"The mountains where you have not been yet..."

One Russian poet, actor, singer and song-writer  asked a question in one of his songs: "What is better than the mountains?" and answered: "The mountains where you haven't been yet". The song being so well-known, the lyrics haven't struck me until now when I actually started to go to the mountains.
Every week I climb one mountain with a group of people in a small icy island in the North Atlantic, the mountain can be small and gentle or high and steep, sometimes we enjoy good weather, but often we are in a blinding blizzard. No matter how different the walks are, the end point is always the same - it is breathtaking, magnificent and worth going.
Walking gives you all the time in the world to go down to your thoughts, here I tried to jot down some of them. On mountains.

on the photo: Kerhólakambur on the 22nd of February 2014

Early Sunday morning is difficult enough: alarm-clock sharply cuts through the consciousness, you open the eyes - the time has come - you are about to be born. Mercilessly. Irreversibly. By that very moment I am dissolved completely in the agonizing empathy of the pure and innate emotion of a new born, halting with all my civilized nature a deep animal howl. Steps are feeble and shaky, sight is impaired by a blinding light of a sudden bathroom light-bulb, cold is wrapping limbs, stomach gets in a knot with a realization of inevitability of the following events; a splash of cold water in the face - there, I am ready to burst out crying, the world has to hear my voice and it suddenly gets easier.
Reviving gulps of coffee evoke the primate memory of a mother´s pacifying breasts - life gradually gets its true colours. Birth is finished, life (a mountain) waits ahead.
(setja te á brúsa og fara á fjöll...)

It is not by chance that I employed a metaphor of life here - to me climbing a mountain is similar to a living a life in a miniature: half of the way you struggle to get up, lose all your strength, leave aspirations behind, forget why you had to do that, get exhausted, and then, before you know, after a small glimpse of joy, you suddenly start to slide over the hill so fast you never believe you had been there. Sounds familiar? Yeah, and it´s called "a mountain".

A mountain itself is a powerful positive concept for many things in our life, primarily something difficult, demanding (whether an experience, relationship, or work) but, eventually, worth going through. The proof to this is numerous poems, songs, quotations, images and metaphors in all creative art, both verbal and non-verbal.

The great book of the mankind utilized this image at best - all the meaningful episodes happen closer to God, therefore, on the mountain. Among those are: The Mount Sinai, where Moses received the gift of Law, the Ten Commandments; Moses and Elijah encounter God on the mountain top in the Old Testament. In the New Testament Jesus appoints His twelve disciples on the mountain, delivers His sermon on Beatitudes in the Sermon on the Mount, there happen His final discourse and Transfiguration - some of what I remember.
In the Quran mountains are portrayed as stabilizers, as fixers of the earthly life: "Have We not made the earth as a wide expanse, And the mountains as pegs?". And lets not forget the powerful Four Sacred Mountains of Buddhism (Taoism). It is just obvious that such a meaningful and distinct landmark could not simply been overlooked by a man.

The religious connotations of the mountains being so strong, even in the twenties century literature one of my favourite writers - Aldous Huxley - endows mountains with a sacred meaning: "My father considered the walk among the mountains as the equivalent to the churchgoing" - which we all, after all do, together on a good Sunday morning.

Besides divine, there is a lot of earthly and insignificant matters, of course. Like the life itself, a walk up the mountain is overly romanticized, mostly by the highly metaphoric, hence poetic nature of the latter. For many people the attraction components are the ones which comprise the life yet again:

Nature: The only thing you actually watch most of the time is the exact distance between the feet and butt of the person who walks in front of you. The direction of the stare is most often dictated by the weather conditions (unless there´s something specifically interesting to look at): the better the weather the higher the stare is fixed, which also gives a possibility to employ the side vision and actually to see some natural beauties (snow) on a good day. But mostly, as I said, you just look down into the footsteps of the front person.

Fun: Most of the walk is difficult in this or that way: if it´s not the blizzard which gets behind the eyelids and hits the face (must get the seal fat next time I am in the ocean), it can be the path itself - going straight up or sloping abruptly down. There can be a lot of tricky ice under the fresh snow or sharp lava pieces, which heighten the chances of twisting the old joints; it can be small round stones, which primary purpose of being is only to take you downhill with a German motorbahn speed. It can be anything. It can be anything unexpected.

People: As in real life there are people around you - coworkers, neighbours, acquaintances, maybe friends and relatives, all walking with you - same time, same path, same destination. Mostly we walk silently with our thoughts. Once I imagined, what if we were thinking out loud, or if there was a person who could read our thoughts, how soon that person would go crazy? We all carry our burdens with us, everywhere, every time. And we take them with us up the mountain. Exactly as in the real life, most of the time each of us is alone there, and what is more difficult, alone with oneself.

Purpose: Often I was thinking why do we go there? Apart that it is a good physical exercise (still, running on a good day is much nicer, my moderately handsome husband says), it is (at least to me) a rather difficult task to complete every weekend. Edmund Hillary answered: "Because it is there". Gunnlaugur Júlíusson said: "Because I can". Why do we live then? What´s the purpose of life? "42"? No, wait, isn´t it "52" now?

Excitement: If someone thinks that going up the mountain is only about excitement, fun and new impressions, you are as far from the truth as you can be - climbing the mountain, even the smallest mountain is actually hard work with a varying degree of difficulty, but always work. But the result is always rewarding. The harder it takes, the more fulfilling it gets, which makes it an exact illustration to my favourite proverb: "nothing in this life which is worth having comes easy" (remember an analogy with life?).

In this respect a question "why are you climbing the mountains?" is as absurd as "why do you live?" - because it is small life. But unlike the real life, here every time you get to experience a strong feeling of completion, yet another test being passed. And what makes it much more valuable - it is a victory over something so grandeur and impressive, so meaningful and potent in the whole history of the mankind, that it becomes close to a cleansing experience.

And me - a woman from a faraway country - for the last years I have been trying to make peace, if not friends, with this strong, cold and independent Iceland. And every time I take one of your mountains, I get closer to you despite that you seem not to care. After first ten you looked at me with interest, I know. We all carry our lunch in the bag pack and coffee in the flask, we all go up for our different reasons, but on a good Sunday morning we are all united by a small victory, most important on ourselves.

At the end of the day, as William Blake said: "Great things are done when men and mountains meet; This is not done by jostling in the street".

So, it´s life. It hard and wonderful. Suck it up.

"That day, for no particular reason, I decided to go for a little run..."

Distance: 21 kilometers
Time: 2 hours 1 minute (one minute, for God´s sake...)
Average Speed: 10,4 km per hour
Most Encouraging Information: 1277 calories burnt 
Personal achievement:  and a completely new feeling of knowing myself better.  

It was not before my body had completely gotten over the torturing experience of running for good two hours non-stop;

It was not before I had generously helped loading it with tons of chocolate, pies and sugar in the following month with two birthdays of my daughter´s and my husband´s;

It was not before a month had passed, 
when I actually felt ready to come out and talk about it publicly -
- my first and largest masochistic experiment - taking part in the Reykjavik marathon. 

It started at 8:40 am on a most boring and wet late-August typical Icelandic morning. I will abstain from the chronology and detalization of the events, but will instead share my experiences and interesting moments of taking part in that "most unnecessary and disturbing" (thank you, mom) event.

My moderately handsome husband was running full marathon (for those blessed who do not know, this means 42 kilometers of pain, misery, blistered feet, and occasional self-pity) that day. We started together and he, in a rather gentlemanly manner, was accompanying his lady the first ten kilometers, until, of course, he felt rather bored and got tired of, actually, walking.

After the first five, I got a recurrent thought circling in my mind, measuring the distance: God bless Drinking Stations and good people working there. This is the actual measure for a runner, an occasional oasis of life and hope, not the abstract kilometers which seem only growing longer with every step.

A half-conscious crowd sharing a common blurred state of mind, hardly seeing anything through the pain in the lungs and with the leg muscles dying with every step, can hardly be expected to observe the manners and etiquettes and avoid throwing paper cups under the feet, but miracles happen: a moderately handsome gentleman of mine was actually running with his cup in the hands for a good mile looking for a trash bin, under the judgmental look of his not-so-well-mannered spouse, until one of the cheering people took it from him. Apparently, manners are always manners.

People standing outside and cheering was the highlight of the trail. Honestly. Thank you all for being there! If you haven´t been at any side of the path, just try to imagine how all those people got up on an early cold and wet morning, went out with the kids and occasional water and pastry, were standing outside in the rain, clapping, smiling, playing music, encouraging us, to get over ourselves, to keep on going, to believe we can do it. (When I stop running, I,  hereby, in this piece promise to all of you - witnesses reading this - I will put up all my grumpy, irritated and sullen kids at 8am and go out at every marathon to cheer and support those crazy courageous people). Here and now I can only say, thank you. Probably, you have no idea how much it mattered!

Other words of gratitude I should address to my brave and determined step-son just only for the fact that he, in his teenage anarchic-nihilistic prime, put himself out of a warm bed at 8am on Sunday morning, went out alone into the cold rain and wandered for hours in the streets of Reykjavik with a camera, trying to catch us on the trail to take good pictures... Indeed, that day was full of personal victories.

A rather (believe me, this is just a literary understatement) lean Japanese man was running somehow around me most of my twenty kilometers - overtaking lazily and lagging behind for taking pictures of the most beautiful scenery and places that we were passing by, until he quite (again, understatement) easily and gracefully turned into the full marathon path and lost himself for his next 42 kilometers with more pictures to be taken with grace and ease of running. Speaking of the cultural labeling.

Interesting (I am not sure it was the exact emotion of the spur of the moment) it was to see the cocky sporty super guys running already back fresh and frisky when me, my pain, both of my lungs and each and every of my leg muscles were only hardly finishing our first ten.

Rather amusing was to realise that both feet started to blister on the 12th kilometer (9 km more to go). In my defense - I did prepare! I did read all those numerous advice web-sites about how to prepare for the marathon. I did put on my old comfy running shoes and all-proven professional socks. I just failed to take into consideration the high dampness of the day, and on several occasions in the beginning, when we all were still running in one big crowd, I stepped into the water and that irrevocably for weeks, for many a painful shower, settled the sorrowful destiny of both of my feet. The professional running socks, eventually, were the only serious loss of the day.

People show their true colours in the long distance running. Or is any demanding situation working as a touchstone and depriving us of the craftiness and pretense? Spending two hours with more or less the same people around you, one can see how different we all indeed are. Someone runs pushy, overtaking and stepping just in front of you, someone steps into the big pool and makes the feet of everyone around a wet mess, and someone (there was one guy) completely exhausted, sweating and already hardly running, who saw a glove drooped by a guy running in front of us; with everyone just passing, he picked it up and followed the guy for six more kilometers unable neither to get up to him, nor even to shout anything, but just carrying his glove.

Finishing the last kilometer with the rain in the face was not what a girl with a makeup on the eyes would dream of (you know exactly what I mean, sisters), especially with the full awareness that my step-son would be waiting for me to take pictures of me beautiful finishing. Nothing doing... Passing by Harpa (a national opera house) - a grandeur manifestation of the small and proud nation´s self-consciousness - encouraged me to hold my head high and whole-heartedly believe Christina Aguilera that we are all beautiful... no matter what.

I do not consider myself an emotional person to weep in the movies, on books or cute stories but going through the finish line, at that very moment, I blessed the rain washing down stuff from my eyes.

I did it.


Copyright © 2013 by Olga Johannesson

What doesn´t kill you makes you stronger?

"What doesn't kill you makes you stronger" - persistently was persuading me Kelly Clarkson, as I was trying to mutilate myself on a treadmill, finding pain in the parts of the body which were dormant for most of my life and feeling aching organs that I had no idea existed in my body before.

Source of photo (and an interesting blog about running)

Being half-conscious, to divert my mind from the pain purely out of survival precaution, I started thinking if is that really so - do we really need pain to grow? Does a person, who is blessed by a peaceful and quiet life, undisturbed by any sorts of turbulence, come up as an physical, emotional, spiritual cripple? And to follow the other extreme: going to the hell and back creates, basically, a superman? (oh, sorry, I meant a superwoman).

What happens if one doesn't get enough pain through life? Lets say, there's a moderately happily married life with 10 years on the back and two kids on the front. Then, one day there comes a realisation that the chest starts sliding down and actively forming a paunch, social networking becomes the most exciting thing, beer and caffeine have replaced water, in general - things have got out of control.

And there it starts - subconsciously,  persistently,  methodically we start to generate our own suffrage to get out of the couch and back on a horse: to be emotionally fit one gets an unobtainable love object - the wife of a neighbour will do, a colleague with its regularity of meetings is even better. After all the person doesn't matter - it is just is to train emotions, as Robbie Williams was confiding into my ears: "just want to feel real love, feel the home that I live in".  Next step is to ruin the family, get a divorce, see kids once a month, live alone and start looking for the meaning of life - all of these  to be spiritually fit and growing even further.

But what if we stay motionless in your moderately happily life? We stop being interesting to people - the absence of drama makes us lose colours and mimicry with the life itself. The most interesting people, writers, artists, politicians, actors, even "that nephew of the guy who lives next door", are the people with the wretched life and an ongoing crisis.

And we still think we are going for pleasure? That's our eternal shallow delusion, a trick formed by our refined inventive artful psyche, which wraps a bitter pill into the sweetness of a minute pleasure. "Sometimes it is harder to deprive oneself of a pain than of a pleasure" - floated the words of F. Scott Fitzgerald somewhere in my already half-conscious mind.

By following our unnecessary immediate wishes, overindulging in foods, sweets, tastes, with all sorts of social infidelities, we are methodically paving the way to our own abyss, so that later we would have a chance to apply all our strengths to get out of and become stronger, fitter, smarter. Or drown and die.

So, stating the obvious for everyone but me, I came to a conclusion, which helped me to finish those last minutes on the treadmill - that we need regular injections of pain, leading to suffrage, produced by our internal striving for crises. "Everything in moderation" - refrained Ancient Greeks in my head to beautiful Kelly, and I decided that was enough for the day.  

The song ended, treadmill stopped, I took out the earphones, and with a feeling of standing on the way to perfection, went home thinking about mundane things as what to cook for dinner for my moderately handsome husband who was babysitting our inquisitive beautiful baby-daughter, secretly thanking Providence for all that boring uneventful life that I was blessed with, hoping I was done with my pains at least till my next gym.


Copyright © 2013 by Olga Johannesson