I go out each morning to get a coffee locally, because I work from home and I find it too socially cut-off. Going out each day for that coffee allows me to meet other people and just have a connection with folks around me. It’s all good for mental health.
Today I bumped into a writer, who has been publishing books about ‘hidden’ Edinburgh and also ‘Uknown Glasgow’. Turns out that by trade, he is actually a lawyer, and that spurred on a discussion about ‘doing what you believe in’, rather than ‘doing something because you think it will make money’.
I’ve met this writer a few times before so he knows all about me, and what I do. Today he said ‘I presume that the trips you run, you do them because you love them?’, to which I replied that in my view, everything I offer, always started off as a personal trip to see what was there. I have never gone anywhere from the beginning with the idea of ‘checking it out for a future workshop’. I think that is just a bad idea. I’d much rather to to places that I am passionate about.
And then later on this morning, one of my clients Richard, wrote to me and said ‘I think I’ll come to Iceland with you, because you wrote so passionately about it’. Well, it wasn’t really my intention do to a ‘sell’ on Richard in particular. I just think that sometimes I feel I need to let others know that the trips I run, didn’t come from a need to make money, but they are often places that are very personal to me.
Iceland as I wrote a few days ago, has been part of my life since 2004. Patagonia is a year older. Torres del Paine has been part of my psyche since 2003. I was only about two or three years into making images as a ‘serious’ hobby at this point.
The thing for me about Torres del Paine, is that I knew the moment I was leaving that place, that I would be back. Although I had no definite plans to do so, and felt that this was a ‘once in a lifetime’ experience for me, I just had a hunch that it would feature as an important place for me, and so it has become that.
Some places draw you back, because you know you haven’t really managed to get under the skin of it enough. Or you know you’ve found some parts of the landscape to be elusive. You see things but aren’t able to capture them, or you know there’s a few more faces to the place that you still have to experience.
I have often thought that Torres del Paine is a place of many personalities. It is complex. The weather is so changeable, from sunny weather and t-shirt to downright difficult. It’s one of the major reasons why I think I can’t stay away from the place.
And it is one of those places that when you do go there, you always come away thinking you need to go back again because you know there’s a lot that’s been left unsaid.
I don’t think I will ever stop going to Torres del Paine national park. There are locations and places around the world that have become part of my world-home-view. I would be a very sad person if I were to find out I could not go back to many of the places I visit: Iceland, Japan, Patagonia, Brazil…. they are part of who I am I think. They have etched part of themselves in to me. I know this for sure.