At the same time, I’ve been busy launching a brand-new site that has its own bright future: LoveandTrash.com!

It’s a project with some of my very good friends. We’re calling it “a DIY blog for people who do things differently.” There’s a ton of content, some very fun stuff, and lots of “actionable inspiration” to get you motivated.

The truth is, the more I traveled, the more I found that while I love traveling, my true passion was more on the environmental/DIY track. Love and Trash gives that passion a voice, and I couldn’t be more excited about it.

So stop by and check it out! I think you’ll like it. LoveandTrash.com

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A congress member speaks at the morning fire ritual

In October, I traveled to The Farm in Tennessee, where the 10th Annual Bioregional Congress was taking place. I was excited to be there, though I couldn’t help but wonder…

What’s a bioregional congress?

Good question. To understand it, you need to understand “bioregionalism”. From biocongress.org:

[Bioregionalism] is taking the time to learn the possibilities of place. It is a mindfulness of local environment, history, and community aspirations that leads to a sustainable future. It relies on safe and renewable sources of food and energy. It ensures employment by supplying a rich diversity of services within the community, by recycling our resources, and by exchanging prudent surpluses with other regions. Bioregionalism is working to satisfy basic needs locally, such as education, health care and self-governance.

Essentially, bioregionalism boils down to getting more out of what you have, instead of importing what you don’t. Many new organizations and communities are working in this way, with an eye toward resource (and human-resource) management.

Shared meals in the common center, prepared and paid for by attendees

The Congress started in 1984, at which age your humble author was just learning to sing to trees. Since then, it’s continued to grow into a vibrant semiannual gathering of people from throughout the Americas who are actively experimenting with new forms of community and environmental awareness.

For example:

• a group called Ecobarrios who are working with residents in Mexico City’s housing developments to institute sustainable practices, composting and gardening (more on Ecobarrios);
• a housewife from Nashville who just got involved in nonprofits and wants to find out what the challenges are from a marketing perspective;
• a self-described eco-punk from LA who organizes traveling shows to teach underprivileged communities around the world about sustainability;
• several members of intentional communities from North to South America, here to discuss what works, what doesn’t, and where they are headed.

There is a fair share of outré hippie yahooism here as well. Tie-dye, massage, singing with the earth, singing Woody Guthrie songs: it all happened. But that hippie veneer was only skin-deep: beneath the surface, every person here is honestly, fully dedicated to working for change.

These guys talked animatedly for a long, long time.

Hippie Soup to Nuts

Each morning, the entire group met to discuss the day’s topics. Nothing was predetermined; it all had to be hashed out by discussion and vote. Laborious, yes—but it meant that everyone present had a voice.

These folks have their system down TIGHT. I’ve never seen anything like it. They conducted a huge meeting, circle-style, in a format where everybody got a chance to talk, with minimal interruption, almost no off-topic ranting, and not a single insult. You try that sometime with a group of 100 people.

That was my first sign that the people here were not just trying to share, give and change, but making it happen.

Proposed lecture topics for a single afternoon

The next sign was the depth, breadth and complexity of the discussion topics. People here were not speaking in generalities, but addressing topics that had direct effects on their work.

One woman wanted to discuss GMO seeds, and how we can keep them out of gardens. A small group proposed a new community and asked for potential members. A man offered dowsing lessons. A Venezuelan woman offered to share stories from the revolution. A short film on Cuba’s survival without petroleum drew a crowd.

Throughout the day, people gathered in various groups and addressed various questions and topics. The level of intellect was high, and the work accomplished was impressive.

In the evening, there was food, music and dancing.

I could only stay one day at the Bioregional Congress, but I left completely inspired. I fully intend to take part in future Congresses: as the environmental movement ramps up, these are the people who are leading the way to the future. I have faith they’ll get us there.

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Intern housing at The Farm

Way out in the Tennessee hills lies a 1750-acre establishment that has been quietly affecting change for almost four decades.

The Farm, an intentional community, was formed in 1971 by Stephen Gaskin and a group of hippies who were tired of the status quo. Like so many other groups at the time, they chose a new path, dropping out of society and moving to a plot of land outside Summertown where they could start fresh. Like other groups, they were dedicated to peace and love and new age spirituality.

Unlike many other groups, The Farm survived.

39 years later, it’s not much of a farm. In fact, almost no farming goes on. It feels more like a small town with its own roads, store, school, town hall and university. The long-term population is around 150 people, with plenty of visitors who come and go. This is a huge drop from the peak population of 1500.

People used to drop their lives and come live on The Farm, but it doesn’t work that way anymore: now, they come for education and training, then take their knowledge back home.

One of The Farm’s biggest draws is its school of midwifery. Ina May Gaskin is the author of Spiritual Midwifery, a seminal book that reinvented childbirth practices in the 1980s. Ina May is now considered “the mother of authentic midwifery,” and continues to practice, teach and write. Together, the five Farm midwives have birthed over 3,000 babies in 38 years.

But that success couldn’t shield The Farm from the harsh realities of survival in America. By the mid-1980s, the group was deep in debt and, to save themselves, had to abandon some of their more radical practices. From a loose commune, they became an intentional community: a group of like-minded individuals who are responsible for their own wellbeing, while still sharing the most important resources.

Residents own the land in common and share property taxes, roads and water costs. Apart from that, they’re on their own to build their homes, create their lives, and figure out how to survive.

As a part of the community’s evolution, Farm residents began taking on individual projects that were supported by community money and chosen by a vote from all members. This led to the founding of Gaia University, Plenty International, Kids to the Country and other endeavors. The Farm had become, rather than a unidirectional commune, a diverse community united by a desire to improve the world.

From what I could tell, the key to The Farm’s success is that it has adapted over time. From a fever dream of hippie farmland to a grown-up, idyllic town, this group has clearly dedicated their lives to finding the answer to that age-old question: how can we all live together in peace, without going broke?

Not to wax overly poetic, but that’s really what it’s all about. Residents of The Farm appear to have figured out that their work here can have wider effects: they are a testing ground for a new type of community that most people only dream of.

That’s why The Farm was chosen as the host of the Bioregional Congress in 2009. And that’s how I came to visit Summertown, Tennessee.

Hilarious: a TVP silo.

Next up: uh, what’s a bioregional congress?

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I like to move around.

Throughout this journey, I’d always been happy to move on to the next spot—but leaving Asheville hurt just a little. Still, there were adventures ahead. No time to stop, not now.

I took the bus to another bus, to another bus, to a hotel in Nashville, Tennessee. The road wound through the Blue Ridge Mountains, and was lined with new sights: little towns that seemed to be no more than bus stops… soda-sipping teenagers in camouflage, heading off to war… endless ridges fading from green to emerald to blue to purple to grey, forever into the distance… and here and there, little bursts of red on the leafy hillsides, signaling the onset of autumn.

I’d hoped to be in North Carolina to see the leaves turn, but with red leaves come cold nights—and after New Mexico’s horizontal snow and Colorado’s ice rain, I didn’t want to get stuck in the cold again.

Hey, it’s another Elvis statue!
photo by SeeMidTN.com

Santa and Elvis on the Roof
photo by robot_zombie_monkey

And so I went to sunny Nashville, where Kevin and Nicole joined me.

We walked Nashville’s strip that night, trying to get excited about Music City USA, but mostly nonplussed by the tourists and the beer-drinking party hoo-ha. We had better reasons to be here: we were in Nashville to visit a friend we hadn’t seen in a while.

Several laughs, a few tears and one bad movie later, I was ready to hop another bus. Nashville had been a renewal, and I was heading toward something exciting.

The next bus was piloted by a driver with Elvis glasses and a pompadour, who had the thickest hills accent you ever heard. He grinned ear to ear while asking me ten questions about where I was from and where I was going. He seemed to know most of the passengers by name. Three of my fellow passengers were Amish: a quiet family in black and purple.

Later we pulled off the two-lane highway and waited for nearly an hour next to a hospital. The driver explained: there was another Amish family in there, the girl had come down with bronchitis, we were waiting for them to be discharged. Nobody on the bus seemed to mind waiting. We all sat silently in the green heat.

Eventually our passengers arrived, and the bus motored on through lush woods, a sunny winding highway into the southeast corner of Tennessee. Traffic got scarcer as we drove, until finally we pulled off at the Summertown bus stop.

  

  

I had called ahead to have someone meet me here, but the bus was now an hour behind schedule. Nobody was here. The town was little more than a scattering of shops, most of them Amish souvenir stores. The six Amish people had all gotten off the bus with me, and were now riding away in black buggies. The Elvis driver winked a goodbye out the window as he guided the bus back onto the highway.

The bus stop was closed. I was out of food and water, and it was late afternoon. My cell phone didn’t work, and there was no Internet reception; how would I get where I was going?

But I hardly had time to worry before the lone bus-stop employee reappeared from someplace. Country manners kicked in immediately: in short order I was being given a tour of the establishment while phone calls were made on my behalf.

And thank goodness: I hadn’t missed my ride, because they’d forgotten to come pick me up. If I hadn’t called, I’d have spent the night at the bus stop. But they were on their way now, for sure this time. I sat down out front to wait.

Soon enough, a muddy Subaru stopped out front. Two barefoot and bedraggled dudes stepped out, all hair and patchouli. I hopped in the Subaru and we toiled up the hill, a few miles outside of Summertown where we came to:

And I’ll tell you all about that very soon.

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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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The word “Asheville” followed me across America. I first heard it uttered while picking dandelions in Paonia; after that, I heard it spoken of in nearly every city I visited. “Asheville,” people would say. “You gotta go to Asheville.”

So I went. They were right.

How to describe it? Well, it’s like taking all the best parts of Nevada City, Portland and Berkeley, and sticking the whole thing in the middle of beautiful mountains with gorgeous weather.

I almost feel like I shouldn’t tell you about it, because it’s a secret that wants to be kept. Locals and tourists alike recognize the yuppie wolf at Asheville’s door: moneyed do-gooders in Priuses and SUVs, ready to move in and pour their Starbucks all over this fiercely independent town.

But to be honest, I don’t see how a bunch of yuppies could possibly change a town this strong in spirit.

And anyway, rich folks discovered Asheville hundreds of years ago.

photo by Exothermic

This used to be Cherokee land, but the natives were unceremoniously exterminated and Asheville slowly grew into a hillbilly township. After the Civil War, one George Washington Vanderbilt decided to construct a “little mountain escape” just outside of town: that property became the Biltmore Estate (largest house in America).

Funny thing about the Biltmore Estate, however: unlike many gilded mansions, this one was intended to be self-supporting. The United States’ first forestry school was founded here; there were farms, gardens, a dairy, and scientific programs for managing all sorts of resources.

That’s one trend that held true throughout my visit to Asheville: people here seem to be united by a true love for the land, and an active interest in understanding and managing it.

That may be due to the fact that there are mountains everywhere you look. Beautiful, rolling blue hills encircle the city, omnipresent in the background, patient, serene and enticing. It would be hard to live here and not be enchanted by the landscape—and certainly, the town attracts a very specific type of person for just that reason.

In the middle of town, there’s an underpass mural that is far and away the best I’ve ever seen. Created by the Asheville Mural Project, it features portraits of locals, chosen by nomination. There’s a woman spinning wool; a man with a shovel; a cyclist; a city planner; a gardener; musicians; dancers; and a snake-haired tattoo artist. The message is clear: this town loves the alternative, the artistic, and the sustainable.

  

  

It rained the first two days I was in Asheville, and when the sun re-emerged, so did the entire town. The streets were crawling with buskers: young dudes in old-timey clothes playing old-timey music. Sort of like a bumpkin Nashville… and in every corner without live music, there was a piece of weird art. The place was bursting with creativity, and the Carolina sun graced it all with glorious color.

Over the next couple of days, I’ll tell you about some of the specifics of my time in Asheville. If you can’t wait, check out my photos.

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It was all there, and more: North Carolina, as I experienced it, was a study in contrast.

I hopped off the train in Durham, which is right smack in the middle of North Carolina and home to Duke University. Durham’s neighbor cities, Raleigh and Chapel Hill, are each within a few miles; locals call it “the Triangle,” and commute frequently between towns.

That’s where the area’s main problem lies: commuting. These towns, built on tobacco and once connected by fields, weren’t designed for the 21st century. But as they grew in concert, more and more roads were built: now, the Triangle is almost impossible to navigate without an automobile. Vast open spaces are bordered by wide roads. No sidewalks, few central areas… just a lot of cars.

It took me about five minutes to realize that Durham was a car town—and 45 more to procure a carton of milk and a little food for the night. To find eats, I had to hike down to the strip mall; cross a massive, empty parking lot; and wander through a ridiculously huge outlet store (which, luckily, was open late and had a grocery section).

Despite the hassle, I was undeniably happy. As I left my hotel, it started raining: a warm, fragrant rain that I’d rarely experienced out West. By the time I got to that gigantic parking lot, it was transformed: a river flowed across the sealed blacktop, lit orange by the streetlights, steaming gently. Frogs croaked, and the air was heavy with the odor of flowers and grass. It was beautiful, and it was new. I was in the South!

Kirsten and CJ

I’d stopped in Durham to visit Kirsten Hausman, who (aside from being Larry’s daughter and therefore a step-cousin of some sort) is an environmental crusader in her own right. She’s a Director at Green Plus, a program of the Institute for Sustainable Development. Their mission: to set standards for sustainability in business, and help people meet them.

One of the issues the Institute for Sustainable Development cares about is the same one that confronted me: getting around the Triangle without a car.

Kirsten told me that the area is at a crossroads both literally and figuratively. People are moving around more, and populations are growing; more and more locals commute from one town to another. But the infrastructure to support all those cars hasn’t been completed.

Without careful planning, this area could become just another mass of strip malls—or, it can be guided successfully into a more sustainable future. Right now, that’s all up to the civic planners.

For now, we poor folks and carless freaks have to ride the bus.

Lucky for me, there was a bus stop next to the Target. When I got there, a woman loaded down with grocery bags was standing near the door. I asked her if she was getting on the bus.

“No,” she said, “that bus costs two dollars and I only got a dollar. I’m waiting for the next one in a half hour.”

I, carrying exact change for my own bus ticket, shrugged and climbed aboard. But the driver stopped me.

“She gettin’ on?”

“I don’t think so,” I told him. I explained what she’d said.

As I sat down, the bus driver was unbuckling his seat belt; I watched through the window as he got off the bus and convinced that woman to come ride the bus for free. He even carried her bag for her.

That’s what it comes down to, in this part of the world: you might be poor, you might be carless, but you won’t be stranded. Not if someone is around to help.

I was to encounter this attitude more and more frequently as I moved through the South, but here it really shocked me. That just wouldn’t happen in my beloved San Francisco, where people are more in the habit of stepping over others than stopping to help. It gave me something to think about.

And I had plenty of time to think, riding the bus all over Creation.

Ultimately, the Triangle wasn’t for me. I had two delicious meals with Kirsten and the family, then hopped a bus to Asheville. See you there next.

© jessicareeder for Uprooted, an eco/travel blog, 2010. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: community, design, Durham, ecotravel, green building, green living, green plus, North Carolina, sustainable, transportation, travel, weather

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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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From Virginia, I turned left, heading southward at last. And right off the bat, things changed.

It all started at the train station, where I sat and waited for an hour past departure time before boarding. And that was just the beginning.

Now, I’ve ridden Amtrak all over the West, and it’s always been my favorite way to travel. It’s scenic, comfortable, affordable and eco-friendly: who, I always wondered, wouldn’t want to ride the train?

As I boarded in Virginia, I started to understand: Not all trains are the same. In this part of the country, you don’t take Amtrak if you can avoid it.

Out West, there were big seats and big windows, and the cars were rarely full. You could walk around the train, hang out in the sightseeing car where happy families sat in cushy chairs admiring the view.

Here, the windows were tiny; the dining car was run down and half filled with luggage; and the tables were inhabited by a passel of loudly un-sober people playing cards.

It was a warm, humid day outside. The train car, however, was so cold that everybody was wrapped up in blankets, shivering.

In the back corner of the car, the overactive air conditioner was dripping freezing water onto one of the seats. A little old lady clucked and shook her head. “It ain’t sposed to be like that.”

   

Freezing water drips from the ceiling onto a seat, right next to a power outlet—
but don’t worry, the outlet doesn’t work.

The people were the saving grace of this train ride—which, as I later realized, was my first hint at the fast-approaching reality of the American South.

For, even despite the weird odors and discomfort in the overcrowded, dingy, freezing-cold train car, people were smiling, and talking. Old women and young college students had amiable conversations, compared backgrounds and family stories. People shared blankets and sweaters, and whenever the train stopped we all rolled our eyes and chuckled at our dumb luck.

We were all in it together, and we knew the train would get us there, and for a couple of hours we suffered through it in good company. After all, it could be worse.

But it could be better. I missed the West.

© jessicareeder for Uprooted, an eco/travel blog, 2010. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: adventure, amtrak, community, featured posts, North Carolina, tourism, train, travel

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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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