I’ve got a crush on an ocean rower. At 43, Roz Savage, equal parts beauty, strength and grace is to my mind the hottest eco-warrior out there. But she hasn’t always been. Once a plain Jane office girl in an unhappy marriage in London, Savage woke up one day to the confines of a cubicle and faced reality: She wrote two versions of her own obituary. One was the version she was headed for, the other was the version she’d want.
Inspired, Roz ditched the husband and the shiny objects around her to begin a life less ordinary. She traveled. She wrote. She holed up in the countryside and read all sorts of books on the coming environmental rapture and was, well, affected. She decided she’d do something crazy: travel the world as an expression of adventure as activism. But what was the first step? How does one go from being a daily grind omega to an epic adventurist alpha; from quiet, lonely shopping to storming Copenhagen as a UN Climate Change Hero and becoming an esteemed TED lecturer?
By deciding to row a boat across the Atlantic, of course.
Savage, on a shoestring budget, did just that. She found sponsors. She found people willing to help. She didn’t listen to everyone telling her she was nuts (Roz is all of about five feet tall and at the time, not what one would call a perfect specimen of athleticism). But the mind can train the body and the body can transcend the impossible.
And then there she was, alone against the Atlantic. She lost weight. She developed sores on her rear from salt rubbing against clothing. But 103 days later, she made it to Antigua and even wrote a book about the experience. Now she’s 2/3rds the way across the Pacific and will be heading out for the third leg of the trip from Tarawa to Cairns, Australia within a month.
Roz wants you with her, every stroke of the way, by becoming an eco-hero yourself. As she says, “We all have to be eco heroes. Every action counts. To compare it with my ocean crossings, each one takes about a million oar strokes. I could stand on the dock and think “˜one stroke isn’t going to get me anywhere, so what’s the point?’. But you take a million, or 7 billion, tiny actions, and string them all together, and we can still save the world.”
Maybe you can’t ditch hubby and the job to travel the world just yet. No worries, sign up for Savage’s project, Eco-Heroes and become a part of a ripple effect. Participants will earn green deeds points, merit badges, and the biggest Eco-Hero of the week will win earth friendly prizes. And who knows, maybe it’ll be all the inspiration you need to row the world like Roz. Click the video below to see what Roz lives to be all about!