The rock is full of air.
Here it is up-close:
Kind of like styrofoam, really. Every bubble chamber in the rock is a time capsule of a wee bit of a volcanic eruption. Grass even roots in it and sucks that old gas in.
How cool is that!
~
Ásbyrgi
You can be of two minds, at once. They are not in conflict. A forest full of quick life to take you there, through the web of your thoughts?
Or a forest of slow, enduring life, the cliff of ghosts that awaits and towers above you, your body given face as memory?
At Botnstjörn, the windless pond sheltered by birches deep in Ásbyrgi, you can be both at once. They are not in conflict.
Surrender, and feel yourself lose all weight.
Well, the very first blade of the very first grass to ever grow on a steep, eroding slope, that’s what. Mmmm.
It’s self-defeating, but, oh my, it tastes so good.
Rock.
Moss eats rock.
Sheep hooves cut moss.
That’s right, look the other way.
Busted.
I’ve heard that my Christmas Ptarmigan was hard to find. Can you see it now?
Here’s the original pic again:
Happy birding. Bonus, even if you can’t find a bird, you can find pretty rocks upstream:
Yes, Seydisfjörður rocks!
Your Christmas depends on it.
So many Icelandic men of my father’s generation thought they could stay on the land if they built a nice concrete house to keep their families out of the wind, but they did it the Icelandic way, with salt beach sand, and it fell apart.
Women still come, as the snagged necklet of clear glass beads and fishing line below shows, but, as the snag shows, they leave without these baubles, too.
And that is one of the forces that powers the world.
~
Selstaðir
A Raven’s Perching Stone in Skogarhvammur
How erratic!
It was all forest once, in the whole country, at least by the water. Even here in Hvalfjörður, it was trees. But the trees were cleared to make pastures and to keep the Icelanders warm, and then there were no trees, and so it remains in most of the country. Because of this history…,
… horses are now trees. Stick a pale of hay in the middle of a forest clearcut 1000 years ago, and there you have it, a grove. As I’ve said. before, in this country everyone is an artist.
Iceland was a warm place once, until the Cold War. Elephants roamed. Now they’re hibernating.
Actually, they look a lot like elephant seals. Hmmm.
The horses are still cold in the wind, though! No hibernating for them. But hay. Hay is good.
They’ll stay for hay.
A Farm in Iceland 
