The Shaman's Dog

In the hills above Cusco, just outside the grounds of the sacred Fortress called Sacsayhuaman, sits a small adobe compound. The walls are white, the roofs burnt sienna, and the doors a brilliant blue.

The home of our shaman, the keeper of an indigenous tradition that stretches back beyond memory. She welcomes us and ushers us to an upstairs room, the walls lined with gorgeous tapestries. This was her sacred space.

The shaman had laid out the cloth on the floor. Coca leaves. Seeds. Bundles if flowers. Small offerings, each one placed with care. She wasn't performing. She was working.

This is the Pago a la Tierra. The offering to the earth. It's old. Older than most of what we think of as old.

About halfway through, her dog wandered in. A small dog, dusty, completely unbothered. He sniffed the cloth. He sat down right next to the offerings. He looked at the shaman. He stayed.

She didn't shoo him. She smiled, said something soft in Quechua, and kept going.

A few minutes later she opened a small leather pouch from her own store. A herbal mix she'd made. She added a pinch to each coca bundle the group was holding. It tasted like nothing I've had before. Earthy. A little sweet. Alive.

Half the group was crying by the end. Quietly. The sound of something getting through that hadn't gotten through in a long time.

The dog stayed for the whole ceremony.

I tell you this because I want you to understand what the word "authentic" means for us. It doesn't mean a performance for the group. It doesn't mean a script. It means a real woman doing a real ceremony she would do whether we were there or not, and her dog is part of it because he's part of her life.

This is what we go for. This is what we can't fake and wouldn't know how to anyway.

What's the closest you've come to a moment like that, somewhere in the world or somewhere closer to home?