Iceland

The flight from Seattle was reasonably short if not sweet. We landed in the pre-dawn dark on a peninsula in southern Iceland -- at a cute little airport that has been voted Europe's best.

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Not wanting to waste my one full day in country, I rented a little car, fumbled around in the dark -- couldn't find the lights -- and found myself heading south, by fits and jerks, in the first stickshift I've driven in several years.

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Fiddling with the car radio, I quickly found a Christian station that played a wide variety of music -- including Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash, also Nordic musicians. The preaching was in Icelandic, but what the heck -- the station played some great music, and proved a good companion.

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Dawn slowly broke over a black landscape, looking as if it had been indifferently paved centuries before by a giant with crude asphalt and working under union contract. Lichens and mosses had hence taken cautious root on the roughly horizontal but cracked and fissured surface. Not a tree could be seen until I neared Reykjavik, Iceland's little capital -- not one. (Coming back, I'd see what looked like a tree up ahead, and approaching, it would turn into a pile of rocks. Though the next day, walking across the same landscape from the airport, I did find some natural bonsai: dwarf birches, aspen, spruce and pine, about a foot tall, along with a dark blue berry on the ground, among a predominant patchwork of mosses and lichens.)

I stopped at a convenience store for pastries, water, and fruit -- expensive, but nothing horrendous, and the girl spoke English -- and headed south. The heck with jet lag! Let's see the country!

In ten miles or so, I came to an area in which mosses so deep your tennis shoes sink into them, lay over a harshly fissured ignious landscape. In the distance to left, steam rose from some of the island's many geothermal vents. The land is new: as lava boils out and forms Iceland, the newly laid pavement pushes two great tectonic plates -- apart: Europe and North America, Iceland belonging geologically to both. Iceland is to blame for divisions in NATO! They're litterally pushing us apart!
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After passing a town with a stone bridge over a rushing, glacial-fed river (though I had yet to see any ice!), also a KFC and the usual modern conveniences, there was some 80 miles of open country, with mountains and sea both distantly in sight. Aside from small towns -- informal in architecture, with metal roofs built apparently to shed snow (or volcanic ash?) -- this area was partly agricultural. Here and there were bands of long-haired sheep, and frisky little horses with haircuts like the Beetles (bred for a thousand years in Iceland). Pity I didn't take any pictures of the horses. Sometimes the sheep had been allowed into what looked like pea fields, and there was some hay. But Iceland's cool summers seem to keep most vegetables at bay, aside from a few hothouses.

Finally I crossed a plain, with a volcano or two in the distance, to an area where numerous waterfalls fell from a higher tableland, with glaciers visible between the clouds that cover some upper reaches.

After hiking above a large waterfall, and trying to reach a glacier by car -- the road was too rough to get far -- I started heading back. It would have been nice to check out the place where the world's oldest democratic congress was held, or some of Iceland's geisers, but they were a bit off course. I also learned that Iceland has lots of blueberrys a bit earlier in the fall.

But I needed sleep, and badly needed a hot spring. I headed back towards the capital, looking for a bath along the way, stopping by the road once, and once in the KFC parking lot, to nap with the car seat pushed back.

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People were friendly and spoke English, but sometimes gave confusing directions to the most famous hot spring, the Blue Lagoon, near the airport. Someone said a sign would tell me where to turn, forgetting to mention the sign was in Icelandic. (Not a language I speak: but "utganger" means "exit," I did get that. "Ut" for "out," "gang" for "opening," as in "To walk the Gangplank!" Very useful, if you're ever boarded by Norse pirates!)

Finally I found the Blue Lagoon, a huge pool of warm water with some hot spots, steam rising through the spa's foggy lights. I spent the night then at a reasonably-priced and comfortable little inn in a town nearby. The next day I studied at the airport -- only nine flights out that day, so I had the place almost to myself after the earliest. For lunch, I walked across the tundra to the nearest town for a hotdog, and discovered Iceland bonsai.

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So where is the ice in Iceland? It was the middle of October, (and late November on the way back) -- but lowlands were bare. Reykjavik is almost even with Fairbanks, Alaska. Surprising what the Atlantic Current can do! Even in winter, the temperature is above freezing about as often as below. One tenth of the country is covered with ice, but that is only because of mountains -- the highest just some 7000 feet -- and almost equally cool summers. (The temperature seldom tops 60, even in summer.)

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Nor could one call all the country "green." A more fitting name might be Leprechaunland. That is, if leprechauns to enjoy hotsprings as much as the monkeys in Hokkaido.

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A phrase I heard at Kilauea volcano on the Big Island of Hawaii came to mind:

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"God is still creating."