Jackson Perrin is a science educator who enjoys the challenges of living sustainably. He lives with his wife and daughter in their straw-bale house powered by
the sun and watered by the rain in Paonia, Colorado.
Dev Carey is a one-man educational think tank who has taught at all levels, from tots to graduate students, in subjects ranging from hitchhiking to botany. More of his writings and projects can be found at www.highdesertcenter.org.

Sustainable living can seem straightforward: buy a hybrid. Install some solar
panels. Shop locally. Travel less. And don’t forget the organic cotton sheets.
All those actions are worthy, but, of course, they’re just the beginning. How
do you live green without busting your personal budget? How do you design
a career that’s rewarding, but still allows you the time to live your values by,
say, biking to work? How do you find—and live responsibly within—a community
that helps, rather than hinders, your efforts to live more lightly? We
wanted to get our students thinking about these questions; we wanted their
quest for answers to be our next big adventure.
We had some experience with living lightly. When we first moved to
the small town of Paonia, Colorado, to teach at an independent community
school, we were in our late twenties—a couple of idealistic bachelors. Our
tiny paychecks inspired us to make a game out of living on less than $150 a
month. We biked everywhere, year-round; traded work on a local elk ranch
for our rent; picked apples; and socialized at potlucks instead of restaurants.
After a few years, we teamed up with three families to buy a piece of land
and built a six-sided house out of scavenged materials for less than $900.
(It’s still in use today.)
People often assumed we were either miserably uncomfortable or supported
by a family trust fund, but the truth was neither: we were supporting
ourselves and having a great time doing it. In fact, our lives were a lot like
one of our wilderness trips. We helped each other take risks, learned from
one another, and enjoyed the satisfaction of reaching our goals together.
With those experiences in mind, we founded the High Desert Center
for Sustainable Studies on our land in 2005.