I have found that sometimes, after a few days of traveling around a foreign country, you begin to get a bit rough around the edges: Little things bother you. Big things seem manageable. Your legs and feet become enormous appendages that you must carry with you, although you feel as if you cannot do it any longer...
Which brings me to my first installment of Sad Stories...
Summer 2016
My friend and I decided to book a trip to the mysterious country of Norway after loving the people, buildings, and lifestyle of Scandinavians in Stockholm, Sweden from the previous summer.
We decided that this trip was going to be a more active adventure- We would "rave" at a concert, hike up some fjords, go on boats, and basically stay in motion the entire 8 days that we were there. And in order to feel truly adventurous, we booked two scenic hikes back to back in the middle of the trip. Active! Check!
The first one was considered a novice-level hike (lies.) , and the second was deemed more challenging. I mean, one of the reviews said: absolutely no heels, so we took that rather seriously as a sign of rigor.
But even with the "no heels" rule, I never really worried about the fitness level needed for the hikes. After all, there were pictures of kids up at the top of the fjord. If a grade school, short-legged, OshKosh-wearing kid could make it to the top, by George, so could we!
Also, there was a huge reward at the end of the hike that made me even more excited: standing on top of a small rock wedged between two gigantic mountain/fjords, suspended thousands of meters in the sky with no safety net or rope by which to secure yourself! # yolo
Leading up to the adventure, we spent a lot of time talking about how amazing the experience was going to be and how it was a once in a lifetime opportunity.
It became something of "the main attraction" of our trip.
...And then came the day of the actual hike...
(It is important to know as well, that the day prior to this hike, we had spent climbing Preikestolen, which looked a lot like this):
6 a.m. - Up, showered, backpack packed, hiking boots (bought especially for this day) laced, make-up painted on for casual travel pictures
7 a.m. Bus begins to transport us the 2-ish hours to the starting point of our journey
7:15 a.m. We leave the more populated outskirts of Stavanger and enter the rolling green countryside of Norway
8:00 a.m. We spot snow.
8:01 a.m. We reevaluate our plans and realize that there is no way off the bus and no Über to bring us back ( despite the fact that the U in Über has the fancy marks that you feel like you'd find the letter in Norwegian words, not realizing that the special Ü is actually German - whoops)
9:35 a.m. We arrive at the starting point after making friends with the bus driver in hopes that he would wait for us if we did not make the 6 hour time allotment to hike to Kjerag and back.
9:35 and 32 seconds: We look at the mountain in front of us.
Flat, smooth, somewhat-damp rock, positioned at what seemed like a 90 degree angle from the ground we stood on.
Okay, maybe 75 degrees.
Oh dear God.
Now you may have noticed that I have favored the word "hike" during this post. That's because I wanted to drive home the point that this Kjerag adventure had been advertised as a hike... with 3 steeper portions to overcome.
Hike - walk for a long distance, especially across country or in the woods.
It was becoming clear to us now that this was not a hike. This was a climb. And not just any climb... it was a hold-onto-a-linked-metal-chain-in-order-to-ensure-that-you-will-not-fall-off-the-side-of-the-mountain-into-the-abyss climb. It was equivalent to what Miley Cyrus must have based her hit song, "The Climb" on. It was the Everest of Scandinavia. I saw impending doom ahead.
But we had no option to go back, unless we just sat around and waited the 6 hours at the bottom of the fjord talking to the parking monitor (who happened to have ties to good 'ol New Jersey)...But we weren't about to do that.
So, we started climbing.
The rocks were slippery and smooth. We had to rely on our arm strength to pull us up (For reference, I had never made it off the bottom knot in gym class).
The only thing that I had going for me was long legs. I could scale the gaps much more quickly. My poor friend (who is much shorter than me) had lots more difficulty. We had to take MANY breaks, often being passed by other humans much older than us. Also, dogs passed us. Jerks.
I didn't get it. How were we not able to this? We're young! Even if pizza is the main staple of my diet, I thought that having youth on my side would carry me through.
...but that didn't matter. Us and a group of men from Denmark kept taking breaks to catch our breaths as the rest of the population seemingly danced right by. The men from Copenhagen told us that their excuse was that Denmark is completely flat.
Excuses, I thought. (Googled it when I got back, and saw that they were not lying).
Anyway, we got up and a little bit over the first of three climbs and looked down at what was to come. Some flat land and an even steeper climb.
That's when my friend turned to me and said, "I can't do it."
Being in a profession where part of my job description is to be a cheerleader, I quickly replied, "Come on! You can do it! We knew this was going to be hard! We got this!"
She shook her head adamantly and repeated that she couldn't do it. I'll never forget her explanation, which I now look back on and laugh:
"I don't do sports. I can't do it!"
To no fault of my friend, she hadn't a clue that I equated this "hike" to a necessary achievement in my portfolio of life. She had no idea that I had been building this up as something that made me either a winner in life, or a loser.
My logic stemmed from the fact that everyone I knew...and I mean everyone, was either in a long-term happy relationship, engaged, married, or having ADORABLE Gerber-esque children. I was nowhere in the realm of any of these great things. Nowhere. So the only thing that made my life as meaningful and exciting was the fact that I traveled and did cool things along the way.
Looking back, it was not a great mentality to live by, but it was all I had.
So when my friend said she could not go on... I got angry. I tried to hide it through taking pictures and sitting down to breathe in the fresh air for the thousandth time... but anyone who knows me even a little, knows that I cannot hide my emotions.
So as I sat down, with my shades failing to shield my true emotions, I began to cry.
I don't mean wail like a baby, or ugly cry as I did while watching the movie, Marley and Me. No, I mean silent Denzel tears.
It didn't take long before my friend figured it out and began Denzel-ing a little herself. Which made me cry more because my friend does not Denzel often... so I felt guilty that I had caused it.
So there we were... on the precipice of a fjord, Denzel-crying over nothing and everything at the same time...
We ended up sitting for three hours looking out over that second climb. We watched the guys from Denmark make it a little further than us, and eventually, they too turned around. We watched more old people, kids, and dogs pass us to reach the boulder that we never would. We watched the clouds roll through the valley, changing the color of the landscape time and time again.
And because we had all that time to take in the world around us, I also ended up unloading a lot of the things that had been building up over time in me: my fears about aging, my fears about accomplishing typical stepping stones in life, etc. You know, light topics...
Through our conversation, I realized that there really is no "exact" sequence in life to follow, and that there certainly isn't a time-frame that you need to abide by.
It's one of my favorite memories from any trip I've taken thus far.
So, did I achieve what I set out to do in Norway?
No.
But did I leave Norway a different person than when I arrived, due to some fjord-climbing therapy?
Yes.
.. and I will be back one day to take on that boulder, you wait.
But it will not be because I need to prove my worth in life.
It will be because I've become that old person that hiked past me in 2016. It will be my turn to hike past a twenty-something year old sitting down, catching their breath, and have them look up at me and wonder how the hell I am able to climb faster and farther...
: )
Skål xx