For a month I stayed here last spring with 80 huskies. In this place I've bicycled solo for 1300km, sea kayaked for 1300km, gone splitboarding with many different magical views, hung out with whales, dolphins, puffins, killer whales, eagles, porpoises and seals on different occasions. Here I've slept under the stars, northern lights and midnight suns, swam in almost every turquoise fjord I've passed, gone longboarding, surfed, hiked, roadtripped so many times I've lost count. Here I've had my home, my vacay and my office.
Simply put: northern Norway has started to feel like a second home, and I just can't get enough. So it's all my pleasure being back with 19 other people to show them this incredible arctic paradise!
We're right under the prime area of the aurora borealis, somewhere around 60-65th latitude (Tromsø is on 69th) as if it was the most natural thing in the world. Which it kinda is up here, the northern lights are visible quite often during the dark time of the year. It's just so incredible, that something so exotic can be so frequent up here, just like everything else. Turquoise oceans, empty white sand beaches and whales right by the coastline for instance. And then there is those snow-covered dramatic mountains and color bursting sunsets as a bonus. Or just as northern Norwegian standard.
But on the other hand, many of northern Norway's residents travel to Sweden on their vacay since it's "so exotic and beautiful". That says quite a lot about us humans and how we adjust to our surroundings. That which you don't have...
But what I do have is an amazing office!! Sorry but no words need to be excused here! This might be one of the absolute best and beautiful things I know, exactly this combo of arctic nature and animals, and it hits me just as hard every time - every single time. So one doesn't even have to ask if I think it's fine to work day and night and on weekends, to sleep too little, carry too much, and get compensated with happiness, views and a little bit of money?
So we've just landed back in Sweden after a magical long weekend up in Tromsø and Skjervøy. There's so many beautiful things and places in this world, likt this for example, but imagine that most of the earth is covered by this but so few get to experience it. We really are privileged, we who can travel more than one, two, two hundred times in a lifetime. Most people in the world don't even get the opportunity to head outside their hometown in a lifetime, just as it is for my Tanzanian colleagues and friends at Kilimanjaro for instance. And many of us are stuck in an office and don't even think about their possibilities.
I feel so privileged to chose, privileged to be privileged that I was unprivileged enough to go through such a big life trauma at an early age that I never could sit and wait for life to happen or for perfect timing since such timing rarely exists. One can be presented with whichever obstacle or limitation, but there is always possibilities to find one's path or detour to still be able to get those pieces together that one wants in one's life. And if something is impossible, it's all about attitude. Provoking or not, but that's all there is, cus you only can't change that which you can't change, right? It's not easy, but it is the simple truth. And that tool is called gratefulness and getting things done.
But, traumas or flows or mindsets, I'm never gonna do anything else besides make life as beautiful as I can for as long as I get to stay. In one hour everything can change, get worse, be traumatized - maybe - but it could also change for the better. It did happen, and that mantra stays with me forever.
So love and respect to all who dare and fight - or try their best to accept - something. And thanks all beautiful creatures and giants for letting us once again visit your home, the big blue, the biggest home on the earth, that which makes us human beings feel so small. Animal Planet irl really is one of the best, coolest and most empathy-triggering schools there is!
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