I wrote this post on the Vidden hike from Ulriken to Fløyen in Bergen, Norway. Not literally, but piecing together words and sentences internally, as I was blasted by the wind and rain, in the early stages of a > 16km hike between the two small mountains. The post went unfinished, when it quickly became apparent that I was going to have to dedicate at least 95% of my concentration to the task in hand. With sodden feet (thanks, "waterproof" trainers), wet biscuits, an effective vision radius of 10m, and a consequently ineffective camera, I would desperately stumble towards the end. Now I sit on the sofa in my rented apartment, waiting for Scotland to (probably) take leave from the euros against Hungary (edit: yes, of course they did...). Translating my feelings from amongst the lashing rain and rocky descents feels a little less clear than it had done.
In August, I will be a father for the first time, to a daughter. It's an event and a set of feelings that are too complex to grasp, too broad and entangled to deconstruct. But the self-reflection that I have encountered has been surprising. The memory reels of my youth play daily. The small comments that my parents have made from the time when I was young make me realise how human and beautifully inept we all are. Knowing that I will help to raise a new person, to feel similar emotions and experiences for themselves, is both an exciting and daunting future to have ahead. In truth, my perception of that future has no real markers beyond the end of August, when the child is due to arrive. But transitioning to thoughts of practical relevance (Is the apartment ready? How will we make sure the dog is happy?) has never been a strong part of my character.
About 2km along the way from the starting point at the top of Ulriken, it had already started to dawn on me that maybe doing this hike, on a day when the weather forecast wasn't completely favourable, may have been a bad idea. A key part of that was a small pain in my right knee, which is now only notable when it happens to be absent, rather than present. But so were my drenched feet, my brain felt like it was operating on half-speed, my hands were cold, etc. It seems like I'm of the age now. Things progressing a little bit slower. Pains recurring and worsening, rather than always getting better. This challenge had only been decided the night before, and it seemed slightly absurd to me that I now stood on top of this mountain, desperately looking out for small stone structures pointing the way, and navigating swamp-like conditions and hidden hazards. But this is what I had dealt myself, and so to press on was the only way through. That this was apparently the height of summer, was one of the few things to amuse me throughout the journey. This light relief was a crucial element of reminding myself that beyond these thick, damp, cobwebbed walls a life did exist. At times, I'm embarrassed to say, I genuinely thought that I may be lost up there, for good. But these feelings would be brought crashing back down to earth almost instantaneously, after noticing the hundreds of footprints, big, small, old, young, that had been here before me, imprinted into the rain-saturated earth. This was no Everest, it was a literal walk in the park.
And it's for reasons like this that I decided to do this walk in the first place: for someone who claims to like going outdoors, who would like to play a role in inspiring a love for a natural world to a young girl, this sort of trivial walk that countless AI-aided blogs are written about seemed like a must. Today — feet sodden, water dripping off the end of my nose — this was a humbling. A humbling that was necessary and deserved: this world will finish you, and any plans that you may have. You'll do well to merely follow the route that tens of thousands before you have already taken. I saw about seven people and one dog during those worst parts, until general visibility started to expand. Four of those and the dog ran past me, as I slowly plodded onwards. Various sheep wearing jingling bells calmly ate their breakfast, watching as I desperately fumbled with my box of water-logged biscuits.
During the early phase of this walk, before the conditions rendered anything other than complete focus on the next step ahead an impossibility, I had attempted a brief foray into self-reflection. My focus turning a critical (and totally impartial, of course) lens towards my academic career. I searched back through the boxes and notebooks that litter both the physical and mental incarnations of desks and bookshelves that I own. My aim was to figure out the meaning and methods of the work that I had done, and what I hoped to do in the future. All in all, the only thing I found was a person on top of a clouded, rain-swept mountain, stepping in the footsteps of others. The only notable difference being that, where previous footsteps had been submerged, and others had clearly slipped into vast lakes (read: puddles) of water, I was able to benefit from their visual history and maybe make a slightly different choice. A more-or-less optimised route, but highly constrained by my physical capabilities. Those choices involved mistakes: feet and ankles submerged in bogs, various stumbles on rocks that were clearly unstable.
This is not to say this walk was particularly eye-opening from the perspective of inspiring genius breakthroughs, or new creative designs. It's only to say that this cold, low-altitude, 10m-wide, circular chamber helped turned on the desk light, showed where all the paper lay, and what was written on it after all. Academic research can be a really wonderful thing, the problem creation, problem-solving, interactions, and collaborations. But there are strict limitations in the problems I can both comprehend and solve, and I'm absolutely indebted to past pioneers who have shown the way. Those who have placed the mountain markers, where I would stand, catch a breath, exposed, peer into the gloom, and wonder how to make it to the next one.
I don't know if my daughter will grow to develop an appreciation for academic study. But I, personally, would like to avoid ever mentioning it to her. To never reveal the negative side of the profession that I've completely glossed over here. But also to allow her to press onwards, and discover whatever it will be that she would like to do, without the bias of the guiding hand on her shoulder. What I hope to continue showing her, throughout the next years and decades, is a humbled man desperately searching for a stable rock to use or a solid footprint to stand in, at the top of a small mountain, in a bit of a rain. And what I hope she will be able to take away from this, is the ability to see a path not trodden at all, and to know how to take the first step into it.