A thousand kilometres north of Stockholm lies a land of midnight sun and polar night where autumn passes swiftly. Mosses on the mountainside grow a rich raving red while birch-clad contours in valleys below turn a glowing gold. Small icebergs float in turquoise lakes of glacial cold while large skies seem perpetually locked in a passionate dance. I want to lie on my back amongst the blueberries and watch it unfold: dark shapes swallowing brightnesses of blue, a few moments of icy rain before the sun breaks through with a burst of gold, sending shafts of light to earth while the clouds gather and burst once more, shifting and swirling light and colour into darkness. But it’s quickly too cold to stay and watch: the wind that blows from the north brings the colour to my cheeks but takes the feeling from my fingertips, so I stand and walk on.
Writing helps me to notice beauty, to process complexity, and to feel some small sense of control over the different paths I can take and the different ways of walking each. But as this site betrays, I haven’t been doing much writing of late. In the whirlpool of work I have been too busy chasing dreams and shadows and being strong and carrying on.
But of late my soul has been tired. Tired of trying to keep up, its leash seems to have become more elastic, stretched out by all the yanking I do from one life to another. Sometimes now it takes a day or two to catch up when I fly between lives. Tired of everything I've seen and known, of all the power and pain and potential. Sometimes I think it takes itself off wandering, or perhaps stays in bed while I catapult myself through a day without it.
But like Lyra and her daemon, without it I can only go through the motions of being me. I wish I could breathe it in deep and screw my top on tight so I could know that it’d stay put without needing my constant attention to keep it so.
So what do you do when you feel spread so thin you’re no longer really sure you’re there at all? A meditation or yoga retreat might have done it. But I wanted to be alone to collect myself and face myself and to be free from walls and barriers and constraints of any kind and to know how it would feel to be so removed from all the rest of the world. So I took a map and a rucksack and I went solo hiking in the Arctic. I walked a hundred miles of the Kungsleden, from Abisko to Vakkotavare, with detours of days off into the mountains where I would see not a single soul all day and the elements would throw everything at me.
Sometime in the afternoon of day one I took shelter from the wind in the lee of a solid rock. Tucking my knees up to my chin and leaning back against the cold stone I looked down the valley I'd walked up, following the trail that wound back as far as I could see through scraggly vegetation and alongside rushing water. Soon chilled, I stood, turned and took in the scene ahead and saw wild, relentless, wonderful space. Miles and miles and hundreds more miles of mountains and plateaus and stone and moss and water: dripping and rushing and trickling water that I could dip my bottle into and drink straight down, fresh and cold and clear. Marshes and pools without faces looking up at me, valleys heaped with jagged stones smashed, I imagined, by the lashing of a dragon’s tail when the world was new. What privilege to be here, what magnificent freedom to be here alone.
Walking for half a day along one vast valley it seemed like nothing changed except angles and light, but then somehow the valley merged into the next without me ever having noticed how it happened, like years do, or intentions. Sleeping early and deeply and waking to walk on with clear air in my lungs and wind in my face and a wild horizon to take my breath away every time I looked up, after a few days I felt that I could go on forever. Using my body, putting one foot in front of the other and moving forwards, my legs feeling strong and my shoulders carrying all that I needed, each day ending with tiredness in my limbs rather than in my soul; I wanted to go on forever.
Walking alone for hours, day after day, is a little like dreaming. Thoughts surface seemingly at random as synapses fire: French verb tables, the name of the cat in the Kingdom of Carbonel, something I forgot to mention in a conversation at a barbeque last year. Thoughts churning, processing, discarding, focusing. Forced to be so completely present, with only my own company, it was powerful to feel what I might be capable of. I felt endless opportunity. Whatever happens, I will manage. After perhaps a week, I began to notice my soul bursting within me. I felt like a stronger, kinder, better me. This is a feeling that flows and sings inside you.
Did I need to go walk alone in the Arctic to achieve this because of the life that I lead, or because I haven’t worked out how else, more easily, to be good to my soul? How often are you completely, utterly present, and whole within yourself, and at peace with yourself? And how do you keep it so?
Writing helps me to notice beauty, to process complexity, and to feel some small sense of control over the different paths I can take and the different ways of walking each. But as this site betrays, I haven’t been doing much writing of late. In the whirlpool of work I have been too busy chasing dreams and shadows and being strong and carrying on.
But of late my soul has been tired. Tired of trying to keep up, its leash seems to have become more elastic, stretched out by all the yanking I do from one life to another. Sometimes now it takes a day or two to catch up when I fly between lives. Tired of everything I've seen and known, of all the power and pain and potential. Sometimes I think it takes itself off wandering, or perhaps stays in bed while I catapult myself through a day without it.
But like Lyra and her daemon, without it I can only go through the motions of being me. I wish I could breathe it in deep and screw my top on tight so I could know that it’d stay put without needing my constant attention to keep it so.
So what do you do when you feel spread so thin you’re no longer really sure you’re there at all? A meditation or yoga retreat might have done it. But I wanted to be alone to collect myself and face myself and to be free from walls and barriers and constraints of any kind and to know how it would feel to be so removed from all the rest of the world. So I took a map and a rucksack and I went solo hiking in the Arctic. I walked a hundred miles of the Kungsleden, from Abisko to Vakkotavare, with detours of days off into the mountains where I would see not a single soul all day and the elements would throw everything at me.
Sometime in the afternoon of day one I took shelter from the wind in the lee of a solid rock. Tucking my knees up to my chin and leaning back against the cold stone I looked down the valley I'd walked up, following the trail that wound back as far as I could see through scraggly vegetation and alongside rushing water. Soon chilled, I stood, turned and took in the scene ahead and saw wild, relentless, wonderful space. Miles and miles and hundreds more miles of mountains and plateaus and stone and moss and water: dripping and rushing and trickling water that I could dip my bottle into and drink straight down, fresh and cold and clear. Marshes and pools without faces looking up at me, valleys heaped with jagged stones smashed, I imagined, by the lashing of a dragon’s tail when the world was new. What privilege to be here, what magnificent freedom to be here alone.
Walking for half a day along one vast valley it seemed like nothing changed except angles and light, but then somehow the valley merged into the next without me ever having noticed how it happened, like years do, or intentions. Sleeping early and deeply and waking to walk on with clear air in my lungs and wind in my face and a wild horizon to take my breath away every time I looked up, after a few days I felt that I could go on forever. Using my body, putting one foot in front of the other and moving forwards, my legs feeling strong and my shoulders carrying all that I needed, each day ending with tiredness in my limbs rather than in my soul; I wanted to go on forever.
Walking alone for hours, day after day, is a little like dreaming. Thoughts surface seemingly at random as synapses fire: French verb tables, the name of the cat in the Kingdom of Carbonel, something I forgot to mention in a conversation at a barbeque last year. Thoughts churning, processing, discarding, focusing. Forced to be so completely present, with only my own company, it was powerful to feel what I might be capable of. I felt endless opportunity. Whatever happens, I will manage. After perhaps a week, I began to notice my soul bursting within me. I felt like a stronger, kinder, better me. This is a feeling that flows and sings inside you.
Did I need to go walk alone in the Arctic to achieve this because of the life that I lead, or because I haven’t worked out how else, more easily, to be good to my soul? How often are you completely, utterly present, and whole within yourself, and at peace with yourself? And how do you keep it so?