We had a chance meeting in 2016 a vegan restaurant in Granada, Spain when I was traveling with my daughter to see the Alhambra. He was sitting next to us when he asked if he could join us for dinner. He was there doing a Spanish immersion course. We talked for 2 hours. He was a retired family physician from Basel. He retired at 47 years to champion the environmental cause. He walked across the US when he was training here. He walked across the Middle East. He crossed the Atlantic in a solar powered boat.
He was born in Elm, Switzerland. He was named after Martin’s Hole, a natural phenomenon where the sun shines through a hole in the mountains directly onto a church in downtown Elm twice a year.
We kept in touch by email. In 2017 we were passing through Switzerland and he invited us to stay at his cabin in Elm. Sadly we could not take him up on his offer but met for lunch in Zurich. He brought my kids various poetry and art books that he had written. We still have them.
Today my daughter thought of him due to something that was mentioned in an online class. She did a web search of his name and we found out that he had died October 2019 when he fell off a bike and got run over by a truck. He was 71 years old. We will miss him!