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Good Morning.

Because we’re deep in the holiday season, I’ve been thinking about being a tourist in the country I love, where my father was born – Iceland. ÌýÌýIn 1992, I travelled round the country by bus.Ìý The further I got from Reykjavik, the capital, the less English was spoken. Any tourists I saw were either wind-burned cyclists, or hardy walkers. Most of the time I felt it was just me and Iceland. I stayed in remote, red-roofed farms, tucked at the foot of lowering mountains, and travelled through miles of gray lava fields; I climbed hills and stepped warily on glaciers, and never saw another soul. I stayed in small rooms which smelt of horse and sheep. Ìý25 years ago, that Iceland was like my secret.

Ìý

Not any more. Part of Iceland’s recovery since the crash of 2008 has come through tourism: visitors are now arriving in such vast numbers that Icelanders are getting worried about the effect on their unique natural landscape.Ìý There’s the dilemma: tourism brings people who want to experience glaciers and volcanoes, hotsprings and the wild bleak interior – all the things I was drawn to; but that wildness is tamed and changed forever by having to build carparks and hotels, and erect fences and barriers.Ìý By putting a price on the freedom to experience wilderness.

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‘The earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof’ says the psalmist. ÌýÌýThe natural world is a gift to revel in, and care for.Ìý ÌýÌýThese words of the poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins, are my prayer this morning:

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What would the world be, once bereft

Of wet and wilderness? Let them be left

O let them be left, wildness and wet;

Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.’ÌýÌýÌý ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý

AMEN