A picture journey from my extreme Biwak trip at the polar circle in
February through March just before the beginning
of the Corona Pandemic crisis.
How to get the Chi back in place
I needed a some time off, because after changes in my private live also my work place changed by an old management style coming over the team and department. I like it rough, I like it intense, so I love, so I live and nice, sweet and easy did not cut it any more ...
I felt a devine urge to leave civilization for the better heading into some days all alone.
U.S. Army tested and combat proven this equipment was all I took to escape civilization just a bit.
No need for a tent
This trip was supposed to be
the bridge
to find my Chi again.
It quite did the job!
While others need a soft, fluffy or even memory mattress,
I always slept best on solid ground.
Having no more then a warming sleeping back and appropriate cover
looking above me having only the sky with all of its shiny, bright stars.
I am here, so this is Sparta.
All the time I used
available natural cover
as place to sleep.
If there was no natural cover
I stayed next to human made cover,
which was almost fully covered in snow
and
stayed there for sometimes a few days
until I ran out of food
leaving only just in time to get back into civilizations pleasures
like a supermarket
during business hours.
while the tourists did their tourist thing vanishing at night back into their tourists spots.
I was a ghost.
The sun at the polar circle is warming and tanning and most of all
giving most intense impressions.
Here is where god formed land so the sun may reflect to please the angels
by keeping them excited and fascinated
with moving weather moods changing reflections
in a divine rhythm
for ever.
I spent all days in the
outskirts, avoiding
the city centre to the
best possible and
took great pleasure and
joy by wandering along those
fjords.
There, I found strength again
and put my Chi back into place.
Up north, off everything, everything feels more
intense for me and I guess for most of us
not being used to that
so very different, rough and cold
part of this planet.
Everything my senses catch, all I feel got sharpened and spiced up.
I felt alive again.
Actually, I am a night guy.
I enjoy darkness, because that little light becomes more important and more focused.
If I was not resting in secure natural shelter
I kept walking and walking and walking.
This hiking biwak trip was a well needed work out,
excercise and take off
into a new chapter in my live.
More me, less like the others, less trying to fit in, more daring being crazy me.
Because normal is boring and I aint like the others, except I pretend to be
and will loos my Chi
on that way.
The weather at this time of the year
is rough and hostile
to all addicted and civlized humans
as the are to me
even when full of sun shine,
but purest pleasure to crazy me looking to
get my Chi back in place.
The sky can be bright
and the very next moment
covered in clouds.
Yet, always most beautiful
to a
beholder of my kind.
Even so walking empty roads with little traffic
I actually never was far away from civilisation ever.
But, right next to it, is still missing bulls eye.
I stayed
and walked on paths, that lost tracks of all those before me
Do not try this
without good preperation
appropriate equipment
and
a away to call help
if it should go wrong!
I knew what I was doing, after two years, summer and winter in Paris as a homeless
and having had more true friends within the U.S. Army than
within the local civlians.
No mission to difficult...
but a sacrificy to high as I am no soldier on a mission.
So, on this trip it was always safety first!
The army gear helped my to survive nordic stormes that came in exchange with the beatiful sun,
that forced my to stay in shelter and use my food and water wisely.
Sleeping outside at the polar circle, just after winter peak and just before spring coming, with temperatures way below freezingm point will kill the easy going stupid.
I am crazy, but not stupid.
Within minutes the weather can change and a full scale storm can last for three days and nights.
Turning bright sunny days into darkness.
That brought me closer to God,
but might have had any other
panic.
One night of snow
And a day of snow.
No place I would have found help, as it was empty and no road any close
Yet, I felt free and save
right within nature
right in a storm
as I never do within civilisation surrounded closely by other humans.
Actually, I first took cover above the summer vacation residence
of someone I do not know and never will meet
next to a rock.
I was resting in a hole of snow created by the rock shielding wind
sourrunded by snow
arriving at beatiful day
making my way off any road or track
sinking into deep snow
being heavy loaded
with survival gear.
I enjoyed the sun
and was most far off
normal tourists
and even
local residence
Than the storm came
and would last for three days.
The first night,
in a moment the storm rested,
I had to move down
and take a new position
using human made shelter
to better cover from the storm.
After three days
I needed to wait for the tides
opening a path at the stony shore
to make my way back
onto a path.
I know others would have died,
by paniking during the storm
and freezing to death trying to head through
and against the ice cold wind
into snow they'd sank in deeply
loosing the heavy gear or
staying badly covered from the storm
getting wet and freezing to death
when the body could not heat up anymore
their inappropriate gear.
Instead, I was prepared mentaly,
because I calm down in the extrem
when my survival instincts kick in.
The shelter coverd me from the wind,
the wood floor from the freezing ground
and the shore gave my path back onto the road.
I had enough food and slowed down eating
and slept in my full cloth.
I decided afterwards to upgrade the equipment,
becuase I brought the military sleeping back
onto its design limits and therefore bought a
heavy fully water proof garden cover
that would help me in the next storm
off any human made shelter
on a hill top
beyond a skatepark
into the snow.
Another storm came and turned the beauty into another beauty.
The beauty of sun into he beauty of wind
When Corona forced Norway to ask all forigners to leave
I faced a cancelled direct flight back to Frankfurt.
Instead,
I took a domesstic flight to Bergen,
stayed over night at the train station,
to take a train trip to Oslo,
to take a bus trip to Gothenburg,
to stay a night at the harbour,
to take a ferry to Kiel,
to take a train
back into Hell's Kitchen.
