This contemplative travel haibun takes the reader to the green islands of England, Scotland, & Wales. In the year 2000 there was hope we’d begin a better millennium. Now, a quarter century later, the world—and these small isles at the tip (and tipping point) of the Atlantic-Gulf stream—teeter between epochs, as the Anthropocene shapes life on the planet in ever deeper ways. A good time for pilgrimage , a family trek to the old country, in search of origins. But why in the world put these small British isles center stage again, when we were just getting used to the fading of its once dominant empire? Haven’t we had enough of colonialism and its conceits? There are good reasons, personal as well as political. It is the personal that prompts travel to a land where half my forebearers originated. We have old roots in the motherland of the green isles. Politically, too, there is no better place to interrogate the origins of the modern global world than where the infamous Industrial Revolution began, the Americas were born from the jealous hearts of kings, and where the English language, which has become de facto the global idiom of commerce and entertainment, was shaped. This pilgrimage is a way to de-center myself as a citizen of [only] America. And, in coming home, to uncover the stories of First Peoples in the California I was born to. We all hail, originally—as Homo sapiens— from the great African continent. Which is one of the themes of this journey. That we are truly, whether we love or hate the notion, one big entangled family. This book is a pilgrimage toward this recognition.