Timeout 2019

In 2019 it was time for another timeout to explore the world. I was venturing on a 5 Month Trip through Canada and Africa. Exploring British Columbia with a Van and then changing to Botwana and South Africa. Experiencing a true African Wilderness Dream.

In September 2019 it was time again to take a break from a very busy professional life and to take 5 month of the normal everyday routine. Having done this already some years ago I promised myself to take such a break at least every five years.

The first time out took place when I turned 50. And even though I try not to be impressed by numbers I just thought that this is the perfect year to fullfill my deepest desires to go on a journey - much longer than what is ususally possible during a working life. Even if I carfully managed to make some fascinating travells every year. But a 4 weeks travel is still more a holiday then a life form and often you try to just squese in another sight or another acitivity. Its simply a bit more consuming other places than deeply experiencing them, living them, breathing them, understanding them.

So my first long journey after being a student took me to Greenland, Costa Rica, Chile and Argentina - all the way to Patagonia, to Northern India and finally to La Reunion and Mauritius. Ending in Chamonix where we have a beautiful house above the valley and where we had a good month to relive our journeys and to let them settle deep in us - making them a part of us and not just a faint memory to a "vacation". I was so impressed by the intensity and the quality of all these experiences that it was absolutly clear to me to make such a journey - a quest for meaning - a regular event in my life.

So 2019 it was time again. The time of planing is just a beautiful time. Before Corona the whole world was an option and we discussed and daydreamed how a journey should like, how living a journey should like like. Its funny but the decision for a certain journey reflects very much your interest at that peculiar timepoint. And maybe a month or two later you would have decided completly differently. But at that time we came up with a two part journey - the first being the Canadian Rockies and Vancourver Island and the second part was Botswana and South Africa. In Canada we rented a Campervan and had our climbing gear and mountainbikes with us and Africa was all about Safaris and we had a 4x4 Pickup with a rooftop tent, enabling us to have some of the most intense times out in the wild with the wild animals that we dreamed of encountering since we were kids.

But before getting deeper into the many stories and experiences of these journey the legacy of the 2019 time out become much more live changing than the 2014 journey.

Having traveled exentsivly through the world I am a live witness to the enourmous changes that our species is forcing upon earth and wilderness areas in special. I have traveled to places where I was almost alone only to see the same place some 10 years later to be occupied and tortured by masses of tourists.

But the intensity and the shock of some of the things seen on this journey just made it clear: only shaking our heads and be deeply disturbed by the destruction witnessed and then go back to “normality” is not an option this time. We both felt that if even at this remote places – some of them being icons of Wilderness – the human impact is so devastating – we couldn’t simply be lamenting to ourselves. So after coming back in January 2020 and pretty much throughout the Corona Year of 2020 I was working on how to change my life and combine life practice and valuing life – especially in its wild and untamed form.

What shocked us was the amount of deforestation in British Columbia. Driving for hours through clear cuts to see some isolated patches of old growth forests, actually as rare as a snow leopard on the Tibetean plateau or a Blue Whale in the vastness of the oceans. And then to hear that BC is still not able to protect the last remaining 3 % of century old trees just left us speechless. Really in Canada and even more in beautiful BC the government is not able to resist the pressure of the timber industry? How could this be? The same story we witnessed with the salmons. We saw over and again starving grizzlies in the fords near Campell River, we heared the stories from the over fished stocks – from manipulated numbers by the wildlife authorities to be able to grant higher fishing licences – and then we heard and more we saw the result of pure human greed and short sightedness with our own eyes. In Africa it was the omnipresent problem of the poachers and the pressures of the growing population also inside the last remaining wilderness areas. And worse comes to bad we had to witness the slaughtered and violated corpses of rhinos left behind by poachers - killing such a powerful and beautiful creature to serve human stupidity and superstition. It is hard to describe the absurd mixture of feelings of awe and beauty and disgust and contempt at the same time. Clearly there must be a way to support and help the people to keep them from starving without raping nature and slaughtering the last individuals of such adorable creatures. What will they do anyways in a couple of years when the last big animals have vanished from the face of the earth.

All this experiences let me quit my job as the academic director of a businss school and support a new and fascinating project: the creation of a University of Sustainability.