I don’t hate it | A long Icelandic weekend
Hey there. I’m in Iceland. It’s a five-hour direct flight for me, which makes a long weekend doable. I hadn’t planned on taking this trip. But my cousin and three of her friends were going and one of them backed out, leaving a seat on the plane, a room in the Airbnb, and an extra spot on all of the excursions. So pretty quickly I found myself relaxing in the Blue Lagoon, hunting the Northern Lights, hiking a glacier on Europe’s biggest and most dangerous volcano, visiting a black sand beach (definitely going back there during the summer to see puffins), snowmobiling, and descending into a newly discovered ice cave. Two months ago I was in East Africa; now I’m here.
1. A friend in Charlottesville gave me Independent People, by Iceland’s Nobel laureate, Halldór Laxness. At the time, years ago, it was a gift based on his own frequent trips to the Nordic island nation. Serendipity.
2. The glacier I spent a few hours exploring yesterday is the subject of Chasing Ice, a documentary about global warming. We watched it last night after the hike.
3. You can’t have missed the most recent mass shooting, in Florida, which happened the day before I left on this trip. I finally set up a recurring monthly contribution to Everytown for Gun Safety. Let’s commit to ending gun violence in America. I don’t remember being afraid to go to school; kids today, and in the future, shouldn’t be, either.
*Prepared on my iPhone while riding in an #extremeiceland off-roading vehicle, largely during a snowstorm. Mistakes are mine; any strange formatting is due to extreme circumstances. Thank you for understanding.