Land is a complicated thing for me. I’ve traveled across much of the earth — from Haiti to Afghanistan, from Uganda to Japan, Switzerland, Paris, the UK, the UAE, the US, Mexico, Costa Rica, China, India, and Türkiye — the list goes on. Sometimes the travel came fast, one country after another. Sometimes it was through the military, sometimes for work, sometimes just to breathe. What I’ve come to see is how fluid land really is — and yet how each place has its own distinct resonance, its own invisible presence that logic can’t quite touch, but the body can always feel.
In many ways I feel like a nomad, yet at the same time deeply rooted in the earth — almost as if I carry the land inside me. Once, near Lake Arenal in Costa Rica, I wandered onto land that I later learned had been used by ex-Bavarians and German WWII officers for dark, violent acts. I had no idea what I’d stumbled into, but every sense in me felt it — the quality of the light, the cast of the shadows, the sound of the soil beneath my feet. My heart started racing, and I suddenly imagined vicious guard dogs chasing me through the tall grass. I ran to my car. As I drove away, huge dogs emerged from the fields, snarling and chasing me down the dirt road, swallowed by the dust I left behind.
Another time, deep in South India, in a place called Auroville, I crashed a rented motorcycle on a rural road. I lay there covered in blood and dust, barely conscious. Through my blurred vision I saw a couple on a motorbike approaching. They stopped, helped me up, and took me to a sacred place called Solitude Farm. There they cleaned my wounds and fed me raw food harvested that very morning — served on a round metal tray in small mounds, arranged like a mandala. As we ate, they spoke about the nature of farming, the energy of plants, and the way the world connects through every meal. With each bite, I could feel light entering my body — the purity of the food, the clarity of its link to the soil. I’ve chased that feeling ever since, even in Michelin-starred restaurants, but I’ve never found it again.
In 2002, I went to the Panjshir Valley, north of Kabul, with a group of my students. They wanted to thank me for teaching them American reconstruction techniques after the war. The night before, I had terrible food poisoning, but at 5 a.m. they showed up with flashlights — electricity was rare then — insisting that I join them for a picnic in my honor. We drove through dangerous mountain passes until we reached the valley. I lay on a mattress, barely holding myself together, sniffing oranges and lemons to keep from vomiting. I must have looked pathetic beside those war-hardened men.
Then, halfway through the meal, a man from the nearby village appeared. He wore traditional Afghan clothes and a turban, ammunition belts across his chest, a long rifle and revolver at his side.
“What’s wrong with this foreigner?” he asked my hosts in Dari, smirking.
“He’s got food poisoning,” they said.
“Give him this — from my land,” he replied, pulling a piece of deep green hashish from his pocket and handing it to me.
“You have this, mister,” he said in broken English, stood there for a moment, and then simply walked away.
I smoked it. Within minutes I was up dancing in my boots, laughing, devouring the food, hugging sheep, smelling the earth and the mountain in their wool.
Land, for me, is something alive — fluid, visceral, sometimes ephemeral, sometimes solid. It holds memory. It’s marked by the people and the cults that live upon it, recorded in silicon crystals, whispered through the mycelial web that stretches beneath us like a network of forgotten truths. Meaning, I think, grows out of that — from the deep folds of history, from the layers of language and time that shape how we belong.
As I write this, I’m listening to Heilung’s LIFA, the song echoing:
“What am I supposed to do
If I want to talk about peace and understanding
But you only understand the language of the sword?”
The land remembers. The myths keep growing through its roots.
