Human Liferings
For someone who’s accident-prone and a magnet for adventure, I am thankful for the people who have been patient, understanding and supportive during my bursts of individuality. They have saved my life at some point.
Hildur
Ice fishing for arctic char is an art. You drill a hole in the close-to-a-meter thick ice with a spoon and a hook baited with fly maggots. Then you learn the special way of moving the line and hooking the Greta Garbo of arctic char.
Hildur was my guru.
When I was 5 years old my parents took me and my brother ice fishing in Lake Akersjön. There was a blizzard when we arrived, so everyone wanted to pack up and escape to the warmth of the cottage. Everyone except for me. Already stubborn even back then, I refused to leave. I was here to fish!
My parents couldn’t convince me to go with them, but they couldn’t let a 5-year-old stay on the ice by himself either. I could freeze to death. But they wanted to go in and get warm.
Then Hildur whispered to me, “Listen, Sten! If you run around the ice hole without stopping, you have a better chance of catching the fish!”
So I did as my guru told me.
Hildur and my parents enjoyed being toasty warm in the cottage, taking comfort in the knowledge that a 5-year-old boy would not freeze to death in -15C weather since he was running around the hole non-stop. Meanwhile, I caught a nice arctic char and kept myself warm until they came back for me.
Hildur is a woman of steel with a bigger heart. She outlived three husbands and two sons. She hasn’t had an easy life, but she continues to be positive up to this day, being 93 years old and mostly blind. I give her a call every time I’m back on land. She is my idol, my hero and my guru.
Leeanne
Leeanne and I first met in 2004, when the Nautilus Explorer repositioned in Baja for its first trips to Socorro Island and the Sea of Cortez. We were the dive guides onboard.
Four months later, I left Mexico to set up a dive center in a six-star resort in the Maldives. But I got bored after 15 months of living on an island and running the dive center.
Leanne told me that Scubaworld, a dive center based in the Philippines, was looking for a guide for the liveaboard dive boats in Marshall Islands and Palau. So I applied and flew to the Philippines.
I waited 3 months in Manila before I got my working permit for Palau. In the meantime, I decided to know more about Scubaworld’s operation by spending some time in their dive resort in Anilao, Batangas and going on the Borneo Explorer, their liveaboard that ran trips around Batangas and Oriental Mindoro.
It was on that liveaboard where I met my wife, with whom I have been married for 11 years now. She is the reason Tanya, the brain in our family, got her life screwed up from becoming a successful market researcher boss in Asia to marrying a former lumberjack and dive bum like me.
Leeanne now runs her own business and is our “neighbor.” She is the proprietress of Casa Kootenay, a bed and breakfast in La Paz, Baja California Sur. She is the little sister I see way too little of.