If you haven't watched the film My Octopus Teacher, then stop reading this right now and go to Netflix. (Trailer here on YouTube)
An extraordinary work, which chronicles the relationship between South African diver and director Craig Foster and, yes, a wild octopus, the film won an Oscar and rightly so. The link between man and nature shown in the movie - or rather the clear reminder that man is nature and not removed from it in some way, as we may erroneously sometimes think, is shown with startling intimacy and a sense of wonder that brings you straight back to childhood.
Just watching My Octopus Teacher is very healing, but there is much much more to Craig Foster and his work than this one extraordinary movie.
I have been lucky enough to Craig for...well, a long time. When we first met i was campaigning for the San Bushmen of Botswana as a human rights activist - a story that is told in my books The Healing Land and the Long Ride Home - he and his brother Damon had recently completed a film called The Great Dance, following the firtunes of three master hunters of the San people and capturing seemingly impossible footage of, for example, a hunt in which the hunter must 'become' the animal - effectively shape-shifting.
A further film, Cosmic Africa, took us into astronomy through the eyes of a black South African astro-physicist and a journey into the way the universe is interpreted through the African mind.
Other movies included scuba diving into a crocodile's lair in the Okavango Swamps, and swimming with man eating sharks...the list goes on.
Recently, Craig published a book - Amphibious Soul, about his own relationship with the cold water kelp forest - the African Sea forest - where his encounter with his octopus teacher happened, and also about the fact because our species , homo sapiens sapiens, evolved at the margins of land and water where the most food is, we developed an amphibious nature at the dawn of our evolution.
Because of this, water brings out play, joy, exploration, wonder in us and connects us direct to nature, perhaps to the divine, more directly than almost any other means. Then there's tracking, the need for following patterns and signs in nature and beyond, which seems completely linked to happiness and fulfillment... but let's hear this and more from the mouth of the man himself. Listen on, Craig Foster has spent a lifetime doing the impossible and making a living through bringing wonder into the lives of people worldwide.
This conversation is no exception.
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