What On Earth is Earth Parade?
It's a lot of things, but mainly it's a celebration of life
Hello world! We’re Dana and Jaron. We are parents to three young children, Orion (7), Luca (5), and Vivian (3). We count our blessings daily to have three healthy kids and a roof over our heads. We currently live in our hometown, the moist, mosquito-filled, unofficial capital of Latin America, Miami, in an old, charming home under a mango tree. We are surrounded by our dear family and friends, whom we’ve known so long that they feel like family. Our kids are happy and thriving in their play-based nature schools and in general.
By all accounts, we have landed in a pretty idyllic life.
Since escaping the pandemic lockdowns in San Francisco in 2020 by moving into “La Tortuga” (our Airstream) and traveling across the USA for 6 months, we have been toying with the idea of doing something on a larger scale. We have been fantasizing about this secret family project we nicknamed “World Trip,” in which we’d take some of the learnings and inspiration from that journey and do it full-time with more of a clear purpose. World Trip (WT) became the code for this shared vision for a different kind of life that felt like a massive growth opportunity for us individually and as a family but also required a massive leap of faith.
Every few days for a few years now, this idea gnawed at us. After short trips into nature, it would come up. Out to dinner with friends, it would come up. In our dreams, it would come up. We’d talk. Why do we want to do it? What’s the purpose? How do we find the time? How long will we go for? How to pay for it? Are we really moving again? How do we tell our family and friends? Will our kids be happier? Will we be happier? What about school? Are we qualified to homeschool? What will we do with our house? Where on Earth are we going? What are we doing again? Are we insane?
We’re not sure why or where the idea came from. Is it intuition? Some kind of calling? A crazy pipe dream? Whatever it is, we’ve spent much of the last four years suppressing it and hoping it would vanish. Unlike some of our other amorphous project ideas, this was a persistent one that simply wouldn’t go away. It hung in there and lived rent-free in our brains for too many years. This space is the beginning of us listening to it and taking action.
While we don’t have all the answers yet, we have decided that now is the time to go all in. We are pulling our kids out of school, selling or renting our house, and embarking on a family journey to try and encounter the most threatened animals and plants in the world. We honestly do feel slightly insane, but we also feel that if we don’t do it now, we will likely regret it for the rest of our lives. Not honoring that feeling would be more insane.
When you start anything new, the hardest and most consequential decision is whether to commit. Now that the really big decision is over, we have thousands of smaller decisions to make. The first was to decide what to call this project. After a long process that involved hundreds of note cards and brainstorming many good names for dry Chardonnay brands, we finally settled on the name Earth Parade, which we immediately loved.
Earth Parade will be many things, but if we are to distill it into one main idea, it will be a family celebration of life on our planet. We are seeking to enter the most godly kingdoms we can discover on this earth, the plant, animal, and mushroom worlds that are quietly struggling and, in some cases, hanging on for dear life. At the rate we’re going, some of these places will not exist. We must do this while we still can.
The first iteration of Earth Parade will be a physical journey through this special planet and a spiritual one for us as individuals and as a family. It will be the most exciting and challenging thing we’ve ever done. We will explore the world, study flora, fauna, and fungi, and learn about each other and ourselves. We will have fun, experiment, and devise awesome activities that anyone can do in the wild or in any green space!
Earth Parade is also an alternative lifestyle for our family. It will certainly evolve as we do. For now, we are committing to traveling for at least a year. We’ve done this before, but it was with only two much younger kids, and that was only for six months in one country. So this will be different. In addition to being parents, travel planners, cooks, and creators, we are also going to be teachers/learning mentors for our children. So we suppose Earth Parade is also the name of our new little homeschool in the jungle, arctic, or wherever we are. Figuring out homeschooling, or perhaps “roadschooling” in our case, will be another big adventure in its own right, but we figure there’s no better classroom than the Great Outdoors.
Finally, Earth Parade is this newsletter that you are reading right now. We can’t take on such a voyage alone, and we are encouraged by our friends and family, who have been a sounding board and emotional support to help us fulfill this dream. We are so grateful to you. This newsletter is a space for us to continue building our community, share our experiences and lessons from nature, and hopefully inspire others to pursue their own wild dreams or, at the very least, spend more time outside.
Here are some of the special things we have cooking up for you:
Travel trips and guides
Fun, family-friendly nature activity ideas
Simple ways to reconnect and spend more time outdoors.
Coloring pages for kids and adults!
Art, photos, and videos
Thought pieces and interviews on conservation, society, and the future of life
Discount codes
Recipes
Behind-the-scenes access to our family odyssey
Through our new life in the field, we want to inspire people, and especially families, to have more green time than screen time! The more we learn about the soaring rates of anxiety and depression, especially in Gen Z, the more we understand that nature could be a remedy for so many of the physical and mental health issues plaguing our modern society. We will provide tools, activities, and ideas for people to overcome nature-deficit disorder wherever they are in the world.
If getting back into the natural world is part of the cure, then we feel that we must do a better job of protecting it. Since 1970, we’ve already lost nearly 73% of global wildlife populations. At the rate we’re going, around 1 million animal and plant species could be extinct when our kids reach their 40s. Approximately 170 trillion plastic particles are contaminating our oceans, and as we type this, the problem is getting worse.
Of course, humans are not apart from nature. We are a part of nature, and we are inextricably bound together, for better or worse. Without the natural world, we risk losing part of what makes us human beings, and we are learning what makes us sane and happy. These ideas were once obvious, but somehow, modern generations have forgotten this ancient, conventional wisdom.
Over breakfast one morning, we wrote a mission statement for Earth Parade together as a family: to encounter 73 of the most threatened plants and animals. (Maybe you can guess why we picked the number 73?) When we find them, we will do our best to film them, draw them, and celebrate their existence.
How long will it take? We’re not sure. We are intentionally taking it slow to remain sane while traveling with three small kids and to develop a deeper understanding of some of the most pristine places on Earth. What’s our itinerary? We’re still figuring that out, too.
We are excited to be transforming this ethereal subconscious dream into what we hope will be a life-changing experience. An education in reality. We harbor no illusions that it will be easy. We know it will be challenging, but we hope that with the challenge comes fulfillment. The emotional difficulty of being away from close friends and family will be only slightly tempered by the nuclear family bonds we fortify. The longing for routine will be replaced by daily surprises.
Subsequent posts will go into more detail about the plan as it develops, our backstory, and why we feel the urge to do this now, so feel free to check those out. In the meantime, thanks for being here. As we press publish on this Substack to introduce what we’re up to on the eve of the winter solstice, which happens to be Jaron’s 45th birthday, we’re having a “pinch me” moment. As we prepare to embark on this next chapter, we’ve got butterflies in our stomachs and hearts filled with gratitude.
Welcome to Earth Parade!
To Life!
Dana, Jaron, Luca, Orion, Vivian (DJLOV)
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Incredible! Can’t wait to follow along.
So inspiring!