. 

That week we participated and witnessed several rituals and talks presented by this marginalized Caribbean community. It was there that I realized that the more I learned about the Rastafarian culture, the more I realized I didn’t know at all. Yet, we felt quite honored to have both Moses and Elder Blow as our guardians there as they were both highly respected and celebrated. They made sure we always were well fed and comfortable, as we were the only two white people present and among the few women present at all.

The next few weeks of searching for some sort of legal and fulfilling work left me frustrated and a feeling a bit hopeless. As I knew I would have to return to the states in several months for my only brother’s wedding, I began to realize that my efforts were becoming futile with the amount of resources I had left. I also sadly acknowledged the fact that I wouldn’t have enough money to be able to come back to Dominica as my savings was null. I had been blessed with the gift of coming to this paradise but had no true means of coming back in any realistic sense in the near future. 

It became clear to me that I wanted to spend my last months on the island learning as much as I could about the plentiful healing herbs abundant on this fertile island. Moses had mentioned several times to me that he would love some help recording all the information he had compiled about herbs into some sort of book, and I felt this opportunity would be my most fruitful option. I decided that I would go stay with him on his land and live a life of simplicity by his river, helping him catalog the abundance of knowledge he carried while learning to live amongst the nourishing elements.

In this time I got to know more about Moses’ amazing life. I had noticed that he had walked with a bit of a favoring of his right leg. Sometimes he walks with a stick yet this man is incredibly active. He is running around his gardens and hiking down to the river all the time. Always with his cutlass in hand and chopping coconuts down by the dozen, he is busy as a beaver. This man gets around. 

I found out that Moses was shot in the leg in 1973, the year of my birth, when the “Dread act” was in place. He had done absolutely nothing immoral at all, he just grew natural locks in his hair by not brushing or cutting it. Dreadlocks are considered to be very holy to the Rastafarians as they site many scriptures from the Bible that they believe support their call to be closer to nature. Yet, as Dominica had no tolerance for these soul rebels, he was made an example to the Rastafarians. What is interesting is that Moses told me that it was actually white hippie travelers that came to Dominica who sparked the Rastafarian movement there. 

Moses told me of the time in the early 70s when he was the ice-cream truck guy in the capital city of Roseau and he remembers vividly first seeing these free spirits. At the time, he felt like he was part of the capitalistic regime in the capital city of the island that the Rasta’s call “Babylon.” “Babylon” is a term borrowed from the Bible that represents to them a modern hell, where people are disconnected from their roots and totally out of touch with nature and goodness. When he got to meet these hippie folks, he was really influenced by their liberal and freeing perspective. They didn’t “work,” and they created their own values in opposition to the common paradigm. In fact, it was some hippie that introduced Marijuana the first time to Moses, calling it something like “special” tobacco. He had no idea what that herb was.

Soon, a liberation movement started to occur in Dominica, mirroring something like the crazy 60’s in America, and folks who were unsatisfied with the status quo began to free up. Dreads started growing, some with reverence to Hallie Salassie, and some to just be natural. Soon people were forming in the community and began to go into Zion, the jungle, to live. Dominica is blessed with huge mountain formations that keep its dense canopy rainforest from being sacrificed. It is so jagged that it is really impossible to develop, so there is plenty of jungle to get lost in.

I feel that this movement to towards self-reliance and away from being controlled is an echo of the period when the Africans were freedom from slavery in those islands not so very long ago. In fact, Moses ancestors were part of the infamous Maroons who fled from slavery into Zion. That’s how his land was claimed generations ago. And his ancestors chose well, believe me. A “hundredth-monkey” type phenomenon was forming over the Caribbean at this time, people wanted to just live naturally in the elements and be free.

When Moses got the bullet in his leg, he took to Zion to flee from the aggressive police. With several other people he lived an amazing seven years in the jungle. He was married at the time to a beautiful woman and he delivered both of his gorgeous sons in that time period. But he never had that bullet removed until he came back to civilization, to Babylon. So his leg had never been the same since. It was also his left leg.

Over the first couple of weeks together alone on his land, a sweet and tender bond formed between Moses and me. He taught me how to tend his plants, make delicious Ital meals, and live with the two energy sources on his land, the fire and the river. All day long he would identify the hundreds of medicinal plants on his land to me and we would eat of the leaves, make bush-teas, and cook with all the powerful plants. Each day we would bathe in the river with patchouli leaves and I would condition my hair with aloe and avocado while he cleansed his dreads with pulp from hibiscus leaves. 

I shared with him all I knew about the Indian sadhu’s lifestyles and Buddhist thought. While he was the one to introduce me to the gentle heavenly father called Jah, I had the honor to introduce him to the Great Mother Goddess. For both of us, this introduction was nothing short of miraculous. I saw that he embodied the archetype of the affectionate, compassionate Father God, and he felt the Mother Goddess’s love alive in me. We wondered which angel had brought us together. We knew we were blessed.

It should be mentioned here that the boo-boo I got on my first visit here more than a month before had still not fully healed. There was still a small open cut on my left shin. I had been hiking at least 10 miles a day with Emilie throughout the villages, and we bathed in the river everyday during the intense afternoon heat. My wound never had the time to finally dry up and scab over, as it should have.

In the course of a couple of weeks the wound on my leg went from being mildly infected to a seriously nasty puss monster. Moses and I treated it with so many concoctions, yet the infection just grew and grew. We tried cayenne pepper, aloe, the life plant, thyme, lemons, and several other herbs and methods to treat the infection, yet it was impossible to soothe. I was in serious pain, but even before it got to that point, Moses urged me to go to the village nearby and see the local nurse. I refused, weary of the intrusive western medicine methods. He pleaded but I just kept on trying different herbs and tried to keep my leg as clean as possible. Soon, the pain of the infection had me in bed all day, unable to walk at all. Moses and his boys treated me with so much gentleness and love during that horrendous spell. I will be forever grateful for the way they took care of me. 

I’ll skip all the nasty details but I finally did end up in the Dominican hospital with a huge gash cut into my leg to drain the abscess that had formed. It was really gross. My hospital experience was certainly memorable. It was a bummer I didn’t know it was “bring your own toilet paper and sheets” situation, yet I was comforted by both the bus-loads of faithful Christians holding hands around me in prayer and also good friends who came to bring me clothes, books, and fruit.

When I got out of the hospital I only had about a few weeks left to spend in Dominica before having to go back to the states for my brother’s wedding. I really felt that this was one of the hugest sacrifices I had ever been asked to make in my life. The thought of leaving this paradise island and this great love was unbearable. I went back immediately to spend every last second with my love, Moses.

That week was filled with pure celebration and gratitude for our togetherness. We shared so much. We dreamed of what the future might hold for us, discussing marriage, children, and happily ever afters. He offered everything he had to me- his land, his love, his devotion. He knew I had dreams I needed to fulfill back in the mainland and he honored these yet he let me know that he would always be there with open arms and an open heart for me.

I remember on the first day I came by myself to his land and we were sitting on what was to become “our stone,” a large flat warm rock where the Jack and the White rivers met. He held my hand and told me he dreamed of having children running around his land once again. This shook me. I revealed to him that on the very first time I ever set foot on his land, I felt that if I were ever to be pregnant that I would come there to spend my 9 months of gestation. I felt that in every bone in my body. 

It’s funny because at that time, I never realized that I would develop this type of love for Moses, I saw him as a great soul and as a teacher, but I never dreamed of being with him romantically. Our age difference was quite considerable, yet the more I got to know him, this seemed like such a trivial matter. I knew it took all those 50 years to make such a magnificent man.

What a sweet dream we lived. I promised him that I would return. I told him honestly that I did not know when that would be, but I gave my heart’s promise of commitment to him. He was my “doo-doo”, my “sweet-sweet”, and I was his. He assured me that he would always be waiting for me patiently, offering both his heart and his home as mine forever. 

I remember vividly the last time I took the walk up from his land to the village. We were walking hand in hand up the winding path, and dawn was just breaking. Although I had taken that same walk dozens of times, I never took note of the abundant flowers that grew on both sides of the footpath. They were bright yellow. Jamaican yellow bell flowers.

That’s where this story ends. I pray that this karmic cycle of babas and bush doctors and my left leg is now complete. I pray that my leg is finally healed from whatever karmic debts I have connected to all these linked events. I honestly don’t really know what to make of this story and that is why I felt compelled to write it all down, to connect the dots of this little life of mine. I feel that these amazing connections can’t merely be chance. 

I am still wondering many things:. 1.) How I found all of these good babas in the land of the holy cow and how they connected me miraculously to find sweet Moses. 2.) How the “bad baba” started this karma cycle with my leg and how that connects to the baba who knew Prince and ultimately Moses. 3.) How Bob Marley came to me through a silly baba and Buddhism. 4.) How Buddhism brought me to the land of Rastafarians. 5.) How I was initiated into cultures praising both fire and herb smoking, dreadlocked gods. 5.) How these all weave into my very intimate understanding of goddesses and those mysterious yellow flowers. 

And what about that black dog??? At least in my own world of created meaning, these events are part of my personal little myth. And as for those yellow flowers, well as I write it is just the beginning of spring and I have realized that these yellow flowers are always the first to herald in the fresh hope of life awakening again. They are popping up everywhere. 

Praise Jah and Jai Ma!!!!