Aligning Our Actions With Our Values with Kurt Hoelting

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After realizing the gaping hole between his convictions about climate change and his own carbon footprint, Kurt Hoelting embarked on a yearlong experiment to rediscover the heart of his own home: he traded his car and jet travel for a kayak, a bicycle, and his own two feet, traveling a radius of 100 kilometers from his home in Puget Sound. He was used to thinking of Whidbey Island, where he lives, as an hour long, because that is how long it takes to drive it. He says, "What I discovered is that I actually live on an island that is four days long, because that's how long it took me to walk the length of it. I discovered all kinds of dimensions to my home island, that I had never seen or imagined were there by going on foot, and taking that time to go on out-of-the-way routes. The island came alive in ways that have really shifted the way I look at my island now." (hosted by Michael Toms)

Bio

• The Circumference of Home: One Man's Yearlong Quest for a Radically Local Life (Da Capo Press 2010)

To learn more about the work of Kurt Hoelting go to www.insidepassages.com.

Topics Explored in This Dialogue

• What can be discovered when we are walking rather than riding in a car
• What he discovered about his carbon footprint and his jet travel
• How climate change is not in the future, it is something we are in now
• What is "lived time" versus "lost time"
• How his encounter with a Native American man helped him to understand how the ancestors are helping us
• How we can find wild places close to home
• What is the three-day rule of Zen practice

Host: Michael Toms      Interview Date: 11/3/2010       Program Number: 3388