Okay, so technically I was procrastinating last weekend when I sat down at my desk and started thinking about what sustainable tourism means to me… Technically, I already had something I should have been working on… Technically, writing that article was going to contribute to my own personal fiscal sustainability.

Inspiration strikes in this way. Erratic. Inconvenient. With wanton disregard for the fact you don’t have a pencil or scrap of paper in sight… As Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love) recounts so aptly in her TED talk, it even happens to Tom Waits. And the best solution Tom could come up with was to yell at the inspiration-fairy when she started whispering in his ear as he drove along the freeway, “Can’t you see I’m busy right now? Couldn’t you come back a bit later? Like when I’m at my desk?!?!”

So I started thinking about sustainable tourism. And about what a lousy traveller I am. How unworldly and unsophisticated I feel when I step into a strange place. And it struck me that sustainable tourism is like frog pose… so I wrote my vision and sent it off to the organisers of TEDx Whistler, in the hopes that I might be able to wangle a seat at the conference to hear Wade Davis speak. Because any event that promotes itself by tweeting little gems like this: There is no end to the adventures we can have if only we seek them with our eyes open-Jawaharial Nehru – has got to be worth the effort.