With Zeca Chapéu Grande, however, I immersed myself in the woods, walking up and down the trails, learning all about herbs and roots. I learned about clouds, too, how they’d foretell rain, all the secret changes of sky and earth. I learned that everything is in motion—quite different from the lifeless things taught to us in school. My father would turn to me and say, “the wind doesn’t blow, the wind is the blowing,” and this made sense to me. “If the air doesn’t move, there’s no wind, and if we don’t keep moving, there’s no life.” He was trying to teach me. Attentive to the movement of
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