New Substack essay: When Leaving Meant Leaving
I wrote this while sitting on the floor in Malmö, packing for Iceland after three intense days at a football tournament with my daughters.
Ice screws, new mountain boots, harness, crampons, football bags, wet towels, charging cables and the usual pre-expedition chaos everywhere.
And while packing, I kept thinking about what has happened to adventure since I first started travelling in 1986.
Back then, leaving meant leaving. You moved between post offices. You waited for letters. You called home from phone booths if you were lucky. Sometimes months passed before anyone knew if you were all right.
Today we never fully leave anymore.
We can stand on a mountain and call home. Upload film material. Answer messages. Check comments. Follow everything happening elsewhere while standing in the middle of something that should demand all of us.
This is not a nostalgic piece about everything being better before. It is about attention, storytelling, documentary film, expeditions, daughters, modern life and why I still believe leaving can do something good to a human being.
Read it here:
