By 1988, I had grown disenchanted with my life. To my friends and family, it seemed that I had everything.
I was a chauffeur for a wonderful lady, was paid very well, and had a very nice expense account.
I traveled worldwide, driving the finest cars, staying in the finest hotels, and visiting palaces, castles, and vast estates. Yet my life was not complete.
I began to feel hollow inside. I had everything on the one hand and nothing on the other.
I loved my job and I worked hard, but I always managed to find the time to enjoy myself.
My life was a whirlwind of festivity, traveling here, there, and everywhere. I began to party incessantly, but increasingly I WAS NOT HAVING FUN.
Something was tearing me apart.
Finally, I realised what it was. It was the destruction of the Amazon. The vast mysterious place I dreamed of visiting when I was a child that set me off on a lifetime of travel and adventure was being destroyed.
It seemed that whenever I turned on the TV the screen was full of forests in flames. I wanted to do something to stop the destruction, but I did not know what I could do.
I had a full-time job, and though I knew plenty about the Amazon from a lifetime of distant observations, I was not a scientist.
What could I, a mere Chauffeur, do to help save the greatest forest on Earth?
Amid the parties and self-destruction, I was due for a vacation. This was my opportunity to discover what I should do with my life. I knew I had to be alone to think; away from friends and family.
I searched my globe for a place close to Canada, but far from the world I knew. In the middle of the Atlantic, between Canada and Europe, I found Iceland.
The Land of Ice and Fire.
To ensure my trip would be a solitary experience I bought a bicycle and loaded it with camping equipment. At first, the journey was painful and exhausting. I had not cycled for twenty years and was out of shape.
Puffing and panting, muttering to myself I wondered what on Earth I was doing as I pushed my bike up many a slope only to find an even bigger one awaiting.
Ah! But the scenery was ever so spectacular and I grew exhilarated and pushed myself beyond my wildest dreams.
As I cycled the land got more and more beautiful.
Icebergs, volcanoes, glaciers, geysers and pools of boiling mud.
Waterfalls and rivers, so fresh that I could drink straight from them.
I marveled at the beauty of it all and wondered,
"Why can’t the rest of the world be like this?
Why are we polluting the seas?
Why are we destroying the forests?"
As I asked these questions I searched for, but could not find, a noble excuse or explanation for the damage we have done and continue to do to the natural world that we all need to exist.
As the wilderness and beauty unfolded I realised how much we take pollution for granted and how we go through life knowing that swimming in a city's river or even drinking tap water may be detrimental to your health.
I wanted to show my friends that there were rivers so clean that you could drink straight from them. So I filmed myself, standing in a freezing knee-deep river, drinking straight from it to show it could be done.
Eventually, I cycled across the great wilderness that is the interior of Iceland to the vast plains of Thingveller – where democracy has been celebrated for over a thousand years.
I arrived at Thingveller as the sun went down, pitched my tent, and went to sleep. The next morning a terrible storm moved in. The wind ripped my tent to shreds. My belongings flew everywhere. Hastily I grabbed what I could and stuffed it into my saddlebags. The wind screamed like a banshee. The skies grew ominously black. Lightning crashed, and jagged volcanoes were illuminated like tremendous demons reaching from the depths of the Earth, and yet, I had to go for a walk. Such was the awesome power of this land.
I came to a tear in the landscape, a small chasm created by the continental plates of Europe and the Americas that meet at Thingvellir.
I crossed the chasm on a rock bridge. "Wow! That’s beautiful" I thought as I walked on.
Then I saw a large, fluffy white bird walking alongside me two meters away. I stopped to get a better look, and it stopped for a better look too!
It was such a beautiful and mysterious encounter that my heart soared and the moment got even more magical when the bird decided to walk with me, stopping whenever I stopped!
When we stopped for a third time, I suddenly thought, 'I have to go back and have another look into that chasm.'
Never had anything struck me in such a way. I peered deeper into the chasm and Bang! Like a bolt of lightning crashing through the stormy gale there appeared a glorious tale...
Stay Tuned.
Land of Ice And Fire. Part 2. What led me to Walk the Earth Planting Trees.
Will follow soon.
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