Who knew that Lima’s fashionable Miraflores district was the site of an ancient ruin? Most Limeños, in fact, didn’t even know until relatively recently.

This was the version presented by Alejandro Olivo, our guide, whose grandfather farmed these lands and who used to play soccer here when he was a boy. As far as he knew, these were just hills, and what was once a city off 44 temples was leveled by the wealthy Marsano family in the 1980s to make way for what is now Miraflores. The government finally intervened to seize the land and opened a park and a small visitor’s center here in 1991, and subsequent archaeological investigations revealed a fascinating slice of Lima antiquity.

The brick pyramids stand out today against a backdrop of skyscrapers and city streets, a juxtaposition of ancient and modern that serves as an apt metaphor for Lima itself.

Today seven pyramids remain of the original 44, and most of the site has not been fully excavated. What has emerged is a picture of a ceremonial site of the Lima culture, dating from 200-700 AD, where ritual games were played – the name “Huaca Pucllana” means “sacred place to play.”

The remains of some 170 bodies have been discovered, with some important distinctions. About 60 were wrapped in burial cloths and placed on wooden beds, then buried with offerings. These were the royalty, Olivo explained. There were also the remains of 50 babies, who were apparently sacrificed as offerings, or to accompany the royalty to the land of the dead.

Most striking were the remains of 60 young women, who were apparently sacrificed as an offering to the gods. Their bodies were found mutilated and tossed in a corner.

Unlike Caral, Macchu Pichu and other stone-based cities, Huaca Pucllana was built of handmade bricks, and in the courtyard of the structure, two figures of men show the process. The figures also serve to show the stature of the people, who were tiny by modern standards; most were around four feet tall.

Similar to Caral, however, Huaca Pucllana employed sophisticated anti-seismic techniques. In the case of Caral, bags made of fibers were filled with rocks and the walls were built around these bags of rocks. Here in Huaca Pucllana, the builders employed an innovative structural device, leaving space between the bricks and slightly tilting them in alternating directions.

Perhaps the best way to enjoy Huaca Pucllana is to see it twice. The museum closes at 4:30 and the tour is around 45 minutes, so arrive in the daytime. But return at night for a meal at the lovely restaurant on-site, and to enjoy the pyramids lit up against the night sky. It’s an experience you won’t forget.

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

I’d been reading about Caral, considered to be the oldest city in the Americas, in the fascinating book 1491, a new look at archaelogical discoveries in the New World by Charles Mann. So when Sarita suggested a day trip, I jumped at the chance.

Sara booked a tour, and after a few mishaps inevitable to group travel, we were on our way. The three-hour drive up the coast took us past dramatic wind-sculpted dunes, rickety hillside favelas and cement block towns. Most drifted off to sleep; the 5:30 a.m. wakeup call had come far too early (and, in the case of Jeff, it didn’t come at all, which is why we were half an hour late).

Sleepy passengers awoke to find our driver sitting silently on the side of the road. Finally he made a wide U-turn and headed back the way we’d come. After a while, he turned right onto a road that looked a bit more developed than a cattle trail and forged his way into the countryside. We held our breaths as he scraped his way across boulders and forded a small lake until he finally ground to a halt, the van impaled on a pile of bricks.

At this point we all got out and let him try to move forward, but the wheels spun helplessly in the sand, digging the van in more deeply with each try. It was clear this driver didn’t know what he was doing. We all set about trying to help, placing bricks under the wheels and pushing.

Finally a barefoot farmer appeared from the nearby shack made from woven palm leaves. He was incredulous at the sight of a van full of tourists.

“You’re looking for Caral? It’s 2 kilometers back that way; you’ll know you’re there, there’s a big sign.”

The passengers piled back into the van and making our precarious way back out to the highway and to the sign indicating we had arrived at the UNESCO-designated World Heritage Site.

The road wasn’t much bigger than the one we’d traversed, and the site was easy to miss. Unlike Macchu Pichu, where hordes of tourists descend every year, Caral is a relatively new destination and, indeed, a new archaelogical find. For years it was overlooked by archaeologists who didn’t place any importance on the series of hills along the Peruvian coast. It wasn’t until Peruvian archaeologist Ruth Shady Solis intuited the presence of something more, began a dig on the site and sent some of her findings to the States for carbon dating, that its true antiquity was revealed, and the world community began to take note.

Even with the mishaps, Caral was definitely worth the trouble. Built at around the same time as the Egyptian pyramids, the 150-acre site is just one of a complex of similar cities in the region that have forced archaeologists to rethink their estimates of the so-called New World. As the dig continues, “we may be forced to stop calling it the New World,” writes Mann, as it may well turn out the first civilizations developed here, and not in Mesopotamia as previously believed.

Our guide was a resident of the nearby town, trained as had been a number of locals in a community development initiative launched by Ruth Shady Solis, the pioneering archaeologist who had discovered this phenomenal site. The site has taken a leading role in lifting the neighboring community out of poverty, as she shared with us during a detailed tour of the ancient city.

One of the most interesting finds was a collection of flutes made from the bones of birds – proof that even from ancient times, Peruvians were musicians – and loved to celebrate!

We ended our tour in the nearby town of Huacho, where we celebrated a delicious lunch with papas huancaina, lomo saltado, passion fruit juice and, of course, Inka cola!

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

“It’s a sad day in Guatemala,” remarks Juan, manager of Restaurante Lago Azul, where I’ve stopped in my morning walk to enjoy a cup of coffee and a hearty desayuno chapin, a traditional Guatemalan breakfast with eggs, black beans, fresh cheese and corn tortillas and crispy, sweet plantains, fried to perfection.

“Yes, it seems like the rain is going to be here for awhile,” I answered, thinking he was referring to the dreary weather.

But he wasn’t – instead, he was referring to the eruption of Pacaya Volcano yesterday just south of the capital city, which took the life of a journalist and apparently also two children.

The city is still in chaos after a rain of ash fell for miles around, with over a thousand people evacuated to shelters, traffic accidents resulting from streets and highways covered in up to three inches of ash, and air traffic diverted south to El Salvador.

Very strange. I could have very well been climbing that volcano myself this week. I was feeling very compelled to do so – and many tourists do. Instead, I got too busy with work and canceled the trip to catch up on writing assignments.

Lo que sucede, conviene, as a Cuban friend once said. I suppose this is one time where not getting my wish might have been the best thing.

Oh come, Angel Band
Come and around me stand
Oh bear me away on your snowy wings
To my immortal home,
Oh bear me away on your snowy wings
To my immortal home.

ROSELLE, Iron County, Missouri – Redbud blossoms splashed the spring-green hills the day my mother called me home from Guatemala. The freshness in the air and the gentleness of the colors were medicine to my eyes, and yet they pained me, knowing as I did how my grandfather loved this time of year.

Normally, I thought, he would be out on his Missouri Century Farm planting right now, or standing on the banks of an Ozark stream or pond, reeling in a bucket full of fish to share with family and friends.

He was struggling to manage basic functions when I finally reached his bedside – breathing and swallowing were a painful chore. His already birdlike frame seemed even tinier and frailer than when I had left him in December. He was asking to be released, to be allowed to go home to his Lord.

He groaned when he saw me. “Oh, I didn’t want to be such a bother,” he managed to get out.

“Grandpa, it’s not a bother, it’s a gift,” I protested. “You know how much I love to come see you in the springtime. The redbud is blooming and it’s so beautiful!”

“Those sure were some good nuts you brought up,” he said, remembering the bag of Texas pecans I’d picked up on my last trip from Houston.

Grandpa spent his winters picking out walnuts and hickory nuts that he’d gathered on his farm, and he filled bags with them to distribute among family and friends. This had been a dry year and the harvest was thin, so Texas pecans filled in for Ozark hickories. It wasn’t much, but I was glad for it.

His last days were that way – filled with remembrances for each of his grandchildren, great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren, with words of appreciation for the tiny things we did. My mother and her sisters and brother hovered nearby, knowing that each word he spoke cost him dearly.

My grandfather the storyteller asked me to tell him about my trip. I did my best, describing the mountains, the jungle, the birds of Guatemala. Maybe I was too enthusiastic in my descriptions, because my aunt came in and put her hand on my shoulder.

“He needs to rest,” she whispered. Grandpa didn’t miss a beat.

“I’m talking to Tracy,” he rasped.

“Oh! OK,” said my aunt and retreated respectfully.

My sister came in with an arrangement of redbuds beautiful as a poem.

“I just want to go sing praises to the Lord forever and ever,” he told my father.

I swabbed his parched mouth with water as the family gathered.

One by one my sisters and my aunt began to sing “Angel Band,” and I felt the angels gathering in the background. The next day, he was gone.

***

Chris Lloyd “Pete” Hicks was born to a dirt-poor farmer and trapper in the Missouri Ozarks on Nov. 7, 1917. Grandpa’s mother, our great-grandmother Esta Stahl, daughter of a German immigrant, had come to these parts from the Ohio foothills in a covered wagon when she was only two. Her father fought in the Civil War right here in these Ozark hills. Grandpa’s father, Jesse Hicks, had accompanied his own father, William, to Cripple Creek, Colorado during the gold rush days and they had earned enough to buy the farm. But farming wasn’t for Jesse, and when he grew up he let the farm run down while he trapped furs for a living.

As a young boy in the Great Depression, Grandpa was pressed into service with his father, and he told us stories of rising at dawn to hunt with his father, then going to school with the stink of animals on his clothing. He learned to laugh about it. His stories always drew a crowd – stories about carving out a life in the wilderness, about rising above hardship, about outsmarting rivals, about working hard but always taking time to have a laugh.

I asked him once if he’d known any moonshiners there in the Ozark Hills, which were famous for their illicit whiskey production during the Prohibition.

“Well, some people called ‘em criminals, but sometimes they was just good people tryin’ to provide for their families,” he told me.

Turns out some of those good people were his uncles, and he told of the elaborate system they’d devised to conceal their labors. When the “Revenuers” came over the hill on a raid, someone was always on the lookout, and the trap door would come down over the still. Nobody was ever caught.

Grandpa told with a mischievous grin about when he and his friends would sneak into the barn to make off with a little of that “mountain dew.” But one of his friends died after drinking too much of a bad batch, and he steered clear of the stuff after that. Or so he told me.

Grandpa was as devout and humble a churchgoing man as you’d ever meet. He was a deacon at New Hope Primitive Baptist Church and he never missed a meeting; he loved the singing and the preaching and the fellowship as much as he loved anything.

“Keep looking up,” was his most frequent advice to me. He wasn’t one to wear his religion on his sleeve, as Brother Travis Eye said at his memorial service. Instead, he lived his faith every day, dedicating his life to the service of others – friends and family alike. He lived in gratitude, celebrating the joy of a sunrise, a good catch, an abundant harvest, a visiting grandchild.

At Grandpa’s funeral, we met a friend of his that he loved like a son – Chris Schillinger, the owner of Baylee Jo’s Bar-B-Q and Grill in Ironton. My sisters and I had heard about Chris over the years, a fishing buddy who took him camping and whitewater rafting when Grandpa was in his 80s. But it wasn’t until Chris invited us all to his restaurant for a sumptuous home-style dinner after Grandpa’s funeral service – about 150 of us, and then he refused to take a dime – that we met this remarkable man, and we got a glimpse into a different side of Grandpa.

“Your grandpa was a heck of a man,” Chris declared, with tears in his eyes. “You know, he never judged me. I was a single dad, and I had a few girlfriends, but he never cared about that.”

He showed us the place near the cash register, behind the bar, where he would hang our grandfather’s photo, right next to that of another buddy who had died.

There were a few stories he could tell us sometime, he went on, but maybe not now. The crowd fresh from the church milled around outside while the tattooed bikers dined inside. We begged him to tell.

“I don’t know how you’ll feel about this, but your grandpa liked to have a beer or two every now and again,” he began. Not a secret, but not exactly his public image.

“Well, once he told me about the bottle of whiskey he used to keep up in the barn – he said, ‘I’d drink just a little bit in the winter to warm me up.’

“’But when July rolled around and I was still drinking it, I knew I had to quit!’”

As Chris spoke, the Norman Rockwell watercolor of our grandfather faded and a real flesh-and-blood human being with all his strengths and foibles came into rare view. We laughed together and loved him all the more.

We went to Grandpa’s house after the dinner, a beautiful home he had built for my grandmother from pink Ozark granite. Tuckpointed in white and framed with two tall oaks, the home has been a picturesque part of the scenery in these parts for three generations. The tulips he planted in front of the house swayed in the breeze, and the birds he loved sat in the branches above, waiting, perhaps, for him to come fill their feeders.

All his children and most of his 48 grandchildren, great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren were there. We walked across the fields he had nurtured with his own sweat, and we took turns choosing mementos from his belongings.

It was a heartfelt evening and we wavered, as we had all week, between sorrow and joy. Grandpa was where he wanted to be, and he was still giving to us. Cousins, nieces and nephews, aunts and uncles reconnected after years apart. Children and grandchildren looked through his pocketknife collection, his tools, his books, Grandma’s dishes and knickknacks, each of them just as likely to find something for someone else as for themselves. Giving was the order of the day.

I chose a couple of photos of Grandpa, a couple of pocket knives, a Zane Grey novel and a John Deere pillow my aunt Cheri had made for him. I slept with that pillow, and the next morning, I awoke with the sunrise, as Grandpa always did. I felt his presence powerfully, and he was everywhere.

Our little grandpa isn’t little anymore, I realized, and I smiled.

***

I invite any and all of you to share your own memories of Pete Hicks here, and pass this along to those who loved him. He was indeed a heck of a man. Please, share your thoughts and memories in the comment section below, or if you’d like to share photos or a longer piece, write to me at tracy@tracybarnettonline.com.

Here is a link to a video presentation I put together with help from his son Kevin Hicks, his grandson Brent McClane, his daughter (my mother) Judy Brunk, and me.

Chris Lloyd “Pete” Hicks: A life well lived from thirstyboots07 on Vimeo.

Here are a couple of Flickr slideshow collections for download by family and friends.

Pete Hicks’ Birthday Book, by Kevin Hicks

Pete Hicks photo collection – photos by Brent McClane, Kevin Hicks, Judy Brunk and others

I’m not a natural-born runner; my body resists it in every way. But I took up the hobby last year, realizing that if I were going to stay fit on the road, I’d need to rely on means that don’t include going to a gym. Besides, running doubles as an aerobic form of sightseeing – albeit without the camera, the only thing I regretted about today’s run.

(From Friday’s walk: One of several fountains on Amsterdam Street)

I headed straight for Calle Amsterdam, a verdant loop through the heart of La Condesa with a tree-lined path in the center. Formerly called Calle Hipódromo, the loop is what remains of the old Condesa racetrack. Now laced with fountains and gardens and lined with colorful cafés and boutiques among the classic art-deco architecture, it bears no semblance to a racetrack – except for the presence of the other joggers.

The high point was Parque México, an enormous stretch of greenery filled with children learning to rollerblade, boys kicking a soccer ball, tiny dogs in colorful sweaters and their attentive owners, elders perusing newspapers, youngsters listening to MP3 players and families pedaling a four-seated bicycle contraption for rent in the plaza.

Smells of roasting corn, savory pork tacos and fresh flowers filled the rain-washed air. A gentleman sat in front of a booth surrounded by small tables and filled with wooden objects and painting supplies; for $3 you could buy a small animal or for $6 a little wooden jewelry box, and you could paint it however you liked.

Further along I found Mejor en Bici (Better on a Bike), a nonprofit group that provides free bicycles for “rent” in several parks around the city. All you have to do is leave your ID and a 200-peso note, and you can take the bike for a spin.

I don’t know whether it was because of the altitude (Mexico City is about a mile and a half higher than Houston!) or that I’m out of shape after three weeks of huddling in the cold, or simply because there was so much to see, but it was a run-walk type of run. At any rate, it felt great to unclench my huddled shoulders and feel the sun on my skin again.

If laughter is the best medicine, The Yes Men are the best physicians I’ve seen in a long while.

This pair of merry pranksters just released their new movie, The Yes Men Fix the World, and after seeing it last night at Houston’s Angelika Theater, I’m still laughing.

Here’s the trailer:

In the world of the Yes Men, not only does Dow Chemical accept responsibility for the Bhopal disaster, but Exxon pays billions to rebuild the wetlands it’s destroyed, the Department of Housing and Urban Development pays to rehab public housing instead of tearing it down, and the New York Times leads with an end to the Iraq War, nationalization of the oil companies with profits to fight climate change and George Bush indicted for high treason.

The pair create fake websites and field invitations to corporate events, where they pose as company representatives hawking everything from candles made of human flesh to the “SurviviBall,” an inflatable disaster suit designed to protect the rich from “anything nature can throw at you.” The performances are slapstick laughable, but their antics illustrate the dark side of corporate globalization. When the media condemns them for raising false hopes with their “cruel hoax,” they visit Bhopal and Katrina to consult with disaster victims and learn their stories.

Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno are two guys in cheap suits and geeky glasses whose outrageous sense of humor is only matched by their sense of outraged justice. Their escalating series of escapades lands them in hot water when journalists catch on to their act, but they are eloquent in flipping lies into truth.

Their aim is not just to entertain, but to catalyze. The last scene pans the crowds receiving the fake New York Times and focuses on the readers’ faces, wavering between incredulity and hope.

“If a few people at the top can make the bad news happen, why can’t all of us at the bottom make the good news happen for real?” Bonanno demands. But, he adds, “It would take more than two guys in cheap suits with fake websites. It would take millions…”

The camera pans back to the milling crowd… and as the credits roll, the Yes Men plan their next move.

Dulce is the friendly face of sustainability in her neighborhood. With more than 30,000 residents, Lomas de Plateros is one of Mexico City’s largest apartment complexes. When she first teamed up with Noelle Romero of Organi-K, a local environmental group, to establish a pilot Ecobarrios project at the massive complex, people thought she’d lost her senses.

“First we ask them to do something very simple: to separate their organic waste from the inorganic waste,” she explains. “Most of them don’t want to work with the compost because they consider it dirty work, playing with the soil – but that’s ok.” It took awhile, but soon the neighbors grew accustomed to seeing her, and a few of them even began to join her out in the garden. “Now they’re beginning to understand it to the point that at least it doesn’t disgust them to take their organic waste and put it in a bucket so we can pass by for it. “ And as they began to see the tasty fruits of her labors – tomatoes, beans, broccoli, lettuce and strawberries, for example – more of them started coming around.

“Now you can begin to see the contrast,” she said. “They come by and see the seeds have germinated and they’re amazed to see it’s a living thing because they’ve forgotten that food comes from nature.”

Ten families in her section of the complex are now participating, saving their garbage and their recyclables for pickup and even getting their hands dirty by working the compost and planting. Now a group of 15 families in another section of Lomas de Plateros calling themselves “Participacion Ciudadana” (Citizen Participation) have expressed an interest in starting their own composting and gardening project, and Dulce will be the one to organize it.

A recycling dropoff center will be installed in the complex to collect paper, plastic, metal, glass and tetrapack – this latter being the boxes used to package milk and juice that are nearly impossible to recycle in the United States. At the same time, the groups will be experimenting with vertical crops and organoponics. Finally, they’re teaming up with the city’s Commission for the Integral Development of Solid Waste and other local organizations to launch a similar project in Section F, the largest of Lomas de Platero’s sections with more than 10,000 residents.

But this project is about more than gardening and recycling, Noelle explains. It is a seed project for an Ecobarrio.

.

“We need a new vision, a new paradigm,” said Noelle. “With the green circle we’re giving a great message: Minimize your solid residues, minimize your consumption, take advantage of your organics and make them into compost, which in turn will give you the fertilizer for urban organic agriculture.

“So this is how we’re going to close the cycle; and thousands of people who live here will be able to see that you can grow your own food and be sustainable food-wise. This is going to change the vision.”

Dulce, an avid gardener and recycler, had been thinking for some time about how to get her neighbors involved in greening up the city. So when Noelle approached her about starting a pilot program for urban organic agriculture, she jumped at the chance. The composting and gardening project, called the Circulo Verde or Green Circle, is designed to teach people to close the cycle in their organic waste production by bringing it full circle, converting it to soil and then to food for neighborhood consumption and eventually to supplement volunteers’ income.

Organi-K, an environmental group founded by former Green Party leader Arnold Ricalde, is the hub for a variety of initiatives ranging from reforestation to recycling. Organi-K implements the concepts of permaculture, an environmental design system invented in Australia in the 1970s and making its way around the world.

Early this year, Organi-K received a grant from the city’s Commission for the Integral Development of Solid Waste to initiate an urban agriculture program, and Noelle became the coordinator. She began scouting for places to launch the program, and Lomas de Plateros seemed a logical place to start because of its size and the green spaces available.

The Ecobarrios, project, as Noelle explains it, revolves around the establishment of a community that holds a new vision of sustainability. Participants will be given tools to help them track their progress in waste reduction and consumption of resources. The long-term plan has three phases:

1. The Green Circle composting and gardening project. “Once they change their food consumption habits and grow their own food, a new vision can be born regarding responsible consumption and food sustainability,” Noelle says.

2. Sustainable water consumption. “How can we harvest water in times of an approaching cut in water services? What water saving systems can be implemented in people’s homes, and what water consumption habits can be encouraged in these families, such as using biodegradable products or using less water while washing dishes, taking showers, doing laundry, washing cars, etc.”

3. Sustainable energy consumption. Here the community implementation of energy saving systems, installs energy-efficient light bulbs, installs solar water heaters and if possible, solar panels. “By the end of the third phase of an Ecobarrio, we would expect to have a community that holds a new vision and that follows a new life paradigm of love and collaboration with the planet,” Noelle says.

Looking ahead, another Ecobarrios project set to begin soon is in the Pemex housing complex, home to 7,000 people. The Tlalpan municipality is funding the project here, and the group is just waiting for a change in administration in the housing complex to begin another Circulo Verde project. Organi-K has applied for funding from the Instituto de la Vivienda (the housing department) for an even more ambitious project that would implement ecotechnologies on a new housing project in Iztapalapa, on the western outskirts of the city. Keep an eye on this blog for future developments, and contact Noelle Romero at noelleromero@yahoo.com.mx or Arnold Ricalde at despertares222@yahoo.com.mx if you want to pay a visit to Organi-K and lend a hand with one of its projects.

See the slide show here

Volunteer from Fort Worth, Texas

“You’re going to the symphony tonight? You will be miserable!” fretted a Park City Houstonite upon learning of my plans. That’s because the Utah Symphony plays at Deer Park Resort under the stars – a romantic setting unless your chattering teeth are drowning out the percussion section.

Surely our hosts had made other arrangements, I thought – disappointed because the star of tonight’s show was none other than Elvis Costello.

I needn’t have worried. The Park City Chamber, which hosted our visit, pulled out the stops to make it happen, and in high style. The sun soon came out and the cold spell lifted. And our hosts came armed with fleeces and blankets, a plastic tarp for the grass and comfy folding chairs. There were bottles of pinot noir and super-luxe picnic baskets with truffle oil salami and brie, smoked salmon and chocolate raspberry tarts and enough savory distractions to almost make one forget the symphony, much less the cold.

Watching the crowd gather under the suspended ski lifts was a sight to behold in itself. But once Costello walked onto the stage, this colorful spectacle and the gourmet feast quickly faded into the background. The lighting crew and the Utah Symphony wove a magical backdrop for a spectacular performance, with Costello covering an enormous range of styles, from jazz standards to punky alternative to wacky country tunes. My favorite was a yet-to-be released Costello composition telling the Christmas story from Joseph’s point of view.

More pinot, anyone?

Today I found a posting there that I had to share. It’s called The ten very best zen stories for travelers, and if you’re looking for inspiration, you’ll find it here.

Just in case you’re not yet convinced to check it out, here’s an excerpt:

1. A Cup Of Tea

Nan-in, a Japanese master during the Meiji era (1868-1912), received a university professor who came to inquire about Zen.

Nan-in served tea. He poured his visitor’s cup full, and then kept on pouring. The professor watched the overflow until he no longer could restrain himself. “It is overfull. No more will go in!”

“Like this cup,” Nan-in said, “you are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?”

The best travelers head out with no preconceptions about the cultures they will visit and the people they will meet. They remember to pack the most important thing: an open mind.

Thanks to @hanimeli for posting this link on Twitter!

]]> http://tracybarnettonline.com/blog/2009/07/20/zen-stories-for-travelers/feed/ 0 http://tracybarnettonline.com/blog/2009/04/16/an-old-friend-with-a-new-face/ http://tracybarnettonline.com/blog/2009/04/16/an-old-friend-with-a-new-face/#comments Thu, 16 Apr 2009 20:04:13 +0000 tracybarnett http://tracybarnett.wordpress.com/?p=3 Dear friends,

It’s been three weeks since my transition to independent writer, and I am loving my newfound freedom.

Seeing the world through a different lens

 Fortunately or unfortunately, with freedom comes responsibility, at least in this lifetime. So my computer is as constant my companion as ever, if not more so. My new travels have taken me down more paths on the information superhighway than on any actual highway – a temporary condition, I can assure you! – and I’m now learning all about social networking, web hosting, search engine optimization and so much more.

I’m now exploring the ins and outs of Wordpress, an excellent blog-posting site. You’ll see my blog evolve over the weeks and months ahead as I learn more and share it with you as I travel. Please let me know what you think, and share your ideas. I’d like to make this blog an interactive conversation with each of you and with the whole world, and I’ll need your help with that.

For starters, I’ve been kicking around a gazillion ideas for my new blog – ideas that would reflect my goals as a writer, the regions I specialize in and the themes that are near and dear to my heart. Some of my favorites were Gaia Traveler and Gaia Girl, to reflect my emphasis on nature and sustainability; Aventurera and Caminos Less Traveled, to reflect the bilingual and Latino-influenced nature of my travels; then there was Thirsty Boots, my Twitter name.

Ultimately, I decided to stick with the name I began with. While “Roads Less Traveled” may not be quite as clever, my favorite web guru, Dwight Silverman, assures me it’s the best.

“None of them have Google Juice,” he said of the fruits of all my brainstorming. “They’re not going to result in your blog
coming up in a random search.”

“So you think ‘Roads Less Traveled’ is best, even though it’s a cliche?” I asked.

“Frankly, yes,” he answered. “Cliches are what people Google for.”

So… here’s to an old friend with a new face. Roads Less Traveled will be coming your way once again. Please let me know what you think!

Your trusty traveling wordsmith,

Tracy L. Barnett