Letting Go

The idea for this trip had been years in the making. Four of us would head to Senja, Norway, in March – four friends with different but complementary skills. Kieran: base-camp chef. Kate: a phenomenal surfer and snowboarder from Germany. Ben: a Brit living in Canada, adventurous and fond of pushing limits. And then there was me. I had high hopes for the photographic potential of this trip, combining cold-water surf with backcountry ski in the Arctic winter. And our objectives – both adventurous and creative – were demanding.

Perhaps I built up those expectations a bit too high in my mind. Perhaps I thought I could control too much. I came into this trip with a knee brace to help a recently broken knee to heal. There had been admin chaos to deal with, too. It’s fair to say that I wanted everything else to go as predictably as possible.

Heading to the far north in March, I thought that reliable snow would be beyond doubt. But a week before our trip everything had been green. ‘Green – in March! It is so sad,’ I said to the others, and we worried and doubted together. The uncertainties of climate change adding to everything else that either had gone wrong or might do. What if we arrived to find no snow at all? Lucky for us, a snowstorm hit Norway a week prior to the trip. So we jumped from worrying about too little snow to the opposite extreme, and now we were concerned about potential avalanche risk.

Senja is not well known as a surf destination. We wanted to avoid crowds, do something new somewhere incredible, and I wanted to capture unusual images of the experience. Inside info from friends helped us to find the right place. The forecast for the days ahead did not inspire confidence. Windy weather was on its way, and I worried about missing our only window for the surf. So we packed our pulks with duffels full of gear, food, and our surfboards, and skied out to the surf spot.

No-one else was there. Waves lapped against boulders, and the serrated outline of distant mountains lent the scene a grandiose atmosphere, epic and fantastical. This place had a sense of drama, of occasion, but also of tranquillity and peace – a stage set for grand acts to be carried out. A bald eagle soared unhurriedly overhead as we watched, transfixed, from below. This is perfect, I thought. Almost.

Despite the lack of wind, a barricade of black clouds sulked out there above the sea’s horizon. The temperature was a crispy –10°C. There was little discussion between us as we got changed and slipped into the water with our boards. After so long looking forward to this moment, it felt more than a little surreal to me that we were finally here, and I knew that the others must feel the same. And then, within minutes of dipping our toes into the freezing sea, the black cloud overtook us and the landscape disappeared within a white wall of snow and fog.

‘Yeah!’ someone cried. ‘This is it!’

Two hours later, out of the water again, towels frozen and running around in wetsuits trying to warm up, I asked myself if this really was it. We’d be here for days yet. Around 2cm of snow had fallen, dusting the rocks and ending in a sharp line where the waves had darkened the sand, and as I sat there in a burst of sunlight I looked up to see blue sky above.

‘Is it worth getting back in the water?’ Ben asked. But we couldn’t because in the meantime our discarded wetsuits had frozen solid. It was our first indication that the weather would be in charge on this trip. And that the unpredictability of Arctic winter in this era of climate change would make it all the harder to hold onto expectations.

But did it matter? Hardly. We made ourselves cosy on the beach and fuelled ourselves up with hot soup, mesmerised by the calm beauty and magic all around. This was so worth it.

We left camp in the twilight at around 5.00am every morning. On the day when we set out to climb and ski a bigger peak, conditions were clear but windy when we began. The brightest stars still twinkled down at us on the approach. Mountains were etched as deep shadows against the encroaching blue hour. But that ominous black wall of cloud once again lurked out to sea, and I wondered what strange magic it would bring us today. The forecast said nothing of a storm. I had no real idea of what to expect. And that thrilled me!

After a steep ascent, we arrived on the middle peak – but had no opportunity to take in our surroundings. A snowstorm of unexpected savagery was upon us within seconds. It was as if the air had suddenly become completely saturated by snow. Finding it hard to breathe or see the ground in front of our feet, let alone navigate in complex terrain encircled by vertical cliffs many hundreds of metres in height, we huddled there for 30 minutes. Until we started to get cold. Really, really cold, because we’d packed light and didn’t have down jackets. ‘We’ve got to get going,’ Kate said. ‘I don’t care if we go back or go on, but I’m frozen.’

The blizzard had subsided a little – just enough to make safe navigation a possibility. So on we went along the narrow ridge, easing our way ahead on our skis, leaning into the gusts. Bewildering glimpses began to open up through the murk: a sudden vision of a snow slope receding into darkness, a lone tree fighting against the storm, an improbable buttress rimmed with icicles. Flashes and sparks of inspiration. Light and shadow in constant motion. And I realised something: I love the unpredictability. The constant change. Suddenly I perceived that these conditions were not difficult or bad. They were the very fabric of creative opportunity.

When I let go of my expectations and decided to take this journey as it actually happened, instead of trying to force things into the shape I’d visualised beforehand, I realised that the unpredictability was actually the greatest gift of all.

Because it’s not an adventure until things go wrong. Once I let go of my need to be in control, I found that I was pushed to be more creative in extreme conditions. And nature will do its own thing anyway. All we can do is be adaptable and enjoy the ride. The sheer magic of it all, the breathtaking richness, made me appreciate the value of just going with the flow and getting creative with whatever comes next.