Meet Dave and Anna, the Permacyclists.

She was a corporate lawyer from Brussels; he was a sociologist from New York. Neither of them was happy with their chosen profession, and after a great deal of soul searching, they decided to do what many dream of but few actually do: They quit their jobs, studied permaculture, bought bicycles and headed off across Africa, pedaling and working their way through 12 countries, 12,000 kilometers and 16 months from organic farm to organic farm, sharing what they’d learned along the way.

Now they’ve landed in Mexico and are launching a Phase 2 of their journey, but with a difference. This time they’re bringing a video camera and sound equipment, and documenting the stories of people working on solutions to the many environmental problems they have learned about in their travels. Their goal is to make it to the Earth Summit in Rio in June 2012. And this time they’re going by bus, instead of bike, to give them time to do reporting, writing and producing for their blog.

I was inspired by their story and by their plan, since in some ways it parallels my own – so we got together and shared stories. Here’s a little bit of theirs.

The cheery young couple quickly turn sober when they contemplate the ravaged landscape they encountered in Africa – not because of war and famine, the typical scenarios associated with Africa, but because of severe environmental degradation. Soil erosion, deforestation, desertification, invasive species taking over and killing out what’s left of the local ecosystems. “We were biking through all those problems for 16 months,” said Annabelle. “And yes, we have seen some amazing tropical forests, but you could be sure as soon as you left that little national park you would see not a single tree.”

Climate change was a big topic of conversation wherever they went: New York, Belgium, all throughout Africa, and now in Mexico. In Mozambique, they biked along a coast through miles and miles of former rice fields ruined by the saltwater that had flooded them during a tsunami. At Mount Kilimanjaro, they compared historic photos of the ice-capped mountain with its dwindling patch of white.

“How can we deny climate change is happening? People are talking about it everywhere,” said Anna. “They talk about how the rainy season hasn’t come and how its really weird because it’s too wet but not at the right time, and how things have changed.

“But people are acting on this, and that’s the good news.”

That’s how their project evolved to focus on sustainability efforts throughout the continent.

“I find myself much happier when I’m working with people who are working on solutions, rather than those who are saying we are all going to die,” said Annabelle. “To keep saying we’re going to die is not helping, it’s not moving people to action.”

Their families were not happy about their decision to take off across Africa on their bikes. Both mothers, independently of each other, notified them that when they were kidnapped – “not if, but when” – they would not be responsible for the ransom, Dave said. “They took a picture that was a profile of the ear so they could identify us when they found the corpse,” he laughs when he recalls the moment.

And then there was the reaction to Annabelle’s decision to leave her career as a successful lawyer. “It was like: You studied for six years and you have a practice and you’re going to throw it away for what? to go biking?”

There were some actual dangers – they were mock-chargd by a gorilla in Uganda and a hippo in Botswana. “Believe me, when you have that thing of 1.5 tons running toward you in the water, where it’s strongest, and you’e in a little plastic boat…. it’s quite humbling,” Anna recalls.

But the dangers were not at all what the family and friends were worried about. “The image of Africa in the West is just not fair and it’s racist in a lot of ways,” said Dave. Of course, he added, most Westerners haven’t been there, except for a handful who go on safaris, and given the conditions reported by most of the media coverage, it’s a pretty scary place. But the Permacyclists found Africa to be filled with people who were kind, caring and generous.

In Nairobi, he recalled – which has earned the moniker “Nairobbery” – the pair kept a low profile. “We were totally intimidated. We didn’t take a chance, didn’t try to meet local people.” On the last day, nervous at the prospect that they’d have to cross the scary shantytown area, they were surprised to see all the people smiling and waving as they cycled by.

“That same day we met a great guy who ran three kilometers across an open field to tell us we were going the wrong way,” he said. “People were looking out for us, and we didn’t even realize.”

Finally, after many months and many miles, the family came around.

“They saw that we were happy,” said Annabelle.

“And that we didn’t die,” said Dave.

“Let’s face it – some of it’s luck,” said Anna. “Bad things happen – I was a criminal lawyer, so I know. You can get robbed, but you can get robbed in Brussels, too, or New York. So let’s stop being scared. Let’s throw the TV out the window, and let’s get out and meet people. That’s where it’s happening.”

The pair’s second tour of duty started with a three-week natural building class in North Carolina. From there they headed to Houston, where they ran into the folks from Transition Houston, a dynamic part of the Transition Towns movement – who put them in touch with me. Their first video project was about that group and its projects. Here it is.

#1 Transition Houston from Permacyclists on Vimeo.

So far, they say, they’ve been blessed with enthusiastic support everywhere they’ve gone.

“It’s like we’ve stumbled across this underground world of people who are doing amazing things, and now here we are in Guadalajara and we have six interviews lined up and a place to sleep,” said Dave.

To Anna, that response serves to underscore a valuable lesson that their journeys have taught them.

“You know you’re nothing alone – but together, we’re something quite powerful. It’s about the power of groups, the power of community – you’re not alone in this world. Get out and do something, talk to people. It’s really magical.”

Follow the Permacyclists on their blog and on Facebook and Twitter. And check out the trailer for their upcoming movie!

Story and photos by Melissa Gaskill

This blog frequently covers travel that makes a difference – trips that incorporate volunteering, are culturally sensitive, support local businesses, and respect the human and natural environment – or all of the above. I wrote a guest post about such a trip about a year ago, Turtle Rescue on the Eco Side of Baja. More and more places, particularly in developing countries, see this kind of tourism as a sustainable way to protect sea turtles. At the 31st Symposium on Sea Turtle Biology and Conservation, held in San Diego April 12-16, several presentations reported on programs that have seen success, so I thought I’d share them here.

SEE Turtles, a US based non-profit, promotes travel that supports conservation, organizing its own trips to Baja California, Costa Rica and Trinidad.

“We know tourism can be bad for people and animals, especially when done in an unplanned and uncontrolled way,” director Brad Nahill told symposium attendees. “Or it can have positive impacts, including direct financing of conservation and research, reduced dependency on direct use of resources (such as eating sea turtle eggs), increased monitoring, and an increased local constituency. We use local businesses, share commissions, and do additional fundraising, education, volunteer recruiting, and advocacy.”

The organization uses detailed criteria for selecting trip sites, follows established guidelines for trip activities, and monitors trips to ensure they don’t have a negative effect. Locals are always involved either as guides, or as the source for provisions and souvenirs. Fees and donations go back into the community.

So far, Nahill reported, SEE Turtles has generated more than $230,000 for conservation and communities. At least 250 people have visited turtle sites, 1,000 volunteer shifts have been filled, and more than 15 million people have been reached with education and conservation messages. All of this, he pointed out, despite starting the program in a terrible economy. The organization helps programs tap into adventure travelers, volunteer tourists, domestic travelers, and day trippers. In addition to offering organized trips, it also will match up travelers with reputable sea turtle programs near almost any destination in the world.

Lindsey West reported on the efforts of Sea Sense, a small marine conservation organization protecting a small nesting population of green and hawksbills on Tanzania’s Mafia Island. This island contains two-thirds of all sea turtle nests in the country. The organization monitors six nesting sites, four within a marine park, conducting daily patrols and relocating nests at risk of tide inundation.

So far, it has trained 48 locals elected by their villages as conservation officers. Its nest incentive program pays a small stipend to anyone reporting the location of a nest to these conservation officers, and another small incentive when a nest successfully hatches. This program has reduced poaching from more than 80 percent to less than two. Half of the revenues generated by eco-tourism are directed into a village environmental fund, so the community sees direct benefit, West said.

That revenue also covers the cost of monthly allowances for monitors, field equipment, and nest incentives. Sea Sense is exploring the potential to expand sea turtle tourism by incorporating turtle experience into village tours, nature walks, and beach picnics. “We need long-term sustainability and decreased dependence on donations,” West said. Challenges the effort faces include very remote nesting beaches, plastic debris on beaches, the tour guides’ lack of confidence and skill, visitor expectations, cultural considerations, and communications.

Alarmed by the slaughter of turtles in northern Trinidad in the 1970s and 80s, the local communities of Grande Riviere, Matura Beach and Fishing Pond joined forces with Nature Seekers, assisted by the government’s Forestry Division, to protect nesting leatherbacks, hawksbill and green sea turtles. Some 5,000 turtles nest on a beach roughly a mile long here. The program offers guided educational turtle tours nightly March through August – and has carefully monitored and tested the potential effect of lights, photography, touching and the size of groups on the turtles. Its activities also include beach cleaning, sand turtle contests, and tagging and data collection, which are highly dependent on volunteers, often from Earthwatch. SEE Turtles brings groups here as well.

Locals in these communities have also been trained to create jewelry and other items from glass bottles that wash up on the beaches. This program raises funds for locals and sea turtle conservation and leaves the beach cleaner for turtles as well. Turtles tagged in Trinidad have been observed as far east as the Mediterranean and as far north as Nova Scotia, so Nature Seekers’ effects reach far beyond the Caribbean island.

Consider including one of these destinations and programs, or others like them, in your future travels. You’ll see a beautiful place, and do a beautiful thing – help save the sea turtles.

For more of Melissa Gaskill’s life-affirming stories and beautiful photography, visit her blog.

MEXICO CITY, Mexico – Thanksgiving day – I awoke this morning far from home and family but filled with a profound sense of gratitude.

Grateful for the sun that was just beginning to brighten the sky outside my window; grateful for the dear friends who have given me a home in this city of cities. Grateful for the health and the support of my family, who continue to love me faithfully despite my wandering ways.

Most of all on this day, I’m grateful for the path I’ve been given this year, a path that has led me from inspiration to inspiration as I traveled from Mexico to Argentina, seeking to learn from those who are each changing our world in their own way.

I began the year with grave doubts about the future of humanity, indeed, the future of all life on this planet. Peak oil, climate change, food insecurity, financial crises, water crises – ominous reports were being released from leading scientists around the world, saying we have passed the point of no return. We have not managed our inheritance well, and turbulent times loom – of this we can be sure.

I also harbored fears and doubts about my own future as a professional journalist who dedicated most of my professional life to an industry that is now shedding journalists like a maple tree in an autumn windstorm.

So I set off for the South on a search for inspiration in this troubled world, among the people who have always given me hope – Latin Americans, an astoundingly diverse collection of peoples who have for centuries cultivated the flame of joy amid the crises, a civilization born from crisis. I founded The Esperanza Project to document the stories of some of these people, and I began working on a book, “Looking for Esperanza.”

I found that inspiration, at countless kitchen tables and gardens and streets from Mexico City to Iguazú, from Guatemala’s Mayan highlands to El Salvador’s tropical forests, from Paraguay’s campesino movement to the artists and permaculturists of Colombia. Everywhere I went, I found people embracing the coming transition of our world with hope and joy.

I began my journey in January, and came full circle last week, with a powerful network of dreamers and doers who form the Vision Council – Guardians of the Earth. I will share more about this amazing network in my next piece. Among this network were representatives of the Huichol people, an indigenous group that is struggling to save its sacred lands from countless invasions large and small and now from a transnational mining corporation, and I will be writing a great deal about this, as well.

Somewhere along the thousands of dusty, sweaty miles I traveled, watching the landscape unfold through the windows of buses and semi-trucks and airplanes and from the backs of pickup trucks and oxcarts and motorcycles, a wider vision of me began to emerge, as well. Every departure became more difficult; I wept as Colombia’s lush green mountains receded into the distance, feeling the bonds I had made tightening around my heart. What was this force that kept pushing me forward? When would it be my time and place to plant my own roots, my own seeds? Where would be the soil that I would cultivate? Where would be the family whose future I would share?

Always the answer came back the same. You are a child of the cosmos. Your home is this planet. The seeds you plant are in the human consciousness, and they will bear fruit for all. Your family is everywhere… just look around you.

Yes, yes, I answered impatiently. But I want those seeds to make a difference. Like those whose stories I tell, I want my own work to matter. I want to be a midwife of hope in these transition times, a light along the way to that transcendent new world we are all dreaming of.

In those green mountains of Colombia, in an ancient ceremony conducted by Amazonian shamans, I surrendered my consciousness to the Pachamama, to the earthly manifestation of God himself. Allow me to be an instrument of thy will, I pleaded. Show me my path. Thy will, not mine, O Lord.

There in the darkness, surrounded by the chants and drums of the shamans, I saw my path. It was green and lined with trees. A soft breeze was blowing. Not a car, not a building, not a person to be seen.

Solitude. Silence. Spirit-filled reflection in the inherent wisdom of the Mother.

Three things that had eluded me in the constant movement of my journey. Three things that I will be seeking now.

During the three-day ceremony I visited at length with the tribal leaders of the Cofan people, learning of their struggles in the Amazon to reclaim and protect their lands from the invasions of cattle ranchers, oil companies, developers and all manner of threats. Struggles that echoed those of the Huicholes of the Mexican Sierra Occidental, who had left their magical mark on me at the beginning of my journey. Struggles that called to mind those of the Mayan peoples of Guatemala, risking and sometimes losing their lives in confrontations with the mining companies.

I have watched over the year as these struggles have continued to emerge and intensify: the Belo Monte Dam in Brazil, mountain-removal mining projects in Peru, massive agroindustrial plantations in Paraguay. As the free trade agreements signed over the past decade break down the barriers to transnational exploitation in the remotest corners, the native peoples who have guarded their lands for millennia are being called to sacrifice their lives in a last stand for their peoples and the Mother Earth.

All of these struggles unfolded before my eyes, the beautiful soulful faces of their protagonists burning their way into my consciousness. It was then that I knew that the next part of my journey would somehow, some way, be at their sides.

“The Madre is furious with us,” Maracame Julio Parra, a Huichol shaman, shared with me on our last night together. “We are not practicing the rituals of protection in the sacred sites as she has guided us for thousands of years. We must go back and make our peace with her.”

Peace with the Mother. Peace for the guardians of the earth. Peace for us all.

It began at 6:30 am with a mobile loudspeaker blasting an upbeat blessing from the streets, mañanitas-style. That was followed by fireworks, and all day I continued to receive kisses and hugs and very sincere blessings just for the fact that I have a beautiful daughter – which is already blessing enough.

But then, when I arrived home and checked my e-mail, I found the best Mother’s Day greeting of all. I just had to share it with you all.

This greeting came from the Mapaches, or Racoons, a lively group based in Guatemala City that has been using creativity and community-building to raise awareness about the need for a more liveable city.

Their greeting card is a gentle reminder:

“Thank you, Mom, for teaching me to love the Mother Earth.”

Sunset, coming into Quetzaltenango/Xela

QUETZALTENANGO, Guatemala – I awoke this sparkling Mother’s Day to the sight of the Santa Maria volcano from my rooftop, rising green and conical over the mountains that surround this charming city in the highlands. Quetzaltenango, known to Guatemalans by its indigenous name, Xela, is quite literally a breath of fresh air.

The slap-slap-slap of the ladies in the kitchen next door “tortillando,” making tortillas, is punctuated by laughter and chitchat.

My beautiful mother and daughter are well – I’m grateful to them for all they’ve given to me, and I’m grateful to Skype, which allows me to stay connected from so far away. I’m grateful, too, for the capable and loving hands of all the mothers around me, who will be honored today with family dinners, special events and the spectacular bouquets being sold in the streets and markets.

But most of all, I am grateful to the Mother that sustains us all, the Madre Tierra whose fertile soil, abundant rivers, fruitful forests and vast oceans feed and shelter us, century upon century, and I am grateful to all of those who work to protect and nourish her. Since I have arrived in Guatemala, I have met so many.

My conversations with them have revealed the daily destruction of the environment on so many levels; people from taxi drivers to street vendors comment daily on the the increasingly intense heat, the rising floods, the contamination of rivers and lakes and air. The bad news is everywhere, and it can be overwhelming at times. But so is the good news: the fact that so many are dedicating their energy and talent to turning the tide.

To name just a few of those who have inspired me in their labors for Mother Earth in two short, interrupted weeks in Guatemala, and I wish them all a Happy Mother’s Day:

Magalí and Alejandra

Magalí Rey Rosa, the beautiful and eloquent voice for the wildlands whose work over the past three decades has awakened so many, and her daughter, Alejandra Marroquín, who is carrying the torch;

Bayron Medina

Bayron Medina, a descendant of Maya farmers in Alta Verapaz who now works for the Ministry of the Environment and the United Nations, empowering farmers in the countryside to protect their watershed and understand the value of the natural resources that are entrusted to their care;

Maria Jose España

Maria Jose España, Mario Rodrigo Gonzalez and Karla Maldonado of the Mapaches, a vibrant group in the capital who started out to save a forested canyon and evolved to a much broader mission;

Masa Critica Guatemala

Manuel Gomez and the rest of Masa Critica Guatemala, a group of dedicated cyclists determined to establish a right-of-way on the capital’s busy streets;

Steve Dudenhofer

Steve Dudenhofer and the rest of the crew at Ak Tenamit Maya School, where protecting the earth is an integral part of the curriculum, and graduates are making waves around the country in sustainable development, community health, women’s literacy and ecotourism projects;

Maite Rodriguez Blandon

Maite Rodriguez Blandón of Fundación Guatemala, whose work to empower Guatemalan women at the grassroots has taken many forms; lifting women out of poverty and giving them control of their land, she says, is one of the best ways to protect the environment;

Mega and Amanda from Rasta Mesa

Amanda and Mega at Rasta Mesa, working in Livingston to preserve the Garifuna culture and the land;

Eduardo Gularte y Gaby Diaz

Eduardo Gularte, Gaby Diaz and others from the Center for Communication and Development (CECODE), a group of dedicated communicators working to empower people at the local level to use communications tools for social change;

Edith Panameño

Edith Panameño, a schoolteacher working to establish a network of eco-clubs in the Lake Izabal region;

Silvia, Maria Isabel y Luis Rey

The Reyes family of Hotel Ajau, and all the other Guatemalan businesses striving to make their businesses sustainable under the Green Deal and Great Green Deal programs;

Rodolfo Trinidad of Campus Sustentable, Universidad Rafael Landivar, and Rai Aguirre of EcoCinergia, Universidad San Carlos, two groups working in a variety of imaginative ways to raise awareness on campus;

Community Radio activists at a CECODE workshop in Xela

Sandra, Tino, Maribel and many others in a network of community radio activists, who have labored in the face of government repression to bring relevant news and analysis to the indigenous and campesino communities of Guatemala, in their native languages;

Movimiento Agua y Juventud workshop in Xela

Alejandra Tiguila and a host of others with the Guatemala chapter of Movimiento Agua y Juventud (Water and Youth Movement), a dynamic group whose combined energy and commitment lit up the night – and my heart – at a Quetzaltenango retreat center recently.

The list could go on, and soon it will: my contact list has mushroomed, and I won’t be able to visit with a tenth of the worthy groups working on conservation issues around the country. Still, what I’ve seen in these two weeks gives many reasons for hope. Keep reading in the days and weeks ahead to meet these and many other world changers along the path of The Esperanza Project.

Mealtime is a special occasion with Cristina Diaz, here in the beautiful and eclectic home she helped to design.

GUATEMALA CITY – The city sparkled below me like a carpet of diamonds, flung carelessly over the valley and clinging to the surrounding mountains. This is probably as beautiful as Guatemala’s capital city gets, I thought, then scolded myself for the unwelcome thought. I only know the city from reading about it, and from a single pass through to the airport. Hardly enough to judge. I should know by now that you can’t judge a city by the media coverage – look at Mexico City, for example, which I’ve come to love.

And indeed my first night in the Guatemala City has put the lie to the widespread condemnation of Central America’s largest megalopolis. Thanks to Couchsurfing.com, I had friends waiting for me with dinner and directions, maps and guides and ideas for my project. I took a taxi to their beautiful home next to a park in a leafy neighborhood in Zona 2 and received a family welcome.

Couchsurfing, for the uninitiated, is an international web-based community of people who like to travel and learn about other cultures, but don’t necessarily want to spend a fortune on hotels. Members offer to share their couch or bed with travelers for a night or two or three. There is no charge, only an unspoken agreement that someday you’ll offer a space for another traveler. Besides saving money, the system gives immediate entry and insight into the local culture.

I’d heard rave reviews about couchsurfing and decided one day to give it a try. Just a day ago, I sat in a café in St. Louis, Mo., and entered my profile, then scanned a list of about 70 members from Guatemala City. Jose David Diaz, a Guatemalan restoration ecologist who works with the Ministry of the Environment, was my top choice, and I dropped him a line. A few minutes later, I received a warm welcome.

The next night, here I was, eating dinner with him and his parents – Cristina, his mother, had made chili con carne Texas-style especially for me, and a wonderful watercress fritter, Swiss chard with red sweet peppers, corn on the cob and fresh corn tortillas. She’d outdone herself.

Jose David is a restoration ecologist and a world traveler who introduced his family to couchsurfing, and me to his family.

Jose David, for his part, shared with me information about several groups he knows about who are working on interesting projects – a watershed protection project in the eastern province of Baja Verapaz, near the city of Coban, where I have been planning to go already; and a collaborative project of indigenous communities in the Central Highlands who are working together to protect the forests from timber poaching and other destructive incursions. He also showed me an excellent website with topographic maps of the entire country, and gave me his brief overview of the country’s environmental status.

He worries about the petroleum exploration going on in the Lago del Tigre wetlands preserve to the south.

“It’s a very fragile, very special habitat and I just can’t bear to think of what would happen if there were an accident,” he said, and we both shuddered, thinking of the environmental disaster currently unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico. Just today, the news emerged that the mile-deep oil well leak is spewing not 1,000 barrels a day, but 5,000, and scientists fear it will wipe out fragile ecosystems along the Gulf Coast.

Jose David has given me his bedroom while he sleeps on a mattress in the living room. What amazing hospitality! It’s a beautiful room, spacious with a huge window looking out onto a tiny back garden. Pictures and mementos from his world travels are everywhere: Santiago Compostela and Madrid, Amsterdam and Africa, Honduras and El Salvador.

Yesterday’s trip was a good one – I sat next to a Guatemalan technology engineer with a renewable energy company who travels to China and Hong Kong regularly for his work.

He told me the Chinese are investing heavily in wind and solar, something I’ve been hearing in other quarters. He told me of driving through miles and miles of windmill farms on the outskirts of Shanghai – “This is not Don Quixote,” he exclaimed. “This is real!”

Meanwhile, we shared a moment of sadness about the massive oil slick approaches the Gulf Coast. Great Britain, he said, is pulling back from offshore drilling. So far, no word on this from the Obama administration.

At the same time, he was troubled by the harsh new Arizona law requiring immigrants to carry ID with them at all times – not surprising, as the law’s passage has dominated newspapers throughout Latin America and drawn criticism from regional leaders.

“Apparently Americans don’t realize that it’s the immigrants who keep the economy going,” he said. “After all, everybody in America comes from Europe. So they are immigrants too!”

Outside in the darkness, up in the hills not far from here, a chorus of coyotes is greeting the coming of the dawn. How appropriate, I think with a smile. Here in Huehuecoyotl, place of the old, old coyote, I’ve just bid farewell to the greatest coyote of all, Subcoyote Alberto Ruz Buenfil, who is letting me use his home as a base for a few days. Now it’s his time to head into Mexico City, where he is taking the lessons of the Rainbow Caravan for Peace into the barrios of that other place of coyotes, Coyoacán.

I’ve come to Huehuecoyotl to meet his family and some of the people who form this core group of world-changers. I’ve come to break bread, share stories, and glean advice for the journey ahead. Alberto has been in a whirlwind of activity since I arrived – he’s playing a lead role in a film about Fellini’s spiritual journey through Mexico, and the ghost-spirit of the great Italian filmmaker was just here to supervise from another dimension the shooting of some scenes; longtime friend Jose Arguelles, author and visionary, just spent some time here. During my two days here he’s just finished another book and sent it out to the reviewers, underwent a root canal and many hours of community meetings and obligations, and bid farewell to his daughter who is on her way back to Spain; now he’s preparing for a thousand-drum salute and fundraiser for the people of Haiti and a visit from Bolivian President Evo Morales, but still he took time to show me around, orient me to the solar shower and the composting toilet, share photos and reminisce about the incredible 13-year nomadic ecovillage whose trail I now follow, from Mexico to Patagonia.

An old legend tells of a time when the Earth is in crisis, and life itself is in danger. In these times, the legend goes, a new type of warrior will arise: a tribe of all races, creeds and nationalities who will be known by the universal symbol of the rainbow, and driven by love, their mission will be to save the planet from extinction.

So writes Alberto in his book, “Los Guerreros del Arcoiris.” (Rainbow Nation Without Borders-Bear & Company publishers)-Alberto has dedicated his life to nurturing this tribe, leading the Rainbow Caravan of Peace on an epic journey through Mexico, Central and South America. This nomadic ecovillage traveled from country to country, led by Alberto’s old schoolbus, La Mazorca, colorfully painted to resemble the iconic ear of corn. The ever-changing tribe sought to connect groups active in resistance to the destructive corporate model. They set up camp in jungles and mountains, in indigenous villages and urban ghettos, sharing music, theater and seeds of practical eco-wisdom: green building techniques, simple alternative technologies, natural healing techniques and more. At the same time, they gathered up bits of local lore and wisdom and connected the disparate groups into a hemispheric network. In August of 2009, the tribe finally disbanded, each dispersing to different parts of the continent to continue the consuming work of social change.

Alberto returned to Huehuecoyotl, the picturesque ecovillage established in 1982 in the mountains near Tepoztlan by Alberto and his community of rainbow warriors. He is letting me use his home as a base for a few days as I organize myself for the next phase of my journey. The beautiful adobe-brick home is filled with light from the arching windows that look out upon the grassy valley below; out the front door, past a tall green row of fragrant hoja santa plants, limestone cliffs tower protectively beyond the beautiful home of his son Odin, a musician and one of Mexico’s leading permaculture practitioners.

I will see Alberto once again before I go, when he hosts Bolivian President Evo Morales for a brief visit to the city on Sunday. Meanwhile, here is a short interview I did with him recently, at his office in the Casa de Cultura Reyes Heroles in Coyoacán. His warning comes as a coyote howl in the fading moonlight.

“Like the Mayan Zapatistas said, we have had a long time to dream. Now is the time to wake up. Because any dream we don’t manifest becomes a nightmare, made by somebody else.”

To read about them, please visit Guerreros de Guadalajara, a bilingual entry in my Flickr account.

La Minerva, warrior woman of old and symbol of modern-day Guadalajara, photo courtesy of TheLittleTx, Flickr Creative Commons.

My friend Alicia, like me, struggles to remember to bring the cloth shopping bags when she goes to the supermarket. This day, she remembered. Here’s a little reminder she likes to keep handy:

“It’s not enough to be biodegradeable; it’s necessary to be bioAGREEABLE.”

I liked the way this clever slogan captured one of the most important principles of sustainability: “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.” In that order.

I’ve made my list and checked it a million times; selected and reselected my gear; said my goodbyes and received good wishes and safe travel blessings from near and far. I’ve left my car keys, my smart phone and my GPS behind. I’ll be making my way by foot now and by mass transit; everything I’ll need is either in my pack or shoulder bag, or it’s something I’ll have to find along the way, or live without.

I’ve been on multiple deadlines for weeks, with barely a moment to linger over a cup of tea with a loved one. Now the last loved one has pulled away from the curb, I’ve checked my backpack and I’ve made my way through security with an hour to spare, and there’ll be lingering aplenty.

Today, the only thing on my list is Mexico City.

There in the Mexican megalopolis, people are still rushing to make appointments – and I will too, tomorrow. But this afternoon I’ll greet a climate 40 degrees warmer and a mindset to match. I’ll slow down and take time to think; to read a book; to chat with the people I meet along the way. I’ll take time to breathe and look around.

“Are you excited?” my daughter texted me last night as I checked my list for the millionth time.

“Not yet,” I responded. “Just a little panicky: Have I forgotten something? Will I miss my flight? Do I have everything I need?”

Now, however, as the coffee does its work and boarding time approaches, I have a moment to reflect on the year ahead. Yes, I’m excited. Also apprehensive – and curious – and a little bit sleepy. But mostly I’m grateful.

In the year ahead, my plan is to travel the length of Latin America, from Mexico to Patagonia, documenting the Latin American environmental movement all along the way for The Esperanza Project and other publications. I hope you will follow my journey on both sites. The Esperanza Project will be focused on telling the stories of protagonists in the sustainability movement in the Americas; Roads Less Traveled will be about my personal experience, part travel narrative, part advice for a new generation of digital nomads. At the end, I’ll have a book to write and perhaps a documentary to put together, as I will be shooting video as well.

Not many people have the opportunity to take a year to follow their dream. I am hoping that I can do something bigger with this trip – to do what all dreamers hope to do, to make a difference, for myself, for others and for the planet. But even if I don’t, it’s the adventure of a lifetime, and with that, I’m satisfied.

For those of you who have offered your support, your prayers and your ideas and suggestions, I thank you. Thanks most of all for reading, and check this spot soon, and also The Esperanza Project. You can subscribe by e-mail or RSS feed from both of the sites, and/or you can follow me on Facebook (both as a fan of The Esperanza Project and as a friend of ME – And also on Twitter, @esperanzaprojec and @thirstyboots07.

I don’t know how this story will end any more than you do. But won’t it be fun to find out?