Think of the flattest, most forgotten piece of land you can imagine. No trees, no birds, soil so acidic the farmers had given up on it for good. That was Los Llanos, the eastern savanna of Colombia in the late 60s. According to the on-the-ground report from The Ecologist, a young Colombian dreamer named Paolo Lugari looked at this "wet desert" and decided it was the perfect place to prove sustainable living could work anywhere. In 1971, he founded a small community there called Gaviotas. Today, decades later, that same dead land is a thriving rainforest.
The desert of the mind
