HIDDEN TREASURES

We were sitting by the fire – Rod and I.
“You are on a quest,” said Rod –man of the Mi´kmaq people, former chief of the Waycobah first nation in Whycocomagh. “What is the treasure that you seek to find?”

“The reasons that we have beforehand are constructed. The reasons we have after are organic,” I remembered the thought of my Philippine friend Anton Sevilla.

As I came to think of it, reaching “Land´s End” had always been rewarding. Hitchhiking is travelling from person to person rather than form place to place, so those rewards, or treasures, as Rod put it, also have come through people.


I reached “Land´s End” in Alaska with Keith – a master of martial arts. Not only did he drive me all the way to the Arctic and then to the Pacific Oceans, but he was teaching me what he knew in these five days we were on the road. Just meeting him and hearing him was a present in itself, and then him and Robin making the 3 000 km detour to get me to my destinations. There was still more! Keith gave me a beautiful staff – a weapon and walking stick of diamond willow that he had found over twenty years ago in a river.

“Practice,” said Keith, “Now the staff will be your teacher. Make it an extension of your body. Continue carving it. Make it yours.”

Keith came again to teach me in Ionia about three weeks later.
Thank you, master. My fist is my weapon. I pray, I never have to use it. I come in peace.


The staff was too heavy for me to carry. I practiced three times a day, carved it to fit into my hand and started walking with it September 6th . It was fall in Alaska. As I travelled North towards Tok, people were starting to speak of snow.