#188: The aerial view.

Pilgrim Letter #4.

As we taxied down the tarmac all I could see from seat 7D were pine trees, thick as weeds.

Then the plane’s wheels gave the blacktop their goodbye kiss and we climbed, leaving Trondheim behind. My view of the pines went from a line-of-sight, to birds-eye, to a drone’s-eye view. Below the plane, the black-green forests undulated, the mountain lakes glimmered, the streams cut ribbons through the undergrowth. The logging roads wiggled throughout the terrain like a strand of spaghetti, tossed over the landscape to see what stuck. I pressed my forehead to the double-paned window glass like some Marvel-movie demi-god surveying her glorious creation. Except it was not my creation. I was its.

Then it was gone. Cotton-ball clouds on a baby blue background obscured the view. I rested the back of my head against the airplane seat and closed my eyes, my heart beating fast.

Holy sh*t, I DID THAT!

I walked through that gorgeous country.

I walked through forests just like those.

I traversed streams just like those.

I skirted alongside lakes just like those.

I dragged Wilson along logging roads just like those.

With a 25 pound pack. For 21 days.

And damn, am I ever going to miss you, Norway.

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Missing Norway? This is the first of many feelings that are different between pilgrimage 1.0 and 2.0.

When I called a wrap on pilgrimage 1.0, I walked away feeling as if I had found myself again. I hadn’t known she was missing — no face on a milk carton, no flyers stapled to a telephone pole. But day after day, on that trail from Sweden to Norway, I kept getting glimpses of her, like an analog time machine gradually walking me back to my pre-Mike, then pre-MBA, then pre-adult self. That western PA gal who swam a million laps, read in her bed for endless hours, strapped on a face mask and chest protector and knelt in the infield dirt playing catcher for her softball team. That quiet observer of life who marched to her own beat and didn’t take any shit.

Like taking Windex to a cloudy mirror, pilgrimage 1.0 also let me clearly see who I had become. Life was stripped down to its essence: sleeping in Scandinavian twin beds, eating cheese sandwiches, walking along quiet trails and glistening lakes, chatting with another pilgrim or my nightly host. There was nothing left to hide me from me; I could see the default societal settings I’d adopted to run from scarcity, manage risk, maximize my life. And you know what? There’s no shame in that game. That chick did what she needed to do, and she built a great freaking life doing it. But 1.0 was the time to let that go. Those settings had served their purpose and were now holding me back, blocking what I was capable of next.

In the two years since, I’ve held on to that girl I recovered. Not every minute of every day, but most of the time. She’s both grounded me and given me the sense of a path forward. I can tell I’m losing my way when I find myself chasing the siren call of metrics that no longer matter (Success! Notoriety! Achievement!) or straying from the person I aspire to be in the name of security. I catch myself more easily, and the thought is instant, “Nope, this isn’t it, something’s wrong.” Because once you’ve found your way back to yourself, losing her again becomes so unpalatable your priorities rearrange themselves. You’ll do anything to stay true to you.

But wrapping up pilgrimage 2.0 feels different. The outline is the same — beauty, nature, conversations, cheese sandwiches — but the starting point was different.

I started as myself. Then I (unintentionally) added a next-level degree of difficulty. So instead of stripped down, I’m coming away expanded. Or perhaps I should say expansive. I’m not just bigger, but more nuanced, more complex, more respectful of all the facets that add up to a human life.

I walked through the unknown, inside and out, and it expanded both my worldview and my self awareness. The unknown of the terrain, the language, the food; the unknown of feeling my lungs and feet begging for mercy but needing to keep going; the unknown of how I’d react when pushed to my edge.

Walking alongside all those uncertainties, I also became porous to beauty. I feel like the Norwegian landscape is now living inside of me — its mountain plateaus, its cascading waterfalls, its intensity and beauty. I can still hear the mountain streams pounding the rocks as they race towards the rivers. The birds, especially the cuckoo, calling out. And sheep, both their bleating and their bells, continue to soundtrack my days. My dreams still swirl around my next accommodation. I’m still stashing napkins in my pocket and reusing my plastic bags.

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You don’t come away from these things (or, at least I don’t) with some map for the rest of your life. You come away with a better compass. Does this feel like the right direction? Is the needle pointing north? Stop. Check. Feel. Ask.

Pilgrimage, at its heart, is a delivery mechanism for self awareness. How do I do with not knowing what today’s accommodation will look like? How do I do with seeing my bunk bed and knowing full well I’m going to bash my head on it in the middle of the night when I get up to use the loo? How do I do with the curt proprietor telling me, “You’re too early” after a brutal 27km day? How do I do with not knowing how long this three-peaks day will take? How can I adjust? When do I wallow? What tools do I have to change the circumstance, or at least my thinking about it?

Pilgrimage 2.0 took that girl from 1.0 and taught her the power of her own mind. And the peace that comes with knowing yourself just a little bit better.

To our evolution,

P.S. As a wrap to this pilgrim journey (although you can count me writing about/processing this trip for months to come) I wanted to share a roundup:

• 21: Days on the pilgrim path

• 400: Kilometers covered (around 250 miles but who’s counting!)

• 30: Cheese sandwiches consumed (conservative estimate)

• 2: Modes of alternate transportation when I’d had enough (train, car)

• 9: Hours of hiking on my longest day

• 14: Total other pilgrims met

• 4: Total number of pilgrims nationalities (Swiss, German, Dutch, Norwegian)

• 2: Blisters

• 25: Boiled eggs consumed

• 60: Pages filled in my journal

• 2: Number of stoplights I saw between Lillehammer and Trondheim

• 6: Number of times I ate rhubarb in some form (juice, compote, crumble, etc)