“I was born and raised into a middle-class, suburban, fundamentalist Christian family. Every Sunday morning, I suffered yet another sermon of hell, fire and brimstone. Upon returning home, I would shed my polyester suit and clip-on tie, don my cargo shorts and brogans and run to the hundreds of acres of woods at the end of my street. There I would sit, alone, next to the stream and the Grandmother trees. Though I was just a child, something within my soul knew that this was church; my church where I could commune with the mystery of Spirit within nature. This was the beginning of my initiation into the vocation known as shamanism.”