After our WAVE photo on the bridge in Weissensee we headed out for Heilingenblut…..yes….that silly angst about vampires since it still means holy blood or could actually mean blood of the saints. Considering the altitude to which we were being elevated and the literally dizzying affect it had one begins to understand the full meaning of those words.

The air becomes thinner the higher you go and so you become dizzy because of the low oxygen level in your blood. Well, since this writer hails from Amsterdam which is below sea level offering one the inevitable idea that the Dutch have truly overly oxygenated blood climbing ever higher to reach this berg has made me, for the first time, oops another first, an extremist. Heilingenblut welcomed us with a speech, ladies in traditional dress, sandwiches off various wild meats and others with cheese and tomato. The vehicles were being charged and a beeline was made to a small supermarket for a few very needed things. Gordon bought a typical Austrian hat which happened to suit him as well as a handful, of various flower seeds from the area. I searched for a baseball cap style hat in white to shield my brain from the baking sun. Within a couple of hours we began the climb to the Großglokner Pass/ Franz Jozef Glacier. This was going to be a climb of immense proportions and Gordon’s advice to eat sweets and drink water certainly helped  and even if it hadn’t the task of doing both kept me so busy that I might not have noticed the altitude sickness gripping my brain. However the altitude also produced positive eye popping views the likes of which I had never seen. Oh dear, there we go again, another first. I have never been up that high in the open air and it was majestic. And that dear reader is a limp description of what was witnessed. Majestic begins to tickle the edge of the proper description for it was far more.

To stand up there and look upon the glacier and know in your gut that the glacier has grown smaller and the negative affect we, mankind, have had on this blue planet is mind boggling. It is a physical pain that brings one to tears seeing what every member of the WAVE has witnessed today on that glacier is something that every single member of mankind must witness. To ignore it or hide from it and not speak up and act is a crime against life, all life and only condones the crimes against nature. The criminals must be stopped, punished and as far as this writer is concerned forced to see the damage they have done and be made to pay to repair it, to bring forward the cure in the form of the Double Edged Sword Against Climate Change. Our blue planet, our home must have the prescription filled immediately for reforestation of our rain forests and the implementation of sustainable energy in the form of solar and wind now!