Sustainability in Seattle....

In the spirit of transparency and authenticity, I’ll tell some version of my story here. But first I must reveal: I’m one of the people who created this site, and I’m utterly vested in its success.

Marketing shill? More of a sustainability tout, I suppose. It’s not about selling stuff; it’s about selling a better way of life.

The funny thing about the path to sustainability is that it creeps up on you before you even know what you’re doing or why. And then one day you look at yourself and your life and your values and you realize just how far you’ve come. This, to me, is the best way of understanding the path — it’s only in hindsight that we can see ourselves with any clarity. A moving stream is impossible to fathom.

This whole sustainability thing started quite innocently for me, and has now become a bit of an obsession. I don’t even know how to tell this story in this format, because I could write a whole novel about it, and probably will one day. So let’s do an abridged version for now.

It started with a lucky upbringing — I was raised as a secular humanist; no dogma except an unrelenting desire for truth and beauty, social justice and ecological responsibility. My parents, quite rooted in a 1960s ethos, taught me that there was nothing more important in life than the quest for meaning. They were right.

I spent a long time in school and working in labs trying to understand what makes people do what they do. I eventually concluded that people have little insight into their own actions, mostly follow cultural scripts and “animal” instincts quite unconsciously, and are generally unequipped to thrive in this postmodern world. And thus disillusioned, I fell into marketing.

It was only after living in NYC for six years that I fully appreciated how deeply I craved nature. As I grew more and more disgusted with myself for selling products that I didn’t believe in, I grew more and more aware of the impact of my purchases on the world around me. I also became increasingly aware of the toxicity around me — in the physical environment and the mental environment as well. I devoured media ecology and deep ecology writings as I shifted to raw veganism and radical simplicity in my own life. A sustained yoga practice brought me deeper into balance each day, and brought me to a state of such heightened awareness that as I walked the streets I was acutely attuned to the energy of everyone I passed — and most people felt dead. I would stare at weeds and wildflowers poking through the pavement, and I knew that it was time to move.

Next chapter: I found myself living off the grid in a yurt in the New Mexican high desert, where any last vestiges of civilization quickly peeled away. Water and electricity and money were scarce, so I learned to shower twice a month, to dry my hiking socks on yucca spines, to make my own manna bread from sprouted grains. I was happier than I’d ever been in all my life.

I spent three years in the desert, worked on a novel about the dystopia our postmodern world has become, and reluctantly left for a place with more water and fewer cactuses after my novel was done. A bit bewildered to be back in civilization, I only knew that whatever I did had to be something I could believe in, and it had to incorporate sustainability and the “green” movement in some way. I searched for a job on craigslist by typing in “sustainability” and “branding.” Thus, egg, where I’ve been for three years now. And thus Nature’s Path, and thus an entire website about the path to sustainability. I can think of few things more meaningful than helping people to advance along the path, and I invite you all to join us on this journey.