Fall is everywhere. And besides falling leaves it seems the world is falling a part in tiny bits and pieces. A war here, a war there, so awful and tragic. Our country torn, a weird ass election ahead, and our dreams on edge.

Rising above the turmoil, we shut it off and look for simpler pleasures in smaller pieces of our lives.

And me I fall into the refuge of the road as Joni Mitchell would lament, traveling back in time to places, I have been before. Music that draws me into the pace I like. Into another world. Familiar but yet unfamiliar. I drift into the mystic. Espana and Lisboa, where I forget my worries and feel my way to present time.

Shedding the dreads and the dreary. I marvel at the little people I am coming to know who revel in every moment. Savanna, Sophie, laughing with little Weston, who is just now learning to master his miniature toilet. What bliss.

Always more to learn from little emerging smiles, a peek into the amazing.

I would not be here without a whisper from a water friend – “Hey you should be in Seville.” Oh really why? “You need to be there. Make it happen.” Okay.

Well it was years ago I got my start in this gig, assisting Santa Rosa with public outreach for their contentious struggle with wastewater that led to the Geysers Recharge Project …which will be celebrating its 20-year anniversary this fall up in the mountains above Middletown – where ancient ghosts reside in towns now invisible to the setting, like Mercuryville. Laid to waste in the rugged countryside that is now a series of pipelines full of steam generating electricity for the Bay Area.

Wow!

And today I am flying across the Atlantic, plane shaking as I prepare myself to speak at an international conference on Climate Change and Water in Seville, Spain. I never would have thought that this path convincing people that the use of recycled water for irrigating parks and food crops was a good idea to offset our now precious drinking water. Of course these days it’s a little tougher, convincing people that wastewater could be purified to a level and quality that we could safely drink. Lovely possibility, huh!

Well that is one of my missions this week, sharing our successes in advanced purified recycled water with the rest of the world that finds itself in dire straits due to Climate Change, severe droughts, and extraordinary weather variability. And oddly, I’m quite happy to be on the road to share the news.

I owe much of my success to my hometown and to my lovely wife who has managed to put up with these antics, and me, for some 37 plus years, this very day. Wow, now that is something.

Our plane is finding its way to Lisboa. Without a plan or a care, we will wander about the hills and water ways and enjoy the fall again in this Portuguese haven, celebrating our destiny thus far.