"My beginning in this life was in nature," Lia Albejante says, her voice lilting through the phone. In her earliest years, she lived in a small village along a river bordering Brazil and Bolivia. Nature was everywhere, but roads were not—if you wanted to leave, you were going by boat. At three years old, her parents moved to the countryside near São Paulo, an area that was still connected to nature albeit slightly less remote. Then, at 18, she finally left for the city to attend university before traveling abroad.