In 1995, I had a leading during evening prayers to walk to Chile. It was a bit shocking, but not a complete surprise. I love walking, have lived in two countries in Latin America and love the peoples and the cultures. Most importantly, it fit with my spiritual concern about the environment. Ever since I was a little kid I felt closer to God in the mountains than in the city. Part of my strong connection to Friends came during a talk by Marshall Massey at Pacific Yearly Meeting in 1983 about the Peaceable Kingdom including all God??s creatures. Being a little skeptical, I asked, “How do I know You didn??t say, ‘Start walking, silly’ instead of ’start walking to Chile’? I’d like some confirmation”. A few days later I was in Seattle at my brother??s and told him about it. He said, “That’s funny, just last night I was thinking about walking to Chile”. Later, when I shared this leading with my sons, Martin asked if I would please wait until he graduated from college. (I retire in a year so hope to be starting the walk in the winter of 2007). We have done a good job of letting young people know how distressed the earth and her species are, but not a good job of letting them know of the joy that is our foundation there are Divine options for the earth and for us. Somehow we need to recall the feminine, nurturing, creating, life giving part of God. We need to wake up very soon to the sacred glory of life and nature and our sacred responsibility to preserve both or be destroyed. Thomas Berry, a theologian, says we are at the end of the Cenozoic age fifty percent of the life species in the ocean have disappeared over the last 30 years. We can choose whether we go into the technozoicage, where a handful of people have access and control over all the metals and energy resources and the rest of the world??s peoples and species live in misery, or we can go into the ecozoic age where we live in greater harmony with all our fellow travelers on this earth. I believe the care of the earth is for us what slavery was for Quakers in John Woolman’s time. It has taken us several generations to get into the mess we are in it will take a couple of generations to get back out. When I have talked to high school and college Friends, they really respond to this idea. When I was at Reunion General de los Amigos in Monterrey, Mexico, four high school students with whom I had shared the idea of the walk in 2001 asked how the plans for the walk were coming. Young Friends know this is important work, and it is their work. It made me realize I need to be faithful and start some serious planning. At Pacific Yearly Meeting, I gave a map and talked with 25 young Friends, 40 high school Friends, and did an interest group for about 25 adults. There were lots of questions: how far will we walk each day? When will it start? How much will it cost? Where will we stay? The walk initial stages of the walk will begin in the near future. The international phase will begin in early 2007 and is expected to take about 2 years. We will go about 10 miles a day. We will be doing stories and songs for schools and churches. We will look at beautiful places, like whales in the Sea of Cortez, and the jungles of Oaxaca. We will walk the highlands of Guatemala and look at rain forests in Costa Rica. We??ll take a boat ride out to Galapagos Islands to see the rich diversity there. We need three to seven people who are willing to walk the whole route (several people are considering it, including three young Friends who sound pretty sure). We need all the contacts you know along the Pan Pacific Highway (west coast). We will need people to take responsibility for the contacts in a country (Lauren Mari Navarro of Santa Cruz has offered to do that work for Costa Rica). We need Quaker materials translated into Spanish. We’ll need a support group at some point. We’ll need people to make monthly contributions for young Friends who won’t have the financial ability to do this without help. Christine Newton Bush is helping on a Web site. I envision this as a walking-learning teaching process; a peace community trying to model how people do live well together. We will be studying the Quaker testimonies and queries from a new perspective. Is the query on simple living the same in the U.S. as El Salvador? Does equality mean the same thing in Canada, Chile and Colombia? Can you come to consensus if people don’t speak the same language? What would John Woolman say today about our lives and how we are making it impossible for many other species to survive? We will be learning songs and stories along the way about how we see the earth as sacred space and sharing them with schools and churches. Hopefully, people along the way will join us for periods of time. It’s sort of like an overground railroad instead of an underground railroad. Perhaps we can do skits and music that emphasize the sacredness of the earth that we need to start behaving as if we were living in the garden of Eden.