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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.

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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