Travis Dean didn't just find a piece of land. If you believe — and after hearing him, it's hard not to — the land found him. The snake didn't strike. The Jeep held him in that wash until the call came through. The Golden-Eye People called to him in dreams. And somehow, a data scientist who models disasters for a living ended up becoming exactly what this desert needed: an Earthkeeper.

We talk about some of the interesting things Travis has experienced after buying the property. "You saw something on screen — a golden light disc — and before you could finish saying "what is that," it was gone.

Travis Dean is a cancer survivor, engineer, and data scientist specializing in disaster communications recovery. Coming out of chemotherapy in 2018, he began seeing the world, and its data, differently. Years of modeling hurricanes, pandemics, and large-scale crises while watching warnings go ignored pushed him toward something more tangible than analysis.

That conviction led Travis to 160 acres of remote Arizona desert and the founding of the Jackson Earth Restoration & Research Center, a 501(c)(3) named for his dog and rooted in a simple belief: science and stewardship belong together. The Center advances climate adaptation through biocrust cultivation, pollinator monitoring, and disaster modeling, while creating living memorials through ceremonial plantings, dedicated groves, and community-driven acts of legacy.

In the Lakota tradition, Mitakuye Oyasin — "all my relations" — is both a prayer and a worldview. It holds that every being, every animal, every rock, every river is part of one sacred, interconnected family. Travis may not have known that phrase when he nearly stepped on that rattlesnake at sunrise. But he backed away with respect. And the land noticed.

The Jackson Earth Restoration & Research Center is growing — literally. The next community planting event is November 2026, and Travis is looking for people who feel it too. People who are compassionate, committed, and done waiting for someone else to act.

Connect with Travis and the Project:

• 🌐 jacksonerp.org
• 📺 YouTube
• 🦋 BlueSky
• ☕ Buy Travis a Coffee

Featured UFO Image
Date: July 16, 2016
Location: 1162 Renner Road, Lenexa, Kansas

This image was captured as the witness pulled into her workplace parking lot in Lenexa, KS, an ordinary moment that turned extraordinary.

Mike McCord is a Kansas-based investigator with MUFON and an experiencer whose life has been shaped by repeated encounters with high strangeness. Over the course of his life, Mike has documented at least nine UFO/UAP sightings, alongside a wide range of anomalous and deeply personal paranormal experiences that extend far beyond simple observation.

In our conversation, we explore several of those encounters and briefly touch on his memoir, which chronicles his recovery from a life-altering accident. At the time, his prognosis for full recovery was grim. Against the odds, he not only healed—but later climbed a mountain in Colorado. In a photograph taken by his son at the summit, a UFO can be seen hovering in the background.

More recently, Mike has visited two separate locations with groups of experiencers who intentionally “call in” UFO activity. While it took time to acclimate to what others were seeing, once his attention was directed to a specific region of the sky, the phenomenon became visible to him as well.

His private case catalog (names withheld) spans a broad spectrum of reports, including UFO sightings, non-human encounters and interactions, orbs, and cryptid phenomena.

Additional images shared by Mike will be posted on the blog.

Mike's website and Book:
Miracles One Step at a Time, Memoir of a Former Quadriplegic
https://miraclesonestepatatime.com/

Image provided by Mike McCord.
MUFON website link. Find a chapter near you.

"When he shall die, take him and cut him out in little stars, and he will make the face of heaven so fine that all the world will be in love with night and pay no worship to the garish sun." — William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

A Conversation with Dr. Adam Rizvi - What happens when a physician who witnesses death daily discovers it holds no power over love?

Dr. Adam Rizvi is a critical care physician and neurointensivist whose decades on the frontlines of America's ICUs have given him an intimate understanding of mortality —and its transcendence. In his luminous book Love Does Not Know Death, he offers a radically compassionate guide to meeting our greatest fear without flinching, drawing on both his clinical experience and deep contemplative practice rooted in A Course in Miracles.

Based in California, Dr. Rizvi leads hospital teams, teaches workshops on awakening and end-of-life care, and co-hosts the spirituality podcast Letters to the Sky. His work invites us into a grounded, loving community devoted to transforming grief into peace and remembering love's enduring presence.

From the Book: One of the most extraordinary accounts in Love Does Not Know Death is a Shared Death Experience Dr. Rizvi had at a patient's bedside: Despite the chest tube being placed and multiple liters of blood being transfused, it became clear to me that this young man would be unlikely to survive. Then, almost imperceptibly at first, in the stillness at the foot of his bed, I could feel the young man standing next to me, looking at his body. I sensed him to my right and slightly above, floating. I turned briefly and saw a faint outline but could not see distinct features. I could hear him, though. He asked, "Is that me?" In my mind, I responded, "That's your body. But it's not you."
— Chapter 7, page 122

On Practicing from a Different Place: Writing on Substack, Dr. Rizvi reflects: "I still order CT scans and adjust ventilator settings. I still have difficult conversations about prognosis and place DNR orders. But I've learned to do all of it from a different place—not from fear of death, but from trust in something that death cannot touch."

Learn More:
📖 Love Does Not Know Death — lovedoesnotknowdeath.com
✍️ Dr. Rizvi's Substack — adamrizvi.substack.com/p/when-death-becomes-the-teacher