Tag: nature

My way of forgiving myself and love again

After Cori and I had screamed at the ocean, we found a very special and beautiful beach and decided to live there until she would have to leave Greece and head back to Germany.

The weather got a lot brighter and so did my mind. After days of despair and a lot of negative thoughts, swirling around the same again and again, I did finally find some clearness. It’s been like I was able to feel myself again. And through this, I was able to accept myself and gain back my balance. It felt very relieving and enabled me to describe my feelings and what had been spinning inside of my head for days. And finally, I could start to forgive myself and love again.

We spent some wonderful days at this awesome beach. Rosinante parked right on the beach and behind her, a river went by, took a turn along a magical grotto, and finally found the crystal clear water of the ocean.

After we ran out of gas for cooking, we cooked outside on fire and had the most delicious self-made bread and curry of all time. I don’t know if we would have cooked on the fire when we still had gas, but this way it was just perfect. One day, we hiked along the river, that flows into the sea at this magnificent beach. The hike was super nice and beautiful. You can enter it here.

After some days at this paradise, it was time for us to drive back to the airport in Athens and Cori headed back to Germany.

A part of me had wished, that our shared time would have been more harmonious all the time, but more and more I became thankful for this experience and how we lived through it togehter. In the end, we never blamed each other and were always empathic and loveful.

My key learnings:
🤗 Seeing people, I’m interacting with, as training partners really can help me. All of us seem to be training to live all the time and like in every training, things can get wrong even though they are not intended to.
😇 Seeing things that keep my mind spinning as super important and life-threatening/ changing doesn’t help. In the end, almost everything seems to be very less important and big seen from some distance.
💫 Describing my pure and honest feelings to someone else, without intellectually analyzing and reasoning or explaining their origin, helps me a lot. When I’m really out of balance, it helps me when the other person assures me, that my feelings are not wrong.

In the end, it’s all about remembering that I’m perfectly fine the way I am.

Hiking myself free

It’s mid of April 2022 and I’ve reached the eastern nipple of the Peleponnese. Most people call them fingers or feet, but I’m preferring nipples. There had been a time, some years ago when I called most things nipple. Maybe it’s a residue of this nipple quirk left in my head…

The last few days, it has been very stormy and today it’s even crazier. I spent the night behind a beach, in a place protected by a big rock formation. In the morning, I took the drive to the Geopark of Agios Nikolaos, and here the wind is even stronger.

This wind is not the only stormy thing I’m dealing with: my mind is very stormy as well. I’ve been not very motivated for the last few days and I’m feeling kind of down for no special reason I know. I’ve been meditating and practicing the acceptance of my state of mind, but in the morning I got an alarming message from Germany about the health situation of one of my close family members. This message added some whirl to the wind in my head and heart. It leaves me like a sailor in the dense fog of life. Standing in the crow’s nest. Thinking and evaluating if my future me might cope with the challenges to come instead of sailing in this particular moment with what is happening now. I’m asking myself questions like “should I go back to Germany?”, “what will happen next?”, “what if…?”, …

In times like these, it’s the best for me to go outside and do something interesting, but not too challenging. In the best case, it’s something beautiful. Something that keeps me going without much potential to be negatively exciting.

The hike from the Geopark to Ekklisia Agios Georgios is exactly that. It’s super beautiful and the narrow path is interesting but easy to do. I’m hiking between the sea and the mountain. The mountain is protecting me from the wind and the whirlwind inside of my head loses his negative and destructive power. The sun of spring is getting me really warm and after an hour, I’m enjoying all this. I’m welcoming and congratulating a big part of me for making it back from the future into the present. It feels very relieving. I’m still not very positive or happy, but that’s fine. I escaped the black hole, that had me in its gravity field.

I think there is a big power in walking. Maybe it’s because that’s what nature made us: awesome walking machines. Especially walking through nature has so much calm, satisfaction and a kind of wisdom in it.

Visiting Mystras and living on an olive farm

It’s about the mid of April 2022 and I’m driving Rosinante through an olive farm right next to the famous ancient site of Mytras in Greece. These olive farms can become pretty tricky to drive through from time to time. They tend to narrow down and passing the sometimes low-hanging branches of the trees can be tricky as well. I’m always wondering how the farmers are making it up and down the steep slopes on tracks full of loose stones and sometimes pretty big stone steps.

Right next to the little track I took and on the foot of Mystras, I’m happy to find my new home in the center of the olive farm. Hesitation arises in me as I think about if it’s ok for the owner of the farm that I’m staying here for a couple of days. I lay this thought away by coaxing myself. Just at this moment, I hear some low sounds of people working on the farm and I’m pretty sure that they will come along sometime and so I’ll be able to ask them.

I’m exploring my home in between beautiful nature with all its fresh green, olive trees, a meadow, and a nice small stream. The small area I call home now seems to be the dump of the farm because there are some small piles of rubble. It’s funny how different perceptions can be: for me this dump zone is so beautiful that I want to stay here for some days. For the farmer, it might be the most unproductive and worthless area of his whole farm.

A couple of hours later, I’m hearing a tractor approaching and meet it on the small road. I’m waving and smiling and the driver seems to be a nice guy. It’s the farmer and I’m asking him if I can stay for some days. He is absolutely fine with this. We have a short chat about a lot of things and he gives me tips about what to visit in the area. Once more I see one of my beliefs confirmed: if I’m meeting people friendly and open, they do the same to me. It’s like a principle of friendliness attracting more friendliness.

The next morning I start my way to the ancient site of Mystras. After a couple of meters, I’m deciding to try going barefoot for the whole day. As a fallback, I’m tieing my flip-flops to my backpack.

The ancient site of Mystras with its ruins and reconstructed buildings in the rising spring is very beautiful. But the most beautiful part of it is the view from the top of the fortress on top of it. I’m hanging around there for quite some time and thinking about what side of the view I like more: the nature side with its mountains or the valley side with the roads and little settlements? For me, it’s an easy choice and I decide to climb up one of the mountains tomorrow.

After about eight hours I’m arriving back at Rosinante and my barefoot experiment went pretty well. After the first hour of getting used to especially sharp gravel laying on flat concrete, it felt super good and slowed me down a bit. But after having my soles backed on a dark tarmac road it’s super intense to walk on these little, sharp stones.