The Light, the Light, the Light!

The light, the light, oh the light!

Sunday noon, I’m driving out of Reykjavik towards Thingvellir, gorging myself on the views. The light is butter and the sun is slathering it on the grass, the creeks, the mountains, rich golden smears. It coats my eyeballs, thickening everything I see. Even the coarse black gravel is unctuous. Golden butter light melts over the silvery green of moss on volcanic rock, pools in the edges of the lake, runs down the edges of a tiny red cabin with white trim. Dear readers, I stop my car and raise my phone and try to capture it for you, but cameras can’t taste this bounty, the wide sweep of the landscape, the white clouds roiling over the mountains, the blade of the wind. Photos don’t show my heart rising in my chest, the threads of familiarity that braid into this road every time I make this trip.

So I put my phone away and I drive and I drive and I drive.

The drives here have been wondrous. I drove Carly to the airport last Thursday morning; the ride there took us up through Thingvellir not long after sunrise, through snow-covered lava fields under rosy clouds. I dropped her at the airport and got back in the car — what joy to drop someone at the Keflavik airport and get back in my car! My heart sang as I started up the Tucson: I don’t have to leave yet. I took the southern route home, through the bulbous moss-covered lava, past the Blue Lagoon, along the starkly beautiful southern coast. Clouds filtered the sun to a burnished gold, turning everything into a Miyazaki film. The drive was so stunning that at times I couldn’t contain it. Stack overflow, mind blown, brain swirling with thoughts and ideas instead of taking it all in. It occurred to me: I need to restart my meditation practice. Not for the calm, but so I can hold more. So I can stay wide open to all of this. High intensity interval training for the sense of wonder.

Friday night, I drove into Reykjavik, leaving at sundown and driving through the long twilight. As I approached Thingvellir, I looked to my left and gasped at the biggest moon I ever saw. Death star huge. Half lit by sunlight and half glowing with earthshine, nestled in low clouds. It had just stepped above the horizon and it’s a miracle I didn’t wreck the car from sneaking lusty glances over my shoulder. The landscape was all silver-blue, but the moon cast a warm wheaten glow, bold as you please. It glinted off rivers, threw down a long reflection in the lakes, gilded the snowy hilltops.

There’s more to tell, not least the mind-bending experience of spending eight hours in a tattoo parlor getting a raven inked into my arm. But today it’s snowing and I took up a bunch of my writing time tromping around Geysir in the fresh whiteness. I regret nothing. As I write this, the snow is so thick I can barely see across the field to the main road; the flakes are the size and heft of popcorn. Hiding more and more of the grass, erasing the sheep. I’m about to turn my attention to product briefs and roadmaps, work that is made romantic by the winter scene.