The knock comes at 3:45 a.m. I lay still under my mosquito net, trying not to lose the images from my dreams, letting them sink into me so I can carry them through the starlight to the village elder. I hear my companions rustling awake. But still I linger, as not one but three dreams […]

After a weapy goodbye with Nancita and Raulito, our group drove southeast along the Avenue of Volcanoes to the town of Shell. Yes, that Shell. As in petroleum. A town that wouldn’t exist except for the world’s hunger for fossil fuels. As we enter the town, we are greeted by a billboard exclaiming “Shell! Working […]

Steve and Joanne and I are speaking quietly in the darkness, marveling at the sky. The Andean fog has settled in the valley below us, blocking the lights of the town that climbs up the lower slopes of the volcano. The mist reaches toward us over the vine covered rock wall that encloses the garden, […]

Dateline:  Quito, Ecuador I can’t say I had ever really thought of traveling into the Amazon. All those creepy books and movies about violence and insanity deep inside an unforgiving jungle, spied on by menacing natives just never made it seem all that appealing. But in the past few months, I’ve been dreaming, literally, of […]