“I’m organizing a hike to La Piedra Balanceada de Juanacatlán,” announced Mario Guerrero. “It is so short and easy that even my wife is going to go.”

I passed this news around to lots of friends, most of whom decided to pass, commenting that too many of Mario’s “short-n-easy” hikes had proved just a wee bit too long-n-hard for their taste.

I, of course, took the bait, along with a few friends I could describe as “hardy hikers.”

“You’re going to love hiking with Don Pepe,” said my friend Susan Street. “He’s a school teacher in Ixcatan, but also one of the most knowledgeable persons I’ve ever met about flora, fauna and the environment.” 

A new photographic exhibit in Guadalajara showcases the struggle of activists, biologists, botanists, anthropologists – and especially ordinary people in the community – to defend and conserve the remains of a great forest which once stretched from Tesistan to the Huentitan Canyon.

I used to avoid balnearios (public swimming pools) with a passion, but recently I was invited to join a team of University of Guadalajara geographers investigating all of the hot springs around the old Primavera Caldera. To my surprise, I discovered that some balnearios have more to offer than noisy boomboxes and screaming kids.

Members of six Guadalajara families gathered together on June 14 to hike along the 2.2-kilometer “Nature Trail” laid out by rangers in the Primavera Forest. All members of the group were carrying bombs, but not the sort that cause destruction.

The Bosque la Primavera, the extensive flora and fauna reserve lying directly west of the Guadalajara metropolitan area, could be transformed into a geopark and become a candidate for membership in Unesco’s highly esteemed Global Geoparks Network (GGN).