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My next temporary home was in the south of Iceland, in Skaftafell
National Park. Am I the luckiest person alive, or what? |
| The volunteers even have a little hut to use for food preparation,
cards, revelry, and drying our rain-soaked clothes. |
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Here is our first worksite, up the mountain a bit. We were building
stone drains to shunt rainwater and snowmelt across the footpaths
to keep them from being washed away. |
| Steve stands proudly over one of our drains. Now, those rocks there
are like icebergs... much bigger than what you see. The rocks have
to be buried fairly deep to actually stay in place and divert the
water. We had to go walk around the area looking for suitable rocks,
and then carry them back to our drain location. Man, rocks that big
are HEAVY. |
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This is Svartifoss, one of the most photographed waterfalls in Iceland.
It translates to black waterfall because of the long basalt columns
over which it drops. We often worked within earshot of it. |
| This is the Sel Farmhouse, a historic monument to the traditional
turf homes. Trees are scarce in Iceland, so there was no wood (other
than driftwood from shipwrecks on Iceland's rocky coastlines) for
building. But there was plenty of dirt. |
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This is inside one of the farmhouses, looking out over the flood
plain leading to the ocean. |
| Again, not a terrible place to have a lunch break... |
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The weather was volatile, but never awful. Most days it would rain
at some point, and we even got thunder and hail once, but we had a
good vantage point to see the storms coming, so we had time to bag
up our daypacks and put on our waterproofs. One nice thing about building
drains during a downpour is that you get immediate feedback about
whether your design is working. |
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We also constructed and posted directional signs for the hiking
trails around Skaftafell. |
| Now isn't that nice? What you don't see is the meter of post that
we buried in the rocky mountainside. In order to keep the frost from
heaving the signs up and out of the ground, we had to place the posts
pretty deep. That meant a lot of digging and rock-wrangling. |
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It's never fun to wake up at 3 a.m. and realize that you have to
leave your snuggy, warm mummy sleeping bag so that you can gallop
through the mud to the camp restrooms. But when you crawl out of your
tent and see a sunrise like this, it makes it a little better. |
| Ice climbing on the glaciers! What an awesome time. |
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What, walking over 10,000-year-old ice is dangerous? |
| Tom makes the descent over the edge, belayed by our trusty Icelandic
guides, Ivar and Anar. |
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We thought taking that first lean back into nothingness would be
the hard part... |
| ...but it turns out making that last scramble up over the lip of
the glacier was no cakewalk, either. |
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If you ever have the opportunity, I highly recommend giving ice
climbing a try. It was a blast. |
August 7, 2005
I think I pulled a muscle laughing tonight. Alec was re-telling a bizarre
dream he had about shaking Prince Phillip's hand and an actor in a wheelchair
spinning around in circles, and it was just hilarious. I'd even heard
it already, but something about the way he tells stories just makes them
so funny that I can't stop laughing. I couldn't catch my breath and I
think at some point I injured myself, because now whenever I start to
chuckle I get a shooting pain in my ribs. Figures this group has a killer
sense of humor. We all have some hideous bruises from ice climbing and
maneuvering the drain rocks, and my hands are starting to crack from the
work and the rain and the dry heat. My body is falling apart, but I'm
having the time of my life, and I sleep so well at night.
| This is the iceberg lake, where chunks of the glaciers crack off
and slowly make their way out to sea. It was a beautiful scene, but
unfortunately broken every 10 minutes by the obnoxious deisel engine
of an amphibious tour vehicle. |
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The iceberg lake as the sun sets... |
| The wind was blowing as Val, Will, and I crossed this bridge over
the waterway between the lake and the sea. |
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Some of the ice chunks only made it past the bridge before washing
up on the black sand beaches. Note the incoming storm on the horizon. |
| The ice that washed up looked like crystal- absolutely clear, no
cracks or bubbles or anything. |
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The boys being boys and having rock chucking contests... |
| Skaftafell group photo |
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August 9, 2005
A group of us went to the Hótel this evening to remember what beer tasted
like. It was actually a pretty cool place- a tiny upstairs corner with
a few couches and chairs, dimly lit (in part because some other tourists
were watching a movie projected on a curtain), but comfortable and fun.
We sat around and drank and chatted and laughed, and the evening faded
into night. Eventually all the other guests slipped away, and one of the
bartenders took out an acoustic guitar. She went to the other side of
the curtain and we quietly followed, and she sat down on a stool with
a pile of music and a microphone. She was practicing some songs for an
upcoming performance at a work party, I think. We were still feeling kind
of silly and tried to convince Alec to go up and sing Ace of Spades during
one of her water breaks, but he wasn't feeling it. The girl started off
with "Stairway to Heaven" with her slight accent and soft voice, and it
was beautiful. She sang a few songs in Icelandic, but also some songs
I knew by Dido, Jewel, and a really nice version of Sweet Child O' Mine.
I found myself sitting there in the warmth and darkness with the others,
closing down this hótel bar and listening to a pretty Icelandic girl sing
a Guns 'N' Roses song, and it felt perfect, in that ephemeral, never-again
way.
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You guessed it- more pretty flowers! |
| Lambhagi, a former sheep corral area and home to some of the tallest
trees in Iceland. |
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Before leaving Skaftafell, we roasted two legs of lamb in the turf
charcoal oven we dug behind the hut. Yum. |
| A nice backdrop for a lamb dinner... |
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