As an Army private in 1958, Jack Loeffler witnessed the first atomic tests in the Nevada desert. He spent years afterward as a radical environmental activist. But those years also included gigging as a jazz trumpeter, watching for fires in an Arizona forest, tripping on peyote with Carlos Castaneda and, ultimately, having a successful career as a self-taught aural historian. Jack tells his story in Headed Into The Wind , just published by UNM Press .