We’re completely frothing to announce the 5 class winners of MOMENTS – We Are Explorers’ inauguaral artistic competitors. Did your favorite take out the highest prize?
Final month, We Are Explorers hosted MOMENTS, our very first picture, writing, and movie competitors. Your eagerness to become involved blew us away, and the entire crew was gobsmacked on the degree of talent, creativity, and sense of journey present in each submission.
Large shout out to everybody who threw their artistic hat into the ring in addition to our gifted judges and superior sponsors, Dometic, Bush Heritage, Freely Journey, Up, and G Adventures.
After a month of public voting to find out the highest 5 entries in every class, the finalists have been shared with and judged by professionals within the artistic discipline (sadly, not a literal discipline) to search out the 5 winners.
And right here they’re…
Up Cellphone Photograph Winner
Give me a house amongst the snow gums
Josephine (Joey) Whelan
‘We had determined final minute to climate the storm and escape into the Alpine Excessive Nation for the evening, away from the Summer time hustle in our little vacationer city. We obtained a bit of damp as we started the trek in, however it wasn’t lengthy earlier than Mom Nature turned the clouds round & greeted us with this epic sundown as we rolled into camp. I’ll always remember the recharge we felt on this second. (Edmondson’s Hut, Alpine Excessive Nation Victoria, Australia)’
Dometic Journey Photograph Winner
Frozen Moments
Krista Perryman
‘My life consists of freezing moments we name life. Hoping to seize the sensation of the moments we dwell, so we have now one thing to look again on. This second is unquestionably one for the reminiscence banks. Setting out for the mountains at sundown, strolling up the snowy hills with my snowboard and tent on again and digicam clipped firmly to my backpack. One step in entrance of the opposite, respiratory within the chilly contemporary air.
I’d researched in the course of the day a spot I wished to go and it was on the sting of a frozen lake. One of the best half was having the entire mountain to myself. I arrange my tent, ate my dehydrated meal and went out to seize the evening. Taking in each single star my eyes can probably see, struggling to fathom the vastness of this universe and realising I’m the one one who witnesses this second precisely as it’s.
An journey I by no means wished to finish, an evening below the celebrities, alone within the snowy mountains with nothing however my ideas and digicam. I woke as much as a wonderful dawn, packed down my gear and snowboarded again all the way down to actuality however now with yet one more frozen second of life.’
G Adventures Video Winner
The Bleeding A#$holes
Jayden O’Neill
‘4 buddies embark on a 400km Bike-packing journey from Alice Springs to Kings Canyon in desolate Central Australia. With little preparation and restricted health, they weren’t fairly positive what they have been getting themselves into.’
Bush Heritage Nature Photograph Winner
FUEGO
Paul Fencaros
‘There’s one thing about nature that makes us really feel humbled – notably once we get to expertise the sheer energy and scale of Mom Nature in all of her uncooked magnificence. This was a kind of moments that made my jaw drop as I witnessed the highly effective volcanic eruption explode from the earth. I had just one alternative to seize the 20-second publicity because the explosion launched lava from the crater and into the sky. Volcan de Fuego, Guatemala.’
Freely Journey Writing Winner
Don’t Inform Me The way to Camino
Patrick Boxall
‘We known as him Bare Purple Calf. He fell from the highest bunk and the slap of pores and skin on concrete woke everybody within the room. I wasn’t there, however I’m informed they turned on the lights and noticed him splayed out on the bottom, groaning. He was bare. He had sunburned calves. He was – will all the time be – Bare Purple Calf.
I met him in Pamplona. Day 4 of the Camino de Santiago. After I requested how he was going, he pulled a ziplock bag from his pocket and held it to the comfortable night mild. ‘I’ve been feeding my brother to the cows,’ he mentioned, beaming. I slowly backed away.
We crossed paths usually. Walked and talked. He got here from North Carolina and had struggled, he mentioned, with habit points. His brother had succumbed to them. The stroll to Santiago was a chance to straighten himself out; to honour his brother, who now not walked beside him.
‘Can I be honest?’ I requested.
‘Sure.’
‘I’m undecided in regards to the feeding-your-brother-to-the-cows factor.’
‘It’s what he would’ve wished,’ he replied, no trace of a smile.
Many stroll the trail to Santiago as an train in therapeutic. In shedding the previous and entering into no matter comes subsequent. However the future, if it comes, doesn’t all the time come straightforward, and Bare Purple Calf understood that higher than any of us. He quickly picked up an harm; an ankle, I feel. We inspired him to relaxation, to take a while, however he didn’t need to fall behind.
He was cussed. He pushed his physique to breaking level. Most evenings, I’d watch from a shaded desk as he hobbled throughout a plaza looking for a spot to crash. He’d ultimately seem with a glass of wine and a smile; no vino no camino, he’d joke.
He fell in love simply; with folks, with locations. The inexperienced Galician forests. The Meseta’s countless plains. He’d spend the morning strolling with a stranger and have post-pilgrimage plans by night. He’d go on to spend time in Finland, then just a few weeks strolling in Eire. He was Irish in the way in which all People appear to be; a long-lost cousin in Skibbereen, an amazing aunt in Knocknagashel. Sufficient of a connection to assert Guinness as his lifeblood.
We had a operating joke that the cities alongside the Camino weren’t actually cities in any respect. They have been movie units populated by actors, the most recent iteration of actuality TV. Luke – an Irishman – and I grew more and more paranoid, however Bare Purple Calf was having none of it.
‘No,’ he mentioned, waving his wood employees on the surrounding farmlands. ‘This is it. This is real life.’ He wished to know what was rising within the soil. He wished a backyard of his personal as soon as he returned residence. A plot to develop meals, a porch to play banjo – this, he mentioned, was sufficient.
Luke and I spoke about epiphanies. He’d met somebody who’d walked the Camino the earlier summer season and warned him about false epiphanies. After weeks of strolling, this man satisfied himself that he was born to be a farmer.
‘I had this overwhelming desire to get my hands in the dirt,’ he informed Luke. ‘But then, once I made it home, I realised something. I fucking hate farms.’
I can’t say whether or not Bare Purple Calf had any epiphanies; if he did, he didn’t share them. What he did share was his unhealthy days. One glass too many and he’d be stumbling to a church to mild a candle for his brother. And in Santiago, on the evening we completed, he was overwhelmed with emotion. He fled the restaurant and left his pockets on the desk. I searched streets crammed with celebrating pilgrims and located him crying, alone, on a doorstep. He wasn’t prepared for his stroll to finish.
I attempted to calm him with a standard saying: the Camino begins once you go residence.
His response?
Don’t inform me methods to Camino.
We stayed in contact. He’d name late to relive lengthy, energetic dinners and crisp mornings within the mountains. Over time, these calls grew to become much less frequent. I took it to imply he was doing properly, however it didn’t come as a shock to listen to he’d handed away.
There’d been no accident. No darkness. His physique, we have been informed, merely gave up. His buddies posted messages and photographs. They spoke of his backyard. Of his monumental pumpkins, his love for his chickens. How he’d sit on his porch and talk about crimson wine and Van Morrison. About actually laborious occasions and the nice occasions that all the time adopted.
I can think about sitting on his porch and telling him, in all seriousness, that he had taken a great path; actually, Buen Camino. However I do know, in fact, what he’d say in response.’
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Neighborhood Selection Winner
Mr Implausible
Christopher Theobald
‘Wild male Snow Leopard excessive up within the Tibetan Himalayas. Our base was a village of simply 400 folks at over 4000 MASL. After per week of trekking by deep snow & ice at altitude, enduring – 30 levels wind chill, we noticed the tail of a Snow Leopard within the shadows of a cliff face. After a two-hour powerful slog up the mountain, we arrived on the entrance to the cave.
With my adrenalin pumping I stepped to my proper & I met the eyes of a wild Male Snow Leopard, one of the elusive cats on the earth 30 metres away. We had 8 unbelievable minutes collectively earlier than he obtained too shy and disappeared up the mountain. Tenzin my native Tibetan tracker subsequent to me, with tears in his eyes mentioned, “Fantastic”. This Snow Leopard now had a reputation “Mr Fantastic”.’
Individuals’s Selection Award Winner
(chosen by attendees on the We Are Explorers 10 Yr Anniversary)
Momentum
Amelia Purvis
‘If the world you knew shattered, might you discover new moments that mattered?’
