Out There Somewhere
I really can’t remember exactly where we were now. Only the folder in which the raw file lives gives me a clue. Taken three hours after we stopped at a lonely mountain pass in the mysterious east, and at some point later in the evening we parked at Hvalnes lighthouse in the rain, where we boiled some pasta, threw in a few mushrooms before dressing the pesto slathered results with a couple of fried eggs for good measure and additional protein loading before opening a couple of cans of Viking lager and pulling down the shutters for the night. When food is at a premium, you eat whatever’s available to keep your attention focussed on the task at hand. Maybe we were an hour away from the end of that day’s driving. It had been a long journey, and a very wet one at that. I’ve looked at the map, and I can’t quite work it out. And I’m obsessed with maps – I regularly lose myself in them for long periods of time. In the writing of this tale I’ve examined the one of the area several times. We might have been near Starmýri, home to a handful of farms and not much else, but I can’t say so for sure.
Seven hours earlier, we’d returned to the photography trail after playing truant on the good ship Salka in the far north beyond the sixty-sixth parallel at Husavik, where the appearance of four Humpback Whales repaid our spur of the moment investment. After that, the whistle stop tour had taken us on a seemingly endless journey through grey mist that fell softly on the windscreen and clung there determinedly, no matter how much we used the wipers. It still galls me to think of what we missed; what remains there waiting for another visit. We drove carelessly past the enormous Lake Myvatn, barely registering it, while the geothermal pong of Hverir and its multicoloured lunar surface detained us for no more than a few minutes, such was our sense of urgency to head in a south easterly direction. After all, this was day four of a week long adventure. At Egilsstadir, we were but a few miles from the sparsely populated eastern fjords, yet we pressed on, often seeing little through the mist. At times we crept slowly along the seemingly deserted ring road with water to our left, while the opposite side of narrow inlets stayed hidden from sight. Strange to think we’d driven that silent corridor and seen so little of it. It sometimes feels as if we passed it in a dream.
One thing that had caught my eye – that always catches my eye in the flat empty spaces between the mountains and the sea here, was the electricity pylons. They stretch for miles, hundreds of miles and thousands of pylons, going somewhere, seemingly going nowhere. All of these distant corners of the big landscape filled with nothing yet remaining connected by silky threads held aloft by stoical shapes in the gloom. And here, somewhere in those lonely miles between Djúpivogur and Hvalnes we drove past these. And then we turned around and drove back again. The trouble is you can’t just pull up at the side of the road anywhere – not unless you want the driver of a thirty-eight ton lorry to tell you exactly what he thinks of you in his very worst Icelandic.
But I’d seen a pull in before I’d registered the pylons. It’s something you do here if you’re always thinking about opportunities, watching the roadside for somewhere to park safely. Half a mile further along the road we’d found another pull in where we’d turned a hundred and eighty degrees and retraced our tyre treads. And what I do remember is running. Running along the quiet road with my camera bag on my back. The view I’d coveted from the window of the van was going to require some effort to get to, but it would be worth it, I felt. Worth this trot along the ring road in the manner of the marine cadet who didn’t make it through the first week of induction.
I wasn’t there for long before beginning the jog back to the van. Just four handheld snaps, one of which was completely out of focus. That was the first one – maybe I was still recovering from the effort I made to get here. But the elements held promise. The white featureless sky contrasting the darker textures of the land. The waterlogged marsh decorated in a tapestry of white cottongrass that stretched away in all directions. The still pools adding light and presence to the foreground of the frame, and the mountains disappearing into a veil of cloud and mist at the edges of the darkening hinterland. And those wooden sentinels, constantly watching the landscape, marching across the space yet rooted to the ground, no two of them exactly alike. An Icelandic scene to remember. Even if it did take nearly four years to tell the story.
Sometimes it takes that long to get over running three quarters of a mile up and down the road carrying a backpack filled with a camera and three lenses, but the fact that there are still new stories to emerge all these years later seems like a good thing to me.
Out There Somewhere
I really can’t remember exactly where we were now. Only the folder in which the raw file lives gives me a clue. Taken three hours after we stopped at a lonely mountain pass in the mysterious east, and at some point later in the evening we parked at Hvalnes lighthouse in the rain, where we boiled some pasta, threw in a few mushrooms before dressing the pesto slathered results with a couple of fried eggs for good measure and additional protein loading before opening a couple of cans of Viking lager and pulling down the shutters for the night. When food is at a premium, you eat whatever’s available to keep your attention focussed on the task at hand. Maybe we were an hour away from the end of that day’s driving. It had been a long journey, and a very wet one at that. I’ve looked at the map, and I can’t quite work it out. And I’m obsessed with maps – I regularly lose myself in them for long periods of time. In the writing of this tale I’ve examined the one of the area several times. We might have been near Starmýri, home to a handful of farms and not much else, but I can’t say so for sure.
Seven hours earlier, we’d returned to the photography trail after playing truant on the good ship Salka in the far north beyond the sixty-sixth parallel at Husavik, where the appearance of four Humpback Whales repaid our spur of the moment investment. After that, the whistle stop tour had taken us on a seemingly endless journey through grey mist that fell softly on the windscreen and clung there determinedly, no matter how much we used the wipers. It still galls me to think of what we missed; what remains there waiting for another visit. We drove carelessly past the enormous Lake Myvatn, barely registering it, while the geothermal pong of Hverir and its multicoloured lunar surface detained us for no more than a few minutes, such was our sense of urgency to head in a south easterly direction. After all, this was day four of a week long adventure. At Egilsstadir, we were but a few miles from the sparsely populated eastern fjords, yet we pressed on, often seeing little through the mist. At times we crept slowly along the seemingly deserted ring road with water to our left, while the opposite side of narrow inlets stayed hidden from sight. Strange to think we’d driven that silent corridor and seen so little of it. It sometimes feels as if we passed it in a dream.
One thing that had caught my eye – that always catches my eye in the flat empty spaces between the mountains and the sea here, was the electricity pylons. They stretch for miles, hundreds of miles and thousands of pylons, going somewhere, seemingly going nowhere. All of these distant corners of the big landscape filled with nothing yet remaining connected by silky threads held aloft by stoical shapes in the gloom. And here, somewhere in those lonely miles between Djúpivogur and Hvalnes we drove past these. And then we turned around and drove back again. The trouble is you can’t just pull up at the side of the road anywhere – not unless you want the driver of a thirty-eight ton lorry to tell you exactly what he thinks of you in his very worst Icelandic.
But I’d seen a pull in before I’d registered the pylons. It’s something you do here if you’re always thinking about opportunities, watching the roadside for somewhere to park safely. Half a mile further along the road we’d found another pull in where we’d turned a hundred and eighty degrees and retraced our tyre treads. And what I do remember is running. Running along the quiet road with my camera bag on my back. The view I’d coveted from the window of the van was going to require some effort to get to, but it would be worth it, I felt. Worth this trot along the ring road in the manner of the marine cadet who didn’t make it through the first week of induction.
I wasn’t there for long before beginning the jog back to the van. Just four handheld snaps, one of which was completely out of focus. That was the first one – maybe I was still recovering from the effort I made to get here. But the elements held promise. The white featureless sky contrasting the darker textures of the land. The waterlogged marsh decorated in a tapestry of white cottongrass that stretched away in all directions. The still pools adding light and presence to the foreground of the frame, and the mountains disappearing into a veil of cloud and mist at the edges of the darkening hinterland. And those wooden sentinels, constantly watching the landscape, marching across the space yet rooted to the ground, no two of them exactly alike. An Icelandic scene to remember. Even if it did take nearly four years to tell the story.
Sometimes it takes that long to get over running three quarters of a mile up and down the road carrying a backpack filled with a camera and three lenses, but the fact that there are still new stories to emerge all these years later seems like a good thing to me.