I did a surprising discovery at 64. Every now and then, usually when I least expect it, I feel an extraordinary happiness and contentment. There is peace in it too, which I do not remember from before. It lasts a few seconds, sometimes several minutes, and for that short time I feel unbelievably privileged to be alive.
A feeling of nirvana is probably too big a word, but it is the closest I can find. Nothing remarkable has to be happening. I may be sitting around the kitchen table with my daughters, drinking coffee on a balcony or eating with friends after a long day on the road. Suddenly everything is enough.
I most likely experienced these moments when I was younger. My life has really contained lots of love, friendship and happiness for that not to be true. Perhaps I did not recognize them, or I was already occupied by whatever came next. For much of my life, when things felt too good, I worried that something bad would soon happen. That was how life seemed to work.
That knowledge, that a moment will end, is still there. Enjoy this as much as you can, I think. It will soon be gone. But there is no grief in that thought. When the moment has passed, I float on a cloud for the rest of the day.
Around the Kitchen Table
Two of these moments came during the same week in Malmö. The first began with an away football game far from home. Dana’s team drew 1–1, but to her it felt like a loss. She believed she should have stopped the other team’s goal. She had cramp in the backs of her legs and could not run properly, but afterwards that did not matter to her. She was furious with herself, screaming and yelling because she felt she had failed.
We drove home and sat down around the kitchen table with sushi. We went through the entire match, player by player, discussing what had been good and what had been bad. Dana was worried that Eva and I would be sad because she had been so upset, but we weren’t. Disappointment is part of life. Sometimes your body refuses to do what you ask of it.
Eva is at every game. Much of the time she looks happy simply being there, watching and listening. Once we begin analysing, she joins in. She corrects us and says, “No, it wasn’t like that. It happened like this.” Most of the time she is right.
Later that week, after football training, it happened again and even more strongly. Eva joined me on the bicycles when I went to collect Dana. It was a warm and pleasant Malmö evening, still light outside, and we started discussing the game as we cycled home. Eva did not say much on the way, but once we were home the conversation continued around the kitchen table. Football gradually led us into other things, and soon we were talking about life.
We sat there from nine until ten. I am normally careful about going to bed on time because I need my sleep, but I did not want the conversation to end. I looked at the girls and wondered how on earth I had got daughters like these.
Some friends in their thirties and forties tell me they look forward to their children leaving home so that they can finally have time of their own. I do not understand it. Why the hell would I want time away from these wonderful human beings?
The Best of the Best
Hanna picked me up in Montreal a few months after we met for the first time. Finding her was not easy. I had to take a bus from the airport to somewhere outside, and then she stepped out of the car. It was dark and around minus 30 degrees.
Inside the car it was warm. We held hands, kissed and drove to the place where we were going to stay. We were both so happy to be together. Hanna and I are no longer a couple, and of course I hope I will experience that kind of love again. You never know. But the warmth inside that car has stayed with me.
It also happens once or twice on almost every Defender X journey with Jeff. We have had a good day on the road and arrive somewhere where we want to sit down, have a drink, eat, laugh and talk. On our last journey, that place was Trabzon in Turkey. The drive, the company, the food and the friendship came together. We now have a sentence for it: “This is the best of the best.”
Trabzon, Turkey, during our latest Defender X journey. The best of the best moment.
Before Everyone Wakes
Several of these moments have come early in the morning. At the end of April or beginning of May, there is a first day when I can sit on my balcony in Malmö without freezing my ass off. I have finished my fifteen or twenty minutes of stretching, yoga and gymnastics and go outside with hot coffee and my diary. It may be two or three in the morning.
I live beside the canal. At that hour the city is quiet, but never completely still. Lights appear in windows as people prepare to go to work. At weekends, others are returning home from parties. There is always somebody going somewhere. I sit there writing and drinking my coffee, knowing that winter is ending and summer is coming.
The first morning warm enough to sit outside.
I took the same morning routine with me to Greece. We had anchored in a small bay among the islands, and the girls and Arnon were still sleeping. I sat on deck with my legs hanging over the railing and looked into the clear water. Fish swam beneath me while the boat gently rocked at anchor.
I wrote in my diary, drank my coffee, did my gymnastics and went for a swim. At 64, I had only recently begun learning to sail. That morning there was nothing I needed to learn and nowhere I needed to reach. Could it be better?
Early morning at anchor in Greece.
Then came my first morning in the completed house at Lima Basecamp in Dalarna. My mother grew up there, and the property had belonged to my aunt Dagmar. After almost forty years of expeditions, when home was often wherever I put up my tent, I suddenly had a house.
I had finished my gymnastics and was sitting on the balcony writing my diary. It was a little cold, and mist hung over the area. I could see the forest and the power lines. Moose walked there, and I could see their tracks on the ground. A little later, two young foxes appeared and began playing.
The silence was something we never have in the city. A light shone through the mist and warmed the house. I took a photograph and thought, is this really happening to me? Do I really have a new house?
My first morning in the completed house at Lima Basecamp.
Life Can Still Go Wrong
Life hasn’t suddenly become free of challenges. Eva will soon undergo an operation on her left eye. If it does not work, that eye may be lost. I am frightened, and nothing I write about happiness makes that fear smaller. The same Eva sat beside us at the kitchen table that week, listening to Dana and correcting our version of the game.
The Young Man in the Sahara
Crossing Africa, 1988–1990.
Right now, I am writing about the young man I was when I cycled through Africa and crossed the Sahara. I wonder how many moments like these he experienced. Perhaps he noticed them and I have forgotten. Perhaps it has taken me all these years to understand their value.