Olivia Piana — Waterwoman crafting her own Natural paradise.

Olivia Piana is a 3 times Stand Up Paddle World Champion who decided to slow down with the competition travel lifestyle and using that free time to create her own corner of paradise. She’s telling us about her journey.

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Olivia is a French woman from the countryside of Marseille. 6 years ago, after traveling with her van for multiple months, she decided to stop and set up herself on a little plot close to the ocean. She parked the van in the center of the land and convert it into her house. Now she’s spending her time outside taking care of the nature around her, feeding the chickens and walking the dogs. When you arrive to her place, you can have many feelings but once for sure remain, you feel home.

“I’ve always dreamed about having my land, making my garden, a place where my dogs can run ”

As “ Back to simplicity” was the title of our previous story about Carlos, Olivia is an other example of putting the focus on what really matters. She’s living her own life, not the one expected by our society, a simple life closer to Nature where she can put all her energy into planting trees, learning about ecology and practicing her sport.

After having a nice chat with Olivia, I was quiet impressed how she’s really following the permaculture way and doing that in a deep collaboration with nature, she’s also collecting water, using dry compost toilets and ecological products like BIO soap to have the less impact possible on the land. At the back of her mobile home, you’ll also find a nice space for her chickens and ducks who are gently walking together in that little oasis.

She invited me to have a lunch together and it was just so satisfying to see that the eggs in the plate where just collected from the chicken house some hours ago and the veggies freshly harvested in the garden next to us.

“They feel safe in the comfort. For my case, I feel safe in Nature.”

As a 3 times stand up paddle World Champion, Olivia travelled a lot in the past to go from competition to competition, spending more time in cities that she’s still enjoy today but not looking to live in it anymore. A past life experience who helped her to make the choice to live the life that she’s living now.

Olivia is explaining us that she found her safety in that Natural environment and for that, she has no problem to live in a smaller place. Her camper doesn’t have proper insulation but she said “ That’s fine, the first winter days are cold but then my body adapt and I’m not cold anymore ”.

It seems that living in confort doesn’t really match with being connected with nature. It can be hard sometimes when you live surrounded by large concrete walls, cosy sofa and good heating system to not loose the connection with the singing of the birds, the sound of the rain and the energy of the wind.

By being in a modern confort house, it might be harder to shut down Instagram and going for a walk in the forest. Might be easier from Olivia’s camper.

Talking about Olivia and not saying a word about surfing will be only talking about half her life because surfing is a huge part of it, it’s her job and it’s her passion. Seeing Olivia's foiling is like seeing a good musician playing, it looks so smooth that it feels easy but it’s not, it requires thousands of hours of practice. To stay on a top level, she’s getting in the water at least five times a week that we can see as a definition of commitment.

“ When I’m doing a competition, I’m not doing it against others people, I’m doing it with them because if they are not there, there’s no competition ”

These few words are maybe the best way to describe Olivia’s vision, after staying with her one complete day, you can really feel it. Hard to know if it’s the surfing who gaved her that approach but it feels that she’s approach everything as a collaboration in her life, it can be the way she’s working in the garden or training her dogs but also the way she’s choosing a wave.

In a time where the future looks uncertain with many problems to solve and a lot of questions, we can take Olivia’s story as an example of working together with Nature and doing our part.

Words, photos and video by Nicolas Denis
Produced by Studio Collectif.

Special thanks to Sylvia Avontuur for her support