LIFE

I Can Be Happy in My Life

On a Mountain Top for One Night

How one can live one’s life consciously, in a reflective way.

I am in the last phase of my life. I’ve lived a long life and I know I’m going to die, but in everyday life I don’t think much about it. On the other hand, I think a lot about how I live my life, what I can do to live the best possible life.

Naturally, there are many things that play a role in the possibilities one has to live a good life. Among other things, it is very much about who you are as a person, about personal characteristics and genetic heritage, etc.

Furthermore, it is about the people you have had and still have close to you in your life, and not least everything you have experienced in the past. Everyone who has grown up has faced challenges, and the vast majority of them have been through crises in their lives.

I think it is important for everyone to be strongly and clearly present in their own lives. For my own part, I know that I have to be there for myself, and for those around me.

We must be mentally and emotionally present to ourselves, when we think, when we read, when we dream, when we walk, when we watch TV, talk to others, when we write articles, essays, poems and other fiction. This is how I see it for myself, and in other words I have a fairly extensive inner life.

But I also think that it is very important to focus on other things, on the outside, on the physical. I remind myself that it is important that I am in good shape, both physically and mentally.

I like going for walks in nature

I have always liked going for walks in nature and it has now become a very important part of my life to get out and go for long walks.

I like to be outside, sometimes far from other people, far from civilization.

I like to go to mountain tops.

I like to go alone.

I like to feel close to the mountain, the rock, the heather, the lake.

I like to breathe the fresh air in the mountains.

I like to see the mountains, the plains of the high mountains, the forests, the mountain sides. And I like to feel the wind ripping and tugging at my clothes and the rain hitting my face. I like to go out and feel that my body is working as it should and that I can move where I want.

Rasletinden in Jotunheimen

I’ve been thinking a lot about these things lately. Why am I so fond of going for walks in nature and especially going for long walks to mountain peaks? What does it give me to get out of the house and go far, to get a little tired and sometimes feel that I am at the limit of what I can handle?

It has happened that I have pushed myself and tried to push my limits a little, like when one day I went on a 3–4-hour trip to a mountain peak at over 2000 m above sea level, and in rain and fog the next day took just as long time back to civilization.

I did this one August day this year, when I had set myself the goal of going up Rasletinden in Jotunheimen and spending the night in a tent there.

In advance, a few weeks earlier I had gone on a slightly shorter trip in the same terrain, not quite up to the top, to familiarize myself with the area and to better understand what it would require of me to go to this top, staying overnight in a tent there and go down again the next day.

It was useful that I researched the situation in advance, because I was then mentally prepared for what the trip all the way up would require. And not least, I had acquired important information about the path up to the top.

The first part of the trip from the motorway’s highest point at 1389 m above Valdresflya runs on relatively easy terrain. It is flat, lots of rock, some water and a clear path that is easy to follow.

I knew in advance that the path all the way up to the top of Rasletinden was well marked by the tourist association, and that was good information to have with me.

I planned the trip based on weather reports that said it would be fine weather with sun that day. I also knew that it would rain the next day, but I thought that this was the chance I had to go on this trip and spend the night on top of the mountain.

The daily grind, and the experiences that stand out

Why embark on such an expedition?

— The life we ​​live is made up of many small episodes, and very many of these are repetitions. We do pretty much every single day the same as the days before, and we probably know deep down that we will do the same for most of the days to come.

In many cases it can be good to have the security of habit and the certainty that we know what is happening. We all need to feel safe and know what is happening in our lives.

But once in a while we will break this pattern, e.g. by traveling on a weekend trip together with family or friends, we travel on a cabin trip, or we travel on an annual holiday trip in our home country or to warmer regions. This is very common among people in this country. Many people regularly travel to the “South” on a sun holiday at least once a year.

For my own part, I have turned to focusing on doing something different, something else than what I do on a daily basis. Going on a 4–5-hour trip up a mountain peak where I have not been before is a typical example of such a break with the routine.

Sleep outside, under the open sky

I want to do things I haven’t done before, or things I rarely do, such as to go alone far into nature and sleep outside, in a tent or under the open sky.

I haven’t done the latter yet, and I think I’ll get it done maybe next spring or summer, on a day when the weather is favorable for it. Maybe I should do as a neighbour told me, and go out into the field a few kilometers south of the residential area here and lie down in the heather at night and witness the sparrows playing in the spring?

The next day

Sleeping in a tent on rocky ground at an altitude of 2,000 meters is naturally not very comfortable. The place where I set up the tent was cramped, and I could not lie down with my body stretched out. Consequently, there was sleeping with many interruptions during the night, and I went out to have a look at the night sky with the sprinkling of stars. Little sleep, yes, but it is not for the sake of the bed and the comfort that one likes to lie outside in a tent.

The weather conditions in the mountains

Conditions in the high mountains can change greatly within a short time, e.g. with wind, rain and temperature drops. I was prepared for that, and I woke up to fog and rain the next day. Fortunately, it hadn’t gotten colder so I didn’t have to walk on slippery ground again, but I was very aware that I should walk carefully so as not to injure myself and that I should be very careful to follow the cairns and the red T’s on the path down as this was an area, I was not familiar with.

I saw on the weather forecast on yr.no that it was going to rain throughout the day, so I decided to start going down again as soon as I had packed up the tent and equipment and had some food. It was fine to go down, but the visibility was very poor, only from one cairn to the next. I looked after the cairns carefully, so that I could be sure that it was going in the right direction.

The safe and familiar combined with the new and unexpected

By going for long walks alone in nature, I experience hours and days that we rarely experience in the space we call our everyday, the ordinary life we ​​routinely live.

When you have become free of all the duties and daily work tasks that tie together being 100% in your professional life, things can happen that are both unexpected and very positive. You can gain a new perspective on the world, and on yourself. To reach this place in life and this insight is a privilege where the lucky person can rethink how one uses their time.

To take responsibility for one’s own situation — and one’s dreams

I am very aware that, during the period when I was in the middle of my working life with family and small children, I could not have planned and gone on many such great summit tours that I have had the opportunity to do in recent years. But with the right attitude and with good planning, I could certainly have managed quite a few such trips and experienced quite a few great days out in nature, both with my family and on my own.

The key to a rich and varied adult life lies primarily with the individual, in the ability and willingness to get out, get up from stagnation and passivity, and get started with something that includes use of the body, movement, direction and physical activity.