As all avid skier, the signs at the top of the mountain marking of have held an ambivalent mixture of excitement and fear. The lure of steep, untracked powder has been irresistible, yet knowledge of avalanche tragedies on Canadian slopes and human impacts on pristine environments have equally tugged at my cautious and informed nature. To address an impasse in my educational practice, I began to ski out of with a similar ambivalent mixture of fear and excitement. What I discovered beyond the bounds was sustainability for adults; an untracked field that holds much promise for a holistic approach to environmental concerns, social issues, and the soul-destroying way we live and work. Twenty years ago, I shifted from on the slopes of high school teaching to the slopes of adult education, as an international development educator. To my surprise, my frustrations with the bounds of school bells and marking deadlines gave way to a new set of frustrations with adults not showing up to sequential workshops or action meetings. The organization I worked with used Freirean-inspired practices that believed in people's desire to care for issues beyond themselves, their sense of justice and compassion, and their capacity to make a difference. In developing programs, we invited participants to explore and critique the dominant ideology and to listen to rarely heard stories from Third World * communities affected by international policies. Yet, even with in-depth analysis and discussion, the leap from information to social action was a yawning chasm that even passionate speakers from Africa, Asia, or Latin America could not bridge. I began to question this educational practice and even some of my basic philosophical perspectives. Why do people not attend? Why do people not act when informed? Why do people strongly hold to mainline media views and aggressively question or dismiss the Third World speakers that were our guests? We thought we were skiing on the same slope of education for social change identified by many influential educators, but we felt stuck in the trees. So, I resolved to find a practice that resonated with adults from many walks of life and helped them to reclaim their role as active citizens. In the mid-1990s, I began teaching in the adult program of the Faculty of Extension, University of Alberta. Through the courses, I encountered many adults who had been restructured out of their jobs or left to cope with double or triple the workload. Rather than start from theory, which was at a serious impasse, I decided to find out where these adults were in terms of their personal issues and what social concerns captured their concern. What I discovered was that they first needed to find a new livelihood before their severance packages ran out or their pink slips arrived. To explore further possibilities, I engaged classes in discussions on globalization. To my amazement, the students were able to clearly articulate the economic and political forces that had turned their worlds upside down. There was plenty of ideological questioning about who these changes benefited. They were astute, angry, and seeking different ways to live, away from the soul-destroying routines they had been stuck in. They wanted to think outside the box and find ways of living that were not exhausting, overwhelmingly stressful, illness-producing, and did not involve compromising their ethics. When I asked learners about the most pressing global issues, environmental degradation and the widening gap between rich and poor were at the top of the list. This really stumped me; while I was relieved that people on the street really did care, why was there only concern and no action for change? My most surprising discoveries were still ahead. Participants told me that: * There were no reliable sources to inform them on issues of concern. …