Lowlines

Leaving the jungle, leaving the Americas, heading home! After OD-ing on mould and the thick, viscose brew - as well as more ‘place’ than I knew what to do with at times - the sweet relief of a plump pillow, seasoned food and a hot bath soon gives way to this eerie sense of…mutedness. All I can hear is white noise - and what do you do about that when you realise that most of your life is soundtracked by this dull hum?

In Episode 7, the final part of this first series of Lowlines, we move back into the familiar high-pitched world, prepare to re-adjust - and consider how to land back into it differently.

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Two weeks at a plant medicine centre in the Peruvian Amazon - I thought this would be a good thorough deep dive and that I might get wiser and closer to the plants, but I soon discover that two weeks is nothing and that I know nothing. Everything at Aya Madre is a challenge to what you think you understand and who you think you are. An assault on the senses, a take-down of the ego, an all-out reckoning with not even the release of a firm conclusion.

This final episode of the first season of Lowlines is the anti-conclusion episode. Give it up to the twisting, knotted vines and the soaring, deafening jungle chorus. Just go with it. I tried to…!

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Featuring the voices of Maestra Estela, Maestra Yaca, Maestro Nestor and Maestro Daniel of Aya Madre and Jordan McIntosh, the wise apprentice

Working with the land, tuning into the pulse of place - the Aztecs knew what was up. They were engineering geniuses who worked with the lake around which Tenochtitlan (ancient Mexico City) was built to create a rich permaculture system - chinampas - fringed by canals and waterways. When the Spanish landed and took over they didn’t get it. They said ‘drain that lake’, make this place make sense - and the city has been sinking at a terrifying rate ever since. Today, as Mexico City slides lower, the remaining chinampas endure, perfectly designed to function in this landscape - and now being carried forward by some tuned in farmers.

In Episode 5, we’re following these ancient canalways to visit Arca Tierra down in Xochimilco - brilliant project, brilliant vision - the future, and the past all in one big juicy sponge of rich volcanic soil.

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I’m looking for a desert woman, someone who is totally in tune with this powerful landscape and who might help me tune into its great vastness a little bit more. I hear in a Tucson cafe that Arivaca is ground zero for such women. I head down there - almost all the way to the border - and start asking around town for a desert woman. Who I end up spending time with is a long way from what I had imagined but who fills me with all kinds of ideas about what it is to belong to a place, to know it - and for it to know you.

In Episode 4 we follow the lowlines to the La Gitana bar in Arivaca, the brittle dirt of a huntress’s land, discover an abandoned halfway house, a coven of new wave desert women in a secret bar at the back of a store - and then gravitate further down to the border to get up close with The Wall.

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The Sunset Limited, Westbound - Fly or take the Amtrak? The journey or the destination? Taking the slow train to Tucson just felt right. You know when your whole body craves a more gentle, almost human tempo to carry you onto the next place? So, whilst keen to get to the wide open desert, the opportunity to stretch out the journey, savour the changing landscape through Louisiana, Texas, New Mexico and Arizona, and have time to meet my fellow passengers was too much of a pull.  

In Episode 3 we follow the lowlines of the train tracks and the hiss, groan and gentle gyrations of the 36 hour journey as I talk off-grid living, denture cream woes, magic mushrooms and marrying the same man three times with a raft of fellow travellers - all while trying to get a decent bite to eat and a bit of shut eye.

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Featuring the voices of the King Brothers (Matt, Lenny, Lee and Bobby), Maria-Luisa Aguilar, Meredith, Brad, Konnor Broussard, the burrito lady on the platform in El Paso, Jackie in the cafeteria and Dwayne the conductor