Packing again

Since coming back from Kyrgyzstan in the beginning of August, life has been anything but simple. I know I am very privileged in every way, but post-expedition blues doesn’t care about that. It arrives anyway. With age it doesn’t get milder. You see things more clearly. You see what is slipping away.

Some mornings I’ve just sat on the balcony in Malmö, fully dressed, journal in my lap, staring at a cold cup of coffee and unwritten documentary dialogues, unable to decide whether to get going or lie down again. No horizon. No silence. No movement. Just life.

At the Kensington Tours Explorer-In-Residence meeting in the UK it struck me how many of us were saying the same thing in different words: from the outside, this life looks like freedom and big landscapes. From the inside, it’s also just another way of trying to survive normal daily life. And normal life is a challenge.

This autumn more than most.

I came home from Kyrgyzstan with an acute lower back issue. Lumbago. A bad one. Every morning and every evening since then I’ve done the boring, necessary work to climb out of it. Yoga on the same patch of floor. McGill’s Big Three. Breathe, hold, move, rest. Again and again.

The pain is almost gone now. The sleep hasn’t caught up yet.

That part is manageable. It’s part of the job, if “explorer” is a job. Bodies break down. You fix them as best you can and carry on.

The other part is harder.

Hannah and I broke up over the phone the day I returned from Bishkek. She was in North America, I was back in Sweden. We both felt we just couldn’t get it together living on different continents – she there, me here. Different time zones, both of us with young families. Too many moving parts. It felt like an impossible hurdle.

On our last evening together in real life, in the car on the way home from Stockholm in March, Hannah said we had to make some big decisions; otherwise it was over. When she flew home after that trip, I think we both knew. The phone call after Bishkek was just the moment when we finally said out loud what had already been true for a while.

I understand why psychologists say breakups can feel like death.

Hannah knew how to love. When it ended, it was like falling into a sinkhole. I knew I would climb out eventually – I’ve been in dark places before – but reason and the heart live in different worlds. They follow different rules.

Of course I know I have the most magnificent daughters on earth. They are love and meaning and the whole point of everything. But this other kind of love is something else. It’s difficult to explain without sounding dramatic, and I don’t want drama. I just know it has been a long time since I grieved like this.

Thank God there is a new Kensington Alpine Club expedition coming up.

Expedition life is simple. That’s the attraction. You focus on one thing only. Keep it simple. Survive. Take one step at a time. Eventually you get where you need to go.

Now I’m getting ready to leave for Ecuador. The goal is to climb Chimborazo at 6,310 meters and learn a bit more about the trade of alpinism. Before that we’ll have a training and preparation day on Cayambe at 5,790 meters.

The challenge this time is altitude.

On Kilimanjaro, which our Kensington Alpine Club team climbed in April, we walked up from around 1,100 meters. Every day the body had time to adapt. Legs, lungs, head – all of it followed a rhythm that made sense.

This time we’re more or less transported up to altitude. The mountain says hello much faster. The margin for error is smaller. Above 6,000 meters, small mistakes grow teeth.

Chimborazo is often underestimated, especially by people who see it as just another step on the way to Mount Everest. But it deserves respect in its own right. Wind, cold, thin air, crevasses, rockfall. A route that looks simple on a map and isn’t, once you’re there.

So I’m packing again.

Back hurting a bit less.

Heart still sore.

One step at a time.