THE KUAN YIN HIKE 2013 (The Kaskavagge Harmonica Hike) Before Anna and I set out on our Lapland mountain hike of 2013, I asked the oracle Kuan Yin (The Bodhisattva of Compassion; Avalokitesvara) – well known in Asia – about our conditions; first a couple of weeks before the hike, and then just ahead of our departure. These are her answers: - HEAVEN AND EARTH Heaven and Earth in complete harmony. The myriad Beings grow and thrive. Peace and satisfaction prevail for blessings and wisdom are given to all You have sown compassion and reap the harvest of joy and love. What a gift you have been given! Anything you wish to do stands under a lucky star. Grasp the opportunity with both hands, so your many ideas can be developed. You don't have to hurry, for success will come without you exhausting yourself. The soul of sweet delight can never be defiled - Kuan Yin's second answer goes: - CLIMBING THE MOUNTAIN A mountain climber works his way to the peak The sun is setting, a critical situation He prays to the heavens and finds refuge among the rocks The darkest hour before the dawn. Concentrate your insight and shelter in the rewards it brings Although things don't look too rosy at the moment, don't be worried. As soon as you can get to work, the obstacles will vanish. Think over each step carefully, and you won't go wrong. The Wise One is flexible as water and always finds the way - These were wonderful answers to receive, and how great are the chances to get such replies when you want advice on a mountain hike; Heaven and Earth and Climbing the Mountain? Some things Kuan Yin said didn't make sense until the hike developed either, but then the meaning hit like a hammer! I'll get to that when that part of the hike comes up. Anna and I had planned this year's hike a long time. In fact, it was mostly Anna who did the planning. After the hike of 2012, which got me quite tired, with back cramps towards the end, I had wished to ride a helicopter the next time, and land near Nallú, to get directly to one of the mountains we wanted to climb; Šielmmáčohkka, because I had no problems with climbing, or rising up a steep mountain side with a minor backpack. It was hauling the heavy hiking pack across great distances and a vile topography that got me into a stir. However, riding a chopper proved much too expensive, so that leeway had to be left untrodden No other hike had been so uncertain before the outset as this one. First of all I had an eye problem. That happened many times before, but I usually have got rid of it with the same old solution that I got from my doctor at the eye clinic. This time the illness wouldn't give in so easily. The problem was a soar of the cornea, and it just stayed. Finally I had to take cortisone medicine, but that made the pressure in the eye rise dangerously, so I had to take another drug to fight off the side effects of the necessary initial drug... This treatment was in full swing as the date of departure drew closer. Then, two days before departure, I hurt my left knee. Don't ask me how. It hurt madly, and I couldn't get up the stairs at work. Suddenly all seemed ok again, but later a pain and a feeling of instability returned in the knee. I got to a health store and bought a Back-On-Track knee support, over which I also drew a regular, very sturdy knee support. 19 and 20 July 2013 In this state I got on the plane that flew me north to Luleå, where Anna picked me up at the airport. This was my son Ivan's 29th birthday. He lives in Baltimore, Maryland, and it's been some years since we met. His present age reminds me that some time must have passed. The flight from Stockholm to Luleå always upgrades my sense of existence a few notches. Soaring above the clouds has me contemplating our life on this beautiful marble bowling ball in space, and on landing I know love is waiting in the shape of Anna, like a treasure at the end of the rainbow – with the important difference that I in real life, which is much more mysterious than any fairytale – really reach that vanishing location and find Anna there! I pondered the replies that Kuan Yin had given me, and which were encouraging. I had all the reason in the world to take them to heart and hear them as serious and very real, for all other times I've asked Kuan Yin for advice, the answers have been spot on. When we'd driven the 60 kilometers from Luleå to Anna's farm, I got out of the car and made it for Grip, Torre and Eldur, the three horses, who came forth and blew in my face to greet me, while I did likewise. To travesty Dylan: How are you, they said to me; I said it back to them! The next day, the 20th, we had a large portion of Anna's family over for dinner. (Haha, only on proofreading do I sense the twisted meaning that hides inside that sentence!) Anna's mother from a district of Sweden down south called Småland was already in place when I came from the airport, and she'd been on the farm a few days. She was going to take care of the horses while Anna and I were in the mountains; a chore that Anna's daughter Sara, who lives with her family elsewhere in the dispersed and sparsely populated Northbothnian village would usually fulfill. At the dinner that night were, in addition to Anna and myself, her mother Margareta, her son Niclas and his woman Bettan from Stockholm, her daughter Sara and her husband P-O with their daughter Isabell, born in November 2011. We didn't stretch the socializing much, because we were ready to get up very early the following morning, to head for the mountains in Anna's car. 21 July 2013. The alarm clock rang at 5 AM, and we got up, leaving the visiting people in the other rooms asleep. Anna let the horses out and fed them, and we got in the car and left. We were going to ride to Nihkkáluokta; a trip that by car would last about five hours. Anna wanted to show me a gravel road right through the wilderness, so we didn't go out to the highway, E 10, which isn't much of a highway anyway, except on the map. We drove across a wasteland called Herkmyran for the longest time, on a straight gravel road that kept taking us through a vanishing but every second returning sameness of meager but dense coniferous forests. In that sense of ever-flowing sameness it reminded me of a ride in a car in 1972 from Damascus to Baghdad with my friend Calle Trygg, when we were going to India, but then we flowed through a desert landscape. We drove 140 km before we met the first car. We took some quick brakes at places, sipping some coffee and tea. With not too far to go to the town of Gällivare we were halted by the appearance of a big yellow helicopter on the road. An ambulance was parked near, and we also saw a police car. First we thought that the police had hunted down a bad guy and shot him, but news soon reached us that somebody – maybe a berry picker from South-East Asia – had fallen suddenly ill in the forest, and had to be taken to hospital. We heard a motor roaring in the distance. It was a tracked vehicle that transported the ill person out to the road. A doctor had been taken out into the forest with the tracked vehicle to begin with, to speed up the examination of the person. It turned out the helicopter was over-kill, so it left, and the person was taken in by the regular ambulance, and we were free to continue. We would encounter the same helicopter much later in our hike. I'll get to that in due time. When we got to Kiruna, we turned out west on the 60 km road to Nihkkáluokta; a beautiful road in that direction, as the gate to the mountains opens with a fantastic scenery of the Giebmegáisi Massif and bordering areas. As we got ever closer to the end of the road at Nihkkáluokta, we also could study our first serious ascent up unto The Čievrraláhku Highlands, in the distance, which I recalled from last year, and which Anna has engaged twice before. We parked the car at the free lot near the Nihkkáluokta Mountain Center, owned by the Sami clan Sarri, who really has a nice and developing business in place there. Our backpacks were heaviest, of course, in the beginning, with all the food still to eat, and our bodies not yet attuned to carrying that weight. I didn't want to weigh my Haglöfs Sumo 95, because I feared the result would discourage me, but in retrospect it must have weighed at least 28 kilos. I had food for ten days, tent, sleepingbag, clothes, medicine and first-aid stuff plus extra gear like crampons.