Everything has been mildly to moderately overwhelming for weeks and weeks. Drama at tretton37. Deciding to divorce. Deciding to leave tretton37. Job search. Divorce admin. House valuation. More divorce admin. Embroidery course. Party prep. Plus all of everyday life that still needs to happen – work, grocery shopping, cooking dinners, helping with homework.

I was doing my embroidery homework just before midnight, because that’s when I finally had some time for myself. Hand-stitching is a nice way to unwind.

I think I may have turned the corner now, though. The divorce settlement agreement has been signed, and I have also signed with a new employer, so at least I can put those projects behind me. Of the big things, I’ve just got the mortgage application process left. And the embroidery course, very enjoyable but also rather time-consuming, is more than halfway done.

Eric and I are divorcing.

We agreed to do this about a month ago. Now that Ingrid and Adrian, our families, and closest friends have been informed, I can write about it here.

It’s been a long time coming. We did counselling a few years back, but it didn’t make any real difference. We just can’t reach each other any more. We both want/need things from each other that the other isn’t able to provide. There is always a tension of underlying dissatisfaction. It can be unnoticeable for a while, but keeps coming back.

There are no signs that we can ever “fix” this. I see no common foundation to build upon. After years of vain effort, everybody will feel better if we stop struggling and let go.

I have been vaguely considering the idea of divorce for a long time. At first as a scary worst-case scenario – what if we can’t make our relationship work and have to divorce? – that led me to do everything possible to avoid it. Then as a possible, but still scary outcome. Finally as a practical solution. Now that we have agreed to go ahead with it, the feeling is one of relief.

Ingrid and Adrian were initially very shocked but are, I believe, getting used to the idea. They both have multiple friends with divorced parents, and though a few have very rocky co-parenting relationships, most manage it without drama.

The shock was, in my eyes, a good thing. If we had gotten to a state where dissent was obviously visible even to children, then we’d have been well past the point where something needs to happen.

Now we can do this in a civilized, even friendly way, without drama. Figure out all the practicalities together; sort out all the admin. We sent in the divorce papers yesterday, but probably won’t have separated our households before the end of the year. Eric has bought an apartment with a move-in date in November, and then he’ll need time to furnish it. I’ll be keeping the house; today we started the process of getting it valued.

Every autumn the indoor temperature takes me by surprise.

Outdoors, the average temperature mostly follows a nice curve. Warm summer, gradual decline into cool autumn, continuing into a cold winter, and then a corresponding curve back up in spring.

Intuitively I expect the same indoors. Warm in summer, cool in autumn, cold in winter. But that is not what happens. Instead it is warm in summer, cold in autumn, then the heating turns on, and we have the same cold all the way through to late spring when we can turn off the heating again. It wasn’t necessarily always like that, but it’s been our reality since Sweden’s electricity prices spiked in 2021.

This means that there is a very short season for medium-warm clothes: long-sleeved jersey dresses, thin jersey tops, things with lacy sleeves. Half of August maybe, all of September, and that’s more or less it. After that it’s all layers of wool.

Work is still being very frustrating. Killing all energy and desire to do anything. I nevertheless managed to trick myself into working out, promising myself that I could do the shortest workout I could find, but then ended up doing a 35-minute session anyway. Felt better afterwards.

Hälleforsnäs to Hagtorp. Yesterday this stage was 16.5 km but today it took me 18.5 to walk.

First I got an extra kilometre by starting walking without checking the updated weather forecast. Yesterday, the forecast promised rain for today, but only from late morning. When I was packed up and ready to go at around 7:40, I saw the clouds but didn’t think that rain would be imminent. It started raining before I had even walked ten minutes. I started thinking about where I could find shelter, but quickly realised that the best and closest shelter was back at the camping site. So I walked back, through the rain. Gained absolutely nothing but getting thoroughly wet.

It rained for almost two hours. Luckily I had my Kindle.

Afterwards the woods were, of course, very very wet. Not so much the ground, because the soil hereabouts drains quickly, but the bushes and grasses can hold on to a lot of water. Walking through wet forest is like I’m trying to use my trousers to wipe dry all the bilberry bushes. The trousers at least dry quickly, but the water also wicks into my socks and boots, and those keep all the water inside. Yes, I could wear waterproof trousers, but I don’t like the way they feel. Unless it’s cold outside, I’d rather be a bit wet.

Today I learned that lingonberry bushes dry out first, with their waxy-leathery leaves. Bilberry bushes come in quick-drying and slow-drying varieties, because some were clearly drier than others. Bog bilberries were the slowest to dry and seemed to actively hold on to drops of water. And heather almost doesn’t get wet to begin with.

There is a locally famous “rocking boulder” a few kilometres in. Why they didn’t seize the obvious opportunity to call it a “rocking rock”, I have no idea.

I went to see it, of course, but to my disappointment, it did not rock at all, no matter how hard I pushed. Either it needs more weight, or it’s gotten jammed.

The rest of the day was pleasant, unexciting walking. More mindfulness, like yesterday. It went easier today, after all my practise.

Here’s me having bread and butter and a boiled egg for lunch. It took a good while to find a spot where I could sit down for a meal – wherever I looked, it was just wet bushes.

In the afternoon there was another surprise burst of rain. And I had again just passed a shelter, so this time I didn’t even hesitate – turned back as soon as I felt the first drop and ran back, and had my second lunch at the shelter instead of the exposed lakeside cliff I had been aiming for. Another extra kilometre gained.

Sörmlandsleden stage 22, from Hagtorp to Hälleforsnäs, 16.5 km.

This stage has been blocking me for weeks and weeks. No way to get there by public transport, of course, and 16.5 is too much for a one-day out-and-back hike. 33 km would take me ten hours at least, plus driving there and back. Not doable. But now I had a whole free weekend, so I can walk one way today and back tomorrow. (I am again reminded that I should look into the car plus bike solution, so I can get these kinds of longer stages done in a single day.)

Hagtorp is barely a place, even: googling for Hagtorp brings up two kinds of hits only. There is the eponymous transport/shipping company, and there is Sörmlandsleden. I’m not sure what shipping activities the company actually does – there are no trucks or anything visible at their site – but they do have plenty of open gravel surface which makes for a great parking lot for hikers.

I had a leisurely start with a proper weekend breakfast and only started driving at 10:30, hoping to be hiking by 12. But there had been some kind of accident on the E4, which caused major traffic jams, and my drive took forever. When I finally got started on the trail, past one o’clock, I was very happy to be let out of the car and have a chance to stretch my legs.

This stage had proper woods and wild nature, unlike the previous one. There was some mixed forest, and a lot of the typical pine and spruce forest with heather and blueberry bushes. And the occasional lake for beautiful views, and the occasional clear-cut area for contrasting ugliness.

I found my thoughts spinning back to the tretton37 drama all the time, and from there to code problems I left behind at Sortera yesterday afternoon, and then on private worries, and then around again. I ended up turning this into an intense mindfulness walk. Whenever I found myself ruminating again, I made myself focus on what was around me.

Sound. On a large scale: silence. Apart from the start and end, this stage was far from noisy roads, and truly very quiet. This time of the year, there’s very little bird sounds, either. But I myself was making noise all the time: there was the crunch of my boots on debris, and the swish of grass against my legs, and the slosh of water in my water bottle.

Sight. I wish I could have looked around while walking, but much of the path was really rough and uneven, with rocks and roots and tussocks, so it took constant concentration. I would have tripped or twisted an ankle quite quickly. But I could pay attention to the rocks themselves, and all the pine cones on the ground, and the various plants and bushes around me.

Smell. Not much. Books sometimes have people walking on “fragrant pine needles” but in reality any needles on the ground are dead and have no scent at all. Perhaps pine trees in other parts of the world are different, who knows.

Touch. One the one hand, plenty to experience, but on the other hand, most of what I can feel while hiking tends towards the unpleasant. The pressure of the pack on my hips. A wrinkle in my t-shirt under the straps of the pack. The sharp scratch of a juniper bush. But I liked catching the seed heads of tall grasses and letting them slip through my fingers.

Taste. It’s berry season! Lingonberries and bilberries and bog bilberries are all ripe and plentiful. I was extra happy when I found bog bilberries, not only because I like their flavour but also because the bushes are taller and the berries thus easier to pick without bending down (which can be awkward with a heavy pack).

Most lingonberries were mostly ripe, and some were all the way ripe, but I’d say they needed another week or so to reach perfection. Which didn’t stop me from eating them, of course.

Bog bilberries look less appealing. The bushes are sparse and have an air of scragglyness. The berries hang singly or by twos at most, and the colour is muted, so they look underwhelming on the whole. It takes effort to make them look good in a photo.

Bilberries I don’t care much about at all, while I’m out walking. They’re good in pies and muffins and yoghurt and all that, but on their own, they’re too bland for my taste.

Due to my late start, and my slow pace because of the uneven path, I was worried about getting to the end at a reasonable hour. It was seven in the evening by the time I reached the camping area. I had been keeping my eyes open for the last kilometre or two of walking, for alternative camping spots in case the end of the stage was underwhelming (because the other end was literally a gravel parking lot!) but the area around Bruksdammen was beautiful. I put off all thoughts about cooking dinner and getting my tent set up, and instead admired and photographed the area. It was a wetland area with pink water-lilies in deep dark ponds.

Then there was dinner, after which I read for a while, but then went to bed at ten o’clock already, quite tired. The night was very windy – I half-woke a few times and thought at first that it was rain I heard, but it was just the wind being very loud.

There is internal drama going on at tretton37, and everybody is worried and/or disappointed and/or confused, which is very distracting and distressing. If anyone managed to spend even half of their attention on actual work, I’m impressed. I was in such a bad mood when I got home that I comfort ate cake. (Cherry cake, from the freezer.)

My current meeting knitting project is a pair of socks. Socks are great background knitting. But this last pair is not moving along. I knit a bit here and there but they’ve been underway for a long time without getting done. I’m almost avoiding picking them up to work on them. What is going on?

I realized today that I don’t much like the feel of them. I use standard sock yarn of 70% wool and 30% nylon for all my everyday socks. Or that’s what I thought, because I hadn’t paid attention to how different the quality can be. Today I touched the green half-done socks just after handling another pair and it struck me immediately. The wintery ones were soft and smooth; the green ones had fuzzy fibers sticking out here and there and felt rough in comparison. Even when I hadn’t consciously realized it, I felt it.

The green yarn is the leftovers of the first thin sock yarn I bought when I had just started producing socks for everyday use. (I hadn’t even discovered asymmetric toes yet.) Some cheap thing, bought online, sight unseen. I switched to small-scale hand-dyed sock yarns soon after, for prettier colours, but never compared the two side by side.

I’m three-quarters done with the second sock in the pair so I’m not going to give up now. I’ll power through and get these done, especially now that I know what my hang-up is. My feet probably won’t even feel the difference once the socks are finished. But my hands most definitely do – I’ve even given up on a yarn due to the feel. I’ll have to be more careful with my yarn buying in the future.

The latest issue of Utemagasinet (“Outdoors magazine”) had a section where various contributors described their outdoor memories, based on a series of prompts. It made me think, and then I decided to do the same.

And I realize again just how bad my long-term memory is at storing experiences. Eric and I went to all sorts of places before we had children – Wales, Lake District, Scotland – but since I haven’t looked at photos of those trips in many years, I only have rather hazy mental images of them. I am very grateful for this blog.

Anyway, here goes.

Day trip: The last day of our trip to Mercantour. This was our first outdoorsy trip with the kids, and on the last day we went up to a mountain pass where we got our first taste of high alpine landscape. Dramatic views, everybody super impressed, until the afternoon thunderstorm with heavy hail. We all still have strong memories of that day.

Week trip: Padjelanta on skis. My own hikes are usually long weekends so they don’t quite qualify. All my ski tours have been lovely but this one was wilder and more fun than most. In the middle of the Padjelanta national park, we were sometimes the only group in a hut.

Of the weekend trips, I still have very fond memories of the Kinnekulle hike. Most of my hikes have been to mountainous areas, or in various pine forests, but this was a beautiful lowland hike in a completely different landscape. I’ve been thinking of going back there during a different season.

Accommodation: The cave house on Gran Canaria, or perhaps the yurt in Mercantour, which I unfortunately have no photos of.

Highest peak: In 2005 Eric and I climbed the Kilimanjaro. That was BTB, Before The Blog, so I have no post to link to, but here’s a photo from my archives:

Worst weather: Actually not the day with hail and thunder, but a gale in Skarvheimen. High wind, wet snow. The only time I’ve felt truly miserable due to the weather. No visibility, exhausting skiing. By the end of it I was numb with exhaustion and chilled all the way through.

Camp site: Nothing immediately stands out as “the greatest”, because many of the sites near Stockholm are rather similar to each other. The camping site at Trehörningen in Paradiset nature reserve is beautiful, and so is the one by Finnsjön on Sörmlandsleden stage 18. Especially when I am the only one there.

View: Actually not Kilimanjaro. It was a high peak and the views were expansive, but not the most interesting ones. The land around the peak is quite flat and barren. And at the very top I was feeling pretty awful with altitude sickness. No, the best views I can remember were from Viševnik. Only 2000 metres compared to Kilimanjaro’s 5900, but with rather more scenic views. Or perhaps the Centenario SAT via ferrata route, which is right above Riva del Garda.

Here’s Eric’s photo of a very young-looking me on that route, with Riva del Garda far below us, in 2004:

A time when I was afraid: The gale in Skarvheimen. I remember having the realization that this is how people die in the mountains. It doesn’t even take any extreme temperatures – just a bad combination of them, and a long day, and a lack of visibility.

Swim: Many of the swims in the lakes near Stockholm have been pleasant, but the dip in a bog lake in Soomaa felt unlike everything else. The top layer was warm, but beneath it the water was very cold, so I had the strong sense how large the invisible waters were that the tiny little pool connected to.

Food: The outdoor food above all other outdoor foods is porridge, especially with newly picked lingonberries.

I put on my glasses for reading the newspaper today. I’ve been wearing them regularly for embroidery and for some mending, but haven’t felt the need in other situations. But after seven hours of screen time at work today, with very fiddly tasks for the last couple of hours, my eyes were so tired that I couldn’t focus on the newspaper.

At first I thought this was the first time ever, but my “related posts” plugin tells me that I did it once last autumn. It felt like the first time.

Now that I think about it, the text on this blog is also kind of tiny. Smaller than many other sites. A larger font size might be a kindness to more readers than just me.