Around the World in Sixty Days…plus good times with family/loved ones. Below is a gallery of 2009 images; click on any image for more info and a slideshow.
2009 started with an adventure to Ecuador, part of my effort to link environmental studies at Lewis & Clark more closely with its overseas programs. Here's the Museo Fundación Guayasamin in Quito...I fell in love with Guayasamin's art.
I had the good fortune of arriving along with a group of Lewis & Clark students: here we supposedly are at the equator (um, the Museo de Sitio Inti-ñan equator, as opposed to the more official Mitad del Mundo equator nearby), where our guides led us through all sorts of strange experiences on the Big Line. Problem is, according to my GPS the equator was actually a few hundred feet away, right in the middle of a busy road...which provoked some interesting conversations given all the cool things we thought we experienced.
Most of our students' time is spent in Cuenca. Here is my host Narcisa (she was such a help in setting up my visit!) with her husband Julio and daughter Sophia…and a special treat for the guest in Cuenca.
One of my spring semester courses at Lewis & Clark involves fieldwork, including an overnight trip south to Douglas County. Here are my students from last spring in front of the county courthouse after having met with county officials to discuss forest management. It's been a joy to introduce students to my home turf.
We also climb Canyon Mountain to get a good view of the Alder-Jordan watershed, one of our Environmental Studies Program's designated research sites. Here are Rosanne and Sarah counting tree rings en route.
Even Beagle Bailey made it all the way to Tellurium Peak at the top of the watershed (a four mile, 2500 foot climb).
At night they camped on the Proctor forest, and what's camping without a campfire??
Alder Creek Children's Forest was very fortunate this spring and summer to see new trails emerge. Here are workers from the Wolf Creek Job Corps…
… and here is some of the fine work of the Douglas County Sheriff's Department inmate work crew, who were a huge help to us last year. Now we have to bring our trail maps up to date!!
At the close of spring semester I headed off for a two-month jaunt to visit additional Lewis & Clark overseas programs and explore possibilities of starting a few new ones. My first stop was New Delhi, India: I sent this picture home and one of my fellow Alder Creek board members told me he played here (Lodhi Garden) as a child! Small world.
Our students spend quite a bit of time in Varanasi, an old old holy city on the Ganges. Here are two young women selling flowers alongside the river. They spoke very good English, an auspicious sign for their future in a hugely competitive country.
My India trip ended in Bangalore, where I met up with academic contacts to get their perspective on Indian environmentalism and wandered around the city. This one's a quick take from Cubbon Park.
After India I flew to Vietnam and met up with fellow professor Bruce Suttmeier. Our tour focused on portions of the overseas program that take place in or near Ho Chi Minh City, including some time we spent on the Mekong Delta.
Here is one of many touristy items we encountered in the Mekong: drape a (surprisingly droopy) python around your neck! Bruce was a bit less than enthusiastic. Our guide is on the left.
What Bruce and I did alot of in Vietnam was eat. If you squint at one of our dishes here you can make out various parts of a pigeon. It turns out that trafficking in wildlife is a big deal in Ho Chih Minh City, a conundrum of research value to my environmental studies majors given their strong interests in food.
After Vietnam I headed to Europe, first to travel to Jacobs University in Bremen as part of a prospective exchange program there. As a field jaunt, some Jacobs students took me out to do mudflat walking on the Wadden Sea, clearly an exciting adventure as you can tell from their faces and the varied terrain.
Ever one to work for the good of the planet, I helped myself to a freshly shucked Pacific oyster, an invasive species in this area. Our guide clearly had no interest in us roughing it: she brought lemon and pepper for the experience, plus champagne to wash it down.
After my visit to Jacobs I took a few days off and traveled Europe, first stopping to visit my nephew Colin and partner Naomi in Berlin…
…then to meet up with Joy, her husband Matt, and Elise in Aix-en-Provence.
A French geography graduate student who had been working with me in Oregon organized a research seminar with her colleagues in Grenoble, which was my next stop. Here is Claire (lower right) and a few of her grad friends.
Of course, the French do research seminars the right way! We held our seminar in the Ardèche district; here's nearby Mirabel Village.
You may or may not know of Bruno Latour, but he has been a big intellectual inspiration for my work, and his recent writings on geography were the focus of our seminar. Turns out his family winery (Louis Latour) has a branch in Ardèche. Latour had a great time, and worked extremely well with the grad students who organized the seminar. I got to work on my French!
After Europe, I headed off to southern Africa to explore another possible overseas program, and to touch base with a fortuitious connection: a high school in Swaziland, where I spent four years in the Peace Corps and where Bongie grew up, sends more students to Lewis & Clark than any other high school in the world! It's called Waterford Kamhlaba, part of the United World College. Here are some Waterford students at a science fair.
After interviewing a number of prospective new Lewis & Clark students at Waterford I stayed in Swaziland for an extra week to meet up with Joy, Matt, and Elise, and to reconnect with a country I had not visited in nearly 20 years. The concrete tank to the left was one of the water catchment projects I did as a PCV near Bongie's homestead in Mbukwane: it's no longer functional but piped water is now available here.
Here are Joy and Elise at Bongie's homestead with their Swazi cousins. They keep in touch with the older ones via -- you guessed it -- Facebook.
Ever the restless one, I encouraged Elise and a few of her cousins to run with me in the mornings, which proved pleasurable in the cool winter sun.
We took a long hike from Mbukwane to Mahamba mission, where I first taught (and Bongie had earlier gone to school). Here's Matt and Joy with Bongie and her niece Lindelwa.
Now we're back in southern Oregon. Soon after my return, Alder Creek Children's Forest cosponsored a week-long summer camp for area youth. Here you see our just-completed pavilion (with restrooms!), and Wildlife Safari's Taini the cheetah, who paid us a quick visit.
Of course, you can't do Week in the Woods camp without getting in the woods.
We also held Explore Your Forest Day in July, so that Alder Creek Children's Forest could thank its many contributors and show them around the forest.
It's always a joy to return to Kojosho camp in Berkeley in the fall: here are a few of us relaxing during a break. This may be camp number twenty!! Amazing it's still happening after my crazy idea as a grad student so many years ago. It couldn't have happened without many of the people you see in this photo, for which I'm so grateful.
In October Alder Creek Children's Forest held another teacher workshop in conjunction with the Oregon Natural Resource Education Program to introduce area instructors to our Oregon Explorers initiative, which connects kids and natural resources via a set of linked classroom, computer lab, and field experiences. Here are some participants doing a virtual tour and treasure hunt activity prior to heading to the forest; if you want to try it yourself check out http://www.aldercreek.org/tour/.
Some of our teacher workshop participants taking a hike in the forest.
An update on the rest of my menagerie: George and Ira are still doing a great job holding down my bed to keep it from floating away.
So, changes afoot on the Proctor forest: this pile of dirt in the foreground is destined to become a home, assuming the loan gods smile on me, within a year! Hopefully more pix in 2010.
For Thanksgiving Joy and Elise joined me on a train trip to Albuquerque to meet up with Mary, who recently completed her PhD in education and is establishing roots in the city. We had a great time.
One thing we did was travel a bit down memory lane, given that Joy spent several years of her young life in Albuquerque. Here we are next to our old apartment in the university family student housing complex: Joy kind of remembered it, but Elise of course didn't as she's a California girl, having been born after we left New Mexico.
I'll close the year as we do in the Environmental Studies Program. At the end of each semester we have a celebration and poster session to share our work with each other. I'm continually challenged and inspired by my undergrads, though I wish I didn't enjoy teaching so much so I could get a life! Seriously, life is rich, a bit too rich perhaps but a great opportunity for us all once we find our calling.