CRRA Hosting a Book Club

Are you looking to be enlightened by your summer reading?  Have you had your fill of the New York Times best sellers list?  Are you looking to be inspired by one man's mission to preserve the environment.  For the first time, CRRA will be hosting a book club in advance of the annual conference.  The book chosen is "Planetwalker: How to Change Your World One Step at a Time" by John Francis.  CRRA is thrilled to discuss a book written by one our 2007 CRRA conference plenary speakers.  The book will be discuss during the month July on a new listserv so order your book now and get ready to dig-in and begin reading by the beginning of July.  John Francis may chime in on the book club listserve to answer CRRA members' questions as well.  To join the book club, please send an e-mail to info@crra.com.

The book is available on Amazon, and through Elephant Mountain Press.
Order your copy on-line at www.elephantmountainpress.com

Or send a check for
First Print Hard Cover Edition
$24.95 plus $5.00 shipping and handling to:

Elephant Mountain Press
P.O. Box 626
Pt. Reyes Station, CA 94956

Free shipping and handling with orders of five or more.

The following is a description of  "Planetwalker: How to Change Your World One Step at a Time" taken from the book jacket:

In 1971, after witnessing an oil spill in San Francisco Bay, John Francis gives up motorized transportation and starts walking. A few months later, he takes a vow of silence that last 17 years. Through his silence and walking, he learns how to listen and his pilgrimage begins. Planetwalker is the inspirational and engaging story of one man's silent walk across America to raise environmental consciousness and promote world peace. Born the son of a West Indian immigrant in north Philadelphia, John overcomes seemingly insurmountable obstacles on his walk from the California coast to the New Jersey shore. In silence, he earns a college degree and begins walking through the West to America's heartland where he earns a Ph.D. in land resources. When he reaches the East Coast, the United Nations Environment Programme names him a Goodwill Ambassador and the US government recruits him to write oil spill regulations following the Exxon Valdez disaster. Chronicling a young man's call to public service, Planetwalker addresses complex issues of environmental and social justice in America. It encompasses both John's interior journey as he confronts questions of life and death as well as his experiences of life on the road. John encounters people of all walks of life who illuminate the social and physical geography of his journey from the kindness of an Idaho rancher who leaves jugs of water for him on desert roads to the racist violence of an off duty deputy sheriff, who puts a gun to his head. We grow with John as he develops the qualities of character that give him the will and courage of his conviction to act on the deepest voice within him and allow his destiny to unfold. Along with John's haikus, watercolors and drawings, Planetwalker is filled with practical ways in which we too can become earth stewards and take our own pilgrimages both great and small. And as we discover with John on his extraordinary walk, pilgrimage can lead to knowing our kinship with all of life and the all embracing goodwill that unfolds from that realization. John Francis lives in Point Reyes Station, California with his wife and son. He is the founder and director of Planetwalk, a non-profit environmental education program. He travels around the world speaking on pilgrimage and change and is developing Planetlines, an environmental studies curriculum based on the walking pilgrimage for high schools and universities. This is his first book.