Culture and Coexistence into the Great Unknown
A melding of ecology, culture and travel with an emphasis on eco-tourism at the level of communities.
Baja California, despite proximity to the US and recent rampant growth, remains a wild and untamed coastal desert. Behind the charming pueblitos and peaceful resorts lies a varied history where conquest and development have moved both slow and fast. Following a recent trip to the Gulf of California town of Loreto, this first in a series of articles attempts to define what makes the place special, as well as what the future holds for this (mostly) hidden resort region.
Twenty five hundred years ago, a group of peoples settled Tikal, surrounded by the lowland rainforests of the Petén Basin of northern Guatemala. Their descendants would create a remarkable civilization that populated cities and villages across much of southern Mexico, Belize and Guatemala. Today, it has returned to the forest but turned into a major archeological attraction.
I am on the trail of John Muir, intending to walk into the wild high country, his “range of light,” inspired by the vision of Ansel Adams who once said: “Life is your art. An open, aware heart is your camera. A oneness with your world is your film. Your bright eyes and easy smile is your museum.”
Set in a wild forest near the Skärsjön Lake, the Kolarbyn Eco-Lodge is Sweden’s most primitive hotel, offering twelve electricity-free “nature huts” allowing communion with the Swedish landscape without actually camping.
Following the footsteps of Willis E. Pequegnat, a biologist from the 1930s who explored the wild Santa Ana Mountains in Orange, Riverside, and San Diego Counties, this video field journal logs the wonders and threats to this thriving resource.
The BBC documentary swims deep into the mythological underwater world of the “cenote sagrada” of Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula.
Since the time of the Louisiana Purchase, the people of the United States have worked to tame the Bitteroot Mountains of Idaho and Montana, but the rushing rivers and wandering wolves still retain the air of the wild.