Posts by Jeff Wagner

The Bolivian community of Tiquipaya where I live and work made international headlines this month for the first time in over a decade. After three years of drought, the rains came all at once this month, consolidating an entire rainy season worth of precipitation into one week. It wouldn’t have made such big news, except for the forest. The Cordillera de Tunari forms a 16,000-foot tall mountain wall that defines the valley we live in, and its lower elevations used to be draped in trees. […]

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This animated adaptation of my favorite short reading, “The Man Who Planted Trees” by Jean Giono, won an academy award in 1987. In my opinion, the translation is the best out there: similar to the most common one, but more accessible in its English. A transcript wasn’t available online, so this morning, I transcribed it to include in my readings packet for the field. I hope you enjoy it! Many years ago, I set out on a walking tour high in the Alps, a region […]

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Originally published in Sierra Magazine, Fall 2014 I spend my life taking people into wilderness. I am a 23-year-old outdoor educator, and my students are people not much younger than myself: teenagers and twenty- somethings. Every time, whether we’re out there for a week or a month, there’s always a night when we lie on our backs and stare up at the night sky. The stars out there are like powdered sugar. The silence consumes us until somebody says, “I don’t want to go back.” […]

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