Oddly, all my “lands” trips start from a vision I have of water, and place. And time. This defines my core, I suppose. Let me try it out loud, “I exist for experiencing water at places and times.”
Now add people and food and natural things and you get a window in to how my brain works – life is a recipe that has infinite combinations of key ingredients. In my case, I am aquatic.
This one grew from my visions of kayaking islands in an archipelago. In high school I went to Sweden and Finland on a “tennis exchange program,” run by Sport for Understanding, a pilot program run by the then-popular academic exchange program, Youth for Understanding. I spent a large chunk of my summer between my junior and senior years on this adventure. Sweden was mostly a blur, but Finland was much more rich, as it took up more time and we stayed with host families (2, for me and my time) and we played a LOT of tennis, all on clay. It was a summer trip and I remember feeling like summer in Finland meant water, friends, family and fun (and food). All the F’s.
Additionally, I blame social media. I had this pent up, stored energy to get back to Finland and it was activated over the last 5-10 years by my obsession with sharing my kayak photos on Instagram, and the reciprocal effect of seeing other, fine (much finer in most cases) photos, videos and stories of people boating in amazing places. One of those places was the Baltic Sea and the source of many of the photos that got stuck in my head and heart were posted by Minna, the guide I met on this trip and an amazing guide to the world of water and all the F’s in Finland.
This trip also would not have happened without the kernel from another vector that got it started, my friend Ashmita is a great collector of oddballs and organizer of fun gatherings and she organized a trip to the South of France.
I took my invitation to gather in Europe and ran with it to try and fulfill my dream to go paddle the waters of the archipelago off Finland’s western coast. Did it work? 🙂
Iceland
Iceland a society built on a pool culture. I went to my favorite place in Reyk, a public pool using geothermal to have a hot spring fed pool with a view of the sea.
ola (life) | wai (water) 