Dear Guatemala
My interest in Guatemala and the Mayan lands goes way, way back, but mentally I kind of always prioritized going to more distant places, assuming I was “saving” the closest country I hadn’t been to yet for a time when travel would be a little more complicated.
Glad that kinda worked out. I’m not usually one to wait on things I know I want to do. When my twins showed up, travel got a lot more complicated (whether or not they’re coming!) but I voraciously missed exploring new places.
Antigua was a beautiful first journey as a family of five. It’ll always hold that distinction in my memory.
Hiking Igbaras
How to hike Mt. Napulak…
This hike was one of my favorite adventures this year so far, and a big part of it was the fact that simply getting to the start of the hike was an expedition. I found it on Google Maps, and while the pictures were gorgeous, it was unclear how to even get there.
It turned out to be a bit of an obstacle course. First, find your way to the small town of Igbaras.
Get to the town’s municipal hall. It’s on the upper floor of a building across from the public market. When we got there, a woman in the front knew exactly where to direct us.
You’ll sign in and she’ll direct you to Victor’s house. Just an ordinary house in a village.
It’s about 12 miles away. We didn’t meet Victor, but whoever was there let us use their kitchen change into your hiking clothes. By the time you’re done, your next ride will probably arrive.
Motorbikes came to pick us up and take us the to the Bagay Tourism Office- a one room output at the trailhead. That’s where you’ll pay an environmental fee and meet your guide.
And that was just the start of the adventure! It was beautiful, challenging, and definitely rewarding.
Can I Climb This Mountain?
My love for the outdoors came despite not growing up in the most outdoorsy family. Throughout all my childhood visits to the Philippines, I don’t have as many experiences in the ocean or mountains as I would hope from one of the most ecologically phenomenal places.
I really tried to start setting this right with my own family on this most recent visit. I scanned some maps and found some of the most impressive looking mountains on the island of Panay. Then I tried to climb them.
But, figuring out how to even get to the start of this hike was an adventure in and of itself. All the usual maps were pretty useless. Instead I tried navigating using an eight year old blog post, hoping the person’s retelling of their hike was still accurate.
Thirtythree
Started a new lap around the sun today, chef.
Doesn’t really feel like I’ve been on the earth for as long as I have. Feels more like the adventure just got started.
I can’t think over the past few months without seeing my life as very, very full. I get to spend my day doing work I enjoy. Sometimes that takes me to fascinating places to hear people’s stories. Sometimes I get to speak. Perform. I get to come home to play with my kids who are literal miracles. I get to play with old friends. New friends.
I’m an enthusiast with constant wanderlust, but it’s been a lot harder to *want* things when life looks like this.
I’ll still take invitations on trips and babysitting offers, though!
Notes on storytelling, life, adventure, and other things
When you travel somewhere, learn 12-15 phrases. That’s so few, anyone can do it, but it makes the experience wayyyyy better. So worth the effort.
Sometimes you have to tell the kids “sorry, I can’t right now, I’m busy,” but try and watch the ratio that they hear that versus “yeah, I have time for you right now!” Playing with Hot Wheels for as little as 2-3 minutes counts! At least at this age, it can be this simple.
There’s a reason why your work has brought you closer to both nature and culture. Those two go together. Always.
Don’t be so hungry for explanations that you miss out on experiences.
Bring a brick, not a cathedral. Don’t try and hit a home run every at bat. There are better ways to contribute to a team than trying to do it ALLLLL.
Do more things that aren’t for the sake of your next project, to get to the next level, or to create future opportunities. Do more things because they’re worth doing, just because.
There’s something really special about watching your team go on a run and succeed. Ride that enthusiasm.
Take more friend trips. Friendships, especially the older ones, matter so much, and the American adult life really only gives you so much time together. New places set up new memories. (Also things are still a struggle, but don’t forget your friends are nowhere near as broke as you all were fresh outta college.)
If you want to get to know a place real well, visit the market.
Spend as much time as you can outside. Note when you’re doing something inside that could be done in the open air. Pay attention to the obstacles. Can they be solved with something as simple as a jacket, an outdoor bench, or rearranging the deck furniture to get shade?
Curiosity is a healthy relationship with the unknown.
Being close to God humbles ya. When that experience is deep and real, it makes it impossible to feel superior or judge others.
Storytelling takes space. It’s not just about doing non-stop things that sound interesting, but seeing things more deeply.
Too many people go through life feeling unseen. Every now and then, show someone over-the-top enthusiasm that they exist.
Tell stories from the ego, and you shut people off. Tell stories from the heart, and people connect.
Even if you get an exceptionally long lifespan, the life you experience today has a very short shelf life. People move, routines change, and settings evolve very quickly. Let it go as slowly as you can and take it all in.
The natural world is a playground, a classroom, an adventure, and a sanctuary.
It doesn’t take much to stop and accept my kids’ invitation to play for five minutes (or less!), before going back to my inbox. I might not be able to say yes every time, but if my yeses can far outweigh my nos, it’ll really help avoid the impression that dad is always too busy or tired.
When setting a vision, verbs beat nouns. Not, “what title do I want?” but “what would I love to do over and over?”
Pay attention to what your people are doing. Releasing albums? A show this weekend? Creating content about stuff that gets them excited? It costs nothing to be a hype-man for five minutes. Repost them on social. Send a text to ask how it’s been going.
You can live with lightness and it’ll still leave a mark.
Tabi Tabi Po
“When you enter a forest in the Philippines, you’re supposed to say the phrase *tabi tabi po.*
It means “excuse me” or “may I please pass?”
You say this because you don’t want to accidentally step on a duwende, engkanto, or any one of the many mystical beings in the forest.
Filipinos are a superstitious bunch, there’s no denying that. And it might be easy to dismiss this one as an episode of magical thinking or simple folklore, but I think there’s something important about it.
The forest truly is full of vibrant, living beings in every direction. And whether you’re inclined to think of duwendes or mycelium, it’s important to enter that space with respect. A reverential fear. An understanding that your presence has an impact, but an intent to do as little harm as possible.”
Street Art in Anchorage
A massive new mural popped up last summer in Downtown Anchorage.
It replaced an old piece of art called “Anchorage History,” which in spite of its intention, omitted the Alaskan part of Alaskan history, failing to incorporate any indigenous perspectives or elements at all.
The new piece was done by a Filipina-Athabaskan artist and infused the vibracy of many different Alaskan cultures and creatures, from a Yupik inua symbology to wild berries and salmon and caribou.
Wanting to go see the art led me to discover many other great pieces of street art around the center of Anchorage.
Extrapolations
Antigua's Mercado Central
There’s something thrilling about stepping into an alleyway marketplace and realizing… whoa, this place goes deep. More turns and corners and pockets of vendors than seemed possible from the outside. Hidden stands selling hot food you know is probably amazing. The sounds of livestock for sale. The smells of piles of fruit.
One place that perfectly exemplifies that is the Mercado Central in Antigua, Guatemala. Loved the multiple visits I took there during my time in the city.
Clean Cookstoves
Giving a family a new stove, a cleaner and more efficient stove, might seem like a very small drop in the bucket with everything going on in the world. But traditional cooking practices in lower-and-middle-income countries account for anywhere from 2%-5% of yearly greenhouse gas emissions.
For that family, it means severely reducing the risk of burns or other cooking related accidents, and the amount of harmful smoke inhaled over time. And for the entire planet, it can mean that en masse, a lot fewer trees are made into charcoal, preserving carbon sinks and cutting back emissions.
Don’t underestimate the “simple” stuff.
No Sense of Rush
In the Philippines, there’s just no sense of rush.
If you’re not used to it, I suppose it could be a little disorienting. Maybe patience testing. Why don’t the vendors share my sense of urgency? Are they just unmotivated?
It’s actually made me realize how much of the urgency we live with on a daily basis is totally made up. It’s one of the things I appreciate about life here.
This isn’t exclusive to the Philippines. It’s almost everywhere when you leave the western work-obsessed world behind. It’s a more natural rhythm to live with. It’s definitely more innate for me, and one of the hardest things for me to break away from when my visits come to an end.
Each day, hour, or moment can be an episode of abundance. They don’t exist on a conveyor belt of limited chances to get things done.
EarthX Experience
EarthX 2023
Happy Earth Day from Dallas!
Got to speak at EarthX alongside Annah Amani about falling in love with climate solutions and taking notes from environmental heroes in rural, climate vulnerable communities.
🌎🌍🌏
“Rural communities in lower and middle income countries represent the most climate vulnerable. Of people around the world living in poverty, eight in ten people are rural. That means they have livelihoods that depend on agriculture, and climate change disrupts that.
These communities are vulnerable. And yet, it’s communities like these that have made me a climate optimist, that have shown me that it is possible to reverse the cycles that contribute to climate instability.”
Prayers for the Earth
“Your natural world is a playground
a classroom
an adventure
and a sanctuary.”
Those words say it best and remind me of my favorite moments on forests, farms, and waterways.
I’m not an environmental saint. I have an impact on this place I love, that I try to be aware of and to maybe even steer some of it in the direction of good. A healthy relationship with nature always leads to abundance and care.
Happy Earth Week.
Dr. Dodoy's Farm
Meet Dr. Dodoy, the doctor-turned-farmer, but also still-a-doctor who welcomed us on to his eco-farm in the Philippines. He greeted us with some goodies: cassava, coconut juice, and plantains… all of which were grown on his farm.
His crops are doing well. So is his fishery and his bees and his livestock. Other people have taken an interest in learning from what he does so he hopes to expand his farm into a training center. The farmers I’ve met around the world are the most generous people when it comes to sharing knowledge and things they’ve learned from experience about what works.
It’s why promoting things like soil conservation agriculture and tree intercropping among this population is so valuable. Wherever you have an ecosystem where the primary livelihood is agriculture, related knowledge can spread extremely quickly. Include some techniques and ideas that are good for the regenerative cycle, and watch it spread.
The Philippines' Climate Story
So there’s this gap…
I’m a climate storyteller whose told stories from a bunch of different countries. But up until this year, that hadn’t included the Philippines. A country where my ancestry is from that I’d been to a dozen or so times. I guess all those visits were a bit before my climate consciousness and storytelling work had really taken off.
But I wanted to fill in that gap. So many of my peers had told me incredible things about the Philippines’ ecology: from the incredible and unlikely rapid respawning of its baby coral to all the biodiversity found within its forests. Understanding traditional Filipino relationships with nature offers a whole other dimension as well.
It’s an incredible story, but also not a unilaterally happy one. Unfortunately the Philippines leads the world in the number of environmental activists killed every year. Climate hasn’t exactly been a top priority of recent administrations, and it is among the most climate vulnerable countries in the world.
My most recent visit featured time under water, time spent with farmers, and a hike up one of Visayas’ highest peaks. And I know I still have a TON to learn about all the storylines’ present in this country’s ecology, I’m happy to keep doing that catching up.
Take More Friend Trips
As friendships get a little older, you have to put more work into keeping them. Time and money and other commitments create so many constraints, it’s easy to go entire months without touching base with your favorite people.
When you do, it’s easy for the catch-up session to consist entirely of reliving old memories. And there’s nothing wrong with that! But I also want to keep forming new memories.
That’s why I’ve been loving being able to take more friend trips in recent years.Being in a new environment helps to set the stage for new memories to take form.
A Taste of Slower
My cousins dog had puppies just a week before we showed up, so naturally Rhys named them Kai & Juni.
We didn’t just come to the Philippines to run from one beach to another, cramming our days with seeing sights.
Don’t get me wrong, plenty of that happened.
But I wanted to have a sense for the place as a whole, and in order to get that, you need to go a little bit slower. Plan on doing everyday things.
I loved meeting my cousin’s newborn puppies. Navigating public transport to try and reload our wi-fi minutes. Getting a dentist visit.
Loved that taste of everyday life.
Life in Iloilo
We didn’t just come to the Philippines to run from one beach to another, cramming our days with seeing sights.
Don’t get me wrong, plenty of that happened.
But I wanted to have a sense for the place as a whole, and in order to get that, you need to go a little bit slower. Plan on doing everyday things.
I loved meeting my cousin’s newborn puppies. Navigating public transport to try and reload our wi-fi minutes. Getting a dentist visit.
Loved that taste of everyday life.
Diasporic Longing
The very first time I heard the term ‘diasporic longing,’ I knew right away what it meant.
It’s the itch for my kids to have their own sense of connection to the Philippines.
The way each visit to the islands feels like a reset.
The way mangroves and mango juice reminds you of your relationship with nature, and how you are not really all that separate from the rest of creation.
It’s the fact that the slower pace of life, the abundance mindset around time in the day, just feels right. It’s amazing how when you refuse to rush through everything, time feels less scarce.