Sheep, and the Glories of Northern Light

There is a particular smell that tells me I'm walking into a really good European grocery store. It's produce and packaging and something else I can't define that gives me a jolt of a high when the doors swoosh open. It's what I smell when I step into the Bonús in Selfoss, and my step becomes a little jauntier.

And indeed, it's a good grocery store. I load up on broccoli, sweet potato, ginger, peppers, mushrooms; skyr and shrimp; frozen veggies and blueberries; tomato mackerel in bulk. They have garlic salt but not garlic powder, so I pass on by (but regret it later). Because I have a bunch of veggies that I won't be able to scan, I make a tactical decision to wait for the cashier instead of doing self-checkout, then later realize that the machines usually have an English option so I probably could have navigated. I make it through the line without using any English, which isn't much of a feat since all I say is "hallo" and "takk" (thank you), but it's better than nothing. If I'm lucky, next time they'll ask "kvittun?" (receipt) and I can say "nei." Baby steps.

I also pick up the most novel sandwich I can find: smoked lamb and bean salad. It's quite tasty and, although not exactly familiar, it feels like it would fit in nicely at a midwestern potluck. I munch on it in the car after filling up the gas tank with diesel on the way out of Selfoss.

I have no earthly idea how much money I've just spent.

The exchange rate is currently 1 USD to 129.69 Icelandic Króna. My brain, which loves abstract mathematics but has never been the best at basic calculations, is now jet lagged and overstimulated, so doing on-the-fly monetary conversions of that exchange rate is simply not going to happen. I've given up on making grocery store judgments based on price, and I know fuel is over-the-top expensive but I need to it get from here to there, so why obsess over it?

Thus fueled, I drive north to the cabin. It's about four in the afternoon, roughly an hour till sunset, and the shadows are long. The drive that, just yesterday, seemed stark and foreboding is now an ecstasy of light and beauty: the rivers a deep Arctic blue, the distant mountains jagged and snow-capped, the rich gold of late afternoon imbuing sheep and horses and cabins and scrub with a luminous magic.

Two mornings later, the sun will know that I'm about to rhapsodize about it and will banish everything else from the sky except a few little artist's smudges of cloud above the mountains. Each day, the sun rises just after nine, peeking above the eastern edge of the southern sky, and makes a low arc before setting shortly after five.

When I was ten, we moved to Tel Aviv for two years. My dad explained to us that twilight was very short in Israel because we were so close to the equator. Having grown up mostly in Maryland, it didn't seem that big a deal to me; years later, when I moved to Portland, I would realize that my dad had grown up in Seattle and Anchorage, and was accustomed to the lingering twilights of northern lattitudes. I think of that while I'm here in Iceland, when the first hint of sunrise starts early and the sunset colors fade ever so slowly over the course of an hour or more after the sun has departed.

On a clear day, mornings and evenings are ridiculous; long shadows, rich colors, the luminous gold of my favorite times of day drawn out over hours. Noon is a stranger affair, the sun weirdly low at midday. My eye is adjusting to it, but the first few days especially, the noon light seemed somehow wrong. As if there were a partial eclipse, the light too thin. If I make a thumbs-up sign and hold my arm out, aligning the top of my fist with the horizon, the sun just barely crests my thumb-tip at noon.

But the brain is remarkable, and already I'm starting to make sense of this different light. It doesn't hurt that I'm as relaxed as I've been in months. Last night I went out for my nightly soak in the hot tub. No aurora this time, but the cold clear sky had a different treat in store: the Milky Way, faint but distinct. More shooting stars, enough that I made wishes promiscuously, raining down blessings on everyone I love.

The sheep in the field below me are placid today, though Sunday was rowdier. I looked outside Sunday afternoon when I heard a loud honking and saw a silver SUV rollicking through the field, horn tooting, driving a cluster of sheep towards the center of the field. From the other direction, a man walked slowly while his sheepdog merrily encircled another group of sheep, nipping and barking and pursuing the panicked ram who tried to flee the scene.

Meanwhile, a jet black ram had found his way out of the enclosure and trotted along the fence in front of my cabin. He seemed to be a sheep divided, wanting both to rejoin his compatriots and to forge his own path in the wild yonder this side of the fence. The SUV came up along the inside of the fence and honked him along the field's edge until the driver could jump out and haul him back inside the gate.

Today is the last sunny day in the forecast for a while. I'll relish it, and will be equally pleased to get some clouds and snow. Each day I sit at my table, glancing up at the sheep in the field, the lake in the valley, the glacier peeking over the low mountains to the southeast. I sit on my Zoom calls and scribble in my notebooks as if I were home, but it's hard to get quite as worked up about mundane details as I usually would. I joke with my colleagues that if things get too stressful I'll just close my laptop and soak in the hot tub for 15 minutes, but really it's the light and the sheep and the glacier that are changing how I move through my day, these reminders of the relative size of my concerns.

I'm trying to soak that in, to carry it with me. As I carry you with me, dear readers. Thank you all for accompanying me on this journey. It's a joy to have you along.