![]() "The first tent that we were living in was very thin, especially when the cold came in," says Fiona. However, they currently call Marquette in northern Michigan home, where they live out of a tent in a big forest. The family reached Northern Minnesota in December 2021. When you're sitting on a couch you know the destruction that's going on and you're complacent, but when you're running through this forest that's been logged, you really see that we as a people and a planet are not well. "When we were running through the forest we were alone and you had to face yourself in a way you've never had to do before," says Brandon. ![]() The couple would each take turns running. ![]() They decided to cut the 900 miles down and run 227 miles of the North Country Trail - representing the 227 bodies of water the pipeline would cross over. "And what did that mean? We were going to have to live in a tent and we had no experience of living in a tent," says Fiona. "We asked ourselves: 'How are we going to get to northern Minnesota? Because it was not just about raising money for the resistance. They knew this was not going to be practical with a toddler so they tailored their plan and called it 'Running into a New Earth'. To get to Minnesota 900 miles away to join the resistance to the pipeline, and to live in a tent along the way. We wanted to live in the woods."įiona returned home to Ireland to spend time with her parents and by October 2021, three months after hearing Winona LaDuke speak, their house, and pretty much everything they owned, were sold. Hearing about this pipeline and imagining the inevitable oil spills it will cause was enough for Fiona and Brandon to follow on from the sale of their business with the sale of their home.įiona: "We wanted to strip ourselves down. The route crosses 227 bodies of freshwater, including the Mississippi River twice, and many rivers that feed directly into Lake Superior - the largest lake in North America. 'Line 3' is a pipeline that has the capacity to carry nearly one million barrels of crude oil every day from Alberta, Canada to Wisconsin. And we just asked: 'What do our souls want to do while we are on this earth?'" explains Fiona. We have a young son and just seeing the world we were leaving behind. "With Covid and that whole time, we spent a lot of time going inwards and doing a lot of healing. Welcoming Dasan to the world also contributed to the wake-up, she says. In August 2019, Fiona gave birth to the couple's first child. So we asked ourselves: 'What do we really want on a deeper level?' The route we were taking wasn't doing that, and we knew it was time to change," says Brandon. "We collected the largest pay cheque we'd ever collected and we were left feeling empty. We realised the life we were building wasn't aligned with who we are. We spent a lot of time building our company, but we were ultimately left unfulfilled. But the pandemic and the various lockdowns gave them room to reflect and it turned out that their way of life was no longer morally sustainable for them. Up until October 2021, Detroit was their home, where they lived and ran their real estate business that served the elderly. Supporting indigenous people is another major part of their impetus to uproot themselves from urban life.įiona was born and reared in Dublin and studied landscape architecture in University College Dublin. It was here she met Brandon, 38, who is native American, and of the Mohawk tribe. ![]() She couch-surfed across North America, or Turtle Island as it’s called by indigenous people, with the aim of reaching Detroit - another city Fiona was fascinated by.
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