Awareness

 

I just embarked on a four-month journey to Europe to study Architecture in Denmark and pick up any other adventures along the way. As a traveler, one of the most crucial items to cram in your already overstuffed carry-on luggage is awareness. I’ve found that are three types of awareness; situational cognizance, past reflection, and present engagement.

Situational cognizance is extremely important en transit to destination. Marine Frank, a man whom I worked with this summer, exposed me to labels for such situational cognizance called Cooper's colors. This Color Code has four phases white, yellow, orange, and red. Condition White is a state of obliviousness. You are completely unaware of your surroundings, for example texting on your cell phone. Hopefully you won't be attacked in condition white because you'll probably be killed. Condition Yellow is still relaxed but aware that there could be hidden danger around the next corner. If you are attacked, you will be prepared to defend yourself. I like to think of it as enjoying an ice cream cone while being aware that there are melting drips to be attended to. In Condition Orange you have identified a potential threat, and are hyper-aware that attack could come at any moment. And in Condition Red, you are under fire. The enemy is upon you and hopefully you have a gun and know how to use it. For me, Condition Yellow was/is the goal. Retaining a mindset of double-checking my surroundings at all moments so that my lonely passport doesn’t get left in a grey plastic tub at security check has been a bit of a working point in my recent years. To be honest, I’m a bit scatterbrained. Just weeks before my departure I accidentally left my passport in a scanner at a library out of town, so I was determined to retain a conscious connection with all of my belongings on this jaunt overseas to Bergen, Norway. My mom has also always reminded me to “be the predator, not the prey”, so on august 5^th, as I rolled my lime green carry-on across the granite airport floor of the airport towards my 3:15 flight, I tried to pretend I was a wolf dragging a nice juicy gazelle to my hungry pups. After spitting and snarling at the bag check lady when she told me I could only take two carry-ons and, no, I couldn’t tie my backpack and fanny together to make them one, I decided I’d taken the embodiment a little too far and should probably cool it and enjoy the ride. Plus, having my arms free I could now chase my prey more easily…

            However, there’s another kind of awareness than just checking for immediate threat; and that’s awareness of the past, or reflection. I got to my airport terminal with a comfy two hours before my flight left and booted up my laptop in a booth by the gate. (Sidenote: they also have iPads at every single seat in Gates 6-9 at the MSP airport where you can conveniently order food or purchase Internet time for exorbitant amounts of money at the touch of a button. They even have this nice little slot for you to swipe your credit card, and the mysterious Wi-Fi fairy will whisk money from your bank account into some airport deposit so you won’t even be aware of the hefty transaction. Poof! Magic.) Anyways, I plugged in my phone to download and pick through pictures from the summer, which was on my to do list, so I was glad to be checking it off. But as I started looking through the pictures, the Boundary Waters sunshine and sharp smell of Balsam sap seemed to seep the atmosphere with a sense of nostalgia. From hiking to Rose falls with Liz

 and watching the Northern Lights from hammocks,

to Mack, our silly Labrador stretching on a chair with Carter, 

and two goons with guitars on the top of the palisades,

the pictures sparked a smattering of memories full of spellbinding wilderness and giggling relationships. I really loved working in Tuscarora’s close-knit environment. 

(photo cred: Ada Igoe)

It’s incredible that this group of people can be so different yet so similar at the same time, and amidst the hectic, day-to-day collision of figuring out life, our paths just happened to cross for a summer and we could sit side by side on the top of High Cliffs, to push away all the craziness for a minute and enjoy the blueberry-peach sunset.

            While reflection is important, both for memory and learning, striving to maintain a ‘live-in-the-moment’ mindset is equally if not more significant. This is a third type of awareness; awareness of the present. And not just awareness, engagement with the present. I arrived in Bergen around noon on August 6^th. It was a weird sensation watching the sun come up over Amsterdam and realizing that I’d just flown around the globe into morning when it was really only like 10pm back in Minnesota. I slunk into a white seat in the airport after retrieving my bag ready to wait for Nels’s flight to get in. I was a little cranky and tired and feeling a little weird about it because it was beautiful shining day outside. The guy across from me was eating a scone. He spent the next 45 minutes continuing to eat that scone—the smallest scone I think I’ve ever seen. I felt a strong urge to snatch it from him and gobble it up in one bite as if to say, “see? that’s how it’s done!” But that’s actually not "how it’s done". I met a guy on my first flight named Pavel, a white-haired publisher from St. Petersburg who was doing work in California. Pavel was staying in Amsterdam for a couple days on his way home and as we were deplaning I asked him what his plans were for the day. He said he was just “going to walk.” I asked what he was going to do on his walk and he said, “oh, I’m just going to be. Be in the area, on the streets…” I must have looked at him a little exasperatedly because he kind of laughed and replied with his thick Russian lilt, “One day, you will understand.” I guess it must be along the same lines as the scone thing. Maybe being eager to consume the moment might spoil the experience all together? I’m not sure if I totally buy that, but I think there’s a balance factor of present awareness involved.

            Bergen is supposed to be a rainy place, but besides the first few hours of dragging suitcases up very wet cobblestone allies to Nels's mysterious apartment address, the weather has been very fair. I’d even venture to say, extraordinarily beautiful. 

We spent the first few days hiking up a storm in the sunny break.

 We climbed Mt. Fløyen and Ulriken, 2 of the mountains surrounding Bergen. 

(near the top of
Mt. Fløyen)

 (Summit of Ulriken)

And we met some friends from Belgium, Alicia and Isaline. 

The landscape here is incredible. I’ve always had to wrestle with my simultaneous love for water-woods and mountain-woods because I love the mountainous landscape of Colorado but the lakes are far and few and in the Minnesota Boundary Waters where water is plentiful, the land is flat flat. Bergen, Norway however, has mountains banked right up to the edge of the fjords where you can climb high above the tree line in just hours to see the water weaving between pastel island peaks all the way out to deep distant ocean. It’s a perfect combination.

The city is really unique as well. The entire country is a giant slab of rock, so everything is made out of granite. The streets, the curbs, and the stairs are all stone; even the crosswalks are created by patterning lighter granite pieces into the cobblestone. 

The streets are as clean as a whistle too. Yesterday morning on my run I saw a cleaning car polishing the granite sidewalk with big swirling brushes and had to both laugh at and admire the effort. There are so many nooks and crannies to explore and it feels like every building, fountain, statue, and garden was created with great care. 

Tomorrow Anders and I are headed to Hardangervidda, a national park about two hours East of Bergen by train, to check out a backpacking loop around a glacier. And right now, the sun has peaked out from behind it’s cloudy sheath and is filtering through the library window so I think it’s time to step out into the cobblestone streets to be aware of being here. And remember to look around at the jagged horizon because this is happening. This. Is. Now.