VOICES Radio Hour is brought to you by VOICES in partnership with KDNK, The Sopris Sun, and Connection is Medicine Foundation. Each episode we share stories from members of our community. We hope this serves to preserve our oral history of who we are, where we come from and who we aspire to be, through the tradition of storytelling.
This episode of VOICES Radio Hour is called “Simple Gifts”, and it’s about the treasures in life that reveal themselves to us when we take the time to look for them — a gift from the universe that lit up your world in the least expected ways. The storytellers for this episode, moderated by Mitzi Rapkin, are Caitlin Causey, Shannon Ewing and Raleigh Burleigh. The episode aired on KDNK at 6pm on Sunday, March 22. Watch or listen online anytime at voicesrfv.org/voices-radio-hour
Raleigh Burleigh was born and raised in Carbondale. After five years as editor of The Sopris Sun, he set off on new adventures this spring.
It’s dark. Completely dark, besides the glowing volcanic rocks at the center of this structure, made of bent willows and covered with blankets. A drum beats steadily, and my heart beats with it. Many voices attempt to follow along with an ancient Lakota song of prayer. Intermittently, the rocks hiss as water is poured, creating a hot vapor. Somehow we’ve fit a few dozen people inside this ceremonial womb, all smudged with sage and dripping with sweat.
Just two days prior, I was in the port city of Valparaíso, Chile. Twenty-two years old, revisiting a family I’d lived with on exchange six years prior. I’d made a tradition of attending a weekly Dominguera in a hillside plaza. Every Sunday, an assortment of locals and travelers gathered for an informal talent show of sorts. Musicians, jugglers, storytellers, other artists shared their gifts for whatever transient audience accumulated in that moment.
There I met a group of Chileans, a little younger than me. They told me they were headed next to see a French film at an art house cinema in the neighboring city of Viña del Mar. At their invitation, I tagged along.
The film … was horrific. It portrayed disturbing scenes of realistic and abhorrent violence. During one such extended scene, I noticed one of my new-found friends get up and leave the theater.
Earlier that night, Sebastian, a stout young man with a high voice and wild, curly hair, explained how the overweight usher at the theater was breathing … incorrectly. According to Sebastian, the breath should circulate through the abdomen, and not be trapped shallow in the chest.
I was more interested in what Sebastian had to say than subjecting myself to the traumatic events on screen, so I followed him to the plaza outside. There I learned that he is from Villarica, a town far south nestled between a lake and an active volcano. Sebastian told me of his purpose here. The very next day he was traveling to Raices de la Tierra, a three-day gathering of indigenous communities in a forest outside Santiago — Chile’s capital city.
All at once, people began spilling out of the theater, including his friends. They told us how the film ended and we parted.
But, I had a seed. Raices de la Tierra. The next morning, I looked it up. The distance wasn’t so great and I had no firm commitments, but it began that very same night. My host siblings encouraged me to go, so I summoned up the courage and threw together a bag, borrowing their tent.
The journey began with a bus ride of several hours to Santiago. From there, a transfer to another bus, then another. The location of my destination was obscure, and several times I nearly gave up and turned around. But all along the way, angels assisted me. I remember one man in particular walking me far across the expansive bus depot in Santiago, through the streets to where I barely caught my next connection. At every turn, the universe seemed to funnel me exactly to where I needed to go, in such a way that I just couldn’t back out.
By the time I arrived in Cajón del Maipo, it was late. I had no ticket for the event, and according to what information I found online, the gates were closed. But there awaited a sentinel, who received me with brotherly kindness. Once in the forest, I wandered among hundreds of tents and the charged quiet of a few thousand people settling in for the opening ceremony that next morning.
With no specific aim, I walked the dirt path between camps, intuiting a place to nestle my tent. Then, a high voice. “¡Hermano Ralí! Llegaste!” Sebastian, of all people, had emerged from his tent in that very moment, for no apparent reason, and caught sight of me. He beckoned me over and we popped inside another tent where friends from the night before and others smiled and laughed in welcoming disbelief. Suddenly, after a long, uncertain day, I was home.
The gathering itself opened my heart up wide. I participated in my first temazcal sweatlodge, which was guided by a Lakota elder. I met other indigenous people from Mexico, Colombia, Peru, Chile and more. I helped in the communal kitchen, attended every group prayer in the kiva where the three-day encounter initiated.
I sat at the fire of our Mapuche hosts and gained a new respect for this people, their culture and their centuries-long resistance. I made friends among the hippies and felt more in love with life than ever before. At one point, I remember listening to harmonious birdsong in the canopies above and thinking, “The birds are singing because the people are waking up.”
That seed blossomed into far-reaching, life-transforming relationships and identity-shaping lessons. And it all began because I followed my heart through uncertainty, from one step to the next, without knowing to where I was being guided.
I often strive to reach those pockets of flow, guided by the universe, which deliver us to a distinct feeling of aliveness and present connection, listening closely for external signs and internal validation, while trusting a current with no clear destination.