Getting a psychedelic toad through airport security.

Happy Friday friend!

I did something recently that’s unheard of for me.

I listened to the same podcast episode, twice.

Within the space of a month.

I NEVER do that.

Not because every other episode of every other podcast is crap. There’ve been episodes that have had a profound impact on me to say the least.

But! It’s never happened that an episode, and the podcast guest, leave me awe struck in so many ways.

Energetically.

Archetypally.

Intellectually.

Existentially.

It’s an episode of the Tim Ferriss show, and the guest is Wade Davis.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/6MGnTP3x8F5h6Fpht39Mmm?si=46c865edddc4409d

The least impressive part of Davis’ resume is his degrees in anthropology and biology, and his Pd.D. in ethnobotany, all from Harvard University.

He’s the author of 375 scientific and popular articles and 23 books including One River (1996), The Wayfinders (2009), Into the Silence (2011) and Magdalena (2020). Into the Silence received the 2012 Samuel Johnson prize, the top award for literary nonfiction in the English language. His photographs have been widely exhibited and have appeared in 37 books and 130 magazines, including National Geographic, Time, Geo, People, Men’s Journal, and Outside.

Davis is also the recipient of the 2009 Gold Medal from the Royal Canadian Geographical Society for his contributions to anthropology and conservation, the 2011 Explorers Medal, the highest award of the Explorers Club, the 2012 David Fairchild Medal for botanical exploration, the 2013 Ness Medal for geography education from the Royal Geographical Society, and the 2015 Centennial Medal of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University.

Between 2000 and 2013 Davis served as Explorer-in-Residence at the National Geographic, a position also held by Jacques Cousteau and Jane Goodall.

While he’s further under the radar than either of his predecessors, there’s a popular rumor that Davis was the inspiration behind Harrison Ford’s Indiana Jones.

If there’s a cooler sentence ever written, please send it to me.

And honestly, the movies are tame compared to some of his actual stories from the episode.

A snippet of one involves getting a one of the largest species of South American toad, which happens to have psychedelic venom, alive, successfully through security at JFK airport, in his hand luggage!

Weirdly enough, I was half way through one of his books when I stumbled across the podcast episode, not clicking that he was the author.

Davis’ 2009 book, The Wayfinders is a beautiful book that explores the importance of cultural diversity and the knowledge systems of indigenous cultures.

Davis advocates for the preservation of these cultures, arguing that they contain valuable insights and wisdom that can help us navigate the complex challenges of the modern world.

He explores the knowledge systems of various cultures, from the Polynesians' navigational skills to the medicinal practices of the Amazonian shamans.

And it was those navigational practices of seafaring Polynesian cultures, starting over 3000 years ago, that really stood out.

A few things to consider, for context.

Basically the first catamarans, traditional Polynesian boats started out as two canoes joined by connecting logs to enhance stability. Over time, the structure stayed the same, the boats just got larger.

Not huge though.

The average boat, or Va’a, was between 15 and 23 meters long, and made almost entirely of plant matter, including coconut husk, wood, pandanus leaves for the sail, and a little shell and bone thrown in for good measure.

Polynesian cultures sailed and rowed these boats upwards of 10,000 nautical miles (1.15 land miles), and taking into account the prevailing winds in the directions they were headed, you can easily double that.

So upwards of 20,000 nautical miles of open ocean rowing and sailing, in boats no longer than a tennis court, made mostly from palm trees…

I’ll let that one sit for a moment.

One more thing.

Back then, compasses didn’t exist.

Traditional Polynesian cultures had no form of written word, so no instructions.

No maps.

Everything was remembered.

Yep, months on end, with no land in site, no map, no instructions, no compass.

The job of finding the way fell to the navigator.

One man who’s job it was to navigate the entire journey, meaning no sleep other than cat naps and basically yoga nidra (yogic sleep), all the while sitting at the very back of the boat, looking in the direction from which they’d already come.

Yep, backwards.

The navigators job was to watch.

In daylight, to watch the swell of the ocean, the directions and reflections of clouds, the color of the sky at certain times of day.

To watch seabirds like the white tern, who would hunt in the morning and return to land later in the day.

And at night, to watch the stars, not only their position, but also the specific spectrum colors reflected off the edges of stars.

And the moon, including any halos it might have that night as a sign of impending storm activity.

“Ring around the moon means rain soon.”

Not only to watch in isolation, but all pieces of data in complete interaction with one another, including olfactory information.

And not only to watch, but to remember.

To remember it all and to chart course accordingly.

I heard something fascinating recently.

That brain imaging studies done on people asked to think about their future, showed that the areas of the brain that light up, are those responsible for remembering the past.

We form our view of the future based on our experiences of our past.

We create stories based on millions of pieces of conscious and unconscious data, in order to predict our life’s trajectory.

Things happen to us which, a lot of the time, we have absolutely no control over, and have no power to change.

The power we do have, however, lies in taking responsibility for what we choose to focus on.

I’ll be the first to say that it’s 100% easier said than done.

It takes effort, it takes grit, it takes blind belief at times.

It takes determination in the face of what can feel like a wide open ocean with no land in sight.

But the signs are there if you can be still enough, even for a moment, to look for them.

For many things in life, I’m finding out, there will be no compass. No predetermined path or well drawn map.

And it takes creating the stillness to steady the swirling winds of rational thought, to feel what’s going on beneath the waves, and to find your way.

In love and health,

Alex