SUSTAINABILITY AND REGENERATION

I have always loved being outdoors. As a child, I had the privilege of camping and playing in the woods of Northern Arizona, where I fell in love with the smell of dirt and the joy of planting flowers. In Phoenix, though, growing food was never easy. I didn’t yet have the knowledge or the patience, and every attempt ended in disappointment. For a long time, I stopped trying.

In 2018, I moved to southern Illinois to spend the winter in the Midwest. The stillness of that season met me in my grief. The cold air, the bare trees, and the silence of frozen soil reflected my own need to slow down. When spring came, I began to notice the smallest signs of life: the first violets, tender green buds, and the perfume of lilacs. My spirit began to wake alongside the land.

By early summer, I started planting seeds of every kind, experimenting with what could grow. That was when I met an elder, Mama Shabeta, who guided me into a deeper relationship with the plants. She taught me to listen, to sit with my plantitas, to feel them and allow them to feel me. Soon, I began dreaming with them. My cucumbers showed me how to build trellises to hold their vines. The three sisters taught me how to adjust their supports so they could grow together. When I harvested calabasa, visions came to me of my ancestors. My hands became theirs, and I knew we had done this before.

The next year, I learned about companion planting, and my garden flourished. The harvests were more than I could manage, so I shared with neighbors and friends. Through that sharing, I understood that abundance is meant to circulate and that the garden teaches generosity.

When I returned to my beloved desert in the fall of 2021, I carried the lessons of the Midwest with me. I knew I needed to nurture my plant relatives wherever I lived, even in urban spaces. The heat of Phoenix was a challenge, but it also invited creativity. I began planting in the alley behind my home, turning unused land into an herb and lettuce garden. I then moved into my wife’s home, where she had more space to experiment with raised gardens. I successfully grew tomatoes, cucumbers, and calabasa, but when the summer heat returned, the garden burned out almost overnight. I grieved, but I learned, adapted, and tried again. The next season, I moved the raised beds, built shade, and changed my planting cycles to align with winter rains instead of summer sun.

In 2022, my wife, Chef Silvana, and I moved permanently to the home she had been building for over 20 years in Rosarito, Baja California, Mexico, on the lands of the Kumeyaay. I began mapping my garden immediately, eager to learn this new climate, because that is how I truly feel at home. The soil and sea air were different from the desert I knew, and I spent the first year observing the sun, the seasons, and the insects. I built and rebuilt raised beds, learning what could thrive here. We installed water capture, solar, and composting systems and began experimenting with gray water to nourish our plants.

Chef Silvana began her own community work, organizing neighborhood cleanups and transforming an empty lot into a small park. Last winter, she hosted a six-week culinary intensive for thirteen local children, teaching them kitchen skills and the ancestral histories of Mesoamerican ingredients such as avocado, tomato, and mole. The children learned that cooking is ceremony, a practice of patience, care, and memory. They returned for a two-day mole workshop, where they prepared everything over an open fire, stirring stories and flavors together.

During this time, I was completing my master’s and doctoral work in Sustainability Education, and I had little time for my garden. I learned the hard way that distance weakens relationship. Without attention, plants struggled, and the yields were small. Now, with my dissertation complete, I am returning to my plant relatives with new focus and devotion.

As I begin the Regenerative Design program at Prescott College, my goal is to integrate what I have learned about sustaining communities through land and body with the science and practice of sustaining the land itself. Here in Baja, I plan to design small-scale systems for water harvesting, soil regeneration, and community gardens that invite participation and shared responsibility. Chef Silvana's culinary school will grow into a professional and ancestral learning space where children and adults can learn not only how to cook our ancestral foods but also how to grow them in sustainable, regenerative ways.

Together, we are building a model of community rooted in reciprocity, where food, water, and story are part of the same cycle of care. Sustainability, for us, is not just a practice. It is a relationship, a way of listening to the land, honoring our ancestors, and dreaming of a future where both people and the earth can thrive.