Like many called to this work, Dane never had proper initiation, and at 15 left home to seek one. After a long and sordid journey he found himself in a small lake town in Guatemala, taken in by a family of Highland Maya. It was here, living and working among humble and joy filled people who knew exactly who and what they were that he fell into a passionate kinship with initiation, indigenous wisdom, and the nature of simple graces.

In 2013 he was called back to the Midwest to care for his mother, and blessed with an opportunity to remake and re-envision what his own relationships to family and place were and are. A large part of that has been connecting to his Slavic heritage [Hungarian/Slovakian descent].

He has since founded the Make Trybe Center for Transformative Design in Kansas City, that guides seekers of all ages through collaboratively designed transformations in the form of workshops, courses, and wilderness vision fasts as they relate to developing that sense of deep community, or of trybe, that he bore witness to and was a part of in San Lucas Tolimán, all those years ago.