Sorry for the silence but I paid all the price of this freedom. With all myself. Commitment, work without schedules, passion that must not be extinguished. It doesn’t, in fact.
Snow is nothing but frozen water. After so many words, projects and meetings, now I need to stop this rushing river of energy. The River of January is still and motionless, it saves all energies for spring.
I’ll be back to my roots, to my landscapes in black and white. To pure wind. To people who greet each other when they meet and are happy. Because there are few humans in white.
This project will take me to travel by ski in a sustainable way from Oslo to Nordkapp, across Norway, Sweden and Finland from late January to May 2014. The project is aimed to film a documentary looking to all the ways to deal positively with nature, analyzing the increasing and long terms effect impact of winter tourism.
I grew up in the Alps, where hundreds of ski resorts are nowadays operating. I saw the pros and cons of the so called “white gold business”. Its positive effects and its damages.
I want to see and talk to the people in Norway, Sweden and Finland, and film them in their approach to their white world. A skiing trip of 3.000 km touching famous ski resorts such as Lillehammer and wild territories still inhabited by the last nomads of Europe: The Sami.
I will travel using ecoskis made off recycled wood, flax and ecoresins, locally built ski bindings, a special revolutionary device for rescue in the water, beaver bean’s derived organic plastic ski boots by Scarpa, and organic cotton and wool clothes.
With the help of the Museo Maritimo de Barcelona, Grownboards and the boatbuilder Sebastià Vidal, I’m making a pulk-kayak built only with hemp fiber and recycled fishing nets, and still ecoresin, to carry my gears and provisions.
I will sleep in a tent inspired by the Sami tipi Lavvu, built with organic cotton that I’ll then donate to the rescue operation camp. I will wear traditional clothes, crafted with natural materials and manifactured by companies working in a sustainable, respectful and clean way, like Bergans. I will also use where possible, a kite.
I will recharge my batteries using solar panels provided by FuturaSun. I will also receive in the ISPO a very interesting wooden bike. You never know… And I know for sure that I looove wood!
Any suppliers, to whom we never ask a donation or a gift, will receive e report of the effective results in using the gear along this 3.000 km project, credits in the documentary and obviously in the interviews and reportage where the gear will be seen. We simply like to support companies working in a positive way and following the Circular Economy principles.
I will hopefully present this trip in the Green Voice Room at the ISPO 2014 Munich, 26-29th of January, then in Copenhagen Christiania, and in Goteborg, Sweden at the SP Technical Research Institute of Sweden in January the 31st.
I am preparing this trip for a documentary film, the first of a serie, about the impact of winter tourism.
I will be a ‘one man band’, very light and flexible: My aim is to travel with no use of fossil fuel. Only skiing, kayaking on the same pulk* that I will tow and using wind, with the help of a kite.
The skied project will start in the first week of february from Oslo, and will be fun too: I still have to learn snow kite and I will do it right there, in Norway. That will be of course part of the doc. Probably a very funny part!
A special thank to Barbara Zen and L’Infografico.
The web site is www.manonthesnow.com
Be Water keeps going. Memphis is beautiful, although much work is still needed. In July, I’ll be ready for Volta Mallorca: In Mallorca the almond trees are blooming.
Be water, be snow my friends.
Giacomo
* A pulk (from Finnish pulkka) is a Nordic short, low-slung small toboggan used in sport or for transport, pulled by a dog or a skier, or in Lapland pulled by reindeer… (Source Wikipedia)
