Fat for Greenland
This is a wonderful piece written by Hannah Pierce-Carlson about our meeting in Toronto:
Amidst the the table of glistening saag paneer and chutney, our 4th indulgent meal in Toronto in less than 24 hours, Mikael, lifelong- adventurer, polar explorer, and filmmaker grabbed the handful of fat on my upper thigh and said,
“This is good for Greenland.”
When you find a friend that really sees you, what you’re trying to create with your life, and believes that you are meant for more, you cling to their every inspiring word.
Mikael had an accident leading a team across the Greenland Ice Sheet last spring which has left him with a vastly inconvenient concussion, but only a few months later he was cycling with his two young daughters across Turkey. This parent-child adventure is what made me contact him only two months ago. And here we are.
Taking my wrist and isolating the three most vulnerable inches of a human extremity, he enumerated a few ways to dress to prevent frostbite from taking my fingers. He said,
“Maybe it’s you that’s meant to cross the ice cap with me?”
And the thing is, born and raised in Texas and having lived all my life in the Asian sub-tropics and American desert, still yet to experience more than one New England winter, the thought of it actually sounded about right. I’m not one to be surprised by such a plot twist. My life, as most who really know me know, is a circuitous path of global adventures big and small.
In our three days together in Toronto, Mikael (who actually lives in Sweden) and I walked the city blocks, sat in the hotel, restaurants, and discussed everything from hiking in Tenerife, to arctic tent camping in Northern Sweden, me learning to make a documentary about worldschooling, cycle touring with kids, and the challenge and satisfaction of solo parenting adventures, and being securely unrelatable and the loneliness that can seep into the cracks between it all.
When you meet an adventure partner and creator it all clicks. The feeling that you should make something together feels quite inevitable. This week in Toronto we answered the question: do we have the simpatico to make a collaborative experience work at the most mundane of levels?
Conclusion? 
This is Mikael.