Everyone seeks something different when they travel. I hate to call it a vacation; that word makes it sound like I need to get away from something. While I could certainly use a break from work, I will no longer allow my life to devolve to a point where I need to escape from it. I have a need, it is something in my nature, in the core of my being, to travel. My version of travel is not relaxing; it doesn’t involve sitting on a beach. I need to explore. I love to visit a new country, navigate by public transportation, and walk. I will stay in a hostel, or a converted prison, and take overnight trains for 18 hours into the Arctic. A little bit of hardship adds to the experience, and it is also raw material for the stories.
Recently, I was lucky enough to go on such an adventure. It wasn’t anything dangerous or exotic, but it was a journey. It had ups and downs, moments of pure joy that brought tears to my eyes, as well as pain and freezing cold.
My journey started in Stockholm. From there, I took the “arctic sleeper” overnight train north to Abisko, where I stayed for two nights in the Abisko Turiststation, far above the Arctic Circle. One more night in the north in Narvik, Norway, followed. I took this trip in early February, when the weather promised freezing cold, but also a great opportunity to see the Northern Lights.
In the days and weeks that led up to the trip, I obsessively monitored webcams from Swedish Lapland. I downloaded Aurora forecasting apps, and I learned how to interpret the data they provided. I consumed YouTube videos teaching the proper camera setup for capturing Aurora pictures, and I practiced in the dark on early mornings in my backyard, with my camera on its tripod, pointed at the featureless night sky of North Carolina.
I booked guided outings to even darker places than where I was staying. I had spent a lot of time, energy, and money getting ready for the opportunity to see the Northern Lights. But in the days leading up to the trip, I would not let myself be hopeful. I kept telling myself and others that there were no guarantees I would see them. If the journey and the adventure were what mattered, I would consider my trip a “success” (that’s a strange word choice), no matter what happened. In short, even though I had prepared, I did not feel hopeful. My mind had already embraced the worst-case scenario before I ever got on the plane.
I discussed the topic of hopelessness with my therapist recently. I was going through a particularly bad time of it. It was easy for me to rationalize it as a realistic response to the sorry state of things where I live. But we talked about it, and tried to get at the root of what causes such a bleak outlook to plague me.
It turns out I have been doing this for a long time, believing in the worst-case scenario. I had shared stories of my career, when I spent years needlessly going to work every day, believing it would be the day I would be laid off (it never happened). I believed leaving my job, taking a break, and switching gears would leave me financially ruined and homeless (it didn’t). What a burden this hopelessness added to already difficult situations! I’ll never know how much worse I made things for myself.
When pressed for a reason why I take the pessimist’s approach, I searched and came up with this thought: I don’t ever want to be disappointed. My therapist commented about what a remarkable coping mechanism that was, in response to disappointment and sadness, choosing to never have hope that could be crushed. But it was no longer serving me. I can’t go to my grave thinking like this. What was causing it? Dislodging this belief required a journey into my past, as it always does.
When did this start? When did I start thinking this way? I reflected on being a child, then going to college, and then graduate school and post-doctoral study. I described it as “gliding”. It felt effortless. It wasn’t; it was hard work. But I always had a belief that everything was going to work out well. It made everything easier. Then I recalled a moment from my past.
The Phone Call
I hadn’t thought about this experience in a long time. It was after I had completed my post-doctoral fellowship. My wife and I were back in New Jersey with our young son, temporarily living at her parents’ house until I could find my first job. It was uncomfortable for me to be there, and the job hunt wasn’t going well.
A large oil company with an office in central New Jersey, where we wanted to settle down, gave me an interview. The first interview went well. So did the second one. I accepted a dinner invitation with the hiring manager and his team right after it. I felt certain I would get the job. The future was all sorted. Well employed, we would buy our first house and start raising our family in it. My mind was several steps ahead of where it should have been.
After that dinner, I heard nothing for some time. These were the days before email was prevalent, so I was waiting for a phone call. I don’t know how long I waited. But it was uncomfortably long. So long that I eventually picked up the phone and called the manager. He sounded surprised to hear from me, and the very short conversation was awkward, but he briefly explained they had chosen another candidate.
I am as stunned now, writing these words, 30 years later, as I was then. I am feeling the same tightness in my throat and chest. I was in shock. In my therapist’s office, the memory came flooding back. I could remember the room I was standing in, the dappled light coming through the window. I can feel the telephone receiver in my hand as I hung it up. I remembered where my wife was sitting in the room. I don’t think I said anything. Although I can remember that moment now as though it were yesterday, I can’t remember feeling grief or anger, just surprise. I never thought anything bad would happen. I was gliding on ice across a frozen lake when suddenly, it gave way beneath me, and I fell into the water.
I mean, who takes a candidate out to freaking dinner and then doesn’t hire them?
It took a few months after that call, but I eventually pivoted and started a new career. It never made me happy, but it was necessary, and it made me secure. It has also let me do a few things that I have enjoyed. But my gliding effortlessly through life was over.
After that experience, I faced my days with grim resolve and determination. I wasn’t motivated to do great work; I just wanted to be sure I was not going to be the one called when it was time for a layoff. I would outsmart people, outwork them, and put in as many hours as I had to. All of this was driven by fear, the fear that the rug would be pulled out from under me again. The same way it was on that phone call. No amount of success mattered anymore; I believed it would all be taken away. It was exhausting.
Abisko, Sweden
The memory of that conversation and realization came back as I sat on a train at sunrise, speeding north through the vast, empty, beautiful, frozen white expanse of Swedish Lapland. I had left Stockholm, a place I love, the previous evening on this same train. My destination was Abisko, where I was staying for the first two of my three nights in the Arctic, chasing the Northern Lights. I stared out of the train window, admiring the scenery, the snow bending the limbs of the spruce trees, the sunrise illuminating only the tops of trees and mountains in a pink and purple glow, with horizontal rays as the sun struggled to climb higher in the sky. The journey alone was starting to feel worth it already.
Traveling very far north, in my case 100 miles above the Arctic Circle, alone, is not sufficient to optimize one’s chances of getting a good look and a better picture of the Aurora. There is a lot of ground lighting around the Turistation’s many buildings, so each night a guided outing was planned to take me (and a group of people from all over the world) to a nearby dark location for a better view. The first night involved a chairlift 3,000 feet up to the top of a nearby mountain, within walking distance of the hotel.
Trying to see the Aurora places one at the mercy of unpredictable solar activity and the weather. The brightest light display will be made invisible, or nearly so, by a cloudy night. It had been overcast and gray all day long. As our group assembled at the base of the chairlift, we were asked to put on heavy insulated coveralls for our exposed ride and short stay at the top of the mountain. I was already dressed for below-zero conditions, but I struggled and put the heavy suit on. It was still very cloudy, and a light snow was falling; my prospects were not good.
The situation was not only hopeless, due to the weather, but it was also a bit terrifying, as I sat in the cold, dark night on an ancient, rickety metal chairlift. It squeaked and rattled as it slowly made its way up an impossibly steep mountain. It stopped completely far too many times, leaving me swaying and bouncing in the cold, dark expanse of nothingness on the side of the mountain. I was not only feeling hopeless, as in the snow I had no chance of seeing anything, but I was also regretting going. I just wanted it to be over.
Our group assembled in a small building at the summit, and our guide gave a short presentation about the scientific phenomenon of the Northern Lights. I welcomed the chance to get mostly out of the heavy snowsuit, while I drank hot tea and fiddled with my camera and tripod, trying to pass the time until I would go back down.
But around 10 minutes in, one of the other guides interrupted the presentation to tell us that the Aurora was now on and visible. I wasn’t sure what to believe; it was overcast and snowing on top of that mountain. But everyone else was scrambling now to get outside. I felt a little bad for the guide, as everyone walked out mid-speech, but I suspect this happens to him a lot. Still not hoping for anything, I slowly got dressed and got my camera and tripod assembled and ready to shoot. I was the last person out of the building.
As soon as I got outside, among the group of people on the top of the hill, I could see what the guide was talking about and what everyone was pointing their cameras and phones at. Though it was still a little cloudy, the skies had mostly cleared, and there were stars now above my head. And on the horizon was the pale green glow of the Northern Lights, extending up into the sky and silhouetting the clouds that remained. I moved as far away from the other people as I could, without walking off the top of the mountain in the dark, as we had been warned not to do, and set up my tripod. I took the first picture, exactly as I had practiced. I couldn’t believe what I saw on the screen after the 10-second exposure. The picture was so much more intense and vibrant than what my eyes were seeing.
I kept snapping pictures, checking the results, fiddling with the focus or one setting or another. I occasionally looked up to confirm what I was really seeing, but it was unmistakable. A pale green curtain of light stretches from the horizon to the sky. If I looked steadily for a few seconds, I could see it moving. I shuffled across the ice and snow to get myself in the frame for a selfie while the timer ticked down.
It was hard to believe, but the skies had parted, and the Aurora had decided to shine down on me. There was a rush of excitement with each picture; the camera was set on a 10-second timer, and each exposure took another 10 seconds. The 20 seconds between pictures was an unbearable time to wait to see the next image. I moved a few more times to get the most unobstructed view. There was a lot of excitement, and people were shuffling all around, sometimes cluelessly, directly in front of me in the way that tourists sometimes do.
Then, as quickly as it arrived, after perhaps 15 minutes, it had faded. I rushed back inside to get warm and to get a better look at the pictures, which took some doing, as my glasses instantly froze due to the heat and humidity in the cabin, requiring some warming to defrost them. I sat down and scrolled through them, still in disbelief. I got the pictures.
Only about an hour ago, it all seemed hopeless, pointless, and even a bit scary. But it had all worked out.
It All Worked Out
I was weightless. I was buzzing. I shared some photos from my camera with another tourist who was armed only with an iPhone, and then readied myself, packing up my gear, for the chairlift back down. I had forgotten about my fear of heights and the necessity of the return trip on the chairlift when I was caught up in the high of the experience. It was still only about 11:30 PM, and I had until 1 AM to go back, so I decided to avoid the chair a little longer and go back out for some more pictures.
I reassembled and redressed and walked back out into the cold night and stood waiting for a few minutes, hoping for a miraculous return of the Aurora, but instead settled for a few pictures of the starlit sky above my head. There were more stars in the sky than I had ever seen before. In the pictures, the pale green glow of the lights is still visible.
With that, there was nothing left for me on top of that mountain. I had gotten what I had come for; I had the whole experience. I got to see the Northern Lights, and I even got the selfie. I was only about halfway through my whole trip, but all of a sudden, nothing else mattered. It didn’t matter what happened on my next two nights in the Arctic. It wouldn’t matter if I spent the three days in Oslo, where I was going after this, holed up in my hotel room watching TV. I felt complete. This experience had been enough. After all the doubts, pessimism, and hopelessness, it had all worked out.
I enjoyed this feeling of weightlessness. It was a brief glimpse into what life could be like without the weight of hopelessness and depression. Sure, the chairlift ride back down the mountain was bad, worse than the way up. But when I finally got to the bottom and out of my snowsuit, I bounced along the lighted snowy path back to my room.
I sent my wife the pictures and FaceTimed her the good news when I got back to my room. I felt like an explorer or a scientist who had just made some fantastic new discovery. It was after midnight, and I was tired, but I made myself a hot chocolate and told her the story of the evening, still buzzing with excitement. It took a while, but eventually I fell asleep.
As I was packing up for the second night out in Abisko, this time just a drive, no terrifying chairlift. I was free. It didn’t matter what happened that night; I had no sense of hope or hopelessness. I just had that moment.
The second night turned out way better than the first. The Aurora was much brighter; it was out all night, apparently. I stood on the ice of a frozen lake with my group for almost 2 hours, taking picture after picture. Eventually, I stopped taking pictures and just looked up and around at the spectacle. The previous night’s display consisted of light on the horizon. This time, it was everywhere, above my head and all around. It was a 360-degree unobstructed view on the ice of a large frozen lake. The only earthly thing I can compare it to is a planetarium or one of those surround movie theaters. But it was so much larger than that. A few people were in tears. I could see the greens and reds, and they were constantly moving; the most surprising thing was how quickly they moved.
I had seen so much that when our guide told us it was time to pack up and go back, I was ready. I had a camera full of pictures. And besides, I was so focused on what I was doing and seeing, I had stood still for quite a long time on the ice. The air temperature was -25 Celsius, but I was dressed for that. The cold had penetrated my heavy boots and socks, and my feet were hurting. Back on the bus for the short ride back, they hurt even more as they warmed. This was the element of adversity that added to the experience, and ultimately, my feet were fine.
Once again back at the hotel, I was texting pictures and FaceTiming home with tales of my good fortune and my hot chocolate. The previous night, the overwhelming feelings had been hopelessness and then joy. This night was mostly gratitude; it was absent of the counterweight. Not only had it worked out, but it had worked out in the most spectacular way possible, a brilliant spectacle of dancing light on a clear, cold, star-filled night.
I sat at breakfast the next morning, before I had to pack up and catch my train to Norway, staring out at the sunrise-lit mountains and writing in my journal. Then, as now, I reflected on the pessimism and the reality of how lucky I had been. I had planned and prepared and taken on this journey, and despite my fears, it all worked out. It not only worked out, but exceeded any expectation I could have had. And it wasn’t just the Aurora, it was all of it. The train ride, good Scandinavian brown bread and butter, and great coffee for breakfast. The view out of the window. I left for my next stop, and my last night of Aurora chasing, even more complete than the previous night.
What has this experience with hopelessness taught me? Before I left, I was already rationalizing how everything would go wrong. On the last day, at the airport, I was ruminating over it.
It was pointless.
Is there any reason to hold on to my old coping skill, the hopelessness, the insurance policy against disappointment? I felt free when I let it go. Sure, it took one of nature’s great wonders and a long journey to wrestle it away from me, but for a little while, I got to experience life without that extra baggage. And it felt good.
The denouement of this trip was the last three days. I was in Oslo, another new city for me. And it was lovely. Great food, art, and architecture. I went on a showshoeing trip in a nearby forest. I got to see “The Scream”. Cold and gray and snowy, it reminded me of walking through Central Park in winter with my daughter.
A few years ago, at the end of another solo trip, one across Scotland and England, on the last night, walking back to my hotel in London, depression overwhelmed me. I was already grieving the end of the journey. There was no such feeling this time. On my last night in Oslo, I got back to the hotel early, after stopping at a nearby bakery and 7-Eleven (they are everywhere in Scandinavian cities), and enjoyed dinner in my room. I had come full circle, experienced the range of emotions, and I was ready to go home.