Epilogue: Zero
What it means to plant a forest, to ride across a hemisphere, and to believe that one person's actions—rooted in resolve—can ripple outward for generations.
It began not with a bicycle, but with a question.
What if one person could erase the harm of their own lifetime—completely? What if planting enough trees could pull every ton of that person’s carbon footprint from the atmosphere? And what if, along the way, that same person rode a bicycle from the end of the road in Labrador to the southern tip of South America—17,500 miles powered by nothing but legs, conviction, and a belief in restoration—of carbon balance, of ecological healing?
Would it matter? Would it be enough to prove that personal action, not just global policy, still holds the power to change the math of the climate crisis?
This was never meant as a stunt. It wasn’t even a plan—not at first. It began as a quiet weight I carried for years. Not guilt exactly, but a knowing: that the forests and seas that shaped me had kept giving while I gave little back. My own lifetime of travel, work, consumption—it had left a carbon trail. And the only way forward, I believed, was to balance the scale.
The idea behind Climate Zero—the name I eventually gave this ride—crystallized only weeks before departure. The details were vague. I didn’t yet know how, or even where, the trees would be planted. But I knew I wanted to try.
I settled on five thousand trees. Not a poetic number, but a calculated one—an informed guess, refined by footprint estimators and padded with caution, like any good engineering spec. If the average person’s lifetime emissions could be offset by planting three thousand trees, then five thousand would cover the uncertainties. This was the equation of a modest Western life lived into middle age—childhood, ambition, fuel, flights, work, waste. And this would be the burden I had to balance.
But numbers only go so far. Because when I picture just one of the Mountain Almendros thriving at La Suerte—a giant with a six-foot trunk and a two hundred-year future—I see something even more powerful than math. That tree becomes a vertical city: fungi and insects below, monkeys and macaws above. A living keystone. And I planted 1,577 of them.
If even one survives to full maturity, I believe the outcome will be better than I hoped. Maybe five thousand trees weren’t necessary. Maybe one, in the right place, was enough.
All five thousand trees were planted during a single three-week stop at La Suerte Biological Field Station in northeastern Costa Rica. It took a team, yes—but the majority I planted myself. Each seedling required land, hands, water, time, and trust. These weren’t just trees placed in soil—they were gifts, offered by a field station that believed in what I was trying to do, even before I was sure it could be done.
And in the end, it was done. Five thousand native trees. Two continents. Seventeen thousand five hundred miles under my wheels. A quiet, continuous line drawn from Labrador to Patagonia—not for spectacle, but for something deeper: resolve.
People often ask about the hardest part. The answer is always the same: beginning.
Along the way, I told the story again and again—in roadside eateries, in the serendipitous places I stayed—hostels, campgrounds, modest inns—where stories surfaced over meals, coffee, or shared transition. Each time, the response felt genuine, moved, as though the listener were hearing from someone heroic. But I never felt like the hero. I still don’t. I felt human—exhausted, driven, lucky.
The real heroes were all around me: the people at La Suerte who made space for this dream, the friends, family, and strangers who supported the project on GoFundMe, the communities who trusted me, and the countless people I met across two continents who carried a piece of this work forward in ways I may never fully know.
I was the thread connecting their shared hope to the forest we built together.
Maybe the seeds planted were not only trees.
And yet, the silence from sponsors still echoes. As I prepare to self-fund another journey, carrying a message designed to serve a larger good, I can’t ignore that disappointment.
But the roots are down now. Five thousand trees are growing into the forest they were meant to become. My hope is that the story—this story—reaches the audience it deserves. That others will see what one person can do. And that they’ll join in, not out of guilt, but because something sacred still lives in the act of trying. Because if we believe anything at all about the future, we owe it to the children growing up now to at least try—to leave them more than a crisis, to leave them a forest.
What if one person could erase the harm of their own lifetime—completely? What if planting enough trees could pull every ton of that person’s carbon footprint from the atmosphere? And what if, along the way, that same person rode a bicycle from the end of the road in Labrador to the southern tip of South America—17,500 miles powered by nothing but legs, conviction, and a belief in restoration—of carbon balance, of ecological healing?
Would it matter? Would it be enough to prove that personal action, not just global policy, still holds the power to change the math of the climate crisis?
This was never meant as a stunt. It wasn’t even a plan—not at first. It began as a quiet weight I carried for years. Not guilt exactly, but a knowing: that the forests and seas that shaped me had kept giving while I gave little back. My own lifetime of travel, work, consumption—it had left a carbon trail. And the only way forward, I believed, was to balance the scale.
The idea behind Climate Zero—the name I eventually gave this ride—crystallized only weeks before departure. The details were vague. I didn’t yet know how, or even where, the trees would be planted. But I knew I wanted to try.
I settled on five thousand trees. Not a poetic number, but a calculated one—an informed guess, refined by footprint estimators and padded with caution, like any good engineering spec. If the average person’s lifetime emissions could be offset by planting three thousand trees, then five thousand would cover the uncertainties. This was the equation of a modest Western life lived into middle age—childhood, ambition, fuel, flights, work, waste. And this would be the burden I had to balance.
But numbers only go so far. Because when I picture just one of the Mountain Almendros thriving at La Suerte—a giant with a six-foot trunk and a two hundred-year future—I see something even more powerful than math. That tree becomes a vertical city: fungi and insects below, monkeys and macaws above. A living keystone. And I planted 1,577 of them.
If even one survives to full maturity, I believe the outcome will be better than I hoped. Maybe five thousand trees weren’t necessary. Maybe one, in the right place, was enough.
All five thousand trees were planted during a single three-week stop at La Suerte Biological Field Station in northeastern Costa Rica. It took a team, yes—but the majority I planted myself. Each seedling required land, hands, water, time, and trust. These weren’t just trees placed in soil—they were gifts, offered by a field station that believed in what I was trying to do, even before I was sure it could be done.
And in the end, it was done. Five thousand native trees. Two continents. Seventeen thousand five hundred miles under my wheels. A quiet, continuous line drawn from Labrador to Patagonia—not for spectacle, but for something deeper: resolve.
People often ask about the hardest part. The answer is always the same: beginning.
Along the way, I told the story again and again—in roadside eateries, in the serendipitous places I stayed—hostels, campgrounds, modest inns—where stories surfaced over meals, coffee, or shared transition. Each time, the response felt genuine, moved, as though the listener were hearing from someone heroic. But I never felt like the hero. I still don’t. I felt human—exhausted, driven, lucky.
The real heroes were all around me: the people at La Suerte who made space for this dream, the friends, family, and strangers who supported the project on GoFundMe, the communities who trusted me, and the countless people I met across two continents who carried a piece of this work forward in ways I may never fully know.
I was the thread connecting their shared hope to the forest we built together.
Maybe the seeds planted were not only trees.
And yet, the silence from sponsors still echoes. As I prepare to self-fund another journey, carrying a message designed to serve a larger good, I can’t ignore that disappointment.
But the roots are down now. Five thousand trees are growing into the forest they were meant to become. My hope is that the story—this story—reaches the audience it deserves. That others will see what one person can do. And that they’ll join in, not out of guilt, but because something sacred still lives in the act of trying. Because if we believe anything at all about the future, we owe it to the children growing up now to at least try—to leave them more than a crisis, to leave them a forest.