That’s Not a Cloud

When you wake up in Iceland in November and it’s full sunlight outside… you’ve overslept.

It’s Saturday morning, 10:55am. Checkout is at 11am. I call the front desk to let them know I overslept and attempt, in my foggy state, to pack down as quickly as possible. I make oatmeal in my travel cup, then remember that I’ve just taken my thyroid hormone and can’t eat for another hour. I stuff pajamas and books and cords into my duffels, wildly grateful for the ingrained travel habits that let me do this with reasonable results despite operating at about 20% brain capacity. I load up my bags like a pack mule, do a sweep of the room — wardrobe, bed, bathroom — and shuffle down the hallway to the elevator.

I’m in my car by 11:25. The plan for the day is to load up on some groceries and head out to the cabin in Bláskógabyggð. (For the linguistically inclined, here’s more about the Icelandic letter ð.) I chart my course, adjusting for the fact that I did not get up at 9:30 as planned.

As with most incidents, there are multiple contributing factors to my oversleeping this morning. The triggering event was probably that I took a Unasom at 2:45am, which knocked me out so hard that I slept right through my alarm without twitching a muscle. But I took a Unasom because I’d fallen asleep, then woke up 20 minutes later with an anxiety attack, the first I’ve had in a while. The anxiety attack itself had multiple sources, not least of which is the general upheaval of going from hotel to hotel, disrupting all my routines, and baffling my body clock. It feels important to mention this because it’s so tempting to romanticize travel. I do it myself when I’m planning a trip. But there’s always a cost, both to the traveler and to the destination. Like psychedelics and meditation, travel rearranges us in ways that sound super cool from a distance but can be awful in the moment. The benefits may win out (though not always); still, there are nights like this, where the animal body forgets the pleasure and feels only alone and afraid.

So I took a Unasom, and soothed myself to sleep, and woke up 5 minutes before checkout. Now, with a night of drugged sleep behind me, the anxiety has faded but not disappeared. I go to the same Nettó store that I scoped out yesterday and load up on more groceries: eggs, mackerel, bulgur, apples, salt. Then I’m off into the sunny day, speeding along narrow roads towards the interior of the country.

I pass through Þingvellir National Park (aka Thingvellir), pausing to take in views of the rift valley and the wide lake. The lichen-covered lava formations remind me happily of Mt. St. Helens. I arrive early at the cottage, again too early for check-in, and decide to head south to the city of Selfoss to kill some time. It’s about a forty minute drive from the cabin and is the nearest town of any size.

The drive to Selfoss covers 55 kilometers of brown scrubby trees, dark blue rivers, and looming mesas. The landscape here, like the city of Reykjavik, is strange to my eye. My mood is still muted enough that I recognize its beauty but cannot revel in it. In Selfoss I drive aimlessly, exploring tidy neighborhoods of small houses and the occasional pedestrian. I pass the Bobby Fischer Center — the chess grandmaster is buried nearby — and grocery stores that loudly proclaim they’re open every day. Ravens are everywhere, following their own rounded beaks as they fly low across the roads. At three o’clock I turn around and head back to Uthlíd Cottages to check in.

My host is a cheerful Icelander named Thorsteinn. He points out the little restaurant and convenience store at the main building, then gets in his SUV and leads me to the cabin, which is right next door to his own. “The aurora forecast is very good for tonight,” he tells me, and I agree, telling him they might even be visible in Portland. He gives me a quick tour — the cabin is delightfully tiny, so it doesn’t take long — and leaves me to settle in.

I open the blinds and stand at the window, taking in the view. The melancholy that’s been clogging my body drains away. I have a bed, a kitchen, a place to read, room for yoga and workouts. Electric kettle, small but functional fridge, vacation home cabinet with kids’ drawings and worn DVDs. The hill behind me hides most of the other cabins from sight, but I can see Thorsteinn’s place next door and know I’m not completely on my own. In front of me is a field with placid sheep munching their way across the grass, wide bodies anchoring them against the wind. They baaaa their sheeply news to each other. I unpack and then stand at the window, soaking it in. Content. I really am a hobbit at heart.

Some hours later, I’ve eaten my dinner of mackerel and pasta; I’ve made a cup of rooibos and read more Halldór Laxness; now it’s time to put on a bathing suit and try the hot tub. My daydream about this trip was to soak in the hot tub in the cold, watching the Northern Lights. It’s not really that cold, barely below 40 degrees Fahrenheit, but the skies are partly clear and the aurora forecast is splendid, so I put on a bikini and a parka and go outside.

The hot tub is hot. It takes me a few minutes to be able to submerge myself entirely, and then I have a few short minutes of enjoyment until I start feeling overheated. The stars are dense and sharp, although I can’t quite make out the wash of the Milky Way itself. I worry that the high wispy clouds overhead will obscure the view of any aurora. The cabin is remote, but there’s still a fair amount of light pollution, which isn’t helping. I start to feel the mild queasiness that I usually experience after any length of time in a hot tub.

I spend a slippery few minutes trying to balance myself half out of the water, then realize how annoyed I would be if I drowned myself in a hot tub my first night in the cabin. I settle back down, sweating. No Northern Lights; maybe it’s those dang clouds. Oh well. I go inside, woozy from the heat, and take a cold shower. (I’m not alone in my low tolerance for hot water; some of my cousins have a similar reaction to hot tubs and saunas. I gave up on hot yoga after almost keeling over from a forward fold. How I survived a decade in Florida I’ll never understand.)

For the next little while I putter, checking the window occasionally to see if there’s anything green and vivid happening in the sky. Shortly past midnight, I’m reading a story featuring the aurora borealis when I think, Hm… I should probably check outside again. I throw on my parka and snow boots and step out onto the deck. I glance up at the sky while texting with my cousin Miriam, comparing our experiences in hot tubs vs. geothermal spas. At half past midnight, I text her: “No aurora here yet. I’m hanging out hoping….” I’m about to tell her that there are some high thin clouds that might be blocking the view when the clouds start to move and JESUS FUCKING CHRIST IN A HANDBASKET THAT’S NOT A CLOUD THAT’S THE AURORA BOREALIS IT’S HAPPENING.

What I thought was a cloud directly above me begins to swirl and undulate, creamer in the coffee of the sky; at first it loops and whorls directly above me, and then begins to stretch and flow. My heart rises; I want to laugh, or cry, but all I can do is stand looking straight up and say, “Oh! Oh! Oh!” A shooting star streaks across the sky and I laugh aloud at the abundance of it. What I did not expect was the numinous joy, the sharp awareness of communing with a storm of particles in the upper atmosphere. I think about Dust in His Dark Materials books; I think about the space physics class I loved in college; but mostly I spin and pace on the deck. Marvelling.

After a few minutes I have the wit to let Miriam know what’s happening. I’m torn between wanting to share the experience with someone and wanting to sink fully into it. I alternate between craning my neck to stare above me and dashing off frantic updates on my phone, like a dog trying to catch every squirrel at once. The constellations are bright: Orion nocks his bow at the lights, Taurus rubs his back up against the milky whiteness, and the Pleiades could reach down and dip their fingers into the flow. On the other side of the aurora river, the Big Dipper is as bright as I’ve ever seen it, full to overflowing. After a while, the weather that felt too warm for the hot tub starts to feel too cold, and I’m driven inside in a rush to put on my hat and gloves and get a blanket. Back on the deck, I set up a chair and lean back, taking in the show. I feel like a mud-grubbing river creature who suddenly looks up and sees sunlight in the water, and realizes what a magical flow is happening around it all the time.

Almost an hour later, the flow has started to even out and turn; directly above me, the aurora is curving back to the north. I stand up from my chair, turn around, and gasp. Behind me, a classic borealis sheet is fluttering in the northern sky. I pull out my phone and try the camera’s night mode to see if it will pick up the image; to my amazement, it does. When I look at the photos later on my phone, I discover that what has been faint white to my eyes is showing up as vivid green in the photos.

The sheets last only a few minutes before fading into a vague shimmer. I go inside, punchy from the last hour, and settle into my cozy bed for the first almost-normal night’s sleep since I arrived.

It’s Sunday night, and I’m super casual about another night of experiencing the Northern Lights.

After a dinner of mushroom omelette and rye bread (when adventuring, seek routine), I put my bathing suit on, throw on parka and snow boots, and go back outside to try the hot tub again. The moment I step outside I know that I’m seeing the aurora, still faint white but distinct in the sky above. It’s colder tonight, windy and biting. I haul back the top of the hot tub, clip it in place, and step into the water.

HOT! Hot hot hot hot hot, but I crouch into it anyway and sooner than I expect, my body is accepting the heat. I work my way down into the water. The wind rattles through the trees beside the deck, a romantic Brontë desolation. Just a few degrees cooler than last night, but the wind makes all the difference in tempering the geothermal heat, and I lie back in the water.

You may have beat me to this conclusion, but it’s at this point that I realize my wish to sit in the hot tub under the Northern Lights was granted the moment I stepped into the water last night. What I initially took for a high wispy cloud, I now realize, was the early stages of the aurora. I was so caught up in my expectations, so cautious of disappointment, that I dismissed the aurora when I saw it. No, not dismissed: I was annoyed with it. I saw the aurora and was frustrated because I thought it was a cloud preventing me from seeing the aurora. I let that realization soak in with the heat of the water and have to laugh at myself; this is an object lesson with wide applications across my life.

The shapes are more subtle tonight, but the light is brighter; a few times, in the thick wash of light to the west, I see the tinge of green with my naked eye. Above me, a streaming arc of lights curves away to the east and north; to my right is a faint shimmering wall of light.

Now and again I stand up on the hot tub seat to peer over the wall of the deck and see if there’s a better show on the horizon, shivering happily. Over the course of half an hour, the wind dies down. The aurora fades. Eventually I tire of the heat and take myself inside to rinse off and hydrate.

The rest of the night I step outside every twenty minutes or so in case the show starts up again, but the astral river has calmed. I putter, wash dishes, read a bit, and eventually take myself to bed.

Tomorrow I’ll return to work, but instead of my usual leafy view of Goose Hollow I’ll be watching the sheep in the field below, clouds skimming the glacier, rain falling on the mountains. A good Monday.