Are We Still on Earth?

“I consider that there’s nothing wrong in believing in elves even though their names aren’t on the parish register”

-Bjartur of Summerhouses, Independent People (Halldór Laxness)

Thorsmörk, Iceland, a massive valley in the southern part of Iceland. It is sandwiched between three glaciers and the bus ride is nearly three hours from the city. There is nothing around and the land resembles Tolkien’s world in The Lord of the Rings or Earth before we were here.

I traveled with an English college student, Mexican-American art design professor, an older English couple, a middle-aged man from the Bay Area visiting his Icelandic friend, and our Icelandic tour guide, Dane. The bus was cramped and I couldn’t quite shake the rainwater/canvas smell. I choked down a granola bar and waited.

The bus traversed layers of fog that were so dense it looked like Nosferatu would pop out and drain us all before our arrival.

We made the switch at the bus terminal to another small, damp short bus and headed south. From the city, it was an hour and a half to the village of Hella, where we changed busses at a gas station that looked like it needed renovation. It was raining pretty hard and the bus smelled like wet dog. As with most Icelandic gas stations, there was a hot dog shop inside. This bus was larger and sterile, like the shuttle bus that travels from the airport into the city. The fog was so thick that the visibility was zero. I sat motionless on this last leg, another hour and a half. I was in and out of sleep when the coach abruptly rocked violently like a clipper ship in a North Atlantic storm. I didn’t understand, until I saw the glacial tributaries under the bus wheels when the mist cleared.

The wheels dug into the mud at the foot of a glacier. Nonchalantly, Dane said, “Uh, let’s go have a look!” The air was so crisp that I could feel my nostrils become bone dry, and the tip of my nose was bitten by the unrelenting wind. We made it to the wilderness.

The 10-hour hike up an inactive volcano made the red tape of getting there worth it. A sliver of land straddled me and the end of the cliff. One slip of the foot would have been the end of me. I had to plead with myself to keep stepping forward, but when I reached the summit, all of my fears and reservations absolved into the Earth below my feet. I looked over Thorsmörk and saw glaciers 360 degrees around me, as well as brilliant moss-covered cliffs and snow-capped mountains in the distance. It was like setting eyes upon the Earth hundreds of thousands of years ago as glaciers carved valleys and bodies of water emerged. It is easy to understand how many Icelanders believe in elfish creatures after reaching the peak of a mountain here.

Getting down was a little more difficult. On the way out of Thorsmörk, we stopped at a gigantic waterfall, which I promptly ran behind and photographed. In the process, I became drenched (and it was cold, with a high temperature hovering near 48˚ Fahrenheit). I felt my legs slowly turning to jelly with each step that I took on the boggy and sponge-like terrain surrounding the waterfall. In a warped way, I really enjoyed the smell of the earth beneath my feet. I can smile and sit outside in a t-shirt in the middle of March in the States knowing that I braved the Icelandic wilderness.

END