For now, I’ve got a ton of photos. Enjoy!

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While in Asheville, I spent a few hours wandering the trails at the Botanical Gardens. According to a sign posted there, the Southern Appalachians have the richest diversity of native plants anywhere outside of the tropics. Who knew?

The Botanical Gardens, which abut the UNC campus, were filled with people enjoying the shaded glens and free admission. Students played frisbee on the grass; young girls scampered along the creekbed; a flock of tourists followed a guide along the trails. Me, I just walked and looked. Here’s some of what I saw.

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Post tags: agritourism, Asheville, buy nothing, ecotourism, ecotravel, environment, featured posts, flowers, garden, nature, North Carolina, outdoors, photography, tourism, travel

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1. Hear live music on a streetcorner.

On a sunny day, the downtown area is always populated with buskers. Sometimes it’s your basic guy-with-a-guitar setup; sometimes there are a few dudes in overalls or tweed; sometimes it’s a full band with amplification. One sure thing is that you won’t have to walk far to find a street performer to tickle your ears for free (donations appreciated).

2. Feed your head at Malaprop’s Bookstore.

Granted, Malaprop’s is a business, so they also appreciate monetary contributions. But if you’re broke, spend a buck on coffee and peruse their incredible selection of literature.

This store is one of the places that convinced me so utterly of Asheville’s uniqueness. In fact, Malaprop’s seems to assume that its clientele is highly intelligent, educated in self-sufficiency, and actively committed to social/environmental change.

And there’s the proof: a book on Cattle Health in the Green Living section? We’re not in San Francisco any more.

3. Take a nature walk.

While exploring downtown, I picked up a map that indicated there was a botanical garden next to the UNC campus. Heading out that way, I stumbled across the Reed Creek “interpretive trail”, which was a hugely educational resource. It guides you through an area that was once occupied by buildings; along the trail, a series of signs informs you of what was here, what’s here now and why. In the space of a city block or two, I learned a ton about local history and botany.

The Reed Creek trail lets out near the Asheville Botanical Gardens, a huge and beautifully-managed set of trails, greens and buildings. It’s an easy walk, and just like at Reed Creek, the Botanical Gardens are full of information on native species. Make sure you stop at the creek, an excellent spot for a wee nosh and/or nap in the dappled sunlight.

Click for more photos of Reed Creek and the Botanical Gardens.

4. Go on a self-guided art tour.

As I mentioned recently, Asheville is full of art both strange and beautiful. From the underpass mural, to political graffiti, to statuary both commissioned and independent, there’s art all over the place. And that’s just on the sidewalk—but there are also tons of art galleries for your browsing pleasure.

Don’t miss Chicken Alley, a strange little street that looks straight out of New Orleans or Oakland. It’s haunted by living artists and one dead doctor: Dr. Jamie Smith was killed in a 1902 barfight and still hangs around the place.

If you’re more into modern-age ephemera, guess what? Chicken Alley’s got free wifi. Yippee!

5a. (for hippies) Hippie out at the Drum Circle.

photo by BillRhodesPhoto

Apparently this is a big deal, but I am somewhat opposed to drum circles. If they’re your thing, that’s super! There’s a giant one here every Friday night, on Patton Avenue. Just follow the smell of patchouli and sounds of wild djembe.

5b. (for nerds and queers) Get your summer Shakespeare fix.

photo by Zen

What self-respecting town doesn’t have a free Shakespeare-in-the-park series these days? Asheville is right on point, offering free performances all summer (Friday, Saturday & Sunday nights only). The address is #1 Gay Street, so you ought to feel right at home.

Want more, more, more free stuff? I know right? Cheapskate your heart out at Asheville’s official Free Things to Do page.

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Post tags: adventure, alternative, Asheville, buy nothing, ecotourism, ecotravel, energy-efficient, environment, featured posts, freegan, garden, nature, North Carolina, outdoors, photography, starving artists, sustainable, tourism, travel

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UPDATE: Polls are closed! And the winner is…

LOVEANDTRASH.COM

We’ll be launching in just a few weeks. (Don’t know what this is about? Read below…)

Big news from Raggedy Annarchy and Jessica The Hun:
We’re launching a new blog
dedicated to
creativity, radical interdependence
and
how to be awesome for cheap.

This will be a place where YOU can show off your projects, promote your friends’ good work, and pick up new ideas. It’s dedicated to the little things we all do in our lives: to guerrilla gardeners and creative welders; to bike riders and secondhand fashionistas; to fire dancers, banjo pickers, amateur collagists and part-time poets.

Name That Site → WIN

Now through Saturday 3/6, leave a comment below with your name suggestion! We’ll pick the finalists, and run a vote next week.

If your suggestion becomes the name of this new site, you get a one-year Flickr Pro account, or a year’s subscription to one of these mags: Juxtapoz, Make, Wired, National Geographic or Popular Science. Your choice.

Need some inspiration? Here are some examples of what we’ll be publishing:

art video bikes general food pr0n zombies unicorns sewing lessons motivation ridiculous recycling poetry	photos fashion recipes (vegan and meatatarian) clowns weird welding inspiration transmogrification music lots and lots of art fabulous trash
…and whatever else YOU come up with.

Please note:
1. We get to suggest names too. If our suggestion wins, we keep the prize.
2. You can check to see whether your name idea is available: click here and search for your domain name.

OK GO.
Comment below to win!

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Post tags: alternative, art, contest, diy, featured posts, freegan, garbage, gardening, green living, how-to, prize, prizes, recycling, reuse, starving artists, sustainable, zombies

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Tracy L. Barnett
Photo ©2010. All rights reserved.

I arrived in Mexico three weeks ago as the first leg of my yearlong journey through Latin America documenting the environmental movement across the continent, from the perspective of its protagonists. I’ll be traveling through Latin America for this entire year, interviewing green architects and guerilla gardeners, indigenous farmers and bicycle activists, journalists and academics, even public officials engaged in the transition to a more sustainable lifestyle. I’ll be reporting on what I find – in Spanish and in English – on the Esperanza project, a new media initiative.

Inside the theater at Huehuecoyotl, an ecovillage in the mountains of Morelos, Mexico.
©2010 Tracy L. Barnett. All rights reserved.

Here’s how it all began. About 10 months ago I was working as the travel editor at the Houston Chronicle, when a round of cutbacks slashed a third of the staff, including me. It was a shock, but it ended up freeing me up to launch a project that feels meaningful and exciting to me in a way that working for a daily newspaper never could.

The roots of this project really began long ago in Columbia, Missouri, long before I became a travel writer. Back in 2000, I started the bilingual newspaper Adelante, and my student reporters and of course our readers came from all over Latin America. I accepted every invitation I could to visit friends and their families in the South. Before that, I was an environmental writer at the Columbia Daily Tribune. The Esperanza Project tries to pull all of those themes together—travel, Latin America, and the environment—using the multimedia tools I learned as a travel writer and the Spanish I learned as an immigrant affairs reporter in Missouri, California and Texas.

Community members at Teopantli Kalpulli, an intentional community near Guadalajara.
©2010 Tracy L. Barnett. All rights reserved.

Some people have asked me, why Latin America? I can give several reasons for that: First, I wanted to do it. All my life I’ve wanted to take that trip where I just keep on going. Now I’ll be headed south for a whole year, and I’m really excited about that.

But more importantly, I think we in the States get a little self-important thinking we have all the answers. But there’s a lot we can learn from other cultures, ones that aren’t quite as caught up in the consumerist, carbon-dependent model we’ve adopted in the States.

Latin Americans, in particular, bring a different perspective and a level of creativity and passion to their activism really inspires me. My hope is that it will inspire my North American compatriots, as well.

Right now a completely unexpected green revolution is going on in Mexico City. Rooftops of homes and factories are being planted in gardens to provide an alternate food supply and offset carbon emissions.

A young activist in Coyoacán.
©2010 Tracy L. Barnett. All rights reserved.

In Guadalajara, bicycle activists are taking to the streets by the thousands, demanding green spaces, bike lanes and a more people-oriented approach to transportation and city planning. In the mountains not far from here, the Huichol people are fighting a groundbreaking legal battle to take back their ancestral lands and manage them in their own integral way.

But this is just the tip of the iceberg. Everywhere you look in Latin America, local groups have formed to raise consciousness about the urgent need to shift to a more sustainable lifestyle. They don’t have a lot of resources, but what they do have is creativity, passion and spirit.

One of my first articles, though, has to do with a more personal dilemma: Whether to buy carbon offsets to help compensate for the pollution my travel will inevitably cause. Carbon offsets have become pretty controversial of late, but after a lot of thought, I decided to donate $10 a month to the Marda Permaculture Project to plant olive trees and build greenhouses in the town of Marda, Palestine.

Composting at the ecobarrios in Mexico City.
©2010 Tracy L. Barnett. All rights reserved.

I don’t claim that this is the answer to corporate pollution on a broader scale, but on a personal level, it felt like the right thing to do. It’s a wonderful project that builds community resilience using tried-and-true permaculture techniques, and you can read all about it here.

This year I’m going to be using video and photography and my best reporting skills to bring these people to life for The Esperanza Project readers. I’ll also be seeking collaborators, people to write stories from their eco-experiences in Latin America, and people to help with translations. I hope some of you will join us at theesperanzaproject.org.

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Post tags: adventure, americas, community, ecotourism, ecotravel, ecovillages, environment, esperanza, featured posts, green living, latin america, mexico, photography, sustainable, the esperanza project, tourism, tracy barnett, travel

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One year ago, I visited the East Bay Depot for Creative Reuse, a shop in Oakland, California that supplies teachers and artists alike with craft supplies. The store takes in community donations and provides bin after bin of glorious junk. It’s also highly photographable. Some of these photos have been among my most popular of all time. Can you guess which?

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Post tags: alternative, art, California, community, east bay, featured posts, junk art, Oakland, photography, recycling, reuse, starving artists, sustainable, teacher supply

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Today’s a sad day for this blogger: the family dog, a trusty chocolate lab, has reached the end of his life. So, in his honor, I’d like to look back at some of the beasts I’ve encountered on my journeys. Some of them are animals; some are insects; some are fish wearing hats.. some are funny, some are cute, some are dead, and one is a rubber chicken. But they’re all photogenic. Enjoy the show.

And for more funsies, here are a couple of funny animal videos I shot:

Bye bye Bially, we love ya.

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Enjoy the show, and I’ll see you next week.

© jessicareeder for Uprooted, an eco/travel blog, 2010. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: California, ecotourism, ecotravel, environment, featured posts, Humboldt, nature, outdoors, photography, Siskiyou, travel, water

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An extra photo post for y’alls: I’d been in New Hampshire for a few weeks, and had descended into a mild state of computer addiction. Jamie called one day to invite me on a hike, and it turned out to be one of the best days of my entire journey.

We hiked ten miles that day through the White Mountains, on a beautiful trail past marshes, through forests, along the banks of empty ravines. The mountains out here are old and empty, decaying gradually in landslides. The woods are dark and deep. It was unlike any landscape I knew, but my guides had been hiking here for a decade. They knew exactly where to go.

When we reached Thoreau Falls, we had to go off-trail, scrambling down an almost-vertical slope through rotting, mossy branches. The falls landed in a series of pools, and the water was a deep reddish-orange. High iron content? Iron bacteria? Maybe, but we swam anyway, and basked, and then hot-footed it back through the fading light. A beautiful hike, and one I almost missed.

Thank you, New Hampshire.

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Post tags: adventure, ecotourism, hiking, nature, New Hampshire, outdoors, photography, thoreau falls, travel, water, white mountains

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It was August, but it was also Maine. The air was cool and wet and smelled of the sea. We had left the New Hampshire Farmhaus, crossed the border into Kittery Point, and kept heading east until we hit the Seapoint beach.

Seapoint is one of those public beaches that are so beautiful, the local residents try to claim it as their own. You have to have a parking sticker proving that you live in Kittery Point, or you could get a ticket for leaving your car around. But the fog was thick and the sun was dropping, so we took our chances.

The waves were low and flat and gray, and so was the sky. They met and melded just a few meters from the sand: the waves appeared to be descended from the clouds, and it seemed you could walk right out on their foamy tips and end up in the ether.

I didn’t try. Instead, I clambered over slippery rocks, inspected seaweed and shells and discarded crab traps, took a few photos, waxed philosophical while gazing at the grey sea… and that was Maine, my only time in Maine.

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Post tags: adventure, buy nothing, ecotourism, environment, featured posts, nature, outdoors, photography, tourism, travel, water, weather

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