Åre Sessions, Husky Podcast, Adventure Stories and cabin life

M A G I C !!!

Malin brought her 3 friends and came up to Åre last Thursday for our gig at Åre Sessions. For 2 days we were standing up on the Olympia Plateau and served vegan apple pie with Oatly's yummy vanilla sauce, for 2 days we've gone to concerts and danced till the town got quiet, for 2 days we've promoted our Adventure Stories without actually promoting it, for 2 days I've experienced Åre in a way that I wished happened more often all year round. One of the things you don't get when living here is live concerts, an ocean of people, to dance to the music you like and socialize with friends, people you haven't seen in years and new faces, to get a little city pulse every now and then, for instance. I love the quiet periods too, and I love when the solitary mountain is mixed up with festival!

Except me working on learning to feel meaningful when talking about myself, what I know and what I've done, it was really cozy starting the second morning with a breakfast talk with Magnus Ormestad, Kajsa Larsson och Kristoffer Turdell (the pod will be out on Husky Podcast in about 3w!). It's not really convenient to sit next to a big World free skier winner and a big skiing influencer and say "eeeh, I sleep in tents a lot". Who wants to listen to her haha, and how will anyone understand what I do and why they should listen to me? I couljd just as well say that I'm the first woman in the world to travel all the way around Iceland on a skateboard, that I've been up on Kilimanjaro 3 times as a guide, that I work with Sweden's biggest adventurers, that I slept 200 nights in a tent last year, I could've talked about all my athletic successes and MVP's, that I've reached my dream-combo of adventure + design instead of adventure + 7 jobs on the side to make it work. Malin try to make me "brag" more when we're out guiding with Adventure Stories, I keep forgetting since it's my lifestyle and that's why it feels so self-explanatory (to me). To me it's something I always have to remind myself of, that sleeping 200 nights in a tent every year isn't normal. But I'm learning to talk more about it!

Anyways: THANK YOU Åre Sessions, you're magical! Leg-day reached new levels when we commuted back home from work on a snowboard with a packed 90L bag on my back, a heavy IKEA-bag in my hand and wearing Sorels for boots. Thanks for inviting us and thanks for loving our vegan apple pie, thanks for listening to my talk and thanks for all epic music and dancing!

(Find more pics from the event here)

When the event was over we took some recovery days out on the mountain, we headed straight out on skis to cleanse or heads and breathe fresh air, take a dip in a hole in the ice and got warm again in the sauna, and stayed in a cabin with no electricity for a night. Cabin life is always a good idea, cus when everything takes forever - cooking, get warmth, peeing - the brain gets completely present and you reach the ultimate state of relaxation as you don't have time to think of anything else than just doing what your doing at that exact moment and all other things at home just disappear. Cus if you don't chop wood, make fires, drill a hole in the ice, keep the sauna warm, cook food with simple tools, and take on all your layers to dig your way through the snow to the toilet, you will probably die, get sick or pee in your pants. And then when all that's done it's time to sleep. A night out like that is a super thing to do every now and then and at that moment really tempting to do even more often, so we asked ourselves: "Would you stay here for 6 months if you could, or would you need to get paid? No electricity, no water, no friends - only simplicity."

I know what I would anwser, and that answer is long. But first without trying to influence you, what would you've answered?

Haglöfs photoshoot on Gotland

You know when you can let go of everything, let someone else decide everything - when to eat, how to stand and walk, where to go, what to wear, but still get free boundaries in being as natural as possible and do just what you would do if you went there alone. Like having a pt, but a pt over life. And when you're 5 people who go on a 5-day-life-pt-trip, it apparently turn into a playground. That!

Last weekend me Malin, Silja, Thomas and Tim went to Gotland with photographer Hasse and stylist Malin from Haglöfs for a photoshoot. For 5 days we have screamed to Backstreet Boys, bicycled with kites, played bullseye with stones, laughed our hearts out by inside boomerang-jokes, eaten too much fruit from the breakfast buffet, taken morning runs through the world's best psychology pods over idyllic Visbyic streets and swam in the ocean.

Two weeks ago I came back home from an amazing Adventure Stories trip to Fulufjället, and the week after I went to Gotland for a shoot. I just love contrasts! It's superlative, I know, but I do. And I love having my jobs like this, to not really know what's waiting next week, to go to different places and meet different people, to have shitloads of responsibility and to have none, to work alone in the mountains and to head down to the city and be surrounded by people, to give and take inspiration and to create great things together!

But I hate flying. Yes, I hate it. Superlative again, true again. Not the experience per se, I love the experience, but I hate the fact that I'm moving my ass as a contributor to environmental destruction such a short distance. I am a contributor just being alive as a human being, we all are, but we can chose our occasions. Like never flying domestic for instance and take the train as much as ever possible. And you know I do (at least if you've followed me over time). This time I travelled for work and that can lead to many other opportunities, but this time I couldn't choose the train, there was no chance whatsoever. So in this case my heart would've said no, but my ego chose differently and picked a job that would give me 5 days of great fun with friends, new friends, new opportunities, to find more inspiration, new energy and engagement in being an environmentally "perfect" human being the rest of the 360 days that are left of the year.

Anyways, so Gotland, my dream destination since I was a child – thanks for letting me visit! Such a super picturesque and beautiful little island that I need to back to next summer, next time with train and boat of course! Sorry for not showing any images from the shoots, during the 5 days we only wore clothes that were secret of course. So keep your eyes open, in June-Oct you'll see the result at various places!

Adventure Stories nr 4 - FULUFJÄLLET - Who Let the Dogs Out?

"This weekend I did something that was among the coolest things I've ever experienced. Together with 30 super nice huskies and a group of amazing people I drove around with my dawgs in the mountains and played polar expedition in Fulufjället. We had a great deal of weather, to get water was an hour long project, and sometimes you were forced to wear goggles when going to the toilet because the snow was so thick and smashed like knives in the wind. But it was also magical and a nature's experience that I'll never forget. Thanks Malin and Kajsa from Adventure Stories for well organized, thanks Stina and Erika for friendship and car-pooling. This will make me smile for days." -Anders Eriksson, guest.

Ooookeeeey, I thought I'd experienced dog sledding before. Well I have! Last year I lived in the arctic paradise of Lyngen for a month at Camp Tamok. But there's just something xtra to it when you organize it yourself for our 4th ever Adventure Stories trip, this time as a collab with ​Fjälläventyr. "Wow, everyone just can't stop smiling" was my first instinct thought. To get fed by positive energy from your guests is probably the best thing you can get as a guide. My job is to feed them with mine, and the clearest receipt that you're doing your job good is when they give it back and it makes my job even so much better. That's also my whole point in doing this! :) Just like commuting to the office, meet people in the city, get stuck in traffic jam... positive vibes is life isn't it? Everyone has their loads to carry, but nothing gets better and easier if everyone don't help spreading that smile.

So the dogs, our 30 colleagues. So clean and healthy, their behaviors and manners, they even smelled good and that involuntary kiss from Sarek was surprisingly fresh. My heart rests even more when I see how Fjälläventyr's Ludde handle his family members and when I see 30 wild animals live so peacefully together.

We headed out over white wide open mountain landscapes far from wifi. It was quite warm but a snowstorm at 20 m/s, and since everyone looked just like Mt Everest it felt as though we were out on an expedition over Greenland's enormous glacier. Our to the South pole. The fantasy makes the experience even greater and even if we only reached 20km straight into the national park, it felt like we could just as well have been let off right in the middle of a super remote place, which makes this whole thing so exotic. And the fact that we have fire-heated cabins, a sauna and tasty and colorful homemade vegetarian food, doesn't make the experience less grande. An adventure doesn't have to include every piece of simplicity. Because if the fantasy helps creating those feelings that you want to experience, and you get warmth, shelter and food simultaneously, then one can only smile all the way through the whole body also in energy-consuming situations that a snow storm can be if you're tired, cold and hungry.

This trip will become a replay, that's for sure!