Field notes, reflections, and honest stories from the journey of building Shikibuntu and protecting life on Earth.
Gift economy is not just about giving things away
I want to clear something up. When I talk about gift economy, people sometimes hear: everything is free, nobody gets paid, everyone just gives and gives until they have nothing left. That is not what I mean. That is actually the opposite of what I mean. The gift economy I am building toward is one…
The gift economy is not naive. It is how we actually lived.
Every time I talk about gift economy, someone assumes I have not thought it through. That I am romantic. That I do not understand how the real world works. That eventually I will grow up and accept that everything has a price. I want to address that directly. Because the evidence is on my side,…
Too much
She called from a ski slope in Japan to tell me I was too much. I had been on the Bandero for five months. This is the story of what those months were, how they ended, and what the pattern of movements eating their own people looks like from the inside.
When movements eat their own
She could barely walk. That is the first image I have of her. A woman who had given fifty years to a wildlife sanctuary, and me choosing to stay and give everything I had. An honest story about what that cost, what it taught me, and why it became the foundation of Shikibuntu.