fifty miles over four days, from the jungle to the caribbean sea. seven hikers left kalu yala, a sustainable eco-town in the making located in the panamanian jungle, and began their trek to the caribbean coast. these hikers soon found out that, at some points, this untested trail did not even exist.

bushwhacking through the jungle was never on the agenda for the seven hikers, interns and directors developing sustainability projects at this experimental community. but they had to improvise to reach their destination safely – or at all.

kalu yala intern carter angel, one of the explorers on the trip, didn’t even know much about hiking. “i think it was the hardest thing i’ve ever done in my entire life and it was as rewarding as it was challenging,” said angel, 31, a kalu yala resident from virginia. the challenges they faced ranged from language barriers and physical injury to a treacherous climb through the mountains that took them in a circle – back to their starting point a day later.

the kalu yala hikers were accompanied by local panamanian guides, “two farmers that knew their way but didn’t know the trails,” angel said. at some points the hikers saw that they were going off-trail but communicating the ideas in spanish to the guides, who were looking for shortcuts with well-trained eyes, was difficult.

nevertheless, the guides proved essential to the group’s survival. “we walked by a wasp nest and (the guide) just took his hand and plugged up the hole so they couldn’t get out,” angel said. the locals’ knowledge of the area and the environment allowed them to “hear and see things that anybody else wouldn’t be able to hear or see,” she said.

marie stringer, co-owner of tres brazos outfitters – an outdoor adventure recreation business at kalu yala – helped plan this trip, and described the trail as the “supreme jungle” meant for adventurous tourists who want to explore the way to the ocean rather than fly by it in a 1.5-hour truck ride. she tracked the hikers as they took this trip and saw that they were walking in the wrong direction at points. but angel and her companions had to circle back, and as a result, fell far behind schedule. “we were in such a time crunch that there were points where we were literally running,” angel said. they had to make it in four days – or their supplies would run out.

in the midst of this adventure-gone-wrong, the travel team diminished from seven to four. “jess, who did the filming got injured, and then jimmy’s shoes fell apart,” angel said. another hiker, bailey, also had to return to kalu yala. “luckily though, it was kind of a blessing in disguise because they gave us their food and some of their clothes,” angel said. carter continued on this trek with kalu yala staffers tara mclaughlin, sasha papich, and wes stiner.

these risks did make this experience unforgettable for the hikers, but so did the rewards. “there’s some really beautiful points on the trail and i think the four of us really really bonded,” angel said, and then she went on explaining how they saw bioluminescent plankton during a boat ride.

although the trip did not go as planned, this is what happens when the trail is untested, “they’ll be doing it again next semester,” said stringer, from tres brazos outfitters.  

hiking is a popular sport at kalu yala, a sustainable community in the making in the panamanian jungle, where interns develop their own ecological projects for agriculture, living designs, construction, and water resources. a group of these kalu yala residents went on a 50-mile hiking adventure and ended up walking in circles on uncharted trails, reemphasizing the importance of navigation.

since the majority of the students at kalu yala are not local, they are not experts in their knowledge of the area. with new technology, however, navigation can be a tool the hiker carries to the trail. the alltrails application is a technological innovation for navigation that, through an ongoing ecological tourism project, is being adapted to the trails around kalu yala.

app guides hikers, even offline

marie stringer, co-owner of tres brazos outfitters, has been working on this project for months. “it turns your cell phone into an offline gps tracker that tracks your points as you hike outside of cell signal. you can download the maps offline and then utilize your point on the map without wi-fi (or cellular service) to see the topography ahead,” said stringer, as she explained the purpose of alltrails.

the staff at kalu yala have been mapping the trails around the area to add to the app, founded by a group of bay area investors in 2010. as a result, “instead of requiring that a staff member or student know the trail, it allows people to go do this on their own,” stringer said. she is referring to the trails meant for beginners, indicated in the app as the less challenging ones — unlike the grueling 50-mile trail to the caribbean that required guides.  

discovering kalu yala via the app

alltrails will benefit the hiker as an individual and kalu yala as a community. stringer describes it as a social sharing app. “we’ve had people just show up on our property because of the trails that we mapped for our internal use,” she recalls. seeing as there aren’t many trails mapped around the area, people began to see kalu yala as a good place to stop for a break or even for the night.

more visitors at kalu yala could even help in the community’s mission. jimmy stice, founder and ceo of kalu yala, describes how this institution would achieve its most basic goal by spreading “environmental and social values to people who want to come here.

“what i’d really like, though, is to create an economy here where you don’t have to just come here to be a student or come here to camp for the weekend — you can apply for a job here like any real city.”

as kalu yala scales up to a larger community, people who would initially wander in using alltrails could learn more and spread the word about sustainable living. this expansion would lead to more guests and eventually, employees to help upkeep the sustainable ecological programs.

helping people experience nature

this app also solves the issue of accessibility. “what alltrails does is it allows hiking like that to be accessible to people that don’t have that sort of very specialized gear, because the gear that you need is your cell phone,” stringer said. the fact that the app is free also allows everyone to be able to access an outdoor adventure.

carter angel, a hiker and a recent graduate of the internships at kalu yala, recalls a time when she took a hike a saw a rare red frog. the app, by making hiking easier to access, allows more people to experience nature, in nature. “there’s things along that whole trail that you would never see anywhere else because you’re literally just, you’re there,” angel said.

however, angel believes that the paths she worked on are in an early developmental phase, and so she did not yet post many of the trails she mapped.

stringer reemphasizes this current challenge: “i have this amazing vision of it, but it requires actually a lot of time and energy on my part to make it what i want it to be.” she is planning to continue working on this project next semester.

a tool for education

the vision those at kalu yala have for alltrails extends beyond the mapping of a few hiking trails, however.

farm tours, usually given by the farm manager to kalu yala visitors, are being adapted into self-guided tours with alltrails, from the chicken coops to the red cranberry hibiscus bushes.

“i’ll go through and do the farm tour and add every plant that i know,” stringer said. “when people come here they can grab the brochure and then download alltrails, upload our farm tour and literally walk around the farm clicking on the pictures … getting an explanation of what that is, how it builds a soil and what sort of nutrients it needs.”

zoe st. john, the agriculture director at kalu yala, said the self-guided tours will give her more time to work on farm projects. “that means that i get roughly an extra, anywhere from an hour to six hours each week, just to work on the farm,” st. john said. “i am so thrilled.”

the alltrails app can be loaded with unlimited information. stringer explains that the project is not yet complete because she is still collecting “culinary information or any sort of medicinal information,” among other facts about the agriculture at kalu yala to include in the app before posting it.  

a living project

using the mapped trails and, in order to map others, angel created a ‘hiking challenge’ for the staff and students at kalu yala. she wanted to build something that won’t “just get eaten by the jungle,” meaning that it would last for years and get passed on, unlike some sustainability projects that require constant maintenance. 

angel created a point system showing scale of difficulty to encourage people to head out for that first hiking high. “if you think you’re going on a hike and your machete-ing the whole time, like, that’s not a hike — that’s a scramble. so i wanted it to be something that is fun and safe and enjoyable,” angel said.

before the sun begins the morning stretch over the mountain ridge that sprawls across central panama, a group of 20-somethings departs into the jungle. in search of a new place to swim, the young hikers cross a burbling stream that threatens to fill their boots with water. beyond the river and a steep incline, they skirt a pack of cattle struggling to keep their footing on the narrow trail. they nod to the farmer who looks bemused at their continual walks and they proceed. after an hour, the voyagers reach a swimming hole, just as someone back at their camp promised. they leap into the water and rinse the 80-degree heat from their skin as the sun begins to crest over the hills.

when the eco-town of kalu yala entered the panamanian landscape about 10 years ago, it brought an abundance of new life and innovation to the relatively undeveloped land surrounding the chagres national park. the small campus housed internship programs, new start-up businesses and open, roofed, rancho-style platforms for camping. innovative technology attracted lots of young americans and interns from other parts of the world hoping to make advances in the worldwide push for sustainability. but it also brought a phenomena that many panamanian locals had never seen before: hiking.

while residents of san miguel, the closest town to kalu yala, may not understand the hype of carrying heavy-duty hiking packs up a hill for seemingly no reason, interns and staff at kalu yala have adopted the western tradition as a part of their culture.

clay springer, the current director of the outdoor recreation department, first arrived in panama a few months ago and panamanians would watch him hiking up the steep kalu yala access road, and the final steep hill, fondly deemed “suicide hill.”

“oftentimes they’ll look at us and wonder what we’re doing out there,” springer said. “and i’ve been offered a ride by people, by panamanian farmers when i’m walking out in the countryside. i say, ‘no, i’m doing this intentionally, i want to walk…’ and they’re like, ‘gringo loco, no entiendo!’”

this example highlights what many kalu yalans consider a cultural divide between themselves and their neighbors. while many programs are working to engage more with the community so near their village, this often comes with challenges.

aside from language barriers, which make it tough for interns to interact with young neighbors, many of the canadians and americans find it difficult to relate to the many challenges panamanian students from san miguel face. angela jones, the director of education, said she sees a level of apathy toward education in the town but it’s often due to limited means that constrains access to schools.

“there’s no high school here,” jones said. “so the kids, once they graduate from primary school, then they have to go to la mesa, which is about 20, 30 minutes away to go to middle school or high school.”

many students decide against this daily commute and the costs of school. they stay at home or hope to find work elsewhere.

“i talked to a kid just the other day who was 13, i think,” jones said. “and he was just hanging out on the patio. i asked him ‘what do you do?’ and (he said) ‘i don’t go to school.’”  

jones said parents are generally in support of this because it means their children can seek employment at factories in nearby towns, and parents won’t have to pay for bus fares or notebooks. it saves them money, and many students have a desire to leave the valley.

hiking is another apparent divide and, of course, there’s a considerable gap even among americans who are interested in hiking. in 2013, the outdoor participation report found that 70 percent of americans participating in outdoor recreation were white. racial minorities represented only one in five visitors to the national parks, according to a 2011 poll. as in panama, these disparities can be linked to the wealth gap between white americans and minorities.

springer attributes the relative lack of interest in hiking among panamanians living in rural areas to a desire to escape from their current lifestyle, which requires a lot of walking and outdoor labor for everyday chores and errands.

“there is a cultural disconnect there,” springer said. “i think a lot of panamanians living in the interiors have worked really really hard to get to a point where they can leave the interior and go to the cities. so looking at hiking as a recreational activity is confusing to them.”

taylor gray, an outdoor recreation intern from winnipeg, in manitoba, canada, has spent her semester developing maps of surrounding hiking trails with other interns. she feels that most of the work they’ve done in the past has served residents of kalu yala but hopes to encourage more participation for neighbors in san miguel and beyond.

chloe chow, an intern from montreal, said even kalu yalans see hiking as a “luxury,” and thinks that many locals “don’t know about the trails we have here.”

springer thinks that hiking hasn’t been something that panamanians have thought about as an asset in the past. however, with the building of a new canal through nicaragua, which could take business away from the country’s main source of income at the panama canal, hiking might be an important place to turn. because the new canal would not be owned by panama, trade may migrate out of their country. people previously employed at the panama canal will need to look elsewhere to work, and springer said outdoor rec is a good next step.

“(there) is an initiative going on with a company called ‘caminando de panama,’ which means ‘walking panama,’” springer said. “(the) objective is to train locals to have a durable vested interest in conserving their land by turning them into wilderness guides so when they do that, it gives them a new source of income, it gives them a reason to protect their wilderness and instills a new passion for the outdoors in their local communities, which i think is incredible.”

kalu yala and groups such as the kuna yala tribe on the san blas islands have tapped into the growing demand of tourists to travel to panama, but panamanians haven’t taken this opportunity yet. gray said that by training locals to be guides, they will become more invested in the conservation of their land while benefiting from a steady income.

“i think it’s a great opportunity for them to make money, to turn that lifestyle toward hiking,” gray said. “i agree with the statement the more people love something, the more they want to protect it.”

of course, looking at missions like these aren’t always practical in the 10-week semesters that the kalu yala institute provides for its interns. for now, interns in the outdoor recreation program focus their efforts on members of their community and projects they feel they can accomplish. gray’s project comes from a desire to have her peers experience nature more deeply.

“we live here, we should experience the wilderness,” gray said. “so many people come here and are like, ‘yeah, i live in the jungle.’ but then never leave this little community and i think it’s super important to experience 100 percent of the area you’re in, so doing cultural activities, going hiking, doing overnight trips in the woods, cause then you can actually say you experienced the jungle and you lived in the jungle.”

the outdoor recreation program does a good job promoting trail maintenance and hiking within their community, but sometimes it feels a bit isolated even within itself. the interns plan activities with hopes of involving interns from other programs, but without interest it’s hard to hope for longevity.

right now, gray feels that kalu yala is at something of a standstill in terms of growing as a community and increasing its local involvement. while each program and the institute as a whole has goals of expanding into the local community, a lot of these aren’t entirely practical due to time, cultural and budgetary restraints.

“(kalu yala tells interns to) ‘get creative, do your own thing, if you’re passionate about it, do it,’ instead of saying ‘take something from kalu yala, make it better,’” gray said. “i think they should definitely emphasize that more. because i mean, it sounds bad, but there’s so many good ideas, but implemented in shitty ways in kalu yala that could just be implemented so much better.”

for instance, gray hopes her maps will serve as a guide for future hikers. but, to some extent, interns have to hope someone else will pick up on their project. one past intern once created a skee ball court, which has since fallen into disrepair.

for many, there’s a layer of tension between what kalu yala is today, and what it can or even should become in the future with growth. on a more macro level, gray worries about kalu yala growing at all.

“right now it’s just a little plot of land that 150 people can enjoy and can one day be (totally) sustainable at this size,” gray said. “the bigger it gets, the harder it is to stay sustainable. that does worry me a little bit, i think it worries a lot of people.”

people have big dreams for the outdoor recreation department and kalu yala as a whole. as the town gets older, residents are growing more and more aware that many of these changes will be much harder to implement than they envisioned.

“we think very startup-y in the way that we say ‘can this scale? can we have more people living like this?’” said esteban gast, the former president of the kalu yala institute. “and we know that not everyone’s going to live like this.” gast left his position recently to take a job in media in los angeles.

springer, gray and chow think a lot about how to bring san miguel residents into the conversation of outdoor recreation and other opportunities at kalu yala. tuition, paid by the international interns, is waived for any resident of san miguel.

“right now my audience just includes my interns which is a group of six students,” springer said. “but the projects we’re working on is for the benefit of the whole kalu yala community and then eventually hopefully the panamanian community.”

in the end, it’s a matter of time before anyone – within or without kalu yala – will be able to predict the future of what many hope will become a model for sustainable towns around the globe. 

“right now, i don’t think there’s anything wrong with what kalu yala is doing,” gray said. “everyone here has the right mindset, they have the right goals. the bigger it gets, the more it just turns into another town so that is definitely worrisome.”

david eddleston leads a volunteer force called the friends of the oregon badlands or fobits. he said the fun name rhyming with hobits brings attention to the group’s mission to help restore this high desert jewel.
“that means reversing decades of dumping,” eddleston said. “we want to take out all this trash that we’ve got here and gradually restore it and heal it and bring it back to being a wilderness again.”

the fobits have more than a 130 volunteers who work closely with other nonprofits.
the u.s. bureau of land management says that it benefits from tens of thousands of dollars in volunteer labor. facing tight budgets and limited resources, land managers here are increasingly turning to volunteers to help protect these uniquely american assets.