Part 1... About Burning Man

Each year at the end of August a community of 45,000 artists, musicians, eco-warriors, children, bankers, drag queens, inventors, locksmiths, bakers, candlestick makers (anyone with a heart to share and spirit to play), descends on a quiet Nevada playa* to build Black Rock City... and then tear it down 1 week later (*a playa is the desert earth we doeth tread; a prehistoric alkaline lake bed to be precise).

The Black Rock Desert of Nevada, USA is where my six-month travelling odyssey down the Americas begins. Why Nevada? Why the desert? Two words: Burning Man - the global mother of all festivals.

Now the name doesn't do wonders for witches or those with a rampant fear of fire, I agree, but let me tell you, when I hear those two words I'm filled with utter joy and a comforting bliss no other place on earth has done for me yet. It's a reminder of home, a place where money has no value and running free is the name of the game.

Art installations spotted around a fairly barren desert landscape take you both back to your childhood and into the future at the same time. The thing is, trying to describe this festival is somewhat of a futile endeavour; anyone who's ever been has sprouted the words ‘it's hard to explain' and almost as many have said ‘it's a life changing' experience. Burning Man is just one of those magical places that you have to see and live, in order to believe and appreciate.

The spirit of Burning Man lies in its gifting economy; participation and volunteering are a part of your every day play. Cash doesn't count here. You have got to bring your week long supplies of food and water if you want to survive. It has been said if you were to walk into the Nevada Desert with nothing more than the hair on your head near the end of August you will come out trumps from the generosity and survival skills of ‘burners' - people ‘dedicated to community, art, self-expression, and self-reliance'.

One of the best things in life is good food. One of the best things about Organic Fortnight is the Organic Food Festival in Bristol. Not only is it a chance to taste the best of organic mouth watering creations but also a chance to learn more about the ways we can all help to build a sustainable global community.

Hundreds of delicious samples will be on offer in the street market and food pavilions. Riverford Organic Vegetables, The Village Bakery, Doves Farm Foods and The Chocolate Alchemist are some of the food vendors who will be exhibiting and offering their tasty treats at the festival. There is also an Organic Bar (stocked with plenty of organic wines, ales and ciders) and the Bordeaux Quay Cooking Demonstrations where the UKs best chefs will be showing us how to make easy, affordable organic dishes.

The Organic Gardening Pavilion will provide tips on how to create and then get the best out of you very own organic veggie patch. If you don't have a garden at home allotment networks will also be there to offer help on finding and working your own plot of land.

The festival also a dedicated area to organic and eco living. From the best organic skin care and cosmetic brands (Green People, Madara, Spiezia) to the most beautiful ethical clothes and home ware products (Greenfibres, Luma and Abaca Organic).

Date: Saturday 12th September (10am-6pm) and Sunday 13th September (10am-5pm)
Where: Bristol Harbourside
Cost: £5 entry, free for Soil Association members and children under 16.

I'm about to embark on a 6-month odyssey down the Americas. With two other eco advocates we plan to work in and visit a number of sustainable communities and organic farms to enhance our understanding of what's best for the earth from the ground roots up from the cultures of the Americas.

Avoiding air travel where possible (CO2 emissions alert) we'll be travelling extremely light but we'll need all the tips and advice we can get to fit 6 months worth of luggage into our wee backpacks.

Doing a little wondering today I stumbled across this great little eco travel blog called One Bag, which was voted best blog in the Tripbase eco travel awards category.

One Bag is the perfect resource for all travellers who want to have minimum impact on the environment on their journeys. ‘Overpacking tops the list of biggest travel mistakes' says One Bag. Travelling light is an art and science, one of the best travel skill one can obtain. It can make for a much more relaxed, productive and stress-free experience the blog points out.

The site aims to help convert more people to expert one-bag traveller status. They do this by giving tips on what to pack, what to pack it in and how to pack it (wrinkles are avoidable even in a backpack). One good tip I noted which may be useful given me and my travel partners are covering two continents and 8 countries is to split our luggage up ie half my stuff and half my friends stuff in my bag in case one does get lost in transition.

One Bag also has a Travel Letters page with comments from people who have put its ideas into action (which will hopefully convince even the biggest luggage travellers to slim down.

If you're keen to hear updates of my eco experiences I'll be posting blogs of right here on the So Organic site from September onwards.

To some it's an easy feat, keeping the mind still, maintaining balance and some sense of quietness even amidst a global economic recession and warming planet. For others it's a moment to moment effort to find a purposeful peace with and in each thing they do.

We all need to take breath every now and then; take a break from the activities and mind habits we occupy in the constant turning wheel of daily life. Some break with a beer at the pub, a run in the park or a holiday in sunshine. But these simply pause or distract the mind for temporarily relief.

It is not often we delve deeper or question why we feel the need to ‘break' at all. To give ourselves half a chance to feel real peace and happiness we must give ourselves the space and time to allow it.

Meditation is one of the most effective ways to find your own peace. The art of sitting quietly is not the easiest to master as I recently found out. I recently attended a 10-day Vipassana meditation course and learnt that peace of mind involves a lot of work - but work that's without doubt worth it's while with no pleasure in the world matching peace within yourself.

The Vipassana meditation technique requires noble silence, diligence, strong determination and patience with your own learning. It's better not to have a preconceived idea of what to expect (especially what you'll learn about yourself). Everybody has different experiences, this you will find out on the last day when silence is lifted.

Anyone can do the course; people from all walks of life travel from afar. I shared a room with a chemical engineer from Israel, and talked to a girl from Mongolia studying nutrition, a French Senegale child immigration lawyer, a technology artist from London, a Viennese English teacher and a mother of two from Scotland. All ages, all races, all seeking a more focused and balanced mind.

Courses are free. Facilities at the Darma Dipa centre I attended were simple but clean and tranquil. Hot water, a warm bed, delicious vegetarian food and woodland to wonder in. But a take caution: a Vipassana course is no holiday. It is work. Working solely on eradicating the mind of impurities that distract us from our own happiness - 4am wake-ups and an arduous day of meditation sits is what's on offer.

If us organic-ites really want to contribute positively to the health of our families and our planet we can only do it with genuine intention. The stronger the intention the stronger the effect; the more peaceful the mind, the stronger that intention will be.

If you would like do a Vipassana course in the UK visit www.dipa.dhamma.org

One more thing - the approach taught by teacher S.N.Goenka is non-sectarian so you can be assured no religious beliefs are pushed. It is simply a meditation course in learning the art of living.

I was shopping in earth-friendly organic clothes retailer Howies on Carnaby Street store and came across this small pocket sized fold out leaflet titled, in green, ‘DO Lectures'. That was enough to catch this eco blogger's eyes.

The DO Lectures, I read, work on the theory that ‘people don't forget stories, they forget facts' in the hope that hearing other's journeys of ‘doing good things' will give us the tools and desire to change the things we care about.

Environment, business, design, food, sport and technology - the lectures cover it all
The talks are given away free online at www.TheDoLectures.co.uk or you can book a place at the Do Lectures Event in West Wales, being held from the 3rd to the 7th of September. A £1,000 ticket will get you a place to stay at the magical Fforest farm, all your food and drink, accommodation, workshops, canoe rides and musical entertainments in the eves... oh and of course 20 talks given by 20 amazing doers.

This year's doers include Patrick Holden (director of Soil Association) Paul Deegan (moutaineer who brings people's rubbish back from Everest) Gregor MacLennan (Campaigner for Amazonian peoples' rights), and Gerald Miles (Organic Farmer & GM Activist).

The DO Word (a poem I thought you'd like, as featured on the DO Lectures leaflet)

It's short.
To the point.
Quick to say.
All it's letters do something.
IT loves a deadline.
Despises procrastination.
It's the rapids of a river.
The bubbles in a lemonade.
The kick in caffeine.
It's a small word but does more than almost any other word.
It means the same thing all over the world.
It's most effective when it's got a plan.
It's a word for getting things done.
It means action.
It's all verb.