In which I scald my toes, smash my face, eat some Skyr, and cry a little under a sky on fire.
The descriptive blurb for these gets shorter every day, as I hope you've been following along with my adventure (if you haven't, no problem — links to all previous entries are at the bottom of each post.) The short and sweet gist is, when I travel, I usually journal to myself the exact route I take, and a bit of stream of consciousness twaddle. As a memory reinforcement usually, and a social experiment this time... I'm sharing these logs with you wonderful friends. Your outpouring of support thus far has me touched, encouraged, and a wee bit embarrassed. In the months to come, the "real" camera photos will be fleshed out into editorial posts; for now, follow my goofy ass across the land of the ice and snow, of the midnight sun, where the hot springs flow.
Day Four of the Iceland Ring Road Mission by the numbers.
Around 5 hours of driving.
About 385 kilometres traveled.
- Kilometres hiked: approximately 15
- Current running total of all-soup meals: 11
- Times nearly concussed: 4
- Caves/crevices climbed in: 3
- Rainbows captured on camera: 3
- Hours watching the first truly fiery, visible-to-the-eye Aurora Borealis I've ever seen: 2
- Vikings found: 0
The skies of Iceland bear gifts of burning, shimmering light from dawn until dusk
It takes me a while to pry my eyelids open, and my legs still prickle from three and a half hours in the geothermal hot tub last night — but what a fucking amazing show... I hope you listened. I'm buzzing from the high, and from the shitty instant coffee I'm blowing on while sitting cross-legged on the raw board floor. Most of the cabin walls are windowed, and I have a wide field of view to consider how perfectly bifurcated the part of the sky I can see is. To the left: deep, ominous black clouds, and the long trails of mist that indicate an as-yet far away downpour. Having been out in it a couple of times already, I know that the drops are striking hard forwards along the ground with a cadence like an advancing horde. It would almost be enough to convince me not to leave for a while longer yet, except for the perfection of the clear sky to the right. The line of clouds and matching shadow stretching forward through the hills are almost ruler exact: a sharp edged wind has sheared away a crisp path for the next leg of the road. It might be cold and persistent as hell, but I have a lot to thank it for.
A brilliant rainbow arcs over the slopes behind me; Akureyri waves goodbye in a spectrum of mountain light. Bouyed by this, I figure I can make my next stop in hardly any time at all. Instead, somewhere along route to the cave I'm planning on spelunking the shit out of, I end up screeching to a halt in the middle of nowhere, reveling in the fall colours of the first real trees I've seen. Everywhere on the island are pocket forests that feel...disconcerting. It takes me a while to realize it's the height and planting patterns: the young trees have obviously been placed with care, falling in neat rows as if following a quilting layout. It makes sense the more I consider it — deforestation on an island would be an issue, and I've seen this same thing in both Ireland and New Zealand as well. For someone who lives in a province blanketed in thick, wild places and nurtured by ancient cedar and oaken souls, it niggles at the back of my mind uncomfortably. It's dumb, the things we get hung up on. But here, oh, here... the trees are riotous, riding the rolling hills in wild sweeps of oranges and yellows and deep greens. They run up to the edges of a network of lakes that magical colour of cerulean that only happens when standing water reflects the midday sky just so.
Breathe deeply and gaze into the depths of this pool with me here.
I check the time with a faint bit of surprise; both at the fact I've lost two hours scrambling up and down rocky hillocks joyfully, and at how cut and scraped my palms are from the ever constant lava underlay that hides beneath all of the grass and soft moss. By the time I get to Grjótagjá cave, a few other tourists are already leaving. One of them is in her underwear, all shivering gooseflesh and steaming, slicked hair as she picks her way out of the cave mouth. All I can think is, "shit, bathing in this cave is supposed to be hot enough to boil you," and, less maturely, "she's going to smell like farts for days." Bye, Felicia. I climb down into the cave and hang out as the rain begins pattering out of a clear sky again. I eat some Skyr while listening to Sólstafir, alternately sticking two or three toes at a time in the eerie, partially opaque, periwinkle water. I feel I have now reached peak Iceland. It's fucking hot, the steam has that delightfully gross sulfurous quality to it, and I crack my skull three or four times on the cave roof while setting up my gear for some long exposure shots. No one's around to see it since the brave bather left.
Watch these waters from a different perspective with me here.
I stop twice more, at Hverarönd (some geothermal mud pits) and Gufufoss (an incredible waterfall.) I mingle with the rest of the tourists and just drink in the colour of it all. I legitimately enter the next little cabin with a sure feeling that it is simply impossible to top the things I've seen today. Rainbows and grass and water and sky and earth — pure luminosity and hue and uninhibited saturation.
Like every night before bed, I squash my face awkwardly against frigid glass, thinking I'll have to wait for my eyes to adjust to see if hints of the aurora show against the clouds... and in an instant I'm out the door in half my thermal undies, with tears streaming down my face. The romance of the idea of delicately crying in the baths of the northern lights is a bit lost given how absurd I know I look, but also in the near icing of my eyelids shut and the almost-as-instantaneous desire to curl up in a ball for warmth. I smash through the door crying and laughing and tugging boots on the wrong feet and twirling a towel on my head because I can't spare the time to find my buff and I lose a lens cap forever to the frosted grass.
Worth it.
All of these photos, stories, and words are my own original work, inspired by my travels all over this pretty blue marble of ours. I hope you like them. 🌶️
Follow this journey: DAY 1 | DAY 2 | DAY 3 | DAY 4 | DAY 5 | DAY 6 | DAY 7