New Digs

At first, we see what we know, with repeated exposure and/or more intimate exploration, we find a more true nature of that which we see. When I walked in the room, I saw these lampshades as gourds. When I came close I was not sure, because all the gourds I know of have fairly thin skin. These are, in fact Earthenware, thown as a pear shape and then cut into this amazing lattice. ECO-Tours of Wisconsin, Inc. is moving to a new location. We will be near the shore of Lake Michigan, just a half-dozen miles from the premier tourist area known as Door County. Our first concern is to make the home on site liveable and to add two bedrooms for travelers and guests who come for classes and tours. After that, we will begin documenting the natural ecotones on site and putting effort into a large classroom space so in the event of inclement weather, we can still teach our biochar classes. By the coming Spring, we will be actively reforesting and adding to permaculture management strategies, getting the fruit trees and vines back to their prolific state and infusing the land with many, many more perennial food and medicinal crops.
For our supporters and friends, it may seem odd that we have drastically pared back the size of our new center, but in light of rapidly escalating prices for everything, not just energy, we want to place our home base in a more central area, so that we can serve a greater number of people at drastically lower cost. Instead of asking our guests to treck many hours into the Northwoods of Wisconsin, we are locating just a day's bicycle ride from over a million potential guests. The air quality is much better than where we were located and the night skies are much more full of stars. Although it may not be the remote backwoods experience that "Up North" has to offer, we are within about an hour drive of one of the state's dark skies parks and can arrange transport and camping expeditions to that location for stargazers and those who have not yet seen the Milky Way or Northern Lights. Kayaking opportunities abound and as we are located about a day's walk from the Eastern Terminus of the Ice Age Trail, those who want to hike have ample chance to find peace and quiet there as well.
UPDATE: We have been at our new location for about a month. We remain focused on the inside, it took months of Nancy and I working every spare minute to get it back to move in ready, but we are a little flexible in what that means. When we go to town, we still bring a load or two of laundry, our chest freezer is still at the old pod. We have planted about a half dozen things, like rhubarb and elderberries which had been in pots, some given to us, some purchased with gracious donations from supporters. As we do begin making holes in the ground, it seems that this will be an excellent property on which to showcase biochar and the effects of re-generation. Carbon sequestration will be meticulously documented and the results will be obvious. Each time we get a read on soil quality in different areas, we gain understanding of where we are, our place is based on the soil and in this spot, there are places with precious little of that. We will practice our own version of ecological triage, deciding what will remain impacted and what can be easily recovered, focusing resources on places that our intervention makes the greatest difference. I work hard to bring salient messages to this blog and for many reasons I have sought to keep it free and available. If you appreciate that, my paypal account number is the same as my e-mail. t (as in Tony) n (as in Nancy) saladino42 at (because We're old school) hotmail dot com.

Wannabe? (the Rube Goldberg of Life)

I have tried to understand why so many of our hopes and dreams are based on trying to get to, acheive or become something we are not. Sometimes, we spend so much time living in an imagined future that we neglect where we are and potentially things that actually need to be attended to. Struggling to get to a better place, planning for it, putting off being happy for a future expected benefit seems to be nearly universal in our culture. The word wannabe has the solution to the angst created when we do not acheive our hopes and dreams embedded right in it. BE. I occasionally speak to the phenomenon most of us have seen played out in the natural world. Wild creatures, as far as we can tell, spend all their time in the state of be-ing. Although I have seen squirrels fall out of trees and they immediately look around to check to see if anyone (other squirrels) saw them fall. That is the most self-conscious activity I have seen out of many thousands of wild things I have seen and interacted with. I once had a fish that had been hooked badly, and he knew that it was not possible to get food through the smaller opening it left in its jaw, but that is just knowledge about a gross abnormality. It was difficult to ascertain whether it understood that not eating would eventually lead to death. I operated on the fishes mouth and it lived for many more years, healthy. It was not at all sure about letting me catch it in my hand, but after I had cut off the offending piece of jaw bone, with a wire cutter, he healed quickly, ate voraciously and always wanted to be on the same side of the tank as where I would stand or sit. So, how would our lives be different if we managed to just be together without internal,sometimes unconscious forces that push us to feel that we don't have enough money, enough space, enough education, enough food or enough love? Instead of operating from a belief in our own lack, if we just understood that everythng we actually need is not too far away or even, provided in abundance? How do we step away from th ehouse of cards we build to give us comfort in a desired future state and learn to BE in the NOW?
We have had a long history of not reaching our opitmum potential. We even thought we knew why.
Now, we are beginning to realize that some of the things we thought were impotant are not and other things neglected or ignored are the things we should have been paying attention to all along. One interesting example of that I have noticed is that after pushing the idea of getting children into academically challenging pre-K and Kindergartens, somthing well-meaning educators thought made sense fifty years ago, research is finally proving that idea to be wrong. For generations we have been trying to do good for our kids, but the opposite has happenned. Children that young need less academic training and more free play, stories, music and active movement. They need time to grow and develop make and develop social connections and learning skills that have nothing to do with letters and numbers. Their brains actually have no way of integrating those abstract representations of quantities, quantities and sounds. Their perceptual apparatus is attuned to something else that our culture underestimates the value of. Brain research confirms the same effects from too much and too early academic work leads to the same problems as getting too much screen time when you are young. Pediatricians have stated unequivocally, no child should ever be exposed to screen time before the age of two. The results are developing fewer social skills, less gray matter, less and shorter memory, lower reading and comprehension skills during High School and College. If there were benefits in the first grade, by third grade they were more than offset by these deficiencies. Parents don't want to have their children have lives with all the same issues and problems they did, but when we find something we tried to do to help our children actually hurts them, it may be a good time to stop. Real change is differnt than just going with the flow. Not everything we thought was true is actually correct.
Covid-19 has offered us an opening to change how we live. For decades ECO-Tours of Wisconsin Inc. has had play at it's heart. Digging in the earth to plant a tree is work, but when you do it for fun, it is, or can be, serious play. We use those openings to help our guests and bioneers have a more intimate relationship and interaction with nature, with the soil itself. With the landscape and the wildlife whose homes we are intruding upon. Many of the wild creatures who see us lugging buckets of trees into the remote areas we help reforest, must not understand what is about to happen, but more than once, a bird has come to a sedling we had just planted minutes earlier, landed on the tiny sapling tree, then, did their part and helped fertilize the new neighbor with a squirt of waste before flying away. None of us knows the ultimate result will be when we wannabe something or someone else, but we can all be sure that there will be different problems and concerns when we get there too. Many will completely blind-side us when we get close to fulfilling our dreams and aspirations. Accepting what is, instead of remaining distracted by what may come to be is what has allowed us to plant tens of thousands of trees with very little money. The desired future is slowly taking shape, but we can change the world for the better by remebering to "just" BE. When we shift our perspective, both foreground and background are fundamentally changed.
We often build twittering machines of sub systems to make our way through our days. Because we are living in such an un-natural state, out of the moment, trying to get ahead, make ends meet or keep up with our neighbors. It is easy to forget that truly seeing, truly listening and settling down to appreciate what we have may not even make it onto our radar. Like a mobile, the separate parts of our lives seem never to cross or bang into one another and each sub-system is like a constellation of it's own, moving in circles, centered on themselves. So many of us have built devices that help us to do all of the things that need to be done, but they are often held together with bubble gum and baling twine. These often disjoint sub-routines all have to click together in just the right ways to make it possible for us to survive. That creates it's own kinds of stress, an extra tax as it were on our energies and it adds up to inefficiency and eventually feelings of lack that take their toll. We have been doing things this way for so long that it has become second nature, but if any of the sub-systems get just slightly out of balance, our side hustle dries up or the lady doing day care gets sick, it can turn into a feedback loop of perturbation, aggravation, ever more frustrations and it can lead to collapse, exhaustion and bad decisions in other parts of our lives. Stress can kill and we have been keeping so many plates in the air for so long that we often forget, every once and a while, the frenetic spinning stops and the whole apparatus can fall.

These are some of the first trees that ECO-Tours planted. Donations continue to allow us to plant more trees!

This is about three acres of woods. It lies to the West of the house and in summer they cast shade on the house to help keep it cool inside. The old brick farmhouse used to get baked in the afternoon sun! Wind out on The Ledge, as locals call it, wind too is a huge issue and having a thick hedge of woods as protection against prevailing winds also helps make life just that much sweeter! On these three acres, we started with about three hundred trees and have added several hundred more over time as the first ones took off. We have planted over two hundred acres and continue to plant in areas that have impact on local water quality, live-ability and as the forests grow, we are fixing carbon in the form of tons and tons of new tree each year! If the US would reimburse ECO-Tours of Wisconsin Inc. for every ton of carbon we sequester in our trees, we could plant tens of thousands of trees more as the forests regenerate. With the help of individuals from around the world, we have planted well over 100,000 trees.
ECO-Tours of Wisconsin Inc.                                      1445 Porlier street Green Bay, WI    USA 54301

Taking the Long Way Home

How I have come to see my region. This is the part of the planet that I know best. What I do here affects the entire planet.

The Great Lakes are eutrophying, filling up with sediment, more than ten thousand times faster today than they did before the settlement by whites over two hundred years ago. The soils that took over ten thousand years to develop have been washed away in just the last hundred or so years. If we are to reclaim the planet, not only do we need to stop the abuse of the landscape, the watersheds and our soils, but we need to make positive change in the environment a priority. Living as if the Earth mattered is a sound first step to reclaiming the landscape for life, health and the well-being of the generations that will follow.

Years ago I found the value of the road less traveled. The routes we take through life are much like the paths and trails that we come across in the woods. As we accept the ease with which we can travel, we accept the perspectives shared by each and every other traveler along the way. Even the wayside rest areas begin to look alike as more and more of us stop, stand, hands in pockets, to "see" the unique overlooks and vistas. The routes less traveled can often be glimpsed from the main track, but cannot be understood or experienced in any other way. You have to go there, spend time there, live there for a while, then you begin to know them. ECO-Tours of Wisconsin has been devoted to finding unique ways through the landscapes of life, respecting that we are each in the process of finding our way. We are not in the business of taking everyone down the same road, rather we wish to bring a bit of light to areas that could not be seen otherwise. As we share our own perspectives and our own insights, we share information about routes that are just as valid, perhaps even more rich, and abundant with insight and awareness than would be unavailable on the well worn tracks that most institutions steer us toward. When I learned about deer trails, for a time I would follow them through the fields and forest. Over time I found that much could be understood about the deer themselves by following their traces across the landscape. Even their pace could be inferred by following their route, watching for their sign and hoof prints. When I began to understand just what I was seeing, it was exciting but over time I began to think differently about the process. As much as there was to learn from these trails, there was certainly something more out there beyond finding the easy ways through the brambles and bush.
I followed different routes and learned different things, for years growing up, I kept looking for paths less traveled. During my young teen years I became a huge fan of Louis L'amour, a Western writer who spent long hours researching the landscape and conveying what it had to say to him through words. A recurrent theme in his writing was the fact that far too many human beings, and wild creatures for that matter, follow a specified route day in and day out, not only for the sake of comfort and ease, but out of habit and a sense of efficiency. The dark side of this is that the organism puts itself at risk for being stalked by predators. As one might imagine, an impressionable young teen exposed to this sort of logic found over two dozen ways to get from home to school and back again. Although there were only three bridges across the highway between the two, I found not only a fourth one that was about a half-mile out of the way, but several tunnels that were just a fence hop out of the way leading under the highway as well. I imposed a strict randomized method for getting from one place to another, learning which back yards had dogs (to be avoided) and which back fences were easiest to jump. In my own way, I developed a great variety of paths which all led to the same place. This skill, once developed influences the way we live in other areas, especially if we remain open to it, not just moving about the environment, but tackling problems, riddles and puzzles that some cannot even fathom if they have always remained on the sidewalk.

Suspended particle plume at the mouth of the Mississippi River, courtesy of NASA

This photo shows the loss of topsoil that washes into the Gulf of Mexico day and night, year round. Deforestation, digging ditches and draining wetlands leads to impacts that are not intended but that combine to create massive changes on a global scale. Planting trees is one of the greatest acts of hope that we can participate in. Come, join us for a plant-in and we can begin to set things right between ourselves and the planet.

ECO-Tours of Wisconsin Inc. has led hundreds of individuals on what we call plant-ins. We have developed ecotours that appeal to all ages and as part of our tours we cover such often ignored aspects of the landscape as subsoil characteristics, depth to water table, climax forest species that were on site before human intervention started, native land management techniques, existing species at the time of the first survey, and we also share insight into the natural history of the site in recent times. Intimate knowledge of our place on the planet is both rewarding and costly. We cannot rush through the process of learning about our world, nor do we expect anyone to rely on the information we provide as the last word on any of the subjects we cover, but rather as a springboard to asking deeper questions.

As we circle around each subject, the heart of the matter slowly becomes more clear. We refrain from speaking as taskmasters in an attempt to fit people into a preexisting mold, but rather as taffy pullers, slowly allowing each person's unique perspectives to be defined in their own minds and elucidated for others to use as touchstones to help everyone find their way. This is the kind of knowledge that sticks. I have learned as much from a beaver lounging in a rain swollen creek, stretched out on a tiny island of grass as I have from the soaring eagle or the foraging mouse. Trying to put some of this information into forms that can be shared has been a life's work. Tree planting is a vehicle to get us into a deeper relationship with the planet. Watching people develop a relationship with the landscape is worth every minute of fundraising, planning and preparing the trails that lead to their individual experience.
ECO-Tours has been developed as a way to create positive change in the environment, but also in people. We take the long way home on purpose, not to keep from becoming prey, but on some level this too is part of the experience. We do it to enhance the relationship and understanding of places that we might otherwise zip past at sixty miles per hour, relegating our experience to a blink and you miss it kind of thing. Landscape as most of us know it, has much more relationship to paintings or pictures. The sort of images that are static and long lasting. What ecotours allow the traveler to experience are the changeable nature of the land, exploration of various levels, understanding of both ecotones and the ecosphere as a whole. Knowing that the trees we are planting will stand for hundreds of years through storm and strife, drought and deluge creates a relationship to time that is hard to get across in any other way. Knowing that our grandchildren will be assured the possibility of sitting in the shade of the trees we might plant today is both hopeful and rewarding in ways that are hard to put into words. Once experienced, it seems simple, but the complexity of integration often eludes our ability to describe in any other way.
Our organization started out as a relatively small group of friends who worked as fundraisers for the environmental group Citizens for a Better Environment by night and occasionally did guerrilla tree planting by day. In our first ten years we planted over sixteen thousand trees and hundreds of thousands of tree seeds. The only funding we had was the tax returns of yours truly, but the desire to make positive change with very little resources carried us along slowly but surely. We organized as a not-for-profit about twenty years ago and began to accept donations to help us increase our effectiveness and in the past over a half a dozen years or so, we more than tripled the number of trees that we planted, we have shared the experience with many dozens, eventually hundreds, more people and we have branched out into areas that we never dreamed of being able to plant in before. One early year for instance, we were able to secure access for teach-ins and planting on over 110 acres of city owned property that needed reforestation. The only requirement to put time in removing exotic species that are encroaching on the parkway. What this allows is for us to drastically slash the transportation budget and focus even more energy on transforming the landscape for the better.
Donations can be made to ECO-Tours of Wisconsin Inc. through Paypal at: tnsaladino42@hotmail.com

For those more comfortable with snail mail, send checks to ECO-Tours at 522 Acreview Drive, DePere, Wisconsin 54115. If you prefer to make arrangements for your own tour, let us know when you expect to be in Green Bay and a bit about what you hope to gain from the experience. We used to have two city lots that were being managed for permaculture and organic food production, energy efficiency and which used some solar energy for both heating and electrical production. Those recently sold and we are raising funds for our next property. Our tours include more than just diversion, they are designed to qualitatively change the areas around us in ways that will last several lifetimes, transform the culture for the next seven generations and perhaps lead us to expand the nature of what we call home. Some of the things that we have available for eco-tourists include bikes, canoes, snowshoes, tents, cook stoves and study guides. Our guides share the overarching goal of living lightly on the Earth as well as teaching our guests how to reap the benefits of a more rewarding and comfortable lifestyle while simultaneously leaving  behind both a smaller carbon footprint and making lasting positive change on our planet Earth. After all, as has been said, "On Spaceship Earth, there are no passengers, we are all crew.-Buckminster Fuller

We also welcome yo uto eithe rcome learn how to make and use biochar or invite us to transform your dry brush piles into sequesterable carbon! Help protect your ground and surface water, double crop production and provide massive habitat fo rthe soil microbiome! Reduce the need for irrigation and fertilization by 50%! For the Earth!