I gave myself a present on my last travel for work of one night in Iceland[1]. Since it was May, it didn’t feel like a night[2].
I had never seen flowers[3] around Reykjavik before[4], and that brings home the thought – how can I think I really know Iceland? I have spent a few days there over the years. One night added because of a missed connection. Two days tacked on to a family trip to the UK. Thanksgiving in 2019 the year our family spring break vacation fell apart. Here and there, I squeeze a day or two in and revel in the beauty of the stark landscape.
The drive from the airport looks like the pictures we see from other worlds. That is – until you pass a golf course that can be seen between the craggy rocks that stretch from the road to the ocean[5]. Then, arriving in Reykjavik, you enter a town with outskirts and a main street and shopping malls.
On this trip, I took a walk around a park that included biking trails, carnival rides, lots of athletic fields, a zoo, a botanical garden, and stretches of grass. I don’t know for sure, but I don’t think grass lawns are exactly native to Iceland. So where did the dandelions and daffodils, which are scattered along these stretches of American looking lawns, come from[6]?
When I start waxing poetic about Iceland, as I often do, I am asked, “Why do you like Iceland so much?” I used to pick three or four things to tell people – the water is incredible, the air is amazing, the light feels right any time of year. These are all true statements. And yet, the truth is I have no idea why I love Iceland, but I am beginning to figure it out.
As I took my long walk seeing families of Reykjavik on a Saturday morning take their kids to soccer or ice skating or just for a stroll in the very sunny not windy day, I started thinking that I don’t know Iceland at all[7]. I haven’t made a friend there. I have never stayed in someone’s home there. What people in Iceland eat regularly is a mystery to me. On our first family vacation there, I asked our guide how Icelanders could afford to go out with food and drink so expensive, and he explained they really don’t. The restaurants and bars, he said, were mainly for tourists.
The thing about travel is that it brings an unexpected level of anonymity. You can choose to talk to your seat mate[8] on a plane or ignore them in favor of the entertainment screen in front of you. You can choose to offer a helping hand or turn a blind eye. Someone may remember you, but you are unlikely to form a connection.
Sometimes, you encounter something that reminds you of home – like dandelions scattered across the hillside – and it isn’t bad. It is a connection to what you left behind and what you will return to. An internal connection if you will. As I took pictures of patches of dandelions, I wanted to know is it the surge or tourism that made the streets and parks of Reykjavik have touches from home? Or did Iceland look to other climates and bring back what they could? Did the daffodils make it there from Holland? Or did they come from America?
That afternoon, on the way back to the airport, I saw something else new as I gazed at the golf course. I wish I had taken a picture of it – a man mowing the lawn with a large mower he didn’t sit on. He was controlling it with a joystick like device. A remote control sitting mower.
One week later from the time of that walk, I am home in my kitchen. Dandelion and daffodils are mostly done for the year in Virginia. The trip to Germany and Iceland feels like it was 3 years ago not 7 days, and I am already planning my next adventure to Iceland. This time, I will go with Husband for a mid-life honeymoon of sorts. The plans for this trip only include the things we want to do, and I look forward to the letters I will discover inside myself while I take that trip.
I like Iceland for the sensory reasons I listed above, but I also like Iceland because it is both safe and an adventure. When I go, I am both myself and someone new. When I am there, I feel competent and challenged and amazed that this is who I am.
And that, perhaps, is why I love to travel so much. Exploring the new but keeping the feeling that I am ok just as I am. Finding the things that feel right when you are not in your comfortable environment with all the distractions and responsibilities that come with adulting.
I am lucky that my work travels put me on this path, found by means of my own choices, to discover the beauty and the strangeness and the familiarity of Iceland. And I really do love it.
I wonder if someday I will be done with Iceland, and it will be time to find a new place to sink into with joy and wonder and hectic travel. For now – no. I am content to keep transiting through Iceland and adding a day or night when I can. It keeps me thinking and growing – just like those dandelions and daffodils – coming back every year.
[1] Not Bangkok, but yes I did hear the music in my head.
[2] 19 hours of daylight right now, so it felt like a long afternoon.
[3] Yes, Dandelions are flowers to me.
[4] I had seen scrubby bushes with purple blooms dot the countryside, but those weren’t the flowers I grew up with.
[5] This was new to me. A golf course. In Iceland.
[6] I suppose I could google it, but the truth is the question is more important than the answer here.
[7] Just like Judy Collins’ clouds.
[8] Or tour guide