The rain had been falling for days. The autumn colors that had recently lit up the mountain world had faded to something grey and lifeless, and darkness crept in earlier each evening. Not a soul could be seen in the landscape August Helgesson was walking through. It was the end of September, and he had been walking for nearly six months, from Skåne in the south, up through the forests of central Sweden, and onward along Gröna bandet through the mountains on both the Swedish and Norwegian sides. He was twenty-four years old and had almost reached his goal.
But to understand how he ended up there, we need to go back.
August had always been close to nature. As a small child he was out with his parents and sister on weekend trips, and by six or seven he was active in the scouts. It was the classic outdoor life: campfires, camps, short hikes. Over the years it grew. During high school, he and his friends organized their own trips. A scout hike in the Jämtland mountains in 2019 became especially memorable. Being out for an entire week with his group and managing the mountain terrain; that feeling stuck.
Originally, he had planned something completely different. During his first years at university in Linköping, he had saved money from his student grants for a classic backpacking trip through Southeast Asia. Then the pandemic hit, and the plans fell apart. But the dream of doing something big lived on. He watched the film Wild, about Cheryl Strayed's hike along the Pacific Crest Trail, and a friend who had done a similar trip added to the inspiration. Gradually the idea took shape: a walk through the entire country, from south to north.
It took about a year from idea to reality, but the concrete preparations were put off. It wasn't until one to two months before departure that he seriously began planning the route and buying gear. He gave up his apartment, moved everything into storage, canceled whatever subscriptions he could, and minimized his fixed costs. The budget landed at roughly ten to fifteen thousand kronor a month: tent life, noodles, instant mashed potatoes, and grocery runs along the way.
He set off in mid-April. His pack weighed twenty-seven kilos, far too heavy with four liters of water despite there being water sources available, and three books. There ended up being quite a few purges along the way. The first weeks he deliberately kept it short, around ten to fifteen kilometers a day, along the asphalt roads of Skåne. It was lonely and tough. Everyone was at work, nobody was out walking, and the cars didn't stop. But he knew it would get better, and he had invested too much to quit.
And it did get better. Further north the landscape changed, and with it the experience transformed. "What you do on a long-distance hike is really just do a week-long trip over and over again," as he put it.
What surprised him most wasn't the landscapes but the simplicity he found. "You move as you please, eat when you're hungry, lie down when you're tired and the sun goes down. You only need to think about what you're doing right there and then," he said afterward. No calendars, no screens, nothing demanding your attention. Just the concrete and the short-term, where the most advanced planning was figuring out food a week ahead.
Coming home was harder than he had expected. After just two weeks at his parents' place, he took off again for another month. The entire autumn became an attempt to get used to not being out there. The hike had shifted his priorities. Career and consumption no longer held the same appeal. Work would become a means to finance the next trip, not an end in itself.
Before his second long-distance hike, in the summer of 2023, he had learned. His base pack weight went from nineteen kilos down to eight, and by his most recent long trip he had trimmed it to just five. He now knew what mattered: light gear, trekking poles, and starting slow.
To anyone thinking about heading out, August had just one question: "Do you think you'll regret doing it? Most people would probably answer no. I think it's very hard to regret having been out there, because it's an incredibly cool and different experience."
The question isn't whether you can afford to go. The question is whether you can afford not to.
Top tips from August
