A Love Letter

I WONDER IF THE GROUND BEFORE ME HAD EVER BEEN A ROAD.

If so, most of it was gone now. My bike feels heavier with each step I push it uphill; I try not to think about it. Looking back, I can still make out the houses in the village we departed from a few hours ago. We didn’t make it far, but it was far enough. Ahead, all I see are mountains with a few trees sparingly spread across the vast landscape. I stop for a moment, take a deep breath, and close my eyes. My heart feels lighter.

When I was 19 years old, I went on a two-week canoe trip to Sweden. Having grown up in a city surrounded by the farmlands and suburbs of Northern Germany, that trip was my first journey into what I would “wilderness.” It was just six of us, the river, and a million mosquitoes. Still, it wasn’t until the day we climbed a mountain that I fully grasped the space I had been moving through. Looking around, I could not see any signs of human development. No houses, no roads. Only forests, mountains, rivers, and lakes.

It was more than 11 years ago, but I remember that moment—realizing there was nothing around me—so precisely, as if it were yesterday. It was the first time I had experienced anything like that, and it kind of blew my mind. I wasn’t scared, I didn’t feel alone, I was just astonished by its vastness and beauty.

I have spent a fair amount of my time outdoors since then. That moment turned into a passion. But it’s not the beauty of nature alone that draws me back to those places. It’s more than that. For me, they act like the blank space between written words or like a speaker’s pause before something important is said. A niche, where I can exist and don’t matter at the same time. Where the flowers blossom, the wind blows, and the leaves in the trees rustle, regardless of whether I am there or not.

“DO NOT JUMP INTO YOUR AUTOMOBILE NEXT JUNE AND RUSH OUT TO THE CANYON COUNTRY HOPING TO SEE SOME OF THAT WHICH I HAVE ATTEMPTED TO EVOKE IN THESE PAGES. IN THE FIRST PLACE YOU CAN’T SEE ANYTHING FROM A CAR; YOU’VE GOT TO GET OUT OF THE GODDAMNED CONTRAPTION AND WALK, BETTER YET CRAWL, ON HANDS AND KNEES, OVER THE SANDSTONE AND THROUGH THE THORNBUSH AND CACTUS. WHEN TRACES OF BLOOD BEGIN TO MARK YOUR TRAIL YOU’LL SEE SOMETHING, MAYBE. PROBABLY NOT. IN THE SECOND PLACE MOST OF WHAT I WRITE ABOUT IN THIS BOOK IS ALREADY GONE OR GOING UNDER FAST. THIS IS NOT A TRAVEL GUIDE BUT AN ELEGY. A MEMORIAL. YOU’RE HOLDING A TOMBSTONE IN YOUR HANDS. A BLOODY ROCK. DON’T DROP IT ON YOUR FOOT—THROW IT AT SOMETHING BIG AND GLASSY. WHAT DO YOU HAVE TO LOSE?”

Last year, while biking across the Americas, my partner and I realized that it was becoming more and more difficult to find truly remote spots. We found ourselves surrounded by farmland and houses in many of the countries. The isolated areas were just tiny pockets in between civilization, barely big enough for us to really disconnect. At times, we felt like two goldfish gasping for air. I had never truly worried about the world’s increasing population till then. What if, one day, there are no such places left? What if we can’t hold on to them?

Since that trip, we have become more drawn to finding and exploring undeveloped areas. We’re partially driven by the thought that we might have to survive without them someday and partially because it reassures us to see that they still exist right now. Getting there isn’t always easy—it be can physically exhausting and even frustrating—but so far, we haven’t been disappointed. At the end of the day, we have stood there, gazing at nothing.

But I don’t want this to be a story with a moral; rather it’s a “love letter” to what I hold dear and may be an inspiration to go searching for those places and to realize how important they are.