home is behind, the world ahead, and there are many paths to tread...
I am not a city person. I learned this two days ago.
It baffles me that I couldn't have figured out where I preferred to be before now, but I guess I just never really thought about it. All I know is that I went on vacation with my family, and I spent the majority of two weeks wandering around big international cities and seeing beautiful buildings and learning interesting things, and I was exhausted every day but mostly content...
And then we went to Iceland, and everything changed.
The first thing I realized was that Reykjavik is not a big international city like Stockholm or St. Petersburg or Copenhagen or even Talinn, Estonia. There's something about the towns in Iceland that just seems so scattered, like little outcroppings of houses growing at the edges of mountains; Reykjavik is just a bigger version of that. It has a college, it has some industry, there's an airport nearby, there used to be a Hard Rock Cafe - but it isn't a European City by any means. Iceland is to Europe as Alaska is to the USA. It's a different universe out there, and it's slower, and beneath every culture and innovation that's reached Iceland's shores you can still feel how ancient the land is. I could feel it even when I went into a tourist shop to buy an overpriced sweater made of Icelandic wool. I could see it in the fog-covered mountains just barely visible over the buildings.
As much as I did love the city itself, one part drunken sea port and one part artsy college town, I really fell in love when we left it behind. The guide picked us up in a van outside our hotel at eight in the morning, and for the next fourteen hours, we were off.
Iceland
is
beautiful.
Full stop.
Whenever we made stops to see a particular waterfall or glacier or beach or lava field, I found myself running around with a stupid grin on my face, climbing on whatever rocks I could, snapping pictures constantly. Like I was high on it. We drove for hours, across over two hundred miles, through dozens of micro-climates with everything from sun to fog to rain. And when we weren't stopped, I was in the back of the van, staring out the window, listing to music in one ear and forgetting to listen to the guide in the other ear, thinking.
You probably aren't surprised to hear that the whole landscape reminded me of Lord of the Rings.
I had brought my copy of Fellowship along - not that I was able to concentrate on reading at all, but I had it open in my lap, and I kept reading the song I quoted in the post title (the same one Pippin sang in the movie version of Return of the King). It made me think of traveling in an older sense of the word, in a time when it really meant something to take a step outside your door and have an adventure. We do it all the time without thinking about it, these days. We can book a tour one day, and the next day find ourselves standing at a glacier two hundred miles down the coast. The characters in Lord of the Rings don't have that luxury - maybe you get a horse, but most of the time it's just you and your own feet and the long road stretching away from you. It's that effort that makes it all the more beautiful. It's dirty and dangerous, and I'm definitely not in the right shape to be doing that kind of walking all the time, but I like to think that in that world, I would be. And in this world, I could be.
It's about this point that I started having the crazy thought that maybe, someday, I could live in Iceland. Maybe this is the place I belong, damn the rules, damn the language barrier. I've never felt to instantly connected to a place - I've never visited somewhere and thought to myself, yes, someday I'll be back here. Maybe there's a reason for that.
Then again, there are plenty of reasons not to live in Iceland (my family, my friends, cheeseburgers that taste good), so maybe not. But I know I'll be back there, and I'll keep coming back, whenever I am able.
Because when I look out my bedroom window right now, and I can't see past the trees at the edge of my yard, all I want is to be back there again. And I've never felt anything like that before.
It baffles me that I couldn't have figured out where I preferred to be before now, but I guess I just never really thought about it. All I know is that I went on vacation with my family, and I spent the majority of two weeks wandering around big international cities and seeing beautiful buildings and learning interesting things, and I was exhausted every day but mostly content...
And then we went to Iceland, and everything changed.
The first thing I realized was that Reykjavik is not a big international city like Stockholm or St. Petersburg or Copenhagen or even Talinn, Estonia. There's something about the towns in Iceland that just seems so scattered, like little outcroppings of houses growing at the edges of mountains; Reykjavik is just a bigger version of that. It has a college, it has some industry, there's an airport nearby, there used to be a Hard Rock Cafe - but it isn't a European City by any means. Iceland is to Europe as Alaska is to the USA. It's a different universe out there, and it's slower, and beneath every culture and innovation that's reached Iceland's shores you can still feel how ancient the land is. I could feel it even when I went into a tourist shop to buy an overpriced sweater made of Icelandic wool. I could see it in the fog-covered mountains just barely visible over the buildings.
As much as I did love the city itself, one part drunken sea port and one part artsy college town, I really fell in love when we left it behind. The guide picked us up in a van outside our hotel at eight in the morning, and for the next fourteen hours, we were off.
Iceland
is
beautiful.
Full stop.
Whenever we made stops to see a particular waterfall or glacier or beach or lava field, I found myself running around with a stupid grin on my face, climbing on whatever rocks I could, snapping pictures constantly. Like I was high on it. We drove for hours, across over two hundred miles, through dozens of micro-climates with everything from sun to fog to rain. And when we weren't stopped, I was in the back of the van, staring out the window, listing to music in one ear and forgetting to listen to the guide in the other ear, thinking.
You probably aren't surprised to hear that the whole landscape reminded me of Lord of the Rings.
I had brought my copy of Fellowship along - not that I was able to concentrate on reading at all, but I had it open in my lap, and I kept reading the song I quoted in the post title (the same one Pippin sang in the movie version of Return of the King). It made me think of traveling in an older sense of the word, in a time when it really meant something to take a step outside your door and have an adventure. We do it all the time without thinking about it, these days. We can book a tour one day, and the next day find ourselves standing at a glacier two hundred miles down the coast. The characters in Lord of the Rings don't have that luxury - maybe you get a horse, but most of the time it's just you and your own feet and the long road stretching away from you. It's that effort that makes it all the more beautiful. It's dirty and dangerous, and I'm definitely not in the right shape to be doing that kind of walking all the time, but I like to think that in that world, I would be. And in this world, I could be.
It's about this point that I started having the crazy thought that maybe, someday, I could live in Iceland. Maybe this is the place I belong, damn the rules, damn the language barrier. I've never felt to instantly connected to a place - I've never visited somewhere and thought to myself, yes, someday I'll be back here. Maybe there's a reason for that.
Then again, there are plenty of reasons not to live in Iceland (my family, my friends, cheeseburgers that taste good), so maybe not. But I know I'll be back there, and I'll keep coming back, whenever I am able.
Because when I look out my bedroom window right now, and I can't see past the trees at the edge of my yard, all I want is to be back there again. And I've never felt anything like that before.