The Land of Fire and Ice

December 2024

The search for the next girls’ trip destination started with words like warm, sunny, beach. How we ended up deciding on Iceland is beyond me. I think it originally had to do with the existence of direct flights from both Seattle and Boston. I got many blank looks when I mentioned I was going to Iceland in December. As in, why would you do that? Leave cold, snowy, dreary Wenatchee and Boston for… colder, icier, darker Reykjavik? But it turned out to be one of the best vacation destinations ever. Magical, restful, memorable.

The flight from SEA to KEF takes about 8 hours. It seems all flights from the US arrive in the early morning. Rachel and I landed at the same time, which made meeting up at baggage claim a breeze. The flight attendants on the Iceland Air flight were an accurate introduction to the people of Iceland: tall, Nordic, efficient without haste, friendly without obsequiousness. The food was the tastiest I’ve ever had on an airplane.

It’s bizarre to experience a place that is dark for most of what should be daytime. Sunrise wasn’t until almost 11am, and sunset occurred just after 3pm. People go about their normal lives. We encountered rush hour traffic en route to Reykjavik at the typical 0900 on a weekday, and found all stores and bakeries open for business by 1000. It just felt like nighttime, even though it was mid morning. 

The lovely thing about vacationing in limited daylight is that there is no rush in the morning to get moving, and you feel very productive if you’ve done one thing for the day. There is no pressure to pack a day with tourist activities. Winter in Iceland is tailor made for leisurely breakfasts (and second breakfasts), no more than 4 hours of activity, and before you know it, it’s time for a pre-dinner cocktail and a long soak in a geothermally heated tub under the stars. Very often, the wind storms turn a normal drive into a treacherous ordeal (we got a small taste of this our first day in the rental car), and everyone abandons plans and stays home. I appreciate the Icelandic mindset of holding plans loosely, expecting things to go sideways, being ready to adapt to whatever happens, and deferring to Mother Nature. This is not a land for micromanagers, planners, neurotics, nor anyone with a schedule.

We got lucky with the weather. We brought books, skeins of yarn for crocheting, journals. But on our first full day in Iceland, the sun came out, and the wind died down. We decided to brave the rental car again, and venture down the road to see Seljalandsfoss waterfall. When that went well, we kept driving to Vik to visit a black sand beach, Reynisfjara. This was the most spontaneous I’ve ever been on a vacation. I have no idea how these sights are reviewed, nor where they rank in Iceland’s Best Of list – and turns out it doesn’t matter. My memories of Iceland will be of the beauty of barren moss-covered lava fields, freezing mists and thundering water over icy cliffs, the light of perpetual dawn and dusk on the rugged black beach, and the thundering waves of the Atlantic seas.

I chose the Hotel Ranga because of its Northern Lights wake-up system. It’s out in the middle of nowhere on the southwestern coast of Iceland. The bartenders make great martinis, and most guests are there waiting out the clouds in hopes of seeing the fickle dancing lights. We had no expectations, as it had been cloudy for 2 weeks.

At around 0200, jet lag had us awake and chatting like 2 teens at a sleepover, when the phone rang. Aurora borealis! Along with all the other hotel guests, we stumbled outside into the bitter cold. And there, just across the frozen parking lot, were the streaks and curtains of green light, swirling in the starry sky, changing constantly with the solar winds. I hadn’t prepared, and hadn’t figured out how to take photos on my iPhone in night mode. For a while, I just stood dumbly looking at the celestial light show in front of me, until another hotel guest kindly offered photography suggestions. The colors are even more brilliant on film. But it was the constant changing of the lights, against the backdrop of countless stars, the contrast of light and dark, the realization of the immensity of the universe, and me standing on a desolate rock bearing witness to it all – that can not be captured in a photograph.

The next day dawned (at 11am) clear and sunny. So off we went again, this time on a group adventure. Icelanders have outfitted vans with giant truck tires that can inflate and deflate, capable of traversing lava fields and fording small bodies of water. An hour of bumping along the not-quite-a-road later, and we were at the foot of the Mýrdalsjökull Glacier, and standing inside the Katla Ice Cave. 

When in Iceland, do as the Icelandic peoples do. Every little town has a community swimming pool. And everyone makes it a ritual to soak in the geothermal-heated waters. The tourist rendition of this is to pay for a pass to the Blue Lagoon: an atmospheric, otherworldly, series of heated milky-blue pools carved into black lava rock. Yes, it’s a tourist destination. And yes, even Rick Steves says it’s worth a splurge. We did one better and stayed the night at the Retreat Hotel, giving us access to the private lagoon areas. The Blue Lagoon and Retreat Hotel had been closed for a month due to repeat eruptions from a neighboring volcanic fissure, sending lava flows into its very parking lot. As luck would have it, the Blue Lagoon re-opened the day we had a reservation, and we were one of the first guests to return. The road to the hotel had been built the day before opening, a testament once again to the Icelandic way of adapting to their ever-changing land. It was an extraordinary experience: sitting in milky-blue hot water, gusts of freezing mist swirling over the air above me, the stinging cold of the ice droplets on my face, lava formations stretching into the fog, knowing that molten rock was flowing just over the next ridge.

If there’s anything Iceland represents, it is that everything changes. Impermanence is a way of life. And yet there is an ironic permanence to it all: the stars, the galaxies, the rock, the ice, the earth itself – immutable when compared to the utterly brief moment of a human lifespan. I think I became aware of the silliness and hubris of the notion that humans can control anything, as if putting studs on winter tires should mean vacation schedules can proceed as planned. In that awareness, there was comfort and peace. To be small is to be big, and to let go of control is to ultimately claim one’s agency.

December 31, 2024