STV - My Own Into The Wild Experience
Now I know that I said that we would need a lovely little private Island to have our Piano Party @edje @mipiano @hanselmusic. Still, with the current temperatures around the world and especially locally in Spain maybe we should start thinking about Iceland as a wonderful Island for a party.
Well, this has been another challenging week or so it seemed till I saw this post:
Music: Ólafur Arnalds live from Hafursey, Iceland by @beatminister
A video recorded at a lava field near the Katla volcano.
Now that is cool, but the trigger to my story was this part:
The Katla volcano is located in central Iceland, a region even more remote and less populated. Which is a good thing, because if Katla erupts things turn really bad, maybe even for all of Europe. Maybe not quite like in the Icelandic TV show "Katla", but bad enough.
Just watch that vid and see the scenery, nature is so overwhelming and deadly.
Humans are so small, so insignificant in the great wide open.
This next true story was inspired by the video and written while listening to this music and feeling really small once again. And I had to think of that movie.....
Three words "Into The Wild"
I've done my own into the wild for a few years. Surviving in the middle of nowhere. Well, no car and an hour's walk to the first village is not really nowhere, but close enough. If I would mess up out there there was nobody to help me out.
Unless you are helping out a 78-year-old guy gathering wood with a chainsaw. When he hit me with that chainsaw I had at least him and his car to drive me to the emergency room.
Guess that is why I didn´t use a chainsaw myself, still, I ran into several situations where nature was trying to get the best of me.
A huge landslide blocking the road didn´t make things easier and blocked me from any help if required. But what about all those times I had to walk down to the river, over a trail a couple of feet wide next to a gorge? And back with a rucksack filled with enough food to last me a week.
I often wondered what if;
What if the ground would start sliding or what if I slip? The earth did slide during those years making the trail half as wide but I kept going.
Living in nature brings challenges, but it offered so much more.
It made me realize that we are all ants, unimportant little crawlers on this rock floating in space. That Mother Nature is so much bigger than we can imagine.
That is why I am really not impressed by this whole climate change thingy.
Nature will overcome, the question is will humans?
My best guess is no, not in the semi-dominant position, this species takes up in the food chain atm. And except for music mankind has no real function so extinction is not the biggest loss.
Not that I think they will become extinct, I think there will be a smaller population left that might do it a little better than the previous one....but that might be the best-case scenario.
Killing You Is Just Part Of Nature
I have been in weird situations and looked death in the eye at least twice.
One time was driving on a small road, next to an abyss, being caught in a sudden drop of snow, driving up a hill, needing to steer right, in a car that goes straight.
I was not driving, but I felt us sliding, the steering did not work, and breaking did not work until we hit the roadside a roadside that was approx one car and the gravel there allowed the breaks to find a bit of grip and stop the front wheels of the car 25 centimeter from the edge of the abyss.
I am told that I screamed that night and I can imagine I did so. We left the car and walked for 3 hours through the mountains to get home, and a day later 4 hours up the mountain to pick up that car.
It was nature, that almost killed me.
My Other Into The Wild Experience
The other time is years back. I was on a very boring ski trip that would take us across a great mountain ridge but meant climbing, walking, and waiting on the rest of the group.
I must have been fifteen stubborn and skiing in jeans. I was done with the slowness and waiting and chose to go off-piste. I looked down, knew where I needed to go, and was like I can do this. I will just go cross country and get a bus from the nearest village.
Great plan and my estimation of the steepness was spot on. My estimation of how close the trees were to one another was almost right.
The combi of the two made it almost impossible to ski, the trees made turning, or even moving your skis impossible they were freaking everywhere and I must have crashed into twenty before I decided that this was not working....only option left walking.
I started walking carrying my skis thinking this was even worse than climbing and waiting with the group I left probably 400 meters or more above me. So the only way was down.
Btw did I mention I was off-piste and the snow was at least knee deep which caused me to be unable to steer around any trees?
I am sure I did mention I was wearing jeans... do you get a feel for where this is going Dear Reader?
Yes, indeed I was walking through knee-deep snow carrying my skis in jeans. No normally you fall, you brush off the snow and you keep going. No problem.
No problem unless you can not brush off the snow, the snow keeps being there and your leg heat is melting the snow through your jeans every step.
Those jeans get soaking wet, absorbing the heat from my legs and the cold from the snow. That works for the first 30 minutes, then nature starts showing who´s boss and who´s small and stupid.
I was starting to get a tingling feeling in my legs, a feeling that was there to stay. It was getting worse every step until my legs felt like they were sleeping while I was sweating like a pig on this neverending walk.
The snow was everywhere and it took a little bit of thinking to figure out that the snow was higher at the mountain-side of the tree than on the valley side.
If I would squat down at the valley side my legs would not get knee-deep in the snow. Just my ankles would be covered by the snow and those were protected by my ski boots.
Putting my jacket on top of my legs made de tingling go after a while. I used this trick several times but that tingling sensation as if your legs are going to sleep kept coming and it came faster. Where I previously could walk another 10 minutes soon it was 2 or 3.
I knew this might not end well for me, if the frostbite would chew through my legs I would lose them. I didn´t want to live without legs. I thought about covering myself with snow and going to sleep instead. It was a serious thought, not sure if I would still think that way but back then losing my legs was not an option.
Accepting Your Own End Sets You Free
I truly made peace with the idea to leave here with my legs or not at all. And when I made that peace I realized a lot of things, knowing you are about to die does that to you I guess.
But that is a nice topic for another #STV.
I eventually reached the valley and there the snow was still knee-high, but there was some kind of track. Two deep strips as wide as my leg and two feet apart. As if a high sled or a very narrow cart had plowed through. But no traces of a horse or anything that pulled the vehicle.
I have never figured out what it could have been, but it might have just saved my life. Because the snow was no longer touching my jeans my legs did no longer get bitten by the frost.
For about an hour I followed the track and then I saw the village I had planned to reach by ski.... oh I guess I didn´t mention the ski´s anymore.
Uhh, I left them, after walking through knee-deep snow for 30 minutes getting stuck left and right, and carrying those ski´s on my neck I dumped them somewhere. I am glad I did even though my dad made me pay for them.
Bottom Line
That was just two times that nature wasn´t even trying, And we do not have to imagine what happens if she does try.
We see that every day on the news.
Nature is what keeps us alive (yes movie reference & pun intended).
Guaranteed, she can wipe us off the face of her earth without any effort.
Too often I forget about her immense power, her beauty, and her beautiful complexity. Too often trivial human BS clouds my vision.
Sitting here on a very warm Lazy Sunday morning, listening to beautiful music and wishing I was in Iceland right now avoiding the hottest days ever measured on planet Earth, I hear the mother.
She is not worried, she does not see the climate crisis threatening her. She will adapt, will we do too?
I don´t know, but things will change and change always comes at a cost. I don´t want to sound like the prophet of doom, but that cost could easily be billions....not dollars, not Bitcoin, something else....something money can´t buy.
Something I already almost lost twice.
What is Spread The Vibes
If you want to know more about the Spread The Vibe Challenge not A challenge please clikerdeeclick me
And I invite you Dear Reader, to let me know about that time that nature almost got the better of you and how that changed your life.
Thank goodness you made it till the end peace, love and I am out of here!
[Source Pic](All pictures are by MyI & AI)