Environmental activist B.J. Cummings has navigated the polluted waters of the Duwamish River and the political complexities in which it is steeped for 15 years.

She has been fulltime director of the Duwamish River Cleanup Coalition for eight years. Her efforts to organize, clean the river and publicize its plight have been documented in the West Seattle Herald over the years. She is now on hiatus.

On Sept. 19 she’ll plunge herself into less familiar waters with her son, Colin, when they travel around the world for nearly a year. They return the end of July 2010.

Starting in Vancouver, B.C, the two will fly to Japan then ferry to South Korea and China, shunpike it to Thailand, fly to southern India, Kenya, Egypt and Greece.

Cummings said they will camp in Japan and Kenya, visit many United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage sites, and do some “WWOOFing” in Europe.

WWOOF, or World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms, is an organization of organic farmers who host volunteers that want to get their fingers dirty learning about organic foods and the farming lifestyle abroad.

“I have an older brother who lives in Switzerland, and my in-laws in Hungary are counting on us, too” said Cummings, 42, whose drivers license reads ‘Barbara Jill,’ but said she has been called B.J. since birth. “Then we may go to Turkey.”

“That’s good since I’m ‘hungry’ for Turkey,” quipped her son the punster, who will carry a chessboard, camera and journal to place daily entries. Colin turns 11 three days before they depart.

Because Colin’s parents opted to start him in kindergarten before his September birthday rather than wait a year, he is almost a year younger than some classmates at B.F. Day Elementary School in Fremont. He completed fifth grade in June and will begin sixth grade in one year.

“We worked it out with the school district,” said his mother. “We are not going to ‘home school’ in the traditional sense, if you can call home schooling traditional. When he comes back he will be in the same age range as others in his class. He will pick up where he left off. This year is really going to be learning about the world through traveling.”

“I’ll be learning a lot of geography, and eating foods from different countries, like fried tarantulas in Southeast Asia,” said Colin with a prideful grin. “I want to be a chef when I grow up. I want to be the sous chef in my uncle’s restaurant, called Oscar, when we get back home.”

B.J. said he might have to wait on that a few years. Her brother’s restaurant is in upstate New York. No word yet on whether fried tarantula will appear soon on his menu.

Cummings said people might be surprised to know that airfare cost them less than $2,000 each for Colin and her. Also, while she will not have an income, she said it cost less to travel around the world than it would to live in Seattle for the year.

Keep in mind that they plan to use couchsurfing.com when they are not camping. This online network lists more than one million homes worldwide with couches to crash on for free. It’s only fair, considering the Cummings’ have hosted unknown travelers from England to India on their couch.

Cummings is happily married but said budget travel off the beaten path does not appeal to her husband, Tom, who works with computers at Adobe in Fremont.

“He is an anxious traveler,” B.J. revealed. “I’ll miss him terribly, but if he were going to travel with us the whole time I think it would be more of a challenge to our marriage than his staying home. This trip is not his idea of heaven.”

Tom plans to rendezvous with his family three times during the trip. Meanwhile, B.J. will use Facebook, a blog and Skype, a software application that allows users to make voice and video contact from computer to computer over the Internet, often free of charge.

And what about snail mail?

“Yes,” B.J. said. “We’ve got grandparents who refuse to get on Facebook, so a few postcards will be going out.”