Never, ever did I think that there would be a debate in this arid country about which was more important – gas or water. We can survive without gas. We cannot live without water.
Category: Lewis Gordon Pugh
Lewis William Gordon Pugh, OIG (born 5 December 1969) is an ocean advocate, a maritime lawyer and a pioneer swimmer.
Everywhere water is under threat. It is our most precious resource. And there is no alternative to it.
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There’s nothing more chilling
There’s nothing more chilling than swimming across open sea, where recently there used to be a solid glacier.
If we pass on an unsustainable environment to our children we have failed them.
You must not dither – swim like you’re running through a minefield.
I have been haunted by that swim through the whale graveyard and haven’t been able to get the image of the bones out of my head. Man hunted whales almost to the point of extinction, not seeming to care that we would lose one of the wonders of the sea world forever. It is the coldness of the water in Antarctica that preserves the bones and makes it look like they were left there yesterday but I like to think they are there as a reminder of man’s potential for folly.
I resolved to follow my dream. I wanted to push every boundary. I wanted to swim further than anyone else. I wanted to cross seas and round capes that no one had dreamed of swimming before. And I wanted to swim in waters that were so cold no one thought it was possible to survive in them. And though it promised to make me poor and would take away the security provided by a career in law, that didn’t worry me.
Going against the tide has never been difficult for me. It wasn’t even a conscious decision but the natural consequence of following my own instinct.
My love for the water would always be tempered by respect for dangers that must never be underestimated.
Nothing excited me more than opening up the atlas and seeing places and seas, imagining what they looked like and what kind of life the people had.
Always when we walked, it was clear to me how much he loved nature, wild flowers, animals in their natural habitat and the simple pleasures of a beautiful sunset. My love for the environment did not develop out of a vacuum.