In the framework of the university, we had created a department dealing with Sylvilization. It was animated by members of The Tribe . The board had decided to launch walking programs, that were to be arranged by what would be known as UNI-R - the Walking University. Those programs would involved several departments, but the core group of participants would be constituted by people who were enrolled in the department of Sylvilization.

Jean-James Garreau, a young biologist who had joined The Tribe after successful and brilliant studies, was nominated rector of UNI-R. He had enough offical university degrees to make the job and had served previously as project officer within an international organization called "The Peace Book" (Bernard Benson). I would be his assistant for several projects and we would become close friends. 

To me a “nomad university” where students and experts could dedicate their time to meeting people in their community, interacting with the local culture and developing a common understanding about life, had always been an ideal goal. In order to get an education at college or university, one is usually forced to leave the place where he/she is rooted. In the peripherical areas of the world, this often means a tragedy for local communities who see their young people leaving the countryside to go study and make a career in urban areas. In that way, they lose valuable intellectual and professional resources. The Walking University was aiming at meeting people in their own spaces and helping them with resisting a process of acculturation that could lead them to social  exclusion and extinction.

Our first walking program, which had been planned in the framework of the Sahelian Front, started from Paris. Along the way to West Africa, our main task was to spread information about environmental problems that lead to desertification, to set up public awareness campaigns and to build working partnerships with local communities. The program was also to give us the opportunity  to experiment more extensively  with sylvilization and community eco-living practices. Materials collected from the remaining oral sources could possibly integrate into our lifestyle and complete existing databases.

In the Spring  of 1984, more than two hundred people assembled in Marnoisisles, ready to start  what we thought would become an estonishing sixteen year trek on foot throughout the world. The first program was experimental. It will give us a new energy and some strength too. We were tired of wrangling with the authorities and yellow press in France. It was time to breathe some fresh air.

We learned a lot - both from the people we met on the  way and from each other. Life on the road was a great teacher. We set up hundreds of temporary camps, walking in the morning, arranging open classes in the afternoon and parties around the fire in the evening.

Every participant had his own field of interest and research, including ethnography, history, sociology, archaeology, arts, crafts, food traditions, land uses, agricultural practices, architecture, etc. Materials that were collected individually were shared with the whole group. We added new words to our vocabulary, new songs to our repertory, and new plants to our diet. There was so much to explore. We discovered the incredible diversity and richness of living knowledge.

By the end of 1986, we had walked 6,000 km through Western and Southern France, Andorra, Spain and Portugal. We had finally reached the gates of Africa. We set up a camp in Ceuta and started to negotiate with the Moroccan authorities our permit to enter the country. It didn't work.

Our patient expectation lasted for more than one year, during which time we did  small jobs for the local government - botanical inventories, environmental classes for primary and secondary schools, some social works. Many people visited our camp, even from Morocco, enjoying and celebrating the sense of togetherness that binds old friends after a long time away from home. Eventually we learned we could not enter Morocco for some political reason. Our disappointment was great. 

On the other hand we had started to get more and more interested by the Mediterranean. In the end of June 1988, we left Ceuta for Italy where a new walking program was launched in the framework of the international campaign "I've planted a tree for you". Mediterraneo Verde- Greening the Mediterranean -  started next Fall, after some months of practical preparation in the Monti della Tolfa, a small piece of wilderness located some 70 km North from Rome. We were quite surprised to discover that local people in a recent past had lived in huts similar to our gwams. 

From June to September, we received volunteers from Western Europe and Japan who came to be trained in Primary Environmental Care. Learning about the eco-living practices that were part of our program in sylvilization had a positive effect on many of them. Not only it was innovative but also fun. Some  joined us on a permanent basis. 

The first objective of the walking program that started in the end of September was to join Assisi where we had planned to arrive for Christmas. We walked through Civitavecchia, Ostia, Rome and then followed the Tiber river toward Umbria. In every village, an official delegation of authorities were receiving us and introducing our staff to the local schools where children were invited to plant trees. We provided them with young plants that were grown up in a nursery we had started near Rome and other ones that were provided for free by the Ministry of Agriculture and Forests.

The main idea was that every young people in Italy had to plant a tree for another child living in the Sahel. In return, those children in Africa were planting trees for other ones in Asia or South America where we had some contacts too. Each tree was carefully taken care by a godfather and godmother. It was very touching to see how kids were so enthousiastic - and their teachers sometimes as well.

In Assisi, we set up a small camp outside the city. We felt in tune with the spirit of the place where St. Francis obtained a foothold for the fratelli minori  in 1211. There was cold and even snow. During the day we were picking wood and olives in the surroundings. At evening we had storytelling circles around a big fire. While listening to the story of Francis Bernardone and his fellows, some of us got the strange feeling that they had lived all that before. 
 

The following months, our Grand Tour took us down South. We crossed Latina, Naples, Pompei, Sorrento, Amalfi, Salerno. We spent some months on the Vesuvio helping the authorities to prevent forest fires. We then reached the Gargano area in Puglia and continued along the coastline to Calabria. It seemed endless. When there weren't hills, there were mountains and canyons. It ws great and we came in closer contact with the kind of genuine rural culture that was constantly apparent in the local folklore. Most of us felt in love with this country, its nature and people.

Along the way, we organized public events with music and tree ceremonies, worked with local municipalities and arranged classes for volunteers and experts. We eventually arrived on the Tyrrhenian Coast of Calabria around December. In Tropea-Capo Vaticano we established our Winter camp.
 

Within two years, the campaign  had aroused major public interest all over the country. Arrangements were made with national institutions and the National Day of the Tree was reenacted. In 1990 on behalf of all those who contributed to make the campaign a success, Riel Huaorani - a young Canadian Metis who had walked since Paris in 1984, and thus had covered fifteen thousand kilometers on foot - was chosen to receive the United Nations Environment Award for Environment achievement in Mexico City.
 

This was a time when Women without Frontiers, a non-profit organization dedicated to gender issues, peace, and sustainable development were planning a campaign in Central and Eastern Europe called The Walking Trees. The idea was strongly supported by our women's group - Mothers for Life. The initial plaan was to walk from Etna to Chernobyl. Participants would plant a tree for every kilometer they walked.

The Walking Trees campaign started in 1990. In August 1991, the "pilgrims" celebrated the breakdown of the Wall in Berlin. They had already involved hundreds of municipalities, NGOs, local groups and schools on their way - from Italy through Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Austria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Poland. For reasons beyond their control, Oslo was the last leg of their journey. Mothers for Life had walked 6,000 km and planted thousands of trees.