My work routine when at home is exactly the same every day. I wake up around 3.30 a.m., put on the coffee, and – if the weather is good, like it is right now – I open the balcony door, place a chair out there and start writing my diary. Bliss. Then I read a wisdom book, try to meditate for ten minutes, do some yoga (not every day) and head for the office. Once I open the laptop the work-day is full on. I start with whatever page first comes up, and this morning it was Facebook. And a memory of the past. From the hardest expedition I have ever done.
It was the first picture you see here that met my eyes. I look very unhappy, beaten and worried.
SO here´s the story. I took this photo in late May 2018, just after leaving Qasigiannguit. The sled behind me weighed eighty kilos. Food, fuel, an old rifle, spare bindings – and a good amount of doubt. The marriage was cracking, our oldest girl had finished months of eye surgery in Copenhagen, and I felt empty. Local radio said a polar bear was swimming up from Disko Island in my direction. I noted it and skied on.
The first day was beautiful. Minus twenty, dry snow, evening light turning the fjord deep orange. It felt almost kind. Two days later I sat in Ilimanaq watching the snow melt into porridge. No frost coming, so I tried the mountains. Half-way up a ridge the sled wouldn´t move. I had to unclip the harness, let it slide back into a rock and listen to the hull crack. Then I turned north and waded through waist-deep spring snow while small avalanches whispered past.
The nights grew warm. Lakes that should have been “roads” were now bowls of slush with water over rotten ice. Each step asked the same question: will it hold? Somewhere south of the pass, on a strip of moss with drifting icebergs far off, I stopped. I dropped the harness, raised the tent, spread wet socks in the sun and listened to cranes calling. For the first time in weeks I saw the girls clearly, back home in Malmö. I told myself, quietly, that the self-pity had to go. And it did. Not all at once, but enough to lift the chest.
Next morning I waded a lake with water to my knees, skis scraping the dark ice underfoot. Five kilometres to the house became seven hours of mud and slush. A hunter shot the bear that afternoon in the next valley – life moving on without asking.
We flew home, unlocked an empty flat and slept on the floor. The girls wanted bunk beds, I wanted affordable coffee. We have both now. I miss the clear air in Qasigiannguit and the silence that beats like a heart, but I do not miss waiting for bad news or the high prices.
As of July 2018, I am training again. Maybe I will reach the ice this year, maybe not. Flights cancel, weather turns, life changes its mind. Carrying less makes the turning easier. A monk once wrote that clinging is suffering. The tundra showed me the same thing, only colder.
That is what came back with the first cup of coffee. A small lesson: snow melts fast, mornings faster. Better to write it down, bow to it, and start the day.
