Unexpected Wonderland

It’s a complete accident that I’ve ended up in a cabin overlooking the single most popular tourist route in Iceland.

I did almost no research before coming here, partly because of my overwhelmed busy-ness, partly wanting this to be a journey of slow discovery rather than obligatory box-ticking. So even during Sunday’s trip to Gulfoss, I still didn’t realize that the cabin isn’t near the famed Golden Circle, it’s on the Golden Circle. The road I’ve been learning as I go back and forth to Selfoss and to Reykjavik is the famed tourist route.

So. It’s Tuesday morning. I go for a drive to make sure the car battery stays charged. I get to the end of the driveway and decide that, since yesterday we turned right, today I’ll turn left. I retrace our route towards Gulfoss, remembering the steaming hot springs we passed Sunday morning. It’s only a few minutes from the cabin. I park the car by the visitor’s center and walk across the street, where a few small pools bubble gently behind a wire fence. I study the bright moss, the colorful sediment in the heated water that streams out from under the fence. There’s a path of black gravel leading through a copse, but it’s cold and I haven’t brought a coat, so I wander along the fence for a minute and turn around to leave. I’m puzzled by all the tourists we saw here yesterday as we drove past. Geysir. Huh. Doesn’t seem like much.

The next morning, Carly wants to go for a hike. We drive the seven minutes to Geysir and retrace my steps from the day before, this time following the path through the copse and up the hill beyond. We’re half expecting it to dead end at every turn, but the path goes up, and up; branches and goes up still further. We peer down at farms and cabins and a twisting river. It’s not snowing, exactly, but there’s snow in the air.

We reach the very top of the hill. The outlook on one side gives a view of the neighboring low mountains, a craggy ravine, and the farmland below. We cross to the other side, walk down the steps of the overlook, and stare down at the full scope of the Geysir park.

I have badly underestimated this place.

An entire field of geysers and bubbling hot springs spreads before us. At the eastern end of the park is the wide, flat water of Geysir itself, the source of the word “geyser” and a now mostly dormant gusher whose tallest recorded eruption of 170 meters (560 feet, observed in 1845 by Robert Bunsen of Bunsen burner fame) make Old Faithful look like a schoolyard water fountain. A short walk away is the Strokkur geyser, which erupts every five to ten minutes. Although Strokkur usually sends boiling water up a modest 20 or so meters (60ish feet), it can occasionally erupt to twice that height.

Scattered around the two geysers are dozens of small and medium pools of hot water, some of them bubbling merrily, some of them serene. Billowing steam blows off the entire field. We survey this wonderland from the hilltop, amazed, before working our way down the steep hill to explore.

We pass pools of hot water, rims crusted with silica, runoff streaking green and white on the downslope. We step into a wide bog of terracotta mud that leads from the hot springs higher up the slope down to the main area at the base of the hill. Red water pools in the constellations of bootprints, and mud slurps at our boots as we pick our way across — my boots will be edged in crimson for the rest of the week. We gawk at hot springs small and large, one with icy blue silica, another that looks so inviting we wish we could miniaturize ourselves and dive in. Geysir itself is vast and quiet, but neighboring Strokkur sends up a jet of hot water as we walk past, delighting everyone. On the way out we pass burbling streams of steaming water, mud pots boiling like a witch’s brew, small hot springs puffing in the cold air.

When I get back to the cabin and start reading up on what I just saw, I finally realize where I am. Now that I know what I’m seeing, I notice that every morning I see a steady stream of vans and buses, touring vans jacked up on huge tires, Jeeps and Land Rovers, all bearing their tourist cargo along the road on the far side of the sheep’s meadow. In the early afternoon they speed the other direction, heading back to Reykjavik by way of Thingvellir, or along the southern route to Hveragerdi. The Golden Circle is not terribly circular; it looks more like a shark drawn on an Etch-a-sketch. Reykjavik is at the shark’s blunt nose, and in Uthlid we’re at the tail, where tourists must venture off the otherwise continuous road into an offshoot with the route’s most popular two attractions, Gulfoss and Geysir. When I look at the map, I realize I’ve driven the entire Circle, and have stopped at all the major sites. The accidental tourist indeed.

There’s more to tell, of course. But as I write this, it’s late on a Friday and I’ve already driven the top half of the Golden Circle tonight, from Uthlid back to Reykjavik, and it’s time to shower and turn in early. Tomorrow I’ll walk downtown to White Hill Tattoo and get a raven inscribed on my arm. My COVID corvid. It’ll be a long session, and I’m looking forward to the sharp, clean pain of the tattoo needle. Being pushed to my edge and held there, and having something beautiful to show for it.

Deep thanks to everyone who has supported me this week, in so many ways. My dad was an extraordinary person, a gentle giant; and although few of my readers knew him personally, you all know him through me. My obsession with bookstores, my openness to experience, my passion for languages, my gift-giving acumen, my preference for self checkout. Tomorrow’s tattoo session meant I didn’t have a drink tonight, but next week I’ll get a rum cocktail in Dad’s honor; my friend Robert and I will toast our fathers; and I’ll continue to carry him, and do my best to reflect the best of him to each of you.