Earlier in the year I listened to Let My People Go Surfing by Yvon Chouinard. He’s an American rock-climber and environmentalist. He’s also a surfer and he’s the founder of the outdoor brand Patagonia. It’s an autobiography of Patagonia. Chouinard started out by wanting to make better climbing pegs, he wanted to make the best. So much so that he learnt to forge metal and sold the pegs to his climbing friends. He soon questioned the environmental ethics of climbers leaving pegs in the rock and continued to develop more sustainable equipment. It’s an incredible story with ethics and a love of the natural world at it’s core.
I told you I’d restarted surfing. I said to my Mum that I wanted to buy a Patagonia wetsuit vest with hood - yes I’m serious, it’s for winter surfing, to go under my wetsuit. I said immersion in a practice, not sunbathing or Sunday painting.
‘Ah, Yvon Chouinard’, she replied.
I thought, ‘How do you know?’.
She followed with ‘You ate your first pizza with him in Glencoe’.
Glencoe in the Western Highlands of Scotland is one of The most Beautiful places in the world. It’s also where I ate my first pizza aged 5. Actually, I ate a Lot of pizza that day, sharing some with our dog. It kindled my love of pizza, which still flames strong, however I have raised the culinary expectation having eaten one in Naples, the birthplace (around the 16th century) of pizza .
Glencoe
My life is remembered through food. I remember this time, the pizza, the deep mountain valley, the creaky floorboards of Scotland’s oldest hotel, the Kings House, it’s smart breakfast room with tartan carpet where I ate piles of triangular cut toast with marmalade (I had 8 pieces actually), and the infamous Climbers Bar where these crazy climbers told stories and drank a Lot of whisky.
Why were we (my parents and I) there? Because my Dad was just as crazy, just as pioneering, just as maverick. He was a helicopter pilot and founded PLM Helicopters (now PDG). Among many things, they were the first to film the great Scottish films in the burgeoning Scottish film industry, think Highlander, Rob Roy, Godfather etc. He was the most skilled pilot they had and if a challenging job arose it was he who was asked for. Yvon Chouinard would only have been 41 then, my Dad 35. Now in my 40’s it is interesting to reflect on their age.
Here in Glencoe they were making a mountain rescue film and had the best climbers from around the world and Scotland. It was a small world they inhabited so I guess they all knew each other. Hamish MacInnes, Scottish mountaineer, explorer, mountain search and rescuer, author, whisky drinker and story teller was there too. He designed the eponymous lightweight, foldable alloy stretcher called the MacInnes stretcher, widely used in mountain and helicopter rescue, he invented the first all-metal ice-axe and he was named the father of modern mountain rescue.
So I got to hang out with these greats, some many times And I got to eat marmalade toast and pizza out on the misty Scottish hillsides.
‘They were good times’, my Mum said.
The Nomadic studio at the back of the King’s House Hotel, with Ben Etive in the background., Glencoe, Highland, Scotland.
Glencoe is where I returned to first, after I converted an old removals lorry into my Nomadic Studio for a trip to Scotland. On this adventure, I took with me my studio companions and best friends, a cat and dog.
Glenfinnan
Just to show that I really did have a travelling cat. Here we are stopped in Devon (for a year), on our way from West Cornwall to Glencoe and the Western Isles. The studio space was 2m cubed.
I feel very lucky to have grown up in this environment. The mountains and sea and an outdoor life has shaped who I am. These Highlands are my anchor.
And by-the-way (I know she’s reading this). My mum wasn’t just a by-stander, a supporter, a pizza eater. Before she moved to Scotland she was a fashion designer and up North, morphed her skills into a little company named Heli-Mac, making bespoke covers for helicopters left overnight on a snowy hillside, rather than in a hanger, so they could be ready to work the next day. She also made their onboard survival tents. She would have been 34.
P.S.
I’m going to replace my ancient falling-to-bits winter neoprene wetsuit with one of SRFace’s (they’re cheaper than Patagonia) winter beasts, complete with gloves and boots - like Patagonia, they are committed to reducing their environmental impact, use eco-friendly biomaterial producers Yulex, an alternative to fossil fuel bases neoprene, creating the first plant-based wetsuit material. Once you start researching, neoprene from worn-out wetsuits creates yet another plastic pollutant which suffocates our seas.
The issue of ocean plastic lies very close to my heart and pushes me to be more sustainable every day. Parley t.v. and Parley AIR are one of the important charities helping to combat this. The link below takes you there. If you scroll down you will hear about Albatross the film. It’s a most stunning piece of cinematography and music with a beautiful (and tragic) story about the life-cycle of the albatross in the South Pacific. I recommend that you don’t watch the trailer, it covers the deeper message but not the beauty. I urge you to watch the film.
Parley also make sunglasses and sell yarn for manufacture from collected sea plastic.
‘The oceans are the planet’s largest climate regulator. They cover 71 percent of the Earth’s surface. Life in the sea provides more than half the oxygen we breathe, as well as food and livelihoods for billions.’, Parley.com
So, that’s 1 in every 2 breaths that we take are provided by a healthy marine eco-system. Apparently there’s 10 years until this collapses and plastic pollution is deep in perpetration. Unless we do something.
My art practice is at it’s most sustainable yet and people like Yvon Chouinard lead the way on a global scale. We can all make a difference, we have so much power through deciding how and where we spend our money. Since writing this newsletter Chouinard has announced that he is giving away the company and has developed a trust and non-profit designed to donate all of the company’s profits into saving the planet. He states their new mission that ‘Earth Is Now Our Only Shareholder’.