Travelers Wanted for Yearlong Expedition to Change the Story of How We Learn & Live

There is so much wrong with our world, and it’s so easy to feel hopeless in its wake.

I was grateful, then, when earlier this week a friend suggested I read a piece Arundhati Roy had written several months back, in the pandemic’s earliest days. “Historically,” she wrote, “pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next. We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it.”

I think that’s right. Which means we have (light) packing, and (heavy) planning, to do.

In response, in eight weeks — the day after Inauguration Day, to be precise: 1.21.21 — I’m joining a quixotic yearlong quest of people from all over the world who share a commitment to change the story of how we learn and live — by using nature as our guide.

In between now and then, our shared challenge is to design an expedition worthy of the moment, our time, and the needs of the world.

If you’re interested, you can see how the design is unfolding anytime, and offer your own ideas and advice, on our community whiteboard.

Better yet, you can join us. A new world is struggling to be born . . .