Soon, a four-lane freeway will slice across wetlands next to Haskell Indian Nations University in northeast Kansas. Over 100 years ago, this land sheltered Native children fleeing a government school. It still cradles remains today.

A few years ago, L.A.-based producer and vocalist Rafi El met up with a Peruvian shaman, with whom he tried ayahuasca for the first time. While under the influence of the psychedelic drug, the shaman's music triggered some early childhood memories in Rafi - folk music from the Andes Mountains his Argentine parents listened to.

An Amazonian shaman and spokesman for Brazil’s Yanomami tribe will make a rare visit to California (USA) in April 2014, to talk about the urgent need to safeguard the world’s rainforests for future generations, and his connection with the spirit world.

Even for someone trying to navigate the spiritual dimensions of this without a map, the eagles are significant. While they don’t definitively refute coincidence as the principle at work in this story, the sight of the big birds wheeling overhead does give a good nudge toward the notion of one man’s attempt to reach into his culture to improve life around him and another’s generosity to accommodate the effort to find favor with a higher power. However you define that power.

Outside Oklahoma City, the day after Christmas, I found myself lying on a massage table draped in Native American quilts. No sooner had a bear blanket covered me than the Chickasaw medicine man began dusting my body with a feather covered in white sage powder.