Leo was born in 1960 in Monterey California. He grew up in Iceland and Singapore and then settled with his family in Santa Barbara in 1973. As a teenager, he followed a vegetarian diet with his family for two years but was often sick with colds. In 1988 he switched to the Hunter Gatherer diet eating almost no carbohydrates. He followed this diet strictly for two years and experienced an astonishing transformation in strength and health. He spent extended periods alone in the desert mountains north of Santa Barbara under harsh conditions and with little food. Here he learned the most powerful lessons of his life.

He also followed his passion for music and through the 1980’s drew record crowds night after night both with his band and with his solo performances. This success culminated with the offer of a contract with the Budweiser company. Here he saw a fork in the road, he chose the wilderness and founded Sanctuary Wilderness Journey’s, a wilderness guiding service in the back country of Santa Barbara. He also worked extensively as a volunteer with the California Condor Recovery Project, assisting in condor tracking , capture and relocation and also elk capture and relocation.

Though the most important lessons he learned in the wilderness were spiritual in nature, he was also inspired on the most basic and physical levels of survival. He realized that we all used to know how to feed ourselves and that today few of us have any connection to the food we eat, and the life it came from.

In the mid 1990’s he was blessed with a wife and family and together they built Sanctuary Retreat and Rocky Mountain Buffalo Ranch. With effort and commitment, they are building a team of colleagues with a shared vision.

Karen Hansen-Downey is a mother of 3. Before arriving in Canada in 1998, she had worked as a ranch caretaker, childbirth educator, birth assistant, teacher and has been studying and practicing various healing arts for the past 15 years. Her personal work is devoted to assisting people, in private sessions and in groups, to connect with the Earth, the Divine within and to their higher purpose.

The vision that Karen holds for Rocky Mountain Buffalo Company as co-founder, is a company that is value-led, that offers some of the highest quality food for Body, Mind and Spirit. As a student of holistic living, she strives to bring these principles of harmony into growing the business. Her guiding question is “How can we work co-creatively with nature in a harmonious, conscious way to bring the healthiest, most powerful food on all levels to our customers and clients?”

Having been a vegetarian for many years brings a sensitivity to the palate for her that becomes a gift in this business. Having studied energetics in her healing arts work contributes to the desire that all team members and staff working with the company have reverence in the process that brings a product to a consumer. She describes it as ”striving to bring Spirit into all of the business.” It is her intimate relationship with buffalo that has fertilized this endeavor.

Developing relationships with the cycles of nature on the ranch, nurturing pastures, studying all the relationships and cycles within the buffalo herd, praying and fasting prior to harvest, holding ceremony in gratitude is all an integral part of this business for Karen. “I am learning more and more about the power and medicine capable in food. I think it is naturally there, and cultivating it can take it to new levels! Spirit is stripped out of many things in today's world. We’re taking steps to bring it back in the meat we offer, it is our gift and it’s the buffalos gift, as it was in times past. We are honoring that ancient tradition and hopefully building upon it.”