Mitch Albom: Open spaces provide a rare perspective on the crowded, anxious world

NUUK, GREENLAND – When we landed at this remote outpost, just shy of the Arctic Circle, we asked the lone tarmac worker where to go for passport control.

“Is not open yet,” he said in broken English.

“What time does it open?” we asked.

“Half a year,” he replied.

We laughed, figuring he meant “half an hour.” But a few minutes later, after wandering around freshly laid asphalt amidst a panorama of snow-capped mountain peaks, we realized he was serious. This little airport was brand new, and passport control had yet to be built. Another half a year. Give or take.

So we wandered through a doorway, carrying our bags, until eventually a nice woman found us, took our passports, walked over to a bench and stamped them.

“Thank you,” she said, handing them back.

And off we went.

I am writing this at the end of a nearly two-week sojourn to Nova Scotia, Iceland, Greenland and the Faroe Islands. A trip that brought us to icebergs, glaciers, mountains, waterfalls, black sand beaches, a volcano and a sun that stayed in the sky well beyond midnight. I am writing it now because I know once I return to my working life, I will lose the feeling of what I want to share with you. It will fritter away, as memory does.

But it’s a sensation we rarely experience in urban America, and one we are wise to seek out. I’m talking about the feeling of vast, naked skies, building-less landscapes, long, barren beaches and wild, empty seas.

The solace of open spaces.

200,000-year-old air

Now relax. I am not that guy. The one who takes a vacation and comes back with a shaved head, a bunch of oils and a surfboard. This was not a Vision Quest. I did not convert to a cult.

"The Solace of Open Spaces" is actually the title of a book I read years ago, about a woman exploring the inspiration of Wyoming landscapes. The concept has long stuck with me. We get so entangled in our busy lives, we lose perspective on the natural world around us. We live inside electronics. We see the world through a windshield. We envelope ourselves in news, social media, politics, TV shows, sports. Endless noise and clutter.

The only antidote — to me, at least — is to try and reset now and then. This is hard. It takes time. It can take money. But it is an investment in perspective, and in ourselves, a rekindling of the wonder many of us had the first time we felt an ocean wave smack against us, or gazed into the staggering breadth of the Grand Canyon. Majesty. It’s about majesty.

And for all our petty criticisms of this world, we have been gifted a planet of great majesty, if we find the time to explore it.

On this recent trip, in a deep blue bay off of Ilulissat, Greenland, I paddled a kayak alongside icebergs, hundreds of them. What astonished me wasn’t their stark white shapes, or the blue patches where the ice had melted and reformed, or the broad bases that went so much deeper and wider than the protruding tops. It was the sounds! Amidst the dead silence of freezing water, these icebergs were constantly groaning as they shifted and melted, and hissing as air escaped pockets.

“Some of that air,” a guide told us, “might be 200,000 years old.”

Makes you think, doesn’t it?

On the Faroe Islands, we hiked through misty fog that draped vast, deep green mountains, until we reached a giant crevice that fell to the sea, so high and rugged it would shame a set designer for “Game of Thrones.”

In Iceland, we swam in a blue lagoon of hot thermal water. We stood under huge waterfalls. We hiked for hours over massive, lonely hills. Time seemed to crawl. Hours passed without seeing another soul.

We stretched our iPhones in contorted grips to try and capture the magnitude of what we were witnessing. It never worked. Maybe it’s not supposed to. Some things you can only capture with your eyes, and can only store in your heart.

Meanwhile …

Now, I have a running joke with friends in the media business: every time I go away, something major happens. This trip only proved my theory.

From the time we took off, Donald Trump took a grazing bullet from a would-be assassin, survived, then chose JD Vance as his running mate at the Republican National Convention. Joe Biden exited the presidential race and Kamala Harris took his place. A major crash of a cybersecurity system crippled airlines and businesses for days. And the Paris Olympics got underway.

And yet, while I fretted over my timing, and foolishly imagined the world needed my input on these big events, the truth is, it doesn’t. There are plenty of other people who do what I do, as I imagine there are others who do what you do. We are never as important to this world as we believe.

But the world should be important to us. When I take trips like this one, I realize we have been given this enormous gift of nature that so often sits ignored, like an unopened birthday present, as we scurry past, blindly engrossed in our petty distractions.

We should, whenever possible, give ourselves a walkabout. Find an empty place. A natural wonder. It needn’t be as far as Iceland. It can be as close as a nearby lake, or a quiet morning in a park.

There is solace to be found in open spaces. Seek it out. When this journey is over, and my daily demands begin to pile on, I hope to occasionally close my eyes and remember, therapeutically, a yowling iceberg, a midnight sun, high skies, empty mountain ranges and things that take half a year to open and are in no hurry to go faster.

Contact Mitch Albom: [email protected]. Check out the latest updates with his charities, books and events at MitchAlbom.com. Follow him @mitchalbom.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Mitch Albom: Open spaces provide rare perspective on an anxious world