one of my fave movies was 'dances with wolves' i'd kinda forgotten about it to be honest and one day last year while wandering through a sydney bookshop i found this hardback, which includes the sequel 'holy road' which i had never heard off. i picked it up and put it down in mission control. yesterday i picked it up and started to read it.

i've always had a very strong, almost supernatural affinity to the north american indians, my past lives, my heart and my natural shamanic disposition steers me to all things indian, the spirit inside me glows. 

although i have only just started, the book is gorgeous.  it's written in the poetic form of a western man, a solider who has seen death, war and civilisation as he ends up alone on the frontier. his first encounter with an native indian is electrifying, as is the indians perception of him. 

it's rare for me to enjoy writing like this, it happens once in a blue moon, i love this book and i have only just started. i've always been fascinated with people who let go of their advanced civilised culture with all it's technology, comforts, laws and regulations, religions and politics to embrace the new tribal life, the natural order of things. be it a south american jungle tribe, north american or alien (avatar being the obvious one) the concept is always interesting as the journey is one i relate to. 

in a way, when i arrived in australia i was thinking how wild and frontier like my little town was. obviously it changed rapidly but avalon was a very amazing place, with it's own untamed culture of poets, painters, writers and freaks. some rich and others poor but the beauty was you would never know. we would sail around the waterways, head into the bush, i would see wildlife, sharks, dolphins, whales and weird insects. i would meet wild people pursuing wilder dreams and aspirations. i encountered many strange spiritual pathways, healing modalities and philosophies, i had my first shamanic experience, my first direct encounter with the great spirit. 

obviously it was not the wild west, but the journey was strangely familiar and as i read this incredible book, i reminisce about the way i felt, being in awe of the new, the space, the vastness and discovering the ancient culture of the aboriginals through my friend francis firebrace, looking at the big night skies with agent stone. the whole period was frontier - like as i saw the big picture and my part within it.

the novel is like swimming in a rich ocean of nourishment, it's not particularly academic, transient, transgressive or beat but it's just a beautiful story well told and reading it puts me there.