I recently learned two things:

1) To stop hauling my daughter’s damn water bottle, real or figurative, up every mountain.
2) To slide down the mountain on nothing but my own back. To chart my own path, whatever that may be. 

Thanks for these two truths go to a guide named Gunnar who hails from southern Iceland where the men are legendary for speaking all of three words on any given day. That’s the thing about sage souls, they need not say much. They speak and truth trickles out. And if you are lucky, you are listening. Just so happens, I was paying attention that particular day.

Of course, these were not Gunnar’s exact words, but no matter, the essential meaning was the same, just phrased and displayed in a more kindly manner by the Icelandic man.

So here’s how those golden nuggets of truth transpired as 16 of us trudged to the top of a 4,845-foot peak in an extinct volcanic range in the middle of Iceland that still packs enormous heat. And ironically, it packed some powerful principles for me. 

Along the 11-mile hike, there were spots where just one misstep meant certain death, be it a slide off into the boiling hot sulphuric pools below or worse. I reverted to a trance-like, one-foot-after-another mode – never looking behind or more than a few feet ahead. While I focused on my breathing, my teenage daughter chattered away. She couldn’t comprehend why I was saying so little.

One, I needed to center on my breathing and steps to make it to the top. Two, for someone who has had a deathly fear of heights since I was a kid (a fear that still surfaces if the conditions are ripe like falling off the side of a mountain with one misplaced foot), it was critical to remain focused. 

But summit it, we did. At the peak, a light-hearted snowball fight and a brief but serious conversation ensued between our beloved guide Gunnar and my 16-year-old daughter. The exchange began between mother and daughter:

Teenager: “Hey mom, do you have your water bottle?”
Me: “Yep.”
Teenager: “Can I have it?”
Me: “Why? Where’s yours?”
Teenager: “I didn’t bring one. I knew you would.” 

Let’s pause for a refresher here. We’re in the central highlands, the middle of Iceland, on the top of an almost 5,000-foot mountain on a daylong strenuous hike. There are no watering holes except for the water each of us has hauled in our packs on our backs up very steep inclines. And for a little more background: my daughter has been talking ad nauseam about how now that she has hiked and camped in Iceland, she wants to go on a backpacking trip on her own (meaning sans parents) the next summer in Switzerland.

Gunnar spoke without hesitation. And it’s his words I hear, long since Iceland, every time I reach for the figurative water bottle.

Gunnar: “You have to carry your own water. Don’t ever rely on someone else to do that.”
Teenager: Silence and maybe a little mumbling along with some lame excuses.
Gunnar: “It’s not your mom’s responsibility. It’s yours.”

A magma moment emerged for me in which 2,000-plus degree lava struck a glacier encrusted surface and erupted like Iceland’s Eyjafiallajokull volcano in 2010, spewing out volcanic ash miles high and disrupting things foreseen and unforeseen. 

Today, an internal monologue endlessly loops in my head:
“Stop hauling your daughter’s damn water up every mountain. She has to take responsibility for herself.”

And those words, and many variations of them, have continued to reverberate within me long after our Iceland trip. 

The second truth I learned that day was demonstrated versus spoken. It was the instant Gunnar crouched down at the top of a snowy slope and slid headfirst down the mountain with no gear, no sled, on nothing but his own back. 

I was too much of a fraidy cat to go headfirst but I did free slide 1,500 feet down the side of a snowy volcano with nothing but myself, laughing hysterically all the way. As I hurtled downward (trust me, it wasn’t that steep although at the time, it seemed like Kilamanjaro), I completely let go, watching a glacial blue sky studded with billowy white clouds speed by.

I remember thinking as I slid: “This is free. This is what absolute freedom and wildness feels like.” 

And since then, I have redefined and reframed what free looks like for me – whether it’s sitting in my own hot pool under the light of a half moon or firing up my chiminea and watching piñon wood slowly burn down to nothing but ash. For me, free might be:

1) Driving down the highway headed for a few days of solitude somewhere.
2) Watching a double rainbow from a hot pool in New Mexico on Thanksgiving Day (abandoning all traditions and any thou-shalt/must-do scripts).
3) Mountain biking, gardening, writing, reading, doing whatever screams free for me. Doing the thing that moves me and makes me feel alive.

They are fairly simple things but they are the very things that remind me that it’s up to me to chart my own path. It’s ultimately me carrying my water bottle to the top of the mountain and sliding down the side with nothing but me. 

No gear. No anything. Just me.

I’d give just about anything to relive that day from beginning to end. But if I did it again, this time I’d go headfirst all the way.

 

About the author: Nancy Corbett, a corporate public relations professional by day, navigates motherhood, some days better than others, under the aging 1930s roof of a teenager, a husband 14 years her senior, two hound dogs and her own midlife perimenopausal madness. https://www.twitter.com/nancycorb

Author

Nancy, a corporate public relations professional by day, navigates motherhood, some days better than others, under the aging 1930s roof of a teenager, a husband 14 years her senior, two hound dogs and her own midlife perimenopausal madness.

3 Comments

  1. Love this. My children learned the same water bottle lesson through our travels in Nicaragua – and to carry your own hand sanitizer and TP. <3

    • Nancy Corbett Reply

      Thanks, Jennifer. Lessons learned from travels are priceless.

  2. I’d love to check out Iceland one day. I went to Norway/New Zealand and had a blast – I’d imagine Iceland would be similarly spectacular!

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