It's a new year and this is our first issue of 2008. Let's talk about resolutions. I'm not thinking of the small, personal ones we made on New Year's Eve. No, I mean real ones. Resolutions that can actually make a difference in our world.

Climb a mountain. I still picture the stunning view from the top of Mt. Hood the first time I reached its peak. From that vantage, with snow-capped monstrosities all around, my love for nature as well as my own insignificance within it were forever etched in me.

Ride a bike more. Be that person who commutes to work by bike. Be that person who goes grocery shopping on a bike. Being that person will make you a better person, and it will inspire others to do the same.

Get a reusable grocery bag. Recycling your plastic bags is important, but if you didn't bring plastic home in the first place, you wouldn't have to recycle it. China takes home three billion plastic bags every day. We're just as bad.

Learn about the environmental cost of plastic. If we, as stewards of the earth, really understood the life cycle of that convenient, two-handled plastic bag or that tiny plastic container, we would seriously cut down on the amount we consume. Most plastic doesn't get recycled and does not go away. No, plastic just breaks down into smaller pieces which ends up in the ocean, and kills animals that mistake it for food.

Learn about the North Pacific Gyre. A gyre is a vortex that spins, and right now, way out in the Pacific Ocean, a vortex the size of Texas full of billions of bits of plastic is churning. And it will be there forever, continuing to grow unless we do something.

New this year to Wend is an online, paperless version of the magazine which we'll be launching in the spring, giving our readers a choice of how to read Wend. We'll also be adding more pages to each issue, bringing you more inspiring tales from around the world written by people like you, people with a lust for adventure and a sense of duty to preserve the far out places that give us meaning, hope and identity.  –IGM