GOOD NEWS FOR THE AMAZON?



Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva gives two thumbs up to the announcement that the state oil company Petrobras has discovered a "monster" offshore oil field about 200 miles from Rio de Janeiro.

This may be very good news for the Amazon forest where there has been recent talk of new prospecting or building a pipeline from Venezuela to carry oil and gas to Brazil's fast developing and energy hungry south. Now industrial Brazil may be able to satisfy its needs (and have plenty left for export) from a nearby source.

And here is the rest of it.

AMAZÔNIA: WHAT WILL BE THE FUTURE?



The above photo from NASA shows the concentrations of carbon monoxide (grey areas) hovering over Amazônia during September 2007. Carbon monoxide indicates smoke, fire, greenhouse gas pollution and, of course, deforestation. Burning and cutting the tropical rainforests now contributes more than 20% of global greenhouse gas pollution.

It is now believed that the eastern half of the Amazon forest, located in Brazil, may be seriously at risk. "It's not out of the question to think that half of the basin will be either cleared or severely impoverished just 20 years from now," stated Dr. Daniel Nepstad, head of the Woods Hole Research Center's Amazon program. "The nightmare scenario is one where we have a 2005-like year that extended for a couple years, coupled with a high deforestation where we get huge areas of burning, which would produce smoke that would further reduce rainfall, worsening the cycle. A situation like this is very possible." Read more at Mongabay.

The future Amazon will be the result of choices made by Brazil and the rest of the world in coming years. John Terborgh, writing in the current NY Review of Books tells us how it looks from the highest levels in Brazil:

What is the attitude of the Brazilian government toward a possible climatic calamity in the Amazon? On being shown the predictions of some climate models, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva reputedly posed two alternatives. If the rest of the world is so concerned about the future of the Amazon, then let the rich countries pay us not to cut it down. Otherwise, if the forest is going to succumb to drought and fire, then we ought to cut it down first so that we can benefit from the resources before they are lost to the ravages of nature.

Not everyone will be happy with these alternatives, but Lula's pronouncements may not be that far off the mark. The Amazon is being logged at a prodigious rate and with further improvements in transportation envisioned under the Avança Brasil program, logging, and with it the risk of fire, is bound to spread over much of the basin. Slowing or stopping the logging would require a political will that simply doesn't exist in a country obsessed with maximizing development.

Which of Lula's alternatives will the future bring, a green Amazon supported by an international community united against the specter of radical climate change, or a brown Amazon, parched by deforestation and scorched by fire? In my view, the prospects of the green alternative will be determined by the treaty that will succeed Kyoto. At Kyoto, it was decided not to include forests in a system by which carbon emissions are controlled through "cap-and-trade"—i.e., by allowing countries that cut back on emissions to receive tradable credits for doing so. Many now feel that the omission was a mistake because forests store such huge stocks of carbon. Yet how forests will be brought into a second-generation treaty is anyone's guess. Short of significant international intervention through financial incentives or other mechanisms, the business-as-usual scenario will certainly prevail.

Kyoto is about to be reformulated. The choice over the future of Amazônia is likely to come soon. There's been some foolish talk about who owns the Amazon forest. Without doubt, it is owned by Brazil and its neighbors. But the financial choice over its future is clearly owned by all of us.

US Ethanol Subsidies Help Fuel Range Wars and Fires in the Amazon


On Monday (11-05-07) US National Public Radio ran a feature segment on "All Things Considered" about the record 2007 fire
season in the Amazon and the situation in Mato Grosso. The photo at the left shows a fire that was intentionally set on neighboring property in the struggle over land titles but spread and eventually burned 90% of John Carter's 22,000 acre ranch.
(photo credit: npr)
Click to hear John tell the story.

This year's fire season dominated the US news for many days as a "national disaster" was declared in southern California because Santa Ana winds whipped about 25 fires into a local frenzy. But compared to the Amazon it would seem no more than a few embers. Mongabay reported some astonishing fire statistics -- depending on which satellite data set is used, this season there were between 50,729 and 72,329 Amazon fires, close to or more than the all-time record.

Here is a NASA satellite view of the fires burning in the states of Mato Grosso, Para and Amazônas on September 29, 2007. The most intense burning is located in areas that had been opened by roads, and now the fires were spreading across agricultural lands and protected reserves as well. Road-building comes first, then a mix of development and protection but fire respects neither.



Unfortunately, these data seem to end speculation that the reductions of fire and deforestation seen in Brazil across the last 2-3 years were the results of aggressive new government initiatives of regulation, monitoring and enforcement. Instead, it appears that variations in the amount fire and deforestation are more closely correlated with fluctuations in global commodity prices, which now are recovering from a recent slump.

While many factors influence the rate of fire and deforestation, the main driving force seems to be the planting of soybeans. The Mongabay report offered the views of two leading scientists:


Dr. Philip M. Fearnside, one of the most widely cited experts on the Amazon, says that the rise of soy in the region has provided support for infrastructure projects which, in turn, have fueled forest destruction.

"Soybean farms cause some forest clearing directly. But they have a much greater impact on deforestation by consuming cleared land, savanna, and transitional forests, thereby pushing ranchers and slash-and-burn farmers ever deeper into the forest frontier," he explained after co-authoring a 2004 paper in Science on the impact of soy. "Soybean farming also provides a key economic and political impetus for new highways and infrastructure projects, which accelerate deforestation by other actors."

"What’s most striking is that fires in 2007 have increased dramatically in the main soy-production states in the Brazilian Amazon—Mato Grosso, Para, Maranhao, and Tocantins—but have dropped or remain stable in other Amazonian states," said Dr. William Laurance, a senior researcher at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) in Panama and another noted Amazon scientist. "Clearly, soy farming is becoming a major driver of land-use change in the Amazon. The international consumers of Brazilian soy need to understand its key role in driving Amazon deforestation" Rhett A. Butler, 2007 Amazon Fires Among the Worst Ever, October 22, 2007.

And what has caused soybean prices to recover in the global market? Many factors, but chief among them are the new US ethanol agricultural subsidies that have been been causing midwestern farmers to shift from beans to corn. The new "greening of fuel" in the US -- supposedly to fight global warming -- is a big force fueling the fires in the Amazon. It is now thought that, tropical deforestation accounts for more than 20% of the greenhouse gas emissions worldwide, which is more than the amount contributed by the entire transportation sector.

It's a small world where everything is connected to everything. There simply is no people, nor place, nor process that does not bump up against everything else.

SOY IN THE AMAZON


Photo by Pat Joseph

Pat Joseph, writing in the special South American edition of the Virginia Quarterly Review, has given us one of the most thorough, honest and challenging reports on the dynamics of deforestation in the Cerrado and Amazon that I have encountered. I'm going to draw heavily from it in this post. I really urge you to read it in full as there's no way a few excerpts can do it justice.

Pat's report is from Mato Grosso State which in recent years has been the scene of massive burning, deforestation and a center stage for global environmental concern.

He traveled the area with an "americano-brasilieiro" agricultural consultant who wrote him an email saying:

Dear Pat: I am a Brazil/Mato Grosso fanatic. I love the pioneer spirit, the wide-open spaces, and positive attitude among the dynamic farmers in the area. Lucas do Rio Verde, Mato Grosso, is the Garden of Eden in my opinion. My friends there are a pioneer success story. ... in the middle of “soybean ground zero” on the whole planet.


Photos and italicized text above and below from Virginia Quarterly Review

I know this success story. I was born in Chicago. Later, I lived for 14 years among the corn and soybean fields of central Illinois. Many of my friends were the children of the similarly enterprising pioneer families that had drained the wetlands and wiped out the native prairie. They were hard-working, ambitious, and no-nonsense Midwesterner farmers and also very friendly, generous and justifiably proud folks, mostly of German heritage. Just like in Mato Grosso, except for the fact that the average farm size in Illinois was about 600 acres, whereas here it can run 20,000 acres (and upwards) and the new success stories can put Horatio Alger to shame.

I didn't remain in Illinois, I found that I just wasn't a flatlander by nature. In 1982 I moved from the corn and bean fields to the forests and mountains of Oregon seeking the romance of wild places and wilderness solitude. I was part monk, part adventurer, part burned-out political activist and part hippie dropout. Oregon seemed like the perfect spot. I even found a place to live in the Illinois Valley, the river of which begins at a spring flowing from a mountain called Chicago Peak. But, as a midwesterner, I had no idea of the massive deforestation taking place in National Forests. When I saw it, I was shocked. My new home, where I had come to get away from it all, quickly thrust me back into politics as a tree-hugging hermit activist trying to save the remaining 10% of the US ancient forests.

Twenty-five years later, I am now in Brazil, as sort of a spiritual pilgrim following the Queen of the Forest by exploring the path of Santo Daime. And that leads me to places like Acre State where I am finding the spirit of America in Amazônia and facing the classic dilemma confronting a visitor from a rich and consuming society to a new world of economic development and rising expectations. One can not look at this most incredible forest on earth, witness the massive deforestation and not wonder, "whose forest is this anyway, does it not also belong to the world?"

That very same question confronted Pat Joseph in Mato Grosso (two states away from Acre but also in what is called the Amazon "arc of deforestation"). Here's his description of the historical context and the confrontation he faced on the ground:

Settlement of the Brazilian Amazon was sparked by the paranoia of the military government. The generals who ran the country for two decades worried that their unsettled borders and vast empty interior would tempt foreign encroachment on Brazilian soil. Occupar para não entregar. That was the slogan. One of many. “Occupy so as not to surrender.” Another was, “Land without men for men without land.” The generals built roads to encourage migration, then did little to manage how the process unfolded. ...

Even today, an undercurrent of paranoia runs through Brazilian society when it comes to the Amazon, their sense of threatened sovereignty stoked in part by the ill-considered comments of well-meaning politicians such as Al Gore, who once insisted that, “Contrary to what Brazilians think, the Amazon is not their property. It belongs to all of us.” One need only imagine how Americans would feel if foreign leaders made similar pronouncements about, say, Alaska. Not long before I arrived in Brazil, David Miliband, the British environment secretary, was touting a proposal—one enthusiastically supported by Tony Blair—to set up an international trust that would effectively buy a vast portion of the Amazon and manage it as a preserve. The Brazilian response to the idea was swift and unequivocal. President da Silva issued a resounding demurral. “The Amazon,” he said flatly, “is not for sale.”

On a long bus ride across the Cerrado, I sat next to a schoolteacher on vacation and a pastor who was returning to his flock. ... While reclined in his seat, the young pastor ... turned his head toward me and said, “Tell me, why do Americans worry so much about our forest when they cut theirs down in the name of progress?”

In one form or another, I’d had the question put to me many times in Brazil. ... the pastor had a point. What difference did it make that our frontier had closed a century ago? All that meant was that our ancestors did the dirty work for us. And dirty work it was. In conquering the continent, North American settlers had exercised every kind of depravity. We dammed and straightened and diverted our rivers and riprapped their banks. We overgrazed our prairies and drained our wetlands. We cut down our old-growth forests and introduced alien species that grew like weeds in their stead. We hunted down and poisoned predators because they ate our livestock and “our” game. We killed off most of the bison and decimated the salmon. Even now, we’re draining our aquifers, blowing the tops off mountains to get at the coal seams, sinking wells in the gas fields of the West as fast as we can. And how did it all look from Brazil? The United States exploited its resources with a vengeance, and it was rich, the most powerful country in the world. To Brazilians, our high-minded concerns about the rainforest were the rankest sort of hypocrisy—or worse, a conspiracy to keep Brazil from developing into a major economic force in the hemisphere.

Near the end of my trip, Kory and I spent a morning in Sinop being lectured to by the president of the rural syndicate (a coalition of local farmers and loggers). Antonio Galvan is an irascible man with steely eyes, the build of a wrestling coach, and a voice like a broken horn. He was clearly annoyed by the presence in his office of two meddlesome gringos, and, after one question, set off on a tirade that lasted the better part of an hour. His rant was peppered with the words absurd and ridiculous, each point punctuated by a forearm pounding the desk. If you don’t want me to farm, then pay me, Galvan cried. Bam. No one else in the world produces and preserves at the same time! We leave 80 percent of the Amazon untouched! We leave the forest along the rivers standing! Bam. Who else does this? Don’t tell me about how many football fields of Amazon are disappearing every minute. It’s absurd! Bam. Ridiculous!

If you think that Pat Joseph might be exaggerating the tensions facing an outside reporter or (worst) an environmentalist in Mato Grosso, just watch this video from Greenpeace:



What can I say about this? Yes, I (and many friends) have "been there, done that." We sat in front of the bulldozers, climbed the trees, faced the angry locals, made it all the way to the national and international media, and guess what? The big trees are still being cut in Oregon. I came to Brazil in hopes of finding a better way, one that might go beyond the first step of raising awareness (thank God for Greenpeace), to find a path along which true preservation and local sustainability might be achieved. So here in Brazil, I am doing something that I wasn't very good at back in Oregon -- I am listening to the local people.

I read the words of the local leader Antonio Galvan:

If you don’t want me to farm, then pay me.

We leave 80 percent of the Amazon untouched!

No one else in the world produces and preserves at the same time!

I believe that he is asking the right questions:

Who will pay the developing world to avoid the the easy but mistaken path that was followed by the developed world?

Brazilian law requires that 80% of the forest be preserved. But so what, when much of the present logging is done illegally? What will give local people an incentive to follow the rules and protect the forest?

It's true that no one protects and produces at the same time -- at least that's the way it has been. But there is a new world of global warming that demands that we do both and a dream of restoration and renewal that promises that we can.

These, indeed, are the three questions that must be answered. I will be discussing them in coming posts. Stay tuned, and please read Pat's full story Soy in the Amazon.

PAKISTAN UPDATE


In light of the state of emergency declared in Pakistan on November 3, 2007, Global Voices Online has set up a Special Coverage Page where they will be aggregating their own coverage of the events plus regular updates from selected English-language blogs and other relevant information.

SOUTH AMERICA IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY



The Virginia Quartery Review has produced a GREAT special edition on South America. Editor Daniel Alarcón says, "After eighteen months of work, we are extraordinarily proud of this project and delighted finally to be able to share it with you. We hope that you will be as challenged and enthralled in reading this issue as we were in editing it."

"Enthralled" may be too weak a word. You really should check it out. I found the article "Soy in the Amazon" by Pat Roberts to be an absolute "must read."

WORDS WITHOUT BORDERS

What a great title! Nope, I didn't create it. It's the name of a web site that provides quality english translations of contemporary literature from around the world.

My experience of living here in Brazil has taught me how incredibly uninformed I have been, as an Americano, about the world views and events happening from beyond US borders. That's one reason that I got involved in assisting Jose Murilo with his weekly roundup of what the bloggers are talking about in Brazil and the Portuguese-speaking world and, in the process, I got informed about the incredible coverage of citizen journalism being provided by Global Voices Online.

For example, Neha Viswanathan was able to get out a single post before martial law was declared in Pakistan, giving lots of links to breaking news. If you want regular ground-zero updates on the situation in Pakistan, Awab Alvi's blog, being run by Ange, currently can be found here.

Santo Daime Information in English



There's new web site from Europe providing lots of information about Santo Daime in English -- lots of music and photos too. It's REALLY well done. Big thanks to the creators.

Check it out.

Dot Earth

I've been following Andrew Revkin's new blog at the NY Times.



It's quite wonderful.

Somehow, I feel a special connection with him -- perhaps because of his 1990 book The Burning Season which told the story of Chico Mendes and the struggle against the destruction of the Amazon forest in Xapuri, Acre State. This is quite close to my spiritual heart home with the family of Luiz Mendes at Vila Fortaleza in neighboring Caipixaba.

At Andrew's blog there are also a great set of earth links.

Check it out.

Heart Song for a Hermit


Once upon a time, not terribly long ago, I spent my summers with the "Great Standing Ones.":





At that time I used to sit on a mountain in Oregon during the summer and this little bird used to sing to me



Hermit Thrush Photo by Velo Steve

Here is the story:





"Bald Mountain Vigil" originally appeared as two earlier articles in Siskiyou Country, Vols. 8 & 15 (1984 and 1985). Later, it was excerpted and edited for publication in The Soul Unearthed, edited by Cass Adams (Tarcher/Putnam, 1996).

BALD MOUNTAIN VIGIL

For days we had been making preparations for my second summer on the mountain. A series of sweat lodge ceremonies had been conducted to purify our minds and bodies. The Takilma Peace Circle had dedicated Bald Mountain as a special sanctuary to pray for world peace. A group of friends had formed a support group to deliver food to the trailhead throughout the summer. Everything was ready: we were anxious to go, but the storm continued.

Waiting is difficult-it makes me think too much. I thought about the so-called "Wilderness Bill" which had just released over two million acres of Oregon’s roadless areas to the timber industry. I thought about the threat now posed to the great old-growth forest that still flourishes above Silver and Indigo creeks. I thought about the senseless greed and destructiveness of today’s world. Nearly half of all the forests on earth have been cut down since 1950.

Like the rain, my wondering continued. What sense does it make to ask a society that discards its old people to save its old trees? What sense does it make to ask a society that regularly abuses its children to preserve the forest for our great, great grandchildren? What sense does it make to ask a government, which is continually preparing for war, to maintain the peacefulness of the natural world? And what was I doing hiking up to Bald Mountain with people from distant lands, to maintain a forest sanctuary in the middle of nowhere?

Storytelling was a better way to wait. So I shared the tale of how my vigil had begun in the first place. Over a year ago, in May of 1983, I had been arrested in the first activist blockades of logging roads in our National Forests. Our blockade came in the middle of a series of six actions. On that day eight of us sat in front of a bulldozer. Eventually forty-four people got arrested. The court made our probation conditional on not reentering National Forest land for one year. Less than a week later I was back in the Kalmiopsis declaring, "My purpose is peaceful and religious. I shall remain to bear witness to the present attack upon the forest and pray for its safety."

My camp was near the top of the mountain, next to a crystal-clear spring that bubbled out from under a rock. The young ferns, miner’s lettuce, and violets growing around it provided a ready supply of fresh salad greens. A great Douglas fir, ten feet in diameter, created a thick carpet of needles, and its branches shielded my tent from wind and rain.

Within a few days of my arrival I began to sense a growing trust among my new neighbors. The local squirrels, blue jays and juncos were now content merely to announce my presence rather than scold my every move. Deer began to travel the trail through my camp in daylight. The mouse family, which lived in a nearby stump, scampered across my feet as I sat by the fire at night. One afternoon, as I basked in the warm sun, a hummingbird lighted on my shoulder. It made me feel that I had arrived at some sort of harmony with my relatives in the natural world.

My life on the mountain became magical in many ways. Occasional visits from folks bringing supplies felt like a combination of Christmas and family reunion. This kind of experience was not limited to my friends or "support people." Total strangers, just hiking through found themselves hanging out, camping overnight, or readjusting their plans. Sometimes the reaction was extraordinary, as in the case of an Ashland man who made a special return trip to bring me two weeks’ worth of provisions. Nearly everyone tried to offer some kind of assistance: extra food or reading material or a clean pair of socks. Best of all, for me, was just watching people fall in love with the mountain.

The top of Bald Mountain is like Friar Tuck’s head, a flat, barren area about thirty feet in diameter, with a view of the untouched North Kalmiopsis. It is a holy place: good for seeing the four directions, for touching the four winds, for sleeping under the stars, and for talking to God. The overall ambiance of the mountain is more "old growth forest" than "mountain." Decaying remains of ancestral trees still feed the soil and house creepy-crawlers. Grandmother and grandfather trees, the old living ones, stand proudly as secure anchors on steep, fragile slopes. All around there is a feeling of connection with earth and critters and vibrant growing energy. Wendell Berry, in one of his poems, describes feeling "the earth’s empowering brew rise in root and branch." Yes, it was like that.

My daily routine was simple. Gather wood, prepare meals, keep warm and dry, hike down to watch the illegal construction on the Bald Mountain Road, and explore the forest. Walking was a good time for prayer and I often found myself reciting a traditional Navaho chant --

In beauty I walk.
With beauty before me, I walk.
With beauty behind me, I walk.
With beauty above me, I walk.
With beauty below me, I walk.
With beauty all around me, I walk.

This was not ritual. It was simple appreciation.

One day, as I was returning from a morning of road watching, I found a beautiful Knobcone Pine branch, which seemed to have potential for a walking stick. As I passed through a high meadow about a quarter a mile from my camp, however, I plunged the stick into the ground. I had found my meditation spot.

The view from this south-facing slope overlooked seven mountain ridges, which seemed to drift off into the ocean some fifty miles away. Often the ridges rose through low misty clouds, looking like Oriental paintings. For centuries, Buddhist monks have chosen places like my meditation spot to sit and contemplate the impermanence of worldly things. It was a good place to unburden my mind.

During those early days on the mountain, perhaps as a reaction to aloneness, my mind often got terribly busy. I found myself concocting great dramas, holding arguments with the logging industry or delivering self-righteous lectures to the Josephine County Court. But this wasn’t why I had come to the mountain - my purpose was "peaceful and religious" - and these mental debates were making me feel furious and angry.

I meditated and watched my own thoughts come and go like the clouds. I saw that I had no perfect solutions to offer. As my mind emptied, I remembered the awe with which I had, as a child, watched the clouds; I could see that we are all innocent as we attempt to confront the problems of our modern world. For the future of our planet will not turn on our ability to produce the "right solution" as much as on our fundamental values toward life. As the Native American religions tell us, "The two-leggeds have been given a choice."

After my meditation, I would cross over the ridge and drop into the deep, dense forest on the north slope. While the south side was mountain views and sunlight and thoughts, here it was dark and cool. Dewy ferns and decaying branches commingled on the forest floor in an eternal dance of life and death while huge firs rose to form a protective canopy. I could feel the tremendous surge of Mother Earth as the forest enveloped me like a giant womb.

Sometimes I would talk to the trees. I would tell them that a government had drawn a line along the ridge and declared that the forest on one side of the mountain protected, the other side not . . . I would tell them I was just a little guy who wanted to help, who was foolish enough to think that my being there might matter. I would ask the trees to temper my folly with their wisdom, to guide me toward whatever might help them. Each day, without fail, a particular tree or spot would emerge and grip my consciousness. "Just be here," it would say, "live in harmony with us and you will learn whatever you need to know."

Going down to the road was full of another kind of unavoidable reality. The roar of diesel engines and blasting could be heard throughout the forest and reached up to my camp. Hikers told of hearing road work all the way from Pine Flat, which was 2,500 feet below along the Illinois River, to Polar Spring Camp, six miles beyond on the other side of Bald Mountain. As I walked down the trail the grunts and sighs of machines became louder, and the air filled with anxiety.

I watched from a high vantage point about a mile away. From there I could see the full length of the road up to the clearcuts and barren slopes near its beginning on Flat Top. The places directly on the ridge where the trail and road nearly touched each other seemed especially battle-scarred. Freshly felled trees, oozing stumps, deep wounds in the earth and giant equipment all made me shudder.

One day, while sitting there with a visitor, I said, "Perhaps I’m exaggerating, but that looks like a road bringing a war into a peaceful area." The visitor told me about working in a Forest Service survey crew on Flat Top several years earlier. His supervisor looked out over the Wilderness Area and said, "Those trees are protected now, but someday we will get them."

The Illinois River Trail formed the northern boundary of the protected Kalmiopsis Wilderness and the Forest Service had posted many signs. On the road side of the trail the signs read:

ROAD CLOSED
NO TRESPASSING
BY ORDER OF USFS

On the other side:

WILDERNESS AREA
NO MOTORIZED VEHICLES OR EQUIPMENT
VIOLATIONS PUNISHABLE.

The trail felt like a demilitarized zone between warring armies.
I remembered some lines from the 74th Psalm:

The enemy has damaged everything
within the sanctuary;
Thine adversaries have roared in
the midst of Thy meeting place;
They have set up their own
standards for signs.
It seems as if one had lifted up
his axe in a forest of trees.

My first reaction was anger - I wanted to tear down all the signs. Instead, I carved a sign of my own, and hung it on a tree farther down the trail. It read:

BALD MOUNTAIN SANCTUARY
FOLLOW THE BEAUTY TRAIL
COME IN PEACE

I wanted to stay on Bald Mountain as long as the forest was threatened, but the coming of winter forced me off. I had kept my first Bald Mountain vigil for fifty-six days.

Now, nine months later, I was ready to return for my second summer on the mountain.
The storm broke in the night and Karin (from Germany), Pablo (from Spain) and I left for the trailhead early the next morning.

The first few miles of the trail snake upward along perilously steep cliffs high above the Illinois River. My body soon registered the effects of my long rainy season hibernation. As my muscles screamed, every questionable item I had put into my pack danced in front of my mind and grew in size and weight. To make things worse, the clouds had reformed and we were soon putting on our rain gear. This was not going to be an easy hike. The combined burden of a heavy pack and bad weather left little space for my weighty thoughts of the day before. I was forced to set aside all my "wondering" and concentrate on taking one step at a time. When we reached our campsite, the clouds scattered and sunlight began to play across the forest floor. This last storm of spring had ended. Sore and tired, I cast off my pack and felt somehow younger, as if inner burdens born of the world below had been released.

I was excited to visit familiar spots in the forest and led the group on a whirlwind tour. The forest was full of the dense green lushness of late spring and the air was heady with the smells of new growth. The local blue jays, juncos and pine squirrels chattered at us and I wondered if they remembered me. I felt like an enthusiastic child bringing new friends home.

Last summer I had done much of my praying on my hands and knees, picking up bits of broken glass and rusty nails left years ago when the Forest Service had burned down the old lookout. Before leaving the mountain I had constructed a traditional American Indian Medicine Wheel - a prayer circle with flagpoles marking the four directions, the sky and the earth - and the mountaintop was reasonably clean. Now the flagpoles were bent over and a whole new layer of glass and debris had been uncovered by nine months of fierce winds, rain and snow.

Karin, Pablo and I committed ourselves to a regular routine of mountaintop clean-up. Restoring the Medicine Wheel for the approaching Summer Solstice became our most important task. The activity evolved into a meditation - we were not only cleaning up the mountain, but clearing away the thoughts and emotional debris that had been cluttering up our minds. Sometimes one of us would consider a particular piece of glass or rusty nail as a special treasure, seriously discussing its peculiar properties until there was nothing left to do but throw it away. In the humor of the situation, we also faced many of the meanings and absurdities within our own lives.

There were times during those mountaintop clean-up sessions when we’d laugh hard enough to send tears rolling down our cheeks. Then, cleansed with laughter, we’d sit quietly listening to the song of the Hermit Thrush - who we named "Sunsinger"- and watch the sun sink slowly into the ocean beyond the distant ridgeline. Light-hearted and giddy, we’d stumble down the trail toward hot chocolate and stories around the campfire before sleep.

It was over a week until the first group of hikers came through, a 4-H Club outing from Brookings. The leaders of the group, two middle-aged women tired from the long hike up the mountain, looked at our neatly stacked kindling and asked, "Are you planning to stay here all summer?" They were obviously disappointed that their hoped for camping spot was occupied. I thought about the Forest Service fourteen-day camping limitation and responded evasively, "We’ll stay as long as we are supposed to."

Fortunately, there was another campsite nearby with a good source of water and excellent forage for their pack animals. I told them about our mountaintop clean-up project and invited them to join us. About an hour later, three boys - Clint, Adam and Jay - came running up the trail. They turned trash gathering into a competitive game and soon several more buckets of glass were dumped into burlap sacks.

At sunset, Pablo, Karin and I sat quietly in the prayer circle, but the boys couldn’t stop laughing. Jay and Adam would try to hold back, as if in church, but Clint’s infectious giggle would soon get them started again. Finally I said, "Go ahead and laugh. That happens to us all the time," and we joined together in a circle hug of laughter. In that moment, the sound of laughing children seemed like the finest prayer. Listening, I imagined a future full of old trees and happy children and knew then, with a deep certainty, why I was maintaining a wilderness sanctuary on top of Bald Mountain.

The next morning Clint organized another clean-up party at sunrise. We were just rolling out of our sleeping bags when the boys came down from the mountaintop. Clint looked at me with a wink and said, "We left a present for you up there." They had filled seven sacks, over three hundred and fifty pounds of glass and nails. The clean-up task had been completed and I only wished for some way to get it all off the mountain.

A few days later the Forest Service trail maintenance supervisor, Harvey Timeus, visited our camp. I offered him some fresh-brewed coffee. When he asked how long we were planning to stay, I responded, matter-of-factly, "All summer, if the food keeps coming." He frowned, mentioned the fourteen-day rule, and said he would have to do something if there were complaints. I wondered if the leaders of the 4-H Club outing had already produced some. Our conversation reached an impasse. After a long silence, Harvey said, "By the way, we’ll pay our trail maintenance crew to pack out all that trash you picked up. If you went to all that trouble, the least we can do is get it out of here." My wish had been granted.

The next day the Forest Service again visited us, this time by District Ranger Bill Butler. We talked about the wilderness values of the area and some of the hard decisions that lay ahead. I waited for him to raise the issue of the fourteen-day rule but, instead, he asked if I would like to do some volunteer work and mentioned brushing out an old trail. I said, "As long as the work doesn’t carry me too far from the mountaintop." He said, "Fine, I’ll send in some tools."

A week later Harvey returned with tools and an "Agreement for Voluntary Services." The agreement called for me to maintain the Bald Mountain Lookout Loop Trail. "Wow, that sort of makes me the caretaker of the Bald Mountain Sanctuary, doesn’t it?" I said. He smiled and his son, who had come along for the hike, gave me a wink. Harvey’s son was Clint, the boy from the 4-H Club outing.

By Summer Solstice, the Medicine Wheel had been fully restored. Brightly colored flags waved in the strong breeze and fresh strings of tobacco ties decorated the flagpoles. On Solstice we spent twenty-four hours within the prayer circle, fasting and remaining in silence. The night before, we had gone to sleep blanketed by wet clouds that hovered about the mountaintop. At dawn a patch of blue sky opened directly above us. All day we watched as the sun burned off the moisture, and mountain ridges rose out of the low-lying fog and the clear sky spread away from us toward the coast. It felt as if a light or energy was radiating outward from Bald Mountain.

Everything had a quality of sacredness on that longest day. We walked the circle casting tobacco to the winds. We burned cedar and sage in the fire pit near the centerpole. We prayed for the trees, gave thanks for the many wonders of this existence, and thought of loved ones near and far. The circle was complete: we stood humbly in the midst of a great natural harmony and the world, for the moment, seemed in order. Then I had a vision of many prayer circles, forest and mountain shrines throughout our region - places of power and renewal, of peace and pilgrimage. They would be, like Bald Mountain, safe spots in confusing times, rallying points and sanctuaries for those who love this earth and HER peoples.

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Back then, over 20 years ago, I wasn't quite sure who SHE was but later I came to know her as the Queen of the Forest, Rainha da Floresta, as she is called in Brazil and that's why I'm here in São Paulo now trying to make connections that might help protect the greatest forest on earth.

But São Paulo is a tough place facing, like most mega-cities, huge problems. Nature and the forest seem far away and are thought of mostly for recreation and retreat, but not for truth or necessity. Indeed, it's hard to get people to give it much thought let alone a real priority. Sometimes I can feel very far from home and very alone. Sometimes I get sad that our world is, unfortunately, the way it is.

But today, thanks to a new Internet friend Tim, I discovered that that little bird, the Hermit Thrush, can still sing to the hermit in my heart. It's the finest hymn that I have ever heard.

Listen to the Song of the Hermit Thrush

Mandala das Águas.



The country inn Mandala das Águas sits at the gateway to the Matutu Valley between the Lion's Head and Parrots' Peak. The views are specular and so is the food served in a dining room surrounded by nature. No need for a lot of words here as the photos truly tell the story.










The place is full of little surprises as art objects of spirit and fun mix with nature and people into a marvelous harmony. Just wandering around even an ordinary light bulb became for me a true photographer's delight.









And, then there's the family. What can I say other than I'm sure grateful to know them. Tarik, Hixon, Marcia, Sophi, Bambi ... and friends.












See more of the Mandala collection here.

Magical Matutu



The Matutu Valley of southern Minas Gerais, Brazil is one of those magical places, almost mythic like a Rivendel or Shambala or a fantasy kingdom. It keeps drawing me back to reconnect with the land, the places and the people. And, of course, there is always a new batch of photos.


The magnificient Mantiqueira mountains, the magical temples, churches, pioneer buildings, shops, trout farms, and wonderful people all make this a place not to be missed.









The plants and flowers are spectacular.











And this time there was a great day of horse riding up on the Maçieira with Guilherme França and friends.





See the full collection here.

Fibers of the Earth



I've previously presented the work of Fios da Terra and my good friend Nina Michaelis at Fibers of the Earth. Now she has a whole new line of products, ready for Nov 2007. Check them out. Whatever you buy helps not only Nina but a whole group of traditional weavers in southern Minas Gerais, Brazil. Here's Nina at work in the Matutu Valley



and here are a few of her current products:









For more information you can contact Nina at ninamatutu@gmail.com
and you can see more current products at Flickr

Or, you can visit her and stay in her sweet little chalet.

This is Way Cool





Jose Murilo has been my Internet guru in Brasilia. Once and a while I get to help out a little bit with translations and in the process I learn about all this groovy cutting edge technology and the digital revolution that is being promoted by the Brazilian Ministry of Culture under the leadership of world musician Gilberto Gil.


The vision is one of "digital inclusion" that will allow creativity, politics and commerce to flow in all directions. By providing broadband access and connectivity through municipal wi-fi, and through programs such as "Cultural Hotspots", the cultural, economic and regional "hinterlands" are gaining a new voice in Brazil, and now in the world.

The following videos provide a little more of the picture...







And, for me, there's more than the march of technology that is being revealed here. In a world that presents many surprises that are beyond our control at times -- like visas and cell phones -- it is still possible to "mash it up" into working for change with joy.

Guided by the Moon



Edward MacRae's history of the Santo Daime has been translated into English and is now available online as an e-book.