The Mystique
Exactly who was I was searching for a few hours north of 114 degree Phoenix?
Some looked upon Dr. David Jubb as visionary; others wondered if he was a madman.
Jubb was a shaman in the Toltec tradition. He came of age along the untouched, pristine shores of Tasmania. He earned a PhD as a neuro-behavioral physiologist at NYU. He was a pioneering thinker on agrarianism, colloidal biology, ancient civilizations, futuristic dwellings, non-surgical removal of neo-plasm (cancer) and other diverse topics. His books Secrets of an Alkaline Body and The Lifefoods Recipe Book, among others, are brilliant reads. Internationally recognized as a pioneering microscopist, hematologist, cytologist, naturalist and linguist, Jubb has two post-doctoral degrees, deepening what is known about the digestion of different foods at the cellular level.
Hushed whispers circulated the fireside, embellishing the legend. Dr. Jubb, or Happy Face as he was known in the healing world, worked out in in 177 degree saunas. He had a 26 inch waste. He trained princes and prime ministers. Mr. Universe came to study in his kitchen. He practiced breatherianism for a year in Brazil, consuming nothing but water and lemons. Buried deep in the Amazonian basin, deriving energy purely from sun-gazing and his own breath, the immortal Pacific Islander put on ten pounds over the course of months. He trained Brad Pitt for Fight Club. After completing his gall-bladder and liver cleanses, participants discarded their eye-glasses; their vision was corrected. When he discovered he had cancer, he trekked across Eastern Africa, surviving off only his own liquids. His “breakfast of champions” consisted only of urine therapy and the contents of his pipe. He led ayahuaska retreats in northern Mexico. The real-life, most-interesting-man-in-the-world, was an enigma.
Cloud Two Children — of the Cree and Lakota people—adopted Dr. Jubb and spiritually mentored him. The Cree split away from the Seminole nation because they refused to stay on the reservations assigned to them by the U.S. government and continued to break away west in search of freedom to practice their ancient ways. Dr. Jubb’s spiritual journey brought him to live among the maroon nation. It was a point of contention among the native elders that a person from outside the lineage of Crazy Horse and Two Feathers — two of the ancestral leaders of the nation — deemed him a spiritual son of the Cree. Cloud Two Children re-baptized him, “Happy Face.”
‘We are not a Cult!’
A wide spectrum of personalities flocked to Jubb in search of themselves.
Each character in the compound — Dancing Swan, Medicine Brook, Raining Dance, Firefly, Dream Walker, Healing Stream — had their own story. No one addressed anyone else by their legal name. According to Jubb, in the Toltec tradition, the healer bestowed names upon everyone in the community that captured a certain irony about their characters. It was a bluff of sorts or what Dr. Jubb called “the secret of the trance.” I wondered if this was a harmless practice or cultural appropriation.
Here at the Eagle camp, no one knew my real name. After two weeks of my presence, Jubb grabbed my hands and squeezed his eyes shut. He pressed his temple to my heart. In the thirty-sixth year of my life, he re-baptized me; my name was Lame Wolf.
Dancing Swan
At twenty, she was the oldest of eight sisters who grew up in Columbus, Ohio. Her mother became a neglectful pain pill addict and drowned one of her sisters. Landing in foster care, Dancing Swan was filled with resentment. Abandoning Ohio, she headed west, eventually finding room and board with an alcoholic friend. Searching for a permanent escape, Dancing Swan had grown morbidly obese and began chain smoking. She had never known a home but had never ceased to search for one. The non-judgmental affection and acceptance she received at the Eagle’s Nest ensured her loyalty to the outcast community.
Fire Glacier
At a suburban New Hampshire high school, Fire Glacier dabbled with marijuana, coke, mollies and pain pills. Spiraling out of control, by nineteen, he was a full-fledged heroin addict. After three of his childhood friends overdosed, Glacier landed in rehabilitation. Seeing the writing on the wall, he kicked the drugs cold turkey and then hit the road in a hippie Volkswagen van with four companions he met online. They vowed to only drink freshly made juice on the open road. After a year of liquefied cleansing and traversing the American wilderness, Glacier met some like-minded youth in Nebraska who were students of Jubb. The unlikely clan hopped in the graffiti-decorated van until they tracked down Jubb. Fire Glacier never looked back. He has been following the Life Foods lifestyle for six months.
Sitting Moose
Standing an intimidating 6’3”, 230 lbs. of steel and anger, Sitting Moose’s social background turned him into a tough, ruthless man-child. Deprived of a childhood in Portland, Oregon, he learned what it meant to be a man when he was eight years old. Bastardized when the state locked up his parents, his two older brothers—lieutenants in a white supremacist motorcycle gang, Hitler’s Helpers—raised him. The Trump-admirers tried to hire Sitting Moose as one of their enforcers but he turned them down because, in his words, “I hate everybody equally.” The 20-year-old wanderer was not invested in the Eagle’s Nest but rather saw the camp site as a place to lay low until the smoke cleared from the crimes he had committed.
At twenty years old, Sitting Moose had lived and suffered more than most adults three times his age. He was an underground cage fighter on the reservations of Oklahoma. He followed his beloved older brother, Rocko’s footsteps until the Mexican Mafia disappeared him. He went on the run. Imprisoned for over three years in Oregon for attempted murder, his young age saved him from a lifetime prison sentence. Some days he disappeared for hours without alerting anyone, hitchhiking fourteen miles into Sedona to gobble down McDonalds.
I laid down on the ground alongside Sitting Moose in the darkness of the forest, trying to drift off to sleep to the rumblings of javelinas. Just as I closed my eyes the first night, he said “Oh yo Wolf, you hear that noise? Those are wild pigs looking for food. All right good night dude.” I didn’t sleep a wink that night.
Sea of Sands
Sea of Sands was Chowdury Bikram’s assistant for ten years. Uneasy because of the megalomania of the founder of Bikram Yoga, she teamed up with Jubb in Eastern Africa. She was the only communard who did not smoke marijuana and tobacco. As the chief organizer of The Return to the Eagle’s Nest, she set the tempo for the rest of the camp. She was in charge of Dr. Jubb’s writings, videos and speaking engagements. Without her, nothing moved and the camp descended into hippie hedonism. She brought class to an otherwise chaotic, dysfunctional scene. When several Lifefoodarians lost their minds, she supported them. A mother figure, Sea of Sands had one foot in Jubb’s world, the other in reality. She shadowed the larger-than-life alchemist in the kitchen, documenting his alkaline and colloid secrets in hopes of helping him organize the next Life Foods recipe book. Seeing Sea of Sands as a successful and stable figure, some observers wondered why she offered her talents to the “burnt-out” scene.
Healing Stream
An enemy of bathing, his name did not fit his persona. Healing Stream’s oversized shorts fell beneath his beltline. He cut his hair like “his messiah,” Jubb, shaving his hair on the side but leaving a patch of hair on the top that he put in a ponytail. A young wanna-be wizard, Healing Stream broke out of his mother’s basement and found his new home in Sedona. I dubbed him Polluted Stream and Stinky Bear for obvious reasons. If anyone wanted to make the case that we were being brainwashed and cultish, Healing Stream seemed to confirm this argument. His robotic like behavior and regurgitation of Jubb’s lessons gave birth to many rumors.
Healing Stream’s strength was that he was a junior mad scientist. Brilliant, he was the only Life Foods disciple who grasped the intricate teachings and made them intelligible to the rest of us. This was very helpful. Although he came across as a know-it-all and regarded himself as Jubb’s personal assistant, when he spoke to others alone, he let his guard down. He was just another young man searching for himself. When his arrogance was in retreat, his humanity emerged.
Rainey Toad
This 62-year-old woman was a raw foodist who left Arkansas to hit the hippie trail. In the 1960’s, she trained under Ann Wigmore, the mother of living foods. In order to heal from Lyme disease, she invested $5,000 to contract Jubb’s services and establish the Eagle’s Nest. At times Rainey Toad was the sweetest, little grandma. In other moments, when she ran out of her magic pipe, she turned into Grumpy Toad. Holding the keys to the big house, she decided who could take a shower inside the home and who could not. Even in our parallel universe, money regulated human relationships.
Doc Precise
Forced to commute two hours uptown to school because of the danger in his neighborhood, Doc Precise wasn’t supposed to leave his block in South Jamaica, Queens, never mind the state of New York. Coming of age a few blocks away from 50 Cent, the young Trinidadian, Doc Precise, shattered some teeth and had his share of teeth shattered. Jubb’s one-time weed supplier, emerged as a Life Foods apprentice. The antithesis of a hippie, he proletarianized Life Foods like no one else. With the flare of a hip hop artist and a performance poet, he explicated the chemistry of fruitarianism and popularized the lifestyle. Eloquent and dynamic, like Sea of Streams, he lent credibility to a clandestine lifestyle, guiding others through the reversal of heart disease, not through pseudoscience but through hard work. While others lost their minds and flew the coup, Doc Precise remained calm and consistent. As tempests of gossip and intrigue consumed others, Doc P didn’t flinch. His catch phrase, whenever someone left the compound and goodbyes were exchanged, was “Peace Brethren, Catch you in the whirlwind.”
Raining Dance
Raining Dance was from 129th street in Harlem. Many of his contemporaries and siblings fell victim to the concrete jungle. He was raised to be nutritionally conscious by a single father. By his mid-20’s he became a loyal follower of Dr. Jubb. One Saturday, Raining Dance was walking down 116th with a massive backpack that contained his Vitamix and glass jars of Life Water, fizzy shots and home-fermented kombucha.[1] The police stopped him, frisked him and handcuffed him for no reason. Because of his training in Jeet Kune Do — the martial art form made famous by Bruce Lee — they could not wrestle him to the ground. The police officer’s brutality was caught on camera and uploaded to social media for the world to witness. For a breathless two minutes, seven police jostled and beat a man whose hands were handcuffed behind his massive backpack. Ten officers then manhandled him as he laid face down in the concrete. This was the same man who taught my nine-year-old son to offer a cucumber up to any police officer who ever mistreated him. He fled New York to avoid the dreadful bureaucracy of a police summons, court and a warrant. He never looked back. He took his life foods expertise on the road. With razor-like exactitude, he talked people through every detail of cellular rejuvenation and liver flushes. He was to Jubb what Malcolm was to Elijah Mohammed.
A drifter, he had no plan for his four young children, his partner and his mother. They lived on the road for the past three years, camping out across the Midwest and Southwest, escaping reality and ACS (the Agency of Child Services).
At the End of the Rainbow
This is a partial portrait of our community. Others came and went. Empty Nest, Rainbow Hawk, Proud Turtle, Light Frog and others appeared out of the night, searching amidst the bewildering galaxies. The Eagles’ Nest attracted young women and men with dreams who found themselves stuck, chasing illusions. There were common threads of family trauma and drug abuse that ran through the stories. Staying up to smoke organic tobacco and marijuana, until the sun rose, they woke up in the early afternoon. Perplexed by their own material reality, Jubb’s followers saw the millennial leader as their escape. Jubb was their messiah and he promised everyone that the Eagles’ Nest was sitting atop half a million dollars of a mysterious mineral known as white gold.
[1] Life Water is 8 ounces of structured water mixed with baking soda, Epson salt, castor oil, MSM, and apple cider vinegar. The breakfast of champions!
Wow, Danny!!
I had just re-read your book, Shedding That Which Is Not Us a few days ago and will be getting the Vita Mix to use in California, to help my whole family get healthier….with Dr. Jubb’s Life Foods and your recipes!!
In Search of White Gold (Part II.) gives me an historical background….it is so LIVELY and FULL OF IMAGERY. Where is Part I -on your website?
Thanks for your wonderful writings that have a working-class bias sorely needed in today’s phony and glutinous market.
Best Wishes, Ellie O.
In Search of white Gold (Part II.)
“Even in our parallel universe, money regulated human relationships.” –Danny Shaw
I was interested by the philosophical and scientific approach you used to describe the historical background of Dr. David Jubb and his legacy. So long I have heard about shaman stories, their powerful spiritual and herbal impacts on the lives of the lost souls. My grandparents would talk about them, and I always thought that shamans were fictional characters, because at the same time the church taught me that the only healer and omnipotent being is God. Your blog enlightens that side of people who wander in the gray area of religious belief, to the agnostics and perhaps to the true believers of God. In this sense Dr. Jubb becomes an extension of God’s power to heal people here on earth, and for others he could be seen as a contemporary messiah because they have found a cure to their illness in his teachings.
At least I see Dr. Jubb as if he uses his academia knowledge and also his empirical knowledge to transverse to the world of “sanacion.” The baptism, the ritual cleansing of the soul from original sin is nothing new, yet he knows that all religions used this ideology to incite people to start a life of good, to be protected from evil; that is what he technically does, except that he employs nature, foods, and the spirit and get rids of God (the traditional God we think of when we pray for health). I might be a little presumptuous because I don’t fully know Dr. Jubb’s essential philosophy of healing, but definitely the stories of every person you described, found a temple in the Eagle’s Nest. I like that you described the connivance with other members in the Eagle’s Nest, you truly know what is like to feel in Sedona. I hope to have an experience or at least a research experience that would teach me other ways to heal my soul and my body because in this superficial world, we are always used to digesting more harming chemicals (test medicines) than organic treatments.
To this blog, I was not truly clear of what is the “white gold”?
I could only wonder if I will ever get an opportunity to experience the urge to act on the loud tug within me. I often ask myself does a person live many lives to become free. To tap in to the power within that supersedes flesh. Will I ever cross paths with “Eagles’s Nest” and be given a name that is befitting. In the meantime I will quench my thirst through purchasing his book.
While reading this article, it makes me think in other people who have gone for many things through life. Also, while reading I makes me to feel and imaging the environment. This makes me to experience this and see how it works. To have new experiences and new stories to tell.
Is very motivational to see individuals with a grim past transform into an energetic and appreciative person through nature. Nature can heal and provide stability for those who seek it. Many of us if not most are not thankful enough of what this earth provides to us. People like Dr. David Jubb rarely exist and I appreciate such individual teaching others healthy eating and soul searching with nature.
It was interesting to see individuals with different backgrounds with a common goal. Self acceptance is not easy to obtain but it seemed that everyone was determined to fight for it. It was inspiring to see this community in search of natural healing. It made me wonder if everyone was able to succeed in their quest.
When I began reading part one, I kept wondering what “white Gold” meant. At first I thought it was a location, but then I thought that it could possibly be a form of symbolism. After reading part two, I was still confused but also intrigued about what it meant. White gold was placed in the title, but only used once through the writing, specifically in the last sentence. What’s so important about the Eagles’ Nest sitting on top of a mysterious mineral? Another thing I found interesting was the theme of soul searching. Every individual’s story that was shared, faced difficulty at one point in their life but through becoming a part of Eagle’s Nest, they were able to find themselves, reinvent who they were and become one with nature. For me, this really shows the positive impact that a healthier lifestyle can have on a person.
There is nothing better that nature to heal our bodies, mind and pain. Enjoying of the sound of nature and breathing pure air, far from the city polltion and noise can help us to clarify our thoughts and to find ourselves. This kind of adventure is something that everybody needs to do. Going back to the article, Dr. Jubb looks a really interesting person by your description. It’s impressive how all those people get to Dr. Jubb to heal any kind of pain or problem they have. It like a way of reborn for them. What I could notice is that Dr. Jubb is something that all of them need to believe to continue and know that everything is going to be alright. It is like Dr. Jubb is a kind of god for them. And what about all those amazing names. I don’t know, this article looks as something that was taken out from a movie, which is pretty amazing. The only thing that I didn’t like was the part that they also used organic tabacco and marijuana for healing.