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“Sisu isn’t just about embracing physical challenges. It’s an approach to life that’s open to trying new things.”

The mosquitoes are out like a biblical plague, hunting for the blood of any meat sack dumb enough to run through their swampy domain. My wife Melanie and I pull over to quickly cover our skin with long pants and a thin rain jacket. I pull the hood over my head as a summer storm approaches with bolts of lightning rumbling across the remote forest, inching closer with every strike.

This is just the beginning of our vacation.

Most people spend their holidays sipping cocktails on a beach. I tend to spend my free time accumulating blisters, pounding my feet until they swell, and wringing every last bit of energy out of my body until all I can do is collapse in bed. 

At first, I thought I had a few screws loose. Surely that’s the only reason running through swarms of mosquitoes on a remote trail in northern Finland could possibly sound more appealing to me than doing nothing on a beach. But as it turns out, I’m just embracing and even cultivating my inner something the Finns call “sisu.”

Finding My Inner Sisu

Sisu is a Finnish cultural concept, one of those alluring international words or phrases, like the Japanese “ikigai” or the Danish “hygge,” that don’t translate neatly into English. Look for a rough word-for-word translation and you might come across “grit” or “determination.” Those are certainly pieces of the puzzle. But it’s more than that. Fortunately, Canada-born Katja Pantzar wrote a book about sisu in her memoir, The Finnish Way, on returning to her ancestral roots in Finland.

Sisu, she says, “is a courageous mind-set that embraces challenges, small and big. It’s also the ability to act in the face of adversity. It’s an approach to life that is open to trying new things and new experiences and going beyond what we think might be our limits — whether physical, mental, or emotional. It’s also about looking for practical solutions and ways to move forward, to build up fortitude and resilience.”

Any long-distance adventure, no matter if it’s a thru-hike or multi-day fastpack, is full of constant problem-solving. It can be as minute as the moment-to-moment decision of where to make your next step across ankle-snapping stones or figuring out what to do when a storm sweeps in without shelter in sight.

Although throwing ourselves at some sort of physical challenge has become, for better or worse, our vacation de rigueur, this trip came with unexpected emotional baggage. A week earlier, we lost our senior rescue pup of nine years, Moses. The pain of losing him was unimaginable, as if someone callously switched off the light in our souls.

Only a retreat into the forest could begin to mend our broken hearts. But this meant the Karhunkierros would be as much an emotional challenge as it would be physical.

Fastpacking the Karhunkierros

The Karhunkierros is a rolling, mostly single-track trail that cuts through the remote wilderness of northern Finland. For many Finns, it’s the most emblematic trail of the country thanks to its blend of deep pine forests, roaring rivers, and the thundering Myllykoski rapids. Spain has the Camino, Scotland the West Highland Way, and Finland is home to the Karhunkierros.

Most start the point-to-point adventure just over the Arctic Circle in Hautajärvi, as we did with a roughly 40-minute shuttle bus ride from the other end at Ruka — a ski village-turned-quiet escape in the summer. We decided to break up the 50 miles (82 kilometers) of the Karhunkierros into a three-day fastpack (a portmanteau of sorts, combining trail running with backpacking).

At the end of our first day, after evading mosquitoes and lightning, we spent the night in a rustic cabin run by Oulanka National Park. Our luxuries are a kettle to boil water for our freeze-dried dinner and a bunk bed. Day two is a hilly jaunt with about 800 meters of climbing over 30-some kilometers of rugged trail. Our final stretch is meant to be the easiest, but somehow manages to drag on as the rain clouds and blazing sun take turns conquering the sky above. 

By the time we rumble back into Ruka, we only have enough energy to high-five underneath the final trail marker and march like zombies to the nearest g

Sauna: The Poor Man’s Spa

We spend our final evening atop the nearby ski hill for sauna and dinner at BASE Eat & Heat. Sauna is as Finnish as sisu, and in many respects, they go hand in hand. Pantzar explains in her book that the sauna is known as the “poor man’s pharmacy” in Finland. Something bothering you? Go sweat it out in the sauna.

For us, it’s a physically restorative experience switching back and forth between the cold plunge and sauna on repeat. The aches and pains from the Karhunkierros fade away much like the initial emotional dagger of losing Moses did with the distraction of running the Karhunkierros. This trip, Melanie’s first fastpack, began the process of turning that pain into a scar.

That scar will stay with us, even as the initial shock of the pain subsides. It’s one of the reasons I was initially hesitant to get a dog in the first place. But I know now that I’m a far better person having had Moses in my life. And like Pantzar wrote, sisu isn’t just about embracing physical challenges. It’s an approach to life that’s open to trying new things that go beyond what we think our limits are, emotional as well as physical.

I didn’t think I was capable of caring for a dog, much like I once thought I wasn’t capable of running a step further than a half-marathon. Now I regularly cover that distance in my training for marathons and ultramarathon challenges.

In the sisu spirit, even if I didn’t know it at the time, I took on those challenges and am much better for it. Now that this mindset is firmly embedded into my DNA, I can only look forward to the next challenge, whatever it may be, and do as the Finns do: embrace it.