What stayed with me most about the sailing adventure to Norway, was the feeling that the force of nature was not only scary and stressful, but that it also brought a lot of peace to mind. I was able to feel the force of nature when walking barefoot in the forests, on the rocks and in the grass. As my feet touched the soil, I instantly felt my toes sinking into the mud. My reflex system was unexpectedly rapid when stepping on something sharp. As soon as I felt slight discomfort, I adjusted without consciously thinking about it and after a while I got so used to it, that I was nimbly jumping from rock to rock, wriggling my toes in the moss and stroking the high grass with my hands. I loved how connected I was to this environment and how our intuition and connection to nature was still as powerful as it probably had been decades ago. We had simply lost the knowledge of how to reach this connection.
Sailing across the North Sea has taught me more than the act of pulling up sails. Being so close to nature, whether on the water or on the mainland, increased my sensibility to the energy and environment around me. I suddenly felt where I wanted to be, I became aware of the energy within myself and what I needed to recharge. The silence of nature brought me closer to my own thoughts and I started to define life in a different way. What if society’s way of living life is not how I want to live it? What would I need in order to be this close to nature, to feel curiosity as well as anxiety and to surrender to nature without feeling powerless or afraid?
When I was back home, I felt the breeze in my back as I untied my hair. Strands of soft hair draped into my face, blurring my sight. Where first, before this journey, I would have cursed the wind for doing this, I was now grateful for it – the wind – to have pushed me home from Norway to the Netherlands. I had not yet found the answers to the questions I was asking myself, but I knew that this journey had given me another perspective on the force of nature. It now feels like my duty to dive deeper into the many ways we as humans collaborate with nature and how it could shape our lives.