Sure, a ptarmigan on the Selá, Christmas dinner, easy to identify.
And an elf bird in its nest in the hraun, not Christmas dinner, easy enough.
But a cairn in the Villingadalur, that looks like an elvish bird, tricky.
Yet, it’s by it that you find your way through elf country to Christmas dinner.
July is a beautiful time to turn over your shoulder when hiking to Strutsfoss.
So is April.
And then you turn around…
… and keep going.
On the Lower Stapavik Trail, the ptarmigan like to hang out right on the trail edge, right on the edge of the river, among the logs, where the sun gets warm and life is good.
And then they burst up in front of you, from like 20 cm away, and are gone. The trick to disappearing is to remain absolutely still. It didn’t quite work for the one above, which tried to sneak between the cover of two rocks and wound up freezing on the shore grass beside the trail. The one below got it right, though. Safe among the lava lumps.
It’s the joyful hoped-for unexpectedness of the encounters that is so alluring. Like most things in Iceland, “you just never know.”
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.
