Welcome: Let’s Explore the World

Welcome to the Gaiam community’s eco travel blog.  I am delighted to host this virtual journey toward a fresh and conscientious engagement with the world’s wonders.  We’ll explore ways to travel more lightly upon the land, look at new developments in “greening” travel, and discover intriguing destinations, ecologically minded lodgings and enticing eats.  I’ll share a mix of news blurbs and personal stories, and invite you to join in with your own reflections and helpful information for fellow travelers. 

Growing up as the daughter of a P.E. teacher who loved the outdoors, many weekends brought a truck-and-camper outing to a new corner of the Northwest.   Early on I found that the novelty of unfamiliar landscapes was like oxygen, each environment a fresh and invigorating hit.  From our Seattle home, a three-hour drive in any direction revealed an entirely new geography.  We camped beneath moss-draped arms of ancient hemlocks in the Olympic rainforest, hiked through huckleberry meadows on the flanks of Mount Adams, fished in pothole lakes in the arid coulee country east of the Cascades.  And when summer came, we ventured farther, canoeing the Bowron Lakes of British Columbia, watching geysers spew in Yellowstone and buffalo graze amid the granite spires of the Black Hills.  Each road trip unfurled another discovery.

I didn’t take a plane ride till I was 16, but being able to travel at 500 mph opened up an even more intoxicating range of vistas, and as diverse a set of cultures.

In the three decades since, I have visited six continents.  I’ve tracked gorillas in the Congo and scouted for tigers on elephant-back in Nepal.  I’ve floated the Tuichi River in the Bolivian Amazon.  I’ve drunk fermented mare’s milk with Mongolian herders.  Every encounter has enhanced my wonder at our planet’s natural marvels, the beauty of its peoples, the intricacy of their cultures, and how closely connected we are, to each other and to the Earth that sustains us.

My children are 13 and 9.  I’ve hoped to instill in them early on the absolute awe that travel can induce.  But they may never see the glaciers in Glacier National Park that I did at their age, unless we get there soon.  If they trek the Annapurnas in Nepal, I worry their most vivid memories may be of plastic water bottles along the trail, rather than 40-foot-tall rhododendrons.  The gorillas and tigers may well be gone by the time my kids get to Africa or India.  I hope not. 

What’s at stake is huge, and it’s up to us to preserve it.  That commitment can begin by immersing ourselves more consciously in the world beyond our daily realm – whether that’s a wild field at the edge of town, or the very edges of the poles.  I look forward to exploring with you.

St. Augustine said, “The world is a book, and he who does not travel reads only a page.”

Safe travels,
Wendy