It’s been a wild ride. In fact, I often refer to my relationship with Bob Armantrout as Trouts Wild Ride. Over the past twenty years, we’ve moved sixteen times, bought two homes, lived and worked in five countries and one U.S. Territory across three continents and the North Pacific.

We’ve weathered frightening storms, enjoyed spectacular sights, survived the hospitality business, experienced intense passion, lived incredibly diverse lifestyles, helped raise three beautiful children, grew great food, read a lot, took a lot of pictures, wrote a lot about them, composted our poo, collected sky juice, explored that nature thing, cooked indescribably delicious meals and made many, many friends. We became best friends and learned quickly that we would die for one another.

Against all odds, we celebrate this particular anniversary in at our new home in Kumasi, Ghana. Although we thought it would be a fine idea to return to the country of Bob’s childhood, it seemed like a pipe dream until three months ago. Move number sixteen.

We’re in the thick of it. I walk dirt roads with a backpack in search of onions for dinner with a smile on my face. Bob chops the lawn with his sharp machete. Can’t wait to see what the next eighteen years brings. And beyond.

Well, here’s the big news: Bob and I are moving to Ghana, Africa for one year and will be leaving the United States in June!

Columbia University is handling a grant-funded pilot program aimed at figuring out a process for turning fecal sludge into Biodiesel. Last week, Bob received a firm offer from their Department of Earth and Environmental Engineering with the salary he requested.

We find this exciting on multiple fronts. First off, we have both long wanted to spend some time in Ghana. Second, we’ll be working with our good friend Jeremy. Third, Bob needed the work. And fourth, we love the pace of life in the third world.

Bob lived in the coastal city of Accra, the capital of Ghana between the ages of nine and fifteen. We’ll be living in Kumasi, about 160 miles inland from Accra.

His father’s work with Kaiser Aluminum took the family there in the sixties. His father was in an extractive industry, damming a river for cheap power, shipping in ore, turning it into aluminum and shipping it out.

Years ago, after somewhat following his father’s footsteps into the world of manufacturing, Bob promised himself he would not take another job in an extractive industry. Since then he’s been involved in remediation, recycling, biodiesel and teaching.

With this move, Bob will be coming full circle. He’ll be putting his energies into transforming waste into fuel, providing the communities with the revenue they need to clean their waste water.

We are keeping the house, which is a first. Generally we sell and give away nearly everything, put a few things in storage and pack our bags. Where we end up is always a surprise. This time, we plan on ending up right back where we started from. In a year.

The moral of this story is be careful what you wish for!

I’m convinced our impending move to Ghana all began on March 31st when I responded to sister-in-law Kathryn’s Bucket List blog post with the following comment:

You’ve inspired me to throw together my own bucket list.

Train an elephant
Ride a zebra
Learn to skid logs out of the woods using horses, mules, donkeys or oxen
Take voice lessons
Write a book
Move back to Belize
Visit Machu Picchu
Spend a couple of months in Ghana with Bob and the kids

Everything else I’ve wished for has already come true.

And so begins another chapter of Bob and Camille Throw in Together to Create a Life of Joy and Fulfillment by Following Their Hearts!

One easy way to fine tune my bliss meter is this – Every night before I fall asleep, I mine my day for bliss nuggets. This leaves me a feeling of appreciation for the joys of the day and sharpens my bliss sensors for the following day.

The variety of gems which fall out of this exercise is fascinating:

• Pink panther oboe notes, signaling a call from Bob
• Laying flat on the floor with my arms over my head
• Tami’s happy, smiling “hello”
• My palms against the smooth bark of a beech tree
• Jenny wading barefoot across the icy waters of Robeson Creek
• A warm smile on a stranger’s face at the post office
• Bright red cardinals against the background of a gray day
• Haruka’s easy, musical laugh
• Running into family at the Marketplace
• One of Link’s soul-enriching hugs
• NPR sound byte: “In capitalism there are some winners and some losers. And it’s unfortunate, but that’s how our system works.”
• Walking around town, car less and carefree
• Sitting on Hailey, taking in the view from Round Top Mountain
• Playing Beck’s “Loser”
• Vegan Tettrazini and Rise of the Planet of the Apes

Joe Bageant, author of “Deer Hunting With Jesus” and newly released “Rainbow Pie” and pundit extraordinaire, died Saturday March 26 after a four month bout with cancer. I feel like my voice is gone.

All my life I’ve been an idealist, quick to spot the wrongs in our world and strive to set them right. In the 60’s the most blatant sin was the Vietnam War. I threw myself wholeheartedly into the throng of protesters, hoping our collective voices would put an end to the carnage.

Thirty years later, the spread of easily shared information via the world wide web including endless venues for online protest, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the many wrongs in our world today. There isn’t just one cause, there are dozens. Which one will I pick this week and how much difference will it make when we are all are railing about separate issues?

I once asked my idealistic cousin Tommy who is ten years older than I, “Where in the world do we (idealists) go to fit in?” His answer: “There is no place in the world for idealists.”

My father was an idealist. He lost his shot at tenure at Monmouth College in 1969 when he helped stage a protest in which his students pelted a General onstage with marshmallows. He was asked to turn in his resignation and soon found that no other college in either New Jersey or New York would hire him after what he’d done.

Dad ultimately moved my mother and us six kids to a place he described as the “Armpit of the Universe” and even though I suffered at the hands of my new school mates who didn’t understand my clothes and accent, I was beamingly proud of what he’d done.

My husband, Bob has always followed his heart on political matters, quitting a lucrative job after being admonished by his superior for joining a protest rally. He was working at Tecnetics, a company that made power supplies for cruise missiles, and had gotten his picture in the newspaper marching in protest of Gulf War I.

Bob is now an educator who isn’t afraid to bring the truth to light for his students and show them where to go to express their indignation. It’s been said that you marry either your mother or your father and I see that I married a man who isn’t afraid to stand up for his ideals.

Of late, social networking has brought to light a bizillion causes, all clamoring for my involvement. Pretty much everything is either corrupt or broken; from GMO’s to War, to Wall Street, to our justice system, to Corporate Rights, to Election Reform, to Food Bills, to Education and Health Care.

So many causes, so little time to protest. Confused and dis-empowered I look back on the Viet Nam protests with nostalgia.  I find myself missing the focus of that movement, mourning our collective lack of focus and pissed off that things have gotten much worse. That’s where pundits like Bageant stepped in and gave voice to my outrage.

Bob and I have read the copy of “Deer Hunting With Jesus” that lives at our local library and our copy of “Rainbow Pie” is on order. Meanwhile, I’ll be mining Bageant’s many splendid essays for great quotes like these.

Liberal activism is sort of like sending a rabbit to sell wolves on the benefits of veganism.

The slaves are free to elect their masters, and that is enough to satisfy most folks in the land of the free. That, along with 100-plus cable channels to keep us entertained inside the cage. We know we are powerless, but better the devil you know than evil socialism, where you are not allowed to take out a second mortgage on your cage.

Workers in industrialized nations are so busy begging for jobs and wages enough to keep them in meaningless commodities and gadgets (which only shift more money to corporations) they cannot see the forest for the trees.

In the corporately managed theater state, it’s not whether a thing is true that matters, but how it sounds and looks and what you call it. Call end of life counseling a “death panel,” and you’ve just turned mercy and choice into one more Great Satan.

Lies for the sake of generating emotion enough to destroy reason have been a mainstay of American politics from the beginning.

So why did American liberals believe Obama would bring home the healthcare bacon? Because they live in an ideological cupcake land. It’s a big neighborhood, a very special place where “Your vote is important,” and “by electing the right candidate, you can change our beloved nation.

Appearing cheerful is vital in a society where all of life is monitored by an employer, a credit rating bureau or the media’s projection of the world, and mediated by the financialization of life’s every aspect.

A potato is just a potato until people sweating over belt lines and giant fryers turn it into Tater Tots.

Just as we started ballyhooing the triumph of America Consumer Capitalism over Communism, the world’s ecology started backing up like a redneck septic tank.Cultural ignorance dictates that the best way to stop foreign terrorists flying into the country is by humiliating American citizens flying out of the country. Go ahead, grope me, X-ray my dick and for god sake don’t let anyone bring a large bottle of shampoo on board. In an obedient, authority worshiping police state, physical insult and surveillance are proof of safety.

Unfortunately, Americans get laughed off the map for being overly human these days, dubbed emotional pussies, part of the Kumbaya crowd, unrealistic utopians — and if you are sincerely human enough, get your ass kicked by the system.

On his way past the Abundance office, Lyle said he was looking for Bob. “I need to talk to the knower of all things.” For an instant I thought he’d said the mower of all things, which made sense to me because Bob mows like no one else I know.

Bob mows at work and at home and sometimes he mows on down the road.  By the same token, he also knows an awful lot.  “Not always right, but never in doubt” is what Bob jokingly says about himself.

If something is going to happen, Bob generally knows about it before the rest of us.  He was so good at forecasting sales trends in a company we worked at, that I gave him a crystal ball that Christmas.

Bob knows when to leave and he knows when to stay.  He called our departure date from Texas so close that it was less than a week after we pulled out of town that his employer missed making payroll.

But back to the mowing.  When we lived in Virginia, one of the first things Bob bought was a John Deere riding mower which he used to mow the horse pastures on our seven acre mini-farm.  A year later, what had started out as chest high grass gone to seed was looking like a golf course.

He knew when to leave that place, too.  We sold our little horse farm and left the country to manage a one hundred and fifty acre jungle resort with twenty horses.  We traded five horses on seven acres for twenty on one hundred and fifty without the necktie and mortgage payment.

I believe all those hours spent mowing those pastures gave him time, space and solitude to really weigh the reasons to stay against the reasons to leave.  He eventually came to the conclusion that stewardship could be every bit as rewarding as ownership but without the risk.

I’m not the first person close to Bob who noticed that he likes to mow.  His daughters knew this before I found it out.  The year we got together, I thought I’d get young Emily and Amy involved in celebrating his birthday.

“Okay,” I said, “Your Dad’s birthday is coming up – what should we get him for a birthday present?”  It grew quiet as they gave the matter some thought.  And then five-year-old Emily broke the silence with, “A lawn mower?”

Our task is to help clear a fenced-in area of weeds so that some sort of crop can be grown there, unmolested by the deer and other crop loving varmints. On the first day, I picked twenty years of honeysuckle off a section of fence while Lyle introduced Bob to the bush hog.

The next day, Bob dove into the clearing effort head first and he has the battle scar – a blistering poison ivy swoosh – to prove it. After four days we had dragged away a significant pile of buried pipes and cable, pushed the clearing another two or three hundred square feet and cleared six sections of fence.

It took a fair amount of courage to pack up everything we owned and drive across country on the hunch that something good would come of it. But there are so many great enterprises going on here, it was an irresistible opportunity.

We were quickly rewarded for our faith with a warm welcome and have now proudly joined our house mates and friends in the creation of local sustainability. I have the feeling this is just the beginning.