Gorgeous Georgia Part 2 - Emery Creek, GA

For my last day in Georgia Sunny had something special in mind. We had planned to head a few hours west to Emry Creek where we would Powow with a chap who went by the name of Tom Blue Wolf. From what I'd heard and read online, Mr Wolf was a character that felt more like he belonged in folklore rather than a mere blinking, farting bag of flesh.

He was the direct descendant of Creek Indians and had founded The Earthkeepers, an organisation dedicated to teaching people about the relationship between indigenous American peoples and the earth. And how us spoilt, slovenly Colonials could learn a thing or two from it.

Among other things, one (I hasten to add independent) website describes Tom as a spiritual guide, peacemaker, fathkeeper, musician, artist, herbalist, naturopath (I don't know either), environmentalist, author and lecturer.

Further online digging also revealed that he was the consultant for a number of major Hollywood motion pictures on how to accurately portray Native American culture and behaviour in their films. The Oscar winning classic Dances With Wolves is probably the most notable of these but there are many, less awesome examples.

He was, in short, something of a polymath and clearly a man worth meeting.

We arrived at the creek and were greeted by a stocky, bushy haired man in his 60s. he was sporting a pair of worn out jeans and a plain black t-shirt. Given the list of current occupations and former achievements on his CV, I had sort of expected something a little less prosaic. However his personality did not fail to delight.

He had a great expanse of a face that looked as though it had been hewn from the trunk of a California Redwood. Everything about his broad, dense features betrayed a wisdom, deeply held in his being. He spoke with a captivating cadence that sounded like the imaginary love child of Geronimo and Dennis Hopper's Kurtz worshipping hippie in Apocalypse Now.

Over a lunch of cold cuts, I got to understand more about how Mr Wolf saw the universe. According to Tom, everything around us is "just energy, frequency and vibrations - that's all there is."
Somewhat mesmerised, I could only nod in agreement.
"The three things in the world I care about most are bee pollen, water and children. That's it. You know what I mean?" Sort of.
Save for the last one, those certainly weren't the concerns of the average Londoner. I pressed him on the merits of beekeeping.

"Bee pollen is like stardust man, it's everything. When you eat it, you're eating the foundations of everything around you." Quite how this came to bee, I wasn't too sure as I was too bemused to press for clarification.
"I played my bees some Vivaldi man and their production was like, whooosh! They fuckin' loved it."

During our conversation I mentioned an ancient Historic site in Zimbabwe I'd been to and he retorted, in a rather blasé manner, that he had a home there.
"How did you find yourself owning a property in Zimbabwe?" Surely, this was one story too far?

It turns out that he had brokered a peace deal between two bickering African tribes on a sand bank that had appeared overnight in a river that bordered their territories. After successfully brokering the deal, the chief of one tribe asked him "Tom, where are you from?" Tom confided that he was from a number of places.
"I will give you a house in my village Tom." Said the chief gesturing, presumably, to a domed mud hut.
"Now, Tom, you will have a home." Apparently he threw one of his daughters into the bargain as a kind of performance bonus.
"She was just there to get the house ready." He said, a tad bashfully.

It turned out that Tom had also spend much of his childhood in Whitney, England (yes, where David Cameron is an MP). In his 20s he also lived with with a little known folk singer called Leonard Cohen.
"Was he a good flatmate?" I enquired, no longer that surprised about anything anymore.
"Nah, he was a crazy drunk Jewish bastard! Always dressing up like a goddamned undertaker."
This all sounded quite plausible.

Tom's other occupation was the hosting of regular 'Sweat Lodges' where, as you may have divined, a group of willing participants sit in a small hut, heated by scalding stones and you sweat loads. Often this will be accompanied by a raft of hallucinationagenic drugs. Different guest Shamans were invited from South America, Africa, India and other exotic locations in order to practice their respective ceremonies here.

Each Shaman ritual would usually involve a different drug with a more specific spiritual purpose that would aid communication with whichever spirits happened to be in the neighbourhood. Some of these rituals have been known to last over 36 hours.

"There's an ayauasca ritual this Saturday, if you wanna join? It's gonna be real intense."
I politely declined but was intrigued. I had read that CEOs of some of the World's biggest tech companies and corporations are frequent visitors here. If anything, it would be a great networking opportunity.

He was in the process of renovating a wooden assembly hall that presided over the ceremonial Sweat Lodge site. Sunnny and I politely offered to help about with some of the building work as we had an hour or two to spare.

And so it came to pass that we spent a hot, sweaty afternoon installing the pinewood ceiling to Tom Blue Wolf's assembly hut. It was not quite what I'd expected from my visit, but it was surprisingly fulfilling.
This is how it started with L Ron Hubbard (Scientology's founder), I thought. First it was helping to tile L Ron's new bathroom, then you wake up and you're Tom Cruise.

Incidentally, Mr Wolf also claimed to be a fully Cleared Scientologist (the Scientology equivalent of completing Goldeneye on 00 Agent). There wasn't any evidence to support this but I hoped it was true. According to Tom, he'd done it to see what all take fuss was about and then stick a middle finger up to them once he'd Cleared. Even now, they still call to invite him as a guest speaker to events after 30 years of ignoring them. That's a worrying level of dedication.

Our reward for helping finish Tom's ceiling was a trip to a local waterfall to wash the sawdust and the fibre glass shavings off of us and then a dinner at a local Mexican diner.

We were joined by his wife Sonja, his child, and a man called Derek who seemed to be helping out with the building work. His wife was in something of a mood after a stressful day at work and was giving him a bit of the cold shoulder. In an attempt to satiate her, he was resorting to the classic male preserve of baby talking.

It was a herculean effort to contain giggles while watching this towering personality and apparent transcendental medicine man having to step down from his tower and make a cutesy baby voice. His attempts seemed to be falling on deaf ears. This left me somewhat concerned at his abilities to goad whichever spirits were up for that particular sweat session. But then again, even hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. So perhaps even this feat was a little beyond his earthly set of abilities.

Sunny and I had a two hour drive home to digest our rather unusual day with Mr Wolf. I had expected to come away saying that he was a total nutter but many of the things he said made plain sense. Before us Europeans arrived in America the Native Americans had thrived in this country for many thousands of years. They had a diet that contained over 2000 different meats, fruits, vegetables, nuts and herbs. To put it in perspective, the colonists arriving on the Mayflower were on a diet that was closer to 200 varieties. There is, in short, a lot we can learn from their (old) way of life.

It was my last sunset in Georgia and I was a little forlorn to say goodbye to Sunny and Natalie. I'd had some wonderful experiences here and I could really see why so many people had such nice things to say about the state. Now my attentions turned south and to the anticipated Highlight of the trip, New Orleans.