Well, I’m back from my much needed vacation. Was on the Faroes for 9 days, Iceland for 6, and in the States for 12 or so, and now I’m back in Sweden and starting work again tomorrow. The Faroes were exceptional, really breathtaking. They were so green, so wet and lush, and so dramatic I couldn’t help but be knocked out by them. In fact, I was a bit disappointed with Iceland after having been on the Faroes for the last week. Although, I only saw 3 days worth of nature there and I don’t think I went to the coolest spot.
As usual, I left on my vacation wanting a great adventure and I got one. And again, as usual, it didn’t happen when I went out looking for it, it happened accidentally like all the rest of my adventures-in an attempt to get myself out of a situation that was the result of a garunteed stupid decision. It went a little something like this:
I spent my last day on the Faroes on the westernmost island called Mykenes. They call it the pearl of the Faroes, really beautiful, really dramatic, huge rocky cliffs that are probably 40 or 50 meters in some places, and maybe even more, above jagged rocks and ocean below.
Anyway, one of the biggest reasons I like these trips is the cool pictures I come home with. While looking at two utterly incredible separate monolithic rock columns just jutting out of the ocean literally covered in birds, I decided that I absolutely needed a pic of that. I´m standing actually about a meter away from the edge of a real big cliff, the wind is blowing like I’ve very seldomly felt before, and the ocean breeze is filling my nose with one of the most enlivening drafts I´ve ever smelled. I grab my camera from around my neck. As I do so, it fastens on the strap of my binoculars, also around my neck, and they slip over my head, fall on the ground, and roll over the edge of the cliff. First I say ****, then I wait patiently for the sound of the binoculars hitting the water….but it never comes! Success! I look over the edge and **** again because they are on another ledge several meters down. And these ledges, my dear folks, are not fricken big-they’re not tiny but not friggin big. My first thought…haha, as usual is that I CANNOT litter this pristine environment with trash. My second is that I friggin lose everything in my life, I honestly don´t go a single week without losing my keys and I already lost that lumbar support pillow that I bought from Ingrid, my physical therapist. It friggin irritates me. **** again. I make my way, very carefully over the edge of the cliff on loose soil that is crumbling under my feet. The wind is blowing in my face and the waves are breaking hard 30 meters down. This is just the first meter…the rest is pretty much straight down. As I´m making my way down my heart is literally pounding out of my chest. It started pounding the moment I made the decision to go down-instantly, like a light switch. Once again, there are jagged rocks like 30 meters beneath me being beaten by heavy ocean waves and I am standing on the side of a cliff on crumbling soil that is on an unstable ledge with rocks that fall away when I step on them. This sucks.
I make my way down over the binoculars, they are roughly 1.5 meters beneath me and below them, straight down, are the breaking waves and big jagged rocks. I can’t make it down the binoculars from here. I don´t want to jump and there is no other way down. Damnit. So I look around and see if there is another way. There is! Success! But I have to go back up another way and then come back down a different path. It´s kind of far and it involves more ledges with more crumbling rocks and more loose soil. I can´t stand that and my heart is frickin racing like you wouldn´t believe standing out there on the side of that huge cliff in the crazy(and I mean CRAZY) wind. So I make my way around and now I am finally on the same level as the binoculars, although 4 or 5 meters away. My heart is beating OUT OF MY CHEST at the wind and the view right below me and…..the sounds. The sound of wind is howling, and the waves are making their crashing sounds, but there is something else. Sounds like birds very close by.
I look over and there is this big, chicken sized fuzzy bird squaking it´s ass off at me. I see there are several of them. I notice that as I creep closer, kind of hugging the wall, it´s gets more and more aggrivated. And when I get really close, something crazy happens. It´s starts making this crazy heaving motion and noise. Like a dog when it´s about to puke. I´m almost having a panic attack at this-it’s everything: the wind, the waves on the rocks, the birds…I had some bad experiences with birds literally attacking me on Svalbard-they drew blood! Anyway, I creep closer and closer and the bird projectile vomits, literally cocks and releases, this acidic red bile at me-and a lot of it! I dodge! I duck, and I swerve. I get past the first bird unscathed. But there are more. I walk again, creeping by. Nevertheless, I am puked at again. It´s rapid fire. They are like machine gun red bile puking machines. And you wouldn´t believe how far they can spit this crap. I later found out that that stuff burns on contact! Anyway, I am literally running on this ledge now(not tiny but far from friggin big!), jumping from rock to rock, Indiana Jones’n it, part to part to get away from these birds while still trying to keep my ass alive and on the side of the mountain.
Finally I get to my binoculars and take a deep breath out. But it doesn´t last long because I know I have to get back. I have to run the gauntlet again.
The whole situation was so nuts you had to be there to believe it. So I make my way back and this time I think one of them hits me. In the leg, on my jeans(when I get through it all, I don’t think I was hit). No big deal. I keep my pace up, I keep hopping here and there. I take pauses inbetween birds in spots that I can rest safely. The wind is going nuts in my ears and my heart is beating faster than anytime I can remember. Finally, I make it back and attempt to climb up, which, of course, is harder than getting down because I had to jump down a bit. Now I have to climb on those loose rocks. One actually fell beneath me. That was not funny, as Swedes would say. Anyway, I got up, binoculars in hand and kissed the ground, literally.
So that was my most exciting moment on the Faroes. I had a few other minor adventures, but I’ll keep those to myself for now.
Iceland was alright, much more cultural. I hitched around for a while with a woman I met on the Faroes and did the nature thing for 3 days or so, but it really wasn’t what I wanted to do at that time so I caught a bus into Reykjavik and did the cultural thing for a few days. That was really nice. They have a Reykjavik pass there that you can buy for pretty cheap for a certain number of hours and it gets you into basically every museum and every culturual site in the city. In addition to that, I met some cool Icelandic guys on the Faroes and one of them was nice enough to show me around Iceland for basically two whole days. Icelandic people really turned out to be the nicest I have ever met as a group. I really mean that.
And then, back to the States. It was such an incredible time. I absolutely loved seeing my old friends again. My clients, who are my friends, were the most fun-I could have spent days with them. I found though, that by the end of the trip, I was ready to go home. I loved seeing everyone, but I am in the right place for me right now and I wanted to get back here and get moving.
The big lesson I learned on this trip was that life isn’t always going to take care of everything. It might keep me alive, but if I want an enjoyable life I have to do a bit of work to make it that way. I have a way of assuming that it’s all just always going to go my way. The truth is that there are certain chinks in my armour that are going to need my focus to get pounded out. I took mindlessness to a new level this time around-I lost keys(what else is new?), I missed my plane, I spent TONS of money I didn’t have to, I lost money, I lost clothes…basically I have to be mindful of daily life as well as the big picture. Too often, I find myself up in the clouds, just thinking about the major lessons in life and the big things that society has to work out…and then I’m locked out of my house or I’ve lost my wallet.
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