The Shetland Way: A Journey to the Far North
From A to Z: Adventure Beyond Plan B
Exploring Shetland & Fair Isle during the Pandemic
The breathtaking landscape of the Shetland Islands
During the Pandemic, you can't just have a Plan B. How about the rest of the alphabet? We took Plan S: Shetland and Britain's most remote inhabited island—Fair Isle.
Note: Not "Shetlands" - The Vikings clearly thought of Shetland as a 'land'
Redefining Expedition History
It is very important that expedition history not be distilled to just those great men and women like Magellan, Edmund Hillary, Lewis and Clark et al., but to the regular folk—like Sarah and Ed (Us) who go out to do their own exploring and circumnavigation of the Earth and then blog about it—literature in a hurry.
I love writing but hate the paperwork—so I take a lot of photos and videos. Show rather than tell.
This doesn't seem like a big deal—Travel is an activity not an accomplishment—until Global travel stopped due to the pandemic. Now not only is it an accomplishment, it is risky. But that hasn't stopped us before. Therefore, it makes our travels and adventures even more significant because it is getting more and more challenging to spontaneously get up and go.
Our Travel Philosophy
Our motto is: Planning is everything but the plan means nothing. In other words, it is situational. We have already had our flight cancelled to the USA this week, and rebooked with BA. Your best ability these days is flexibility.
Documenting these travels with pictures has the added advantage of it being true, and therefore you have to tolerate contradictions and see things from different perspectives. We really did travel around the world 7 times, and we have the evidence—all archived on FB, Instagram, Blogger and YouTube.
Couldn't take Sarah on this adventure in Afghanastan in 2019
The Cosmic Perspective
No matter where I go, there I am. I can still look up at the same moon, stars albeit different hemisphere. It innately belongs to all of us, children of this planet. I'm stricken by, what poet Diane Ackerman calls "the ricochet wonder of it all: the plain everythingness of everything, in cahoots with the everythingness of everything else"—Cosmic Pastoral.
When your future version of you gets involved in the present version of you to get to better decisions...your life takes on a new optimal perspective. You "release your emergency brake" and when you land things start to Take Off. When you truly feel the emotions of the future, add gratitude, and it is as if you have already signed for it.
"People do not decide to become extraordinary. They decide to accomplish extraordinary things."
Perseverance - The Long Game
We rarely see the incremental baby steps taken when looking for enormous outcomes, but deserving enormous outcomes is mostly the result of a series of small steps, and the art and science of achievement of turning the invisible into something visible is the consequence. State it and Create it: I want to travel around the world was the mantra I told myself everyday as far back as I can remember. How did I do it...one port at a time, mostly by sea...
Direction Over Speed
There are 2 things that determine our life: the quality of our decisions and luck. You cannot make progress without making decisions, and you will make those decisions over time with uncertainty. I call them bets.
Time Millionaires
Shetland reminds me of Alaska, a frontier outpost feeling combined with the Ohana-Aloha islands of Hawaii. Different climates for sure but basically a bunch of rocks in the middle of an ocean—and a lack of superlatives to describe the savage beauty. Oh yea, and add Norway in there because you somatically feel the Viking vibe here in The Shetlands.
For some context, there are two videos below—the one of Ketchikan Alaska, the rainiest place in North America, and the other video is of Mid Summer in Norway at the top of the world in The Arctic Circle.
Ketchikan, Alaska - The rainiest place in North America
Midsummer in Norway - The Arctic Circle
Comments
Post a Comment