A Saturday of Fire & Ice

Saturday morning. After nearly a month of waking late and going to bed after midnight, my schedule is drifting back to what my body craves, and I get up shortly after seven. After a typically fabulous Icelandic hotel breakfast, we pack up and head out of Reykjavik. My phone’s map is being fussy, and finally I decide it’s more hassle than it’s worth. We need to head towards the airport and then catch 42 south; it’s not that hard. I find my way to a major road and follow signs for Keflavik, glorying in the ease I’ve earned on the roads here.

The drive towards the airport isn’t the most exciting, more Newark than travel brochure, but as soon as we turn onto 42, the sun comes out and the landscape turns lunar. Tumbles of volcanic rock, jagged mountains in the distance, rose-gold morning light. We push south, headed for one of the mildly active effusive eruptions along the fissure zone that slashes through the Reykjanes Peninsula in southwestern Iceland. We crest a hill and come in view of Kleifarvatn, a lake at the bottom of a bowl of rocky peaks. Kleifarvatn is fed by neither glacier nor river, instead seeping upwards from the ground and, since the 2000 earthquakes that shook the region, also seeping back down into the ground. In the last twenty years, 20% of the lake has disappeared back from whence it came.

This morning, Kleifarvatn is cold and dark and beautiful. Its shores are coarse black volcanic gravel. The place is mostly empty of humans, just us and another car or two. Signs warning about where to fish and where not to fish indicate the lake is well populated. As we drive, the first gold of sunrise paints the cliffs to our right, and I’m again besotted with the winter light.

The narrow black road winds up and down, around sharp curves, and then drops us down into a broad valley with long midwestern grasses. We see plumes of steam ahead of us and pull into a little parking lot. We’ve stumbled across the Seltún Hot Springs. We step out of the car into bitter wind; it’s the beginning of a day of emptying my sinuses into a series of handkerchiefs. Surely I’ve lost weight on this trip, all of it snot.

The hot springs are fabulous, more condensed than the ones in Geysir, one bubbling, sulfurous mud pool and fumarole after another. The steam billows and coats the wooden boardwalks, freezing in the cold morning. One boardwalk leads up a shallow hill towards a staircase. This is Iceland, so there are no railings. The boardwalk’s surface angles up the hill, and at the same time tilts hard right. A double hazard. It’s not so much coated with ice as infused with it — no hard shell that can crack, just an expanse of hyperslick wood. Robert is wearing solid hiking boots and, though he slides a bit, is able to make it across with relative ease. I, on the other hand, am wearing my fabulous knee-high boots. They are waterproof and sturdy, but have very little tread, and they simply cannot get traction.

The distance to be covered is perhaps ten feet, but every time I put a foot on the section, I do nothing but slide back to where I started. I try once, twice, thrice. A couple is standing ahead of me, on the other side of the gauntlet, watching my travails with both amusement and anticipatory horror. I try a fourth time, a big step forwards along the uppermost edge of the frozen boardwalk, in the hope that sheer determination will prevail over physics.

It does not. I remain upright but begin a slow, inevitable descent down the walkway. “I’m going! I’m going,” I announce, by way of warning to my audience. I want them to understand that I will be setting my weatherproof boot on the sulfur deposits and hyaloclastites below me, not out of disrespect, but because I physically have no other option available to me. The slow-motion slide is gradual enough that I get away with setting just one foot on the ground, using the leverage to step backwards to the flatter and less treacherous boardwalk behind me.

I study the length of icy wood. Robert is over there; I am still over here. It dawns on me: the unfortunate tilt that initially doomed me is also an opportunity. As is the pliability of my boots. I step my left foot onto the very edge of the boardwalk, clenching my foot so the sole of my boot cradles the boards’ woody corners. I shift my weight slightly, and the grip proves solid. My right foot comes forward, likewise perching at the very edge, and still I don’t slide down into the rocky crust. Edge-step, edge-step, edge-step, and then with a careful lunge I’m across the funhouse boardwalk to the flat landing above.

Now I’m ready for mountains and lava and icy rivers; everything else today will be easy. We climb the stairs to an overlook with a stunning view of the hot springs and the boardwalks below. I watch the couple who had been observing me moments ago; their arms windmill as they slip and slide down the icy stretch, legs splayed Charlie Chaplin-style. Past the lookout, there’s a dirt path that is mere mud and ice, and we stroll to a clear mountain stream that’s cascading down the hillside. The sun has just rised above the hills to the east, and if the wind weren’t slicing through my coat and gloves, I might be tempted to tarry. Instead, we find a gravel path leading back down to the parking lot and return to the car, walking past mineral-suffused streams that flow lavender in the bright sunlight.

We continue south and soon see the ocean peeking up above the road. We turn right, then right again, onto a rough gravel road. Not for the first time, I’m grateful for all my time driving primitive back roads in Oregon and Washington, making the hazards of roads like this familiar. We park the car in a smallish lot; I realize the large field beyond us has sometimes served as a vast parking lot, but today there are at most three dozen cars and camper vans. We gear up and follow the wooden signs that point up the hill, bearing the unambiguous directive: “VOLCANO.”

The hill we’re about to climb looks daunting. Robert is faster than I am up the steep sections, but is patient with my steady pace. We’re in that part of the country that makes you think you might have stepped through a portal to Mars, reddish ground strewn with rocks, hills rising to sharp ridges. We come up the first ridge and see what it is we came to see: a river of black lava flows along the valley, creeping towards the ocean, steam rising from fissures along the length of cooled magma. We’re at the tip of the southernmost finger of lava reaching out from the Fagradalsfjall Volcano. Today the effusive eruption is rated at an activity level of 2, “restless.” Needing to let off steam, but not raging hot.

Before we drop down the hill to the lava itself, we continue up and up and up, and up, along the winding path with its occasional patches of trodden snow. We pass enthusiastic Italians, focused Norwegians, breezy Spaniards, athletic Americans. At the top of the hill, we realize we’ve just started the hike, which stretches north for several kilometers more. Tiny people work their way along the ridge to get a better view of the heart of the volcanic system, but we satisfy ourselves with a few minutes standing in the blast of wind, surveying the lava valley below, before turning around.

At the bottom of the ridge we curve down to our right to where the gravely soil butts up against the cooled lava. It smells like the Fourth of July, that hazy scent of burnt out fireworks. As we climb onto the lava itself, I stare across the surface and all I can think of is merengue. The swirls and swoops, the bunched ridges, the long cracks where a swell couldn’t hold, it all looks as if someone whipped up egg whites and then inverted the image, white to black. We take pictures, as you do when you’re standing on cooled lava at the northern edge of the world, but taking pictures seems like such a puny activity when faced with the congealed lifeblood of the planet. I kneel on the hard crust and put my hand down. It feels neither hot nor cold. The surface is gritty like fine sandpaper.

Despite my inclinations, it would be weird to just sit here for an hour. Plus I have to pee like the dickens. So we trudge back up the hill and over the ridge, back down to the port-a-potty and then to the parking lot.

The drive along the southwestern coast is one of my favorite drives on the planet. The clear skies and the recent snow show off the scenery to its best advantage; the mountain peaks are crisp white, the lava sugar dusted, the hump of the glacier clearly visible in the distance. The ocean reaches out to our right, infinite, and then rushes up to explode against the cliffs at Eyrarbakki. Sea foam has frozen in the brackish shallows of the Ölfusá River, frosting the narrow beach as we drive along the causeway.

We stop in Selfoss for lunch (tacos again; I feel like I should branch out so I try shrimp instead of cod, but I need more of that pulled pork) and then do some grocery shopping at the Króner. I love the Bonús and prefer some of their frozen food options, but the Króner is bigger and has overall a wider selection. I am inordinately pleased to have informed opinions about where to do one’s grocery shopping in Selfoss.

It’s a scant hour to sunset, and we’re about to start a hike. After leaving the wetter, warmer coastal lowlands, we’re back in the snowy terrain near the cabin. After clear skies all day, a thin layer of clouds is thickening the horizon, and the sun is about to sink into their haze. Robert wants to try hiking to Brúarfoss, a waterfall close to the cabin; left to my own devices, I would let my inertia and the lateness of the day send me straight home, but I'm happy to oblige him. So here we are in the parking lot, suiting up against the cold.

Thursday’s snow still lies across the entire landscape. On the flat hiking trail, the snow has been trampled and frozen over. We crunch through snow and ice, past the parking lot to the edge of the swift Brúara River, which glints with a mesmerizing silvery sky blue. As soon as we catch sight of the river and begin walking along it, my nerves about hiking this late in the day settle, and it’s Robert who will be prudent and turn us around in a timely fashion. I’m a fool for rivers and once I catch sight of one, will follow it like a lovesick suitor for as long as my legs will carry me.

For a while we crunch over snow along the river’s low banks, splashing through black rills that cut through the ice. We pass rocky rapids and veer away from the river. A bridge of angled rocks leads across a narrow gully. If I lay across them and didn’t mind bruises from the uneven rocks, I could probably touch each side with toes and outstretched fingers; not a tremendous distance, but the films of ice make it treacherous. Iceland isn’t really a “safety first” kind of country. We teeter across the rocky bridge, and the path twists and wanders among low naked trees. We lose sight of the river for a while, and then a growing thunder announces the first waterfall is ahead.

We climb up icy stairs of stone and emerge beside Hlauptungufoss, the first of the three waterfalls on this trail. In front of us, the river splits and narrows and plunges down a crevice between black rocks, the waterfall small but mighty. The Brúara flows down from glacial melt, and right here we see the startling ancient blues of the glacier waters, as if the Arctic itself had liquified. I scurry along the shore to see the waterfall from every angle, thither and yon, in ecstasy. This is my favorite kind of waterfall, intense and intimate. (I have one of those flashes of dislocation: for a moment I’m on the Deschutes River in central Oregon, standing at the base of a cliff on the river bank, at arm’s length and eye level with the terrifying power of Benham Falls. Like standing in the middle of a thundercloud. Awe-struck and so very alive.)

The Brúara plunges down its eternal fall. Despite the cold and the hour, I want either to press on, or to kneel here and worship. Rivers are my church. But the sun is low and it would be foolish to stay longer. When I kneel, it’s to put on my ice cleats, and then we turn around and hike back. We emerge from the winter trees to see the quieter flow of water downstream of the falls. In the gathering twilight, the river has darkened to the color of licorice. I could reach down and devour it, become a wild Icelandic spirit haunting the waters.

Back at the car, I peel off my cleats and turn on the car. It shudders and dies; perhaps the river has touched the battery with an icy finger, trying to wild it. Another turn of the key and it roars to life, munching its fossils, bearing us back to the cabin.

There’s so much more to tell! Snowy hikes through Geysir, a punk museum in a converted public toilet, dinner at Punk Restaurant, lava caves with wobbly tourists, a geothermal power plant with a trippy movie room, the biggest brunch I’ve ever eaten, more waterfalls, a second pass at the Kerið Crater.

But that will have to wait. It’s time for me to turn in for my last Sunday night in the cabin, and get a good night’s sleep for even more adventures this week. Bless bless!