Category Archives: Health & Lifestyle

Health & Lifestyle

Out of Reach

Easter Vacation

If you want to quit the city and brutal world for some days, join us in the Mountain. It’s just a way to get closer to baseline. To empty the heavy burden of modern life, to get a pause from the medial world and  shocking news. To eventually breathe in fresh  air, and to reload your batteries.

It’s OK to greet the mountains with a nod

Effort and  Releaf

When you arrive after many hours driving,its quite a challenge to transport the luggage, food, drinks, books from the parking lot to the cabin. This time day temperature was high and snow so soft that you sank deep into it every other step, even with skis and snow shoes on!

After two hours and totally exhausted, you enter the cabin rather relieved and happy. And after a rich meal with some wine , you normally sleep for hours.

Morning has broken

Now you have to get the table ready for breakfast.

In the morning you go to a small shed with logs of dry wood, and you saw and axe them into pieces that fit the oven in the kitchen. Soon there will be fire inside the oven , and coffee on the stove. Everything is quiet except for the crackle in the oven and the hiss from the coffee pot. Guess who will be happy to join you  to breakfast when the eggs are boiled and bread is toasted?

Sun is shining on the other side of the lake

Restlessness and stimuli hunger

Then comes the reaction phase: You grab your phone. You check for SMS., mails Facebook, Twitter, calls. There are none! What the heck? Life stops, panic starts! You lag behind for several hours, soon for days! Your social Life is in peril. Friends may leave you, you are out of rating. Out of reach! No more likes to eat for lunch. Your hungry heart starve.

You run out of the cabin. Skies are mostly blue. What’s that familier sound? You look up. A small stripe of white condense has covered half the sky. That buzz is the daily plane from Philadelphia to Doha, Quatar. And wow here comes British Airways route from London to Tokyo. What a relief! Civilization has not yet left you totally!

BA Boeing 777 -300 from  London to Tokyo

You checked it last summer with your flight radar app. All the planes from the East of US and Canada to the middel east and Asia including Japan , fly over your cabin at an altitude of 32000-42000 ft.

Then you have to go to the water pump and pump 3 bucketfuls of water. When that is done you must walk back to the cabin and pour one bucket into the boiler and place the two other buckets under the sinks , with a water hose that    is attatched to a solar driven water pump.

A  primitive manual water pump

Solar driven water faucet pump
Out Skiing

Our first  crosscountry skiing this easter was thrilling and nice. We went to a mountaintop nearby. Here you can get a panorama view of 360 degrees.  Or just eat a chocolate or an orange. And take a photo or selfie to prove that you were there.

Not the world’s highest mountain, but surely a very nice place to rest and take a  good view at the world.

Downhill without the use of muscles more than to keep the balance and avoid falling.

And this was how we returned down to our cabin again. (The clips are very short and primitive as my text because here 1000 m above sea level there is no access to Internet except on my tiny phone  with  even  smaller keyboard letters. )

But thats just the point of it all! You need sometimes to be free from the tyranny of being always  available!

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The ones that did not join us to the top had taken out the easter chickens and continued at the breakfast table until lunchtime.

 

Have a nice Easter Holiday yourself

Health & Lifestyle

The End of Silence

Silent sunday, silent mind

It’s Sunday today, and I could stay quite long in bed before I got up. Even before I woke up completely, I could hear it. The sound of Sunday.

Yes, it’s different on Sundays.  A much quieter sound. The sounds from the highway are far weaker. There are no trailers that idles in front of shops nearby. The drilling machines from construction projects in the neighborhood have stopped. There are no bangs from nailguns when the neighbor extends his house. The street isn’t full of guest parked cars to the business people who take the subway to downtown. The house is quiet. Everyone is sleeping or lying in their beds, – just enjoying the peacefulness that soon will be broken.

                      Quiet only for some minutes more, photo Oslo in Winter.com

“Where have all the silence gone?”

A popular author in my country, Frid Ingulstad wrote in the newspaper Aftenposten, 10, December 2008:    “I thought back in time. //: we had something called Sunday silence, and it was greatly respected. Sunday was a day of rest in which work and noisy activities were avoided. The starting point was the fourth commandment about keeping the Sabbath day holy. Today its the environment that is in focus. To reduce noise levels both at work and in homes is an important part of our environmental work.”

We really had Sunday Silence some twenty years ago, in my country. We did’t pay much attention to it, however. You don’t really pay attention to something not being there, when that’s the rule on Sundays.  Until you had guests from America telling you that  that was very special for them. That natural freedom from penetrating sounds and daily chores, that you took for granted.  On Sundays.
But this freedom from noise and all kinds of work in the house, meant that we always had the sunday to land our stress and collect ourselves. Restore our emptied energy, so to speak, and our courage to move on for a new week.
Ducklings by the sea, with the sunlight  trying to penetrate the clouds, photo janeriwaa

Walking into the woods to recapture the  silence.

Last Sunday one of my sons wanted me to take a walk with him in the woods. He was nervous, he said, for his exam the next day, and needed to vent his head. I was occupied with an overview of the prosperity for the richest in the world, in relation to the poor. Therefore, I did not really fancy this setback. Nevertheless, I said yes, both for his sake and the fact that once you get out, the Sunday trip*  is usually an enjoyable experience for both body and mind.         (* footnote on the history of sunday walks at the end of article)

Breaking the silence

My son and I started down the trail walking rather fast. It wasn’t long before I noticed him relaxing. He commented the fresh air, the beautiful lake, and the great atmosphere out there. I couldn’t more agree.

 Ice skating on the lake, photo janeriwaa

Not long after, however, I was at it again, talking about my concern about the world’s distribution of wealth. Especially the future for all of us, if the richest became richer now, when already only 8 people owned more than half the world’s wealth. That would be the end of democracy. We would get oligarchy, if we hadn’t already got it. A form of government with a few rich who ruled the world as it suited them. While the rest of us, excess of 7.3 billion people had to dance for them.

On the path around the lake, photo janeriwaa

I noticed that my son was tense again. – Can’t you stop talking about stuff like this when we are out hiking, he said. I saw that he was upset. I had broken the silence he needed in contact with nature to regain the confidence in himself and the impending exam.

I had shrunk his necessary space for quiet contemplation and reflection, needed to catch up again. This is a psychological space where large everyday concerns can be small, and small everyday pleasures large.

An outlet of a brook, photo janeriwaa

Soundaholics addicted to sounds.

Maybe we have all become more and more dependent on a constant sound surrounding us. Perhaps we have become ,soundaholics needing rehab? Just as we have become addicted to having Iphones and smartphones available wherever we go.

More and more people wear earphones or plugs in their ears. We need to be online all the time, if not to be left behind. But what is it that is really left behind? Isn’t it actually, the freedom to just be present here and now, inside or outdoors. Places where the only thing we can hear is the blood roaring in our ears, the heart beating, and the wind that blows in the treetops. Or the free floating thoughts, flying like birds across the water.

    Sun setting at the seaside this sunday, photo janeriwaa

Footnote on Sunday walks:
  • In our country, it’s a national occupation going for a Sunday walk together. The bourgeoisie in the major cities have been doing it for over a century. Inspired by the Norwegian polar explorers, especially Frithjof Nansen, which spread the idea of ​​ the salutary effects of outdoor recreation, – we all believe that it is very healthy.Gradually this trend has spread to ever more sectors of the population, both young and old. (This has of course also something to do with the fact that industrial work and ordinary physical labour has been much reduced the last decades)            A Sunday walk in one of the the city parks, unknown source

    I’ve tried to find statistics on this, but I can’t say it seems reliable enough for just Sunday walks. The trend in a survey of living conditions in Norway from 2016, which covers the period from 2001 to 2016, indicates that we are both exercising, jogging and walking increasingly more. In 2001, 66% of the population over 16 years, had exercised or been walking more than once a week. In 2016 this percentage had risen to 83% of the population. (Central Bureau of Statistics, Survey of Living Conditions 2016)

      Sunday is a day to teach the children to use skis in winter,photo janeriwaa

    As long as I’ve lived, Norwegians in the metropolitan area have walked on some sort of a Sunday trip. Today’s walk around one of our beautiful lakes was no exception.

    “To go for a walk two or three times a week can do wonders for your body, and is the best protection against cardiovascular disease. The activity accelerates metabolism, helps reduce blood pressure, keeps blood sugar in balance and strengthens bones. “ That is what fitness and nutritionist Kjersti Bjerkan at Ullevål Hospital claims. (VG. 9.sept 1998)

                                       “This is how you do it guys”, photo by Skiforeningen

    Often this “outdoor expedition” is the only way to get back some of that Sunday silence that lingered over the city earlier. Then it was even possible to get bored if you had talent for it. And for me this silence seems to be even as important a factor for our health as the physical exercise.

  • Frontpage photo by janeriwaa