Bit by Bit (by Lawrence)

Interesting marketing strategy.



















Even MORE interesting marketing strategy.

Let's see. We have been in Cusco just over three weeks and:

• We have a nice apartment
• Sophia is in a bilingual school five days a week
• Isabel is enjoying being home schooled
• We have found both a ballet school and a violin teacher for Isabel
• We have managed to cook all meals at home for the last 6 days
• We have made some nice new friends
• We are all doing pretty well with Spanish
• Krista has been making a lot of contacts for her research
• I went for a mountain bike ride

By my estimation, we're doing OK.

We joined an organization yesterday called the South American Explorer's Club. Krista had heard about it from a friend and had intended to visit the "clubhouse" straight away once we arrived, but we never had the time. Funnily enough it turns out to be located five doors away from our apartment! It is an international organization for English speakers who are traveling through South America. I went to visit looking for good topographical maps of Peru, and found them and a whole lot more. A mini-library with DVDs and good books, a book exchange for the more pulpy reads, volumes of terrific advice written by travelers on places to visit in Peru, and activities ranging from presentations on trekking, to trivia nights, to service projects. I think it will be a great resource for the whole family. On Monday there is a service trip planned to pick up garbage along a popular trekking route in Lares, a three hour drive from here, and I would love to go do it with Isabel... We'll see if time permits.

Garbage? you say, in the vast high- mountain wilderness of Peru? Yes, a lot of it apparently. While this is sad, it doesn't surprise me that much. When I lived in Bolivia I was shocked at the way people living in the campo would toss plastic bags, cans, boxes, toilet paper, and broken gadgets indiscriminately across the landscape. I tried to rationalize their behavior from a class-level perspective. Americans, arguably the protagonists of global culture, are famous for their consumption and its greatest by-product, trash. So why, I thought, should it be a surprise that the rest of the world wants to be like us and consume things and make trash? The Peruvians and Bolivians just lack the infrastructure to gather their garbage and hide it in landfills, or recycle it like we do. Hopefully, as more and more developed countries embrace a lower impact, "greener" lifestyle, the rest of the world will follow suit. But until that time, the intersection of "low impact" and "high impact" living (like trekking past piles of trash in a glorious place like Machu Picchu) will smack us on the face whenever we come across it, like a cold snowball thrown from a blind corner.

All this makes me think of my own life and the choices I make, both here in Peru and at home in the US. Before we owned a house, we could fit most of our life's possessions in one car. We were both used to backpacking and living by the wilderness edict of "Leave No Trace," a practice where you carry out of the woods everything that you brought in. As my life evolved and I became a homeowner and parent, it became more difficult to live so simply. We currently own a very old house (119 years and counting) built out of lumber milled from the very trees that once occupied its footprint. This seems like the essence of low impact to me. Now we are essentially recycling a product that someone put a lot of thought and work into, and we are maintaining and improving it so it will last another 200 years. But it is a really big house. And Maine is a very cold place. It takes over one thousand gallons of oil and who-knows-how-many kilowatt hours of electricity per year to make the house inhabitable by human beings. I have been over every inch of the place with caulk guns, cans of foam, infrared cameras, weather stripping, sheets of foil-backed polystyrene, and storm windows. Still, the structure was not built with energy efficiency in mind, at least not by 2009's standards. I sometimes wonder if the original owners just lived here in the summer and fall and had a "winter house" nearby that was easier to make livable in the cold months? In any case, I am not living in a tent anymore. We create a fair amount of trash and depend on polluting, non-renewable resources for our livelihood. Is this so different from the campesinos chucking bottles and cans down into the ravine outside their home? I think not. My "ravine" is just the air around me, and my "trash" is mainly in the form of carbon dioxide. But my analogy is not pure hyperbole...

All of you who know me are aware that cycling is a big part of my life, and that I am a denizen of the woods around Bath, Maine. One of the best trails in the area follows Whiskeag Creek out to a stunning peninsula known as Thorn Head, which juts majestically out into the waters of Merrymeeting Bay. In one section the trail drops down, right to the waters edge, and is permeated by a foul odor when the wind is coming from the east. That’s because this bit of precious green space shares its acreage with the Municipal Landfill. In fact, until recently, Thorn Head was almost completely cut off from town by the landfill cutting a swath from one end of the peninsula to the other. While it’s sad to think the early residents of my city thought it was a good idea to dump their trash in such a beautiful place, that is what they did. They too were just chucking their bottles and cans down into the ravine outside their homes. But all these years later the landfill is slowly being phased out. The city has instated a “pay-per-bag” garbage program (which has cut trash amounts by 60%), and has done a great deal of outreach to help people see the benefit of recycling and composting. In my lifetime, Thorn Head will return to something resembling its original, natural state.

So the news is not all bad. We can all change the way we live and the choices we make. I am imagining what my "winter home" might look like, and I am also looking forward to being part of the solution on Monday on the trail to Lares, Peru.

High altitude playground.