I Quit My Life For A Selfish Adventure
If anybody was to look in at my life in 2016, I would be seen to be living a comfortable and good life, by all measures. A beautiful, two year old daughter, well-loved by my family and friends and a well-paying job. Yet, I found myself resigning from it all and purchasing a one-way flight to Norway.
It was an emotional wait in the airport. ‘I Gotta Be Me’ by Sammy Davis Jr was flowing through my headphones as I sat outside my flight’s gate. It was a song which I had heard for the first time three months previous whilst sat in my office one evening, a song which injected a feeling of discontent into my steady life. Never had any song resonated with me as much as this did.
“How can I be right for somebody else, if I’m not right for me.”
It was a line which had plagued me for months. I wasn’t happy, I wasn’t a good son, brother, uncle, friend or Dad. I went through the motions and it showed. I selfishly yearned for a simpler life, one without responsibility, one with adventure. I wasn’t right for me and I was bringing those around me down.
Despite surprising myself with the decision to run, those around me were less surprised. A close friend had me promise that I would come back, and I promised that I would. At the time, I was lying.
My flight was called and in that moment my decision was made. I stood up with more purpose than I had in a long time, shouldered my backpack, and boarded my flight to Sandfjord, Norway.
I travelled the south of Norway initially, then further north to Oslo and then here and there before finding some solid ground in the form of Fåvang — a place few people outside of Norway will ever have heard of, let alone have visited. Perhaps its biggest claim to fame is for being quite close to where the 1994 Winter Olympics had been hosted, Lillehammer.
It isn’t a place people would conjure in their head when they hear Norway. There isn’t any majestic fjords cutting through the steep mountains, nor is there any dramatic arctic tundra. What it did have is mountains, trees and rivers in every direction. It was the perfect backdrop for my runaway adventure, even more as now I had gained companions in the form of Dennis and Mike, a German and American.
Dennis, Mike and I had been caught up in the modern world and spat out into the wilderness straddling the Norway/Sweden border. Not doing what we wanted in life but also not sure what it is that we wanted to do, either. None of us could pin down exactly what it was that seemed off in our lives. Mike described his life as always ‘having an itch he was unable to scratch’. I got that.
A family had invited us to stay with them on their farm in exchange for our eager hands — an opportune invite as the recently thawed valley was due to have a brilliant, white blanket of snow thrown over it once more.
In the days that followed our host’s introduced us to their children, a seven-year old daughter and a three-year old son, as well as to hundreds of goats, sheep, ducks, geese, and quails.
Most days played out as follows; up at 5am to milk and muck out the goats in the barns, feed the sheep out in the fields, then the ducks, then the quails, then the demonic geese. We’d build just about anything, fix and create boundary fences, fell lumber for processing (firewood or planks), slaughter and prepare animals, tend to the greenhouse or whatever else needed doing on any given day. We finished up around 8pm and would gather around the dining table of the big house for crafts, stories and board games.
The days were harder than I ever imagined farm life could be, before now I thought the expression of ‘working your fingers to the bone’ was just that, an expression. I wasn’t quite down to bone yet, but it didn’t feel too far off. Despite the brutality my body was facing, my mind was in respite, it reflected and wandered whilst my hands worked away.
A few weeks in on the farm and the temperature had been stuck at a pretty chilly -23°C for most of our stay and the novelty of snow had well and truly worn off. My body ached beyond measure — I spent one night asleep on a piano stool as I made the mistake of sitting down to take my boots off and not having the energy to get back up. I had deep cuts on my shins from my wellies and had caught myself on barbed wire resulting in a costly tetanus. Despite this, I felt as though I was home, I felt content.
Where I’m from, we have areas of natural beauty but they’re ever decreasing in size. Slivers in amongst our cities and towns and as a result our relationship with nature isn’t as strong as it once was. The largest animal to be seen in my hometown is a fox, if you’re lucky. We have no right to roam through our countryside and wilderness is long extinct. Norway however, is a place in which the people live in spite of nature — life revolves around being outdoors. We’d hike, ski, fish, forage and camp — come rain, snow or shine. Thanks to Norway’s right to roam (allemannsretten) we could focus of being out in nature itself and not have to worry about designated zones in which we could stay for the night. It was eye opening to be out in places that were wild. Paths were those made by animals. Forests were maintained by the animals it housed. Benches were fallen trees and picnic tables tree stumps. It was this rewilding that I had yearned for. It was refreshing to exist in an environment that wasn’t curated for my comfort and pleasure alone, instead I was a man, in amongst nature. And that, is a feeling seldom felt in the 21st century.
One thing I noticed right off the bat in my adventure was the level of trust given to me by Norway and its people. Within the first week I had been given a fishing rod, an obscene amount of pork, maps, homemade wool socks and even a stranger’s cabin to stay in for a night — all from different and very much, strangers. They trusted us enough to invite us to work and live on their farm, introduce us to their family and trust with their livelihood — trusted as we were family. It was that extension of trust that opened up our evenings. After the day had finished, we’d sit around a dimly lit kitchen table, drink whisky and talk. At first we talked of little things, our different cultures, football and farm chores, until it progressed to talking about why we were really there, with a table of strangers in the Norwegian mountains. We spoke of our problems and fears as we couldn’t with our closest family and friends. They gave guidance when we asked for it and patient ears when we didn’t. It was a time of great reflection that transformed my life — it took the trust of strangers to invite me into their family, for me to finally trust someone enough to open up with my difficulties.
It was the kind of adventure I had always dreamed of when I was younger and without obligation, a selfish dream in which I left my family, friends and responsibilities behind to search for true adventure. A foolish dream which could have ended in injury or worse had I not received friendliness and trust of complete strangers. A dream where I made friends in a new place, but lost some back home.
I returned home after a while, different to when I had left. I was finally at peace with the responsibilities in my life, I knew I wouldn’t hide from them again. I made the decisions I needed to enact real change in my life, for the better. It was a selfish trip, but it was something I needed to do before I could go any further.
I left my insecurities, doubts, naivety and fears in Norway, and I will always be thankful to her for taking them. In the words of Sammy Davis Jr. — ‘I Gotta Be Me’.
