Final Reflections — Ecological Economics in Arizona

Our three weeks in Arizona and New Mexico came to a beautiful ending back in the city where it all began, Tucson.

On our final full day together, we shared a last supper of pizza and salad with both pastors from Shalom Mennonite Church, Tina Schlabach and Carol Rose, as well several of our early presenters, Katherine Smith from Mennonite Central Committee, Duane Ediger from Sustainable Tucson and Mandy Schlabach from Mennonite Voluntary Service — Tucson.  Our time with these partners gave us opportunities to reflect on our most memorable moments and what we learned from these experiences.

Each student has written a blog post — check them out if you haven’t already!  And these public posts are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to their thoughtful reflections.  Students have written journal reflections about the “planet, people and profit” aspects of the places we visited and the industries we’ve learned about, and engaged in countless conversations, both formal and informal, along the way.

We have spoken with dozens of experts in their fields — from migration to mining, solar power to volunteer service, natural history to ecotourism, Native American history to contemporary Indigenous issues.  We have worshiped in three churches:  Catholic, Mennonite and Baptist.  We have camped indoors and out, backpacked to places without roads, hiked among the Hoodoos, and climbed two peaks:  Mt. Wrightson and Chiricahua Peak.

And then there were the 6 am runs that this group of cross country and track athletes did almost daily on roads and paths from Tucson to Portal to Taos to Las Cruces and back to Tucson again.  We really moved in this course!

I’ll finish this final post with a blessing offered to us by Duane Ediger before we left Tucson the first time:

“Peace be in your hearts, good health in your bodies, courage in your vision and boldness in your words.”

Amen to that…