They’re all winding when wended on foot.
Hafragillsfoss
That’s because they wind you in and, wound up, you look behind and what is there? Only the wind. And when you turn you step into the wind in that direction too.
Who says you can’t…
… squeeze water from a stone?
Heck, in Iceland, where even the land itself is alive, it’s commonplace.
Watch your step!
Jökulsá á Fjöllum
Calling this landscape with its fire vent at Sjónípa volcanic diminishes it and makes its strangeness safe.
Wouldn’t it be better to write a guidebook to strangeness, and begin again?
Only the heads remain.
Big guys, though!
Whoever said Iceland was never inhabited by big game!
Near Hafragilsfoss
The wind lives north of Dettifoss, in a landscape in perfect balance: what is neither hard nor seeking shelter is blown away, yet in these flows the wind is often denied purchase and sent on.
Walking is not the point here. Standing and staying, those are the triumphs. If you walk, you will not see.
Water that enters a fall zone and flows down through air to the centre of the Earth, before being stopped by stone, first attempts to find its original level by climbing back, before the Earth draws it away. Have a look.
Dettifoss
People come from around the world to experience this power. What at first appears to make one small and insignificant actually makes one large because as humans we live in what we see. We are the waterfall. Keeping a little distance is safe, though.
When you are caught by a veið, or a plane of gaping energy, that can devour you without a trace…
… where everything (and soon you too) is thrown, or strewn, around without sense…
… it’s best to create memory, and sense, or you will be lost, literally. Cairns like the one below are the Parthenons of Iceland. Don’t touch.
And don’t make more! That would be like destroying Shakespeare.
Even if the highway-building crew starts it, please resist translating cairns, energy gathered from throws to make wide space close, into an image of yourself as witness. This isn’t magic or art. It’s architecture and language. The path to history through them should remain open. If not, why go to Iceland?
~
Images from between Hafragilsfoss and Dettifoss, as well as on Highway 85 to Vopnafjörður.
The newest shoot of grass growing on a bit of volcanic wasteland for the first time ever in the history of the world, that’s the one that tastes best to a sheep, and they will risk life and hoof to get it.
Marauders in Stekkalækur
They’re Icelandic, hence very independent. No sherpas needed.
The sheep missed a blob there on the cliff.
Sandfjall
Don’t worry. They’ll be back to finish.
A Farm in Iceland 