torrents of water

It was the biggest rainfall in Madison's history. Flood waters poured out of nowhere all evening long and continue to cause disruptions and turmoil now, ten hours after the last raindrop fell from the sky.

Ed the sailor came back just before midnight. It took a good many hours for us to review the last month and to reconnect. Before dawn, we fell asleep, exhausted but content.

In the morning, we survey the damage. We are on a hill so you'd never know there was a record setting rain! The cheepers are happy, Stop Sign is complaining that he wants more food. The flowers? Well, it's August. What can you expect! You gotta love abundance in disarray!






(A few lilies remain. I trim them in appreciation, for a season well lived!)






Ed is on a sailor's schedule: eat meals when the weather and conditions permit, not when the clock says it's breakfast time. I threaten to disenfranchise him from my morning routine! Each post does not have to have a photo of this meal. I am still capable of changing things around here, on Ocean!

Or am I?





A day for me begins with as beautiful a breakfast as you can muster. It just does.


The next three days have long been on the books as a farmhouse vacation for Snowdrop and Sparrow. It's the little guy's first set of overnights here and though he is rather chill about it...





...Snowdrop is extremely excited "to show him around."

I pick her up at school and I offer some adventure possibilities, but really, she just wants to come to the farmhouse and watch Sparrow navigate this place as only a two month old can. But first, an inspection of the tomatoes. Accompanied by Tomato. Who, by the way, has been nibbling on the tomatoes.






(Running after Henny, who will never let anyone catch up with her!)






("Can we play store? I'm selling magazines!")






("Is my sister home??)







Dinnertime: A hodgepodge of Snowdrop favorites.






So happy to have Ed home again!






Snowdrop and Sparrow. They roll in and out of play encounters. He's into her, she's into him, then -- just focused on just his toys. Something distracts her. He listens to the sound of her all over the room. Finally he wants someone to pay attention to him. She does. With vigor. Perhaps too much vigor. Or maybe just right? He is her friend. She is his friend.






It's dark now. Ed goes out to put away the cheepers. A real sign that he is home! She insists on going out with him. They come back waving their flashlights, pretending that the moon followed them indoors.







Bed time. Prolonged, too late, but of course I'm just getting the hang of putting the two of them down. Snowdrop, I can't carry you, I have to carry Sparrow.
Really?
Well, let me try...






Good night sweet children of the world. Good night, their parents. Good night Ed.


And so it seems like I quickly picked up the routines and pace of the weeks gone by, no? Does a trip far away really change you?

I can't speak for humanity, but for me, it does. Being amidst people who live with different allegiances, different traditions, different histories is so crucially important to me. As I get older, I get more cautious in my orbit: I no longer plan trips to places that are so different from my own that I feel myself to be lost. That belonged to a different decade. Still, when I go away, when I cross borders, I stop expecting the people around me to be as they are back home.  Forty-eight hours in Iceland may not have been much, but as always with these trips, it pushed me forward. And that's such a good thing.

everyone is returning

It was a very short night: the sun sets at around 9:30 in Iceland right now. I stay up far later than that, writing and trying to decide how much of a cushion I should give myself for travel to the airport the next day: should I take the bus that leaves at 5:30? Or one an hour later?

In the end, I sleep just a handful of hours and set out for the bus terminal at 5 a.m. The sun is about to rise, but that's hard to see: the clouds are back, the drizzle is just barely holding off.

I walk up the street of my 48-hour home...






Then I turn toward the Pond. Standing on a bridge to take this picture, I have the feeling of having done this once before. Only then the Pond was frozen.





A lot can and does happen in the span of 45 years. I never wondered back then if I would return here, as a retired person. The very idea of being a senior is somewhat frightening when you're just twenty!

I walk along the road that borders the Pond. Look at this! Doesn't it seem like I'm on a predawn walk to the commuter train in Paris? The statue standing in a bed of flowers says yes, but the houses in the background --  that's pure Reykjavik.





The rain is holding off, but just barely. People are saying that Saturday was the nicest day of the whole summer. There had been almost no sun at all this year. How can I complain about any of the petty details of travel when I just happened to be in Reykjavik for this glorious occasion? And though it was cloudy, it never even rained while we rode the Icelandics for a a good several hours yesterday.

I am lucky.

When I arrive at the airport, I'm extremely glad that I chose the earlier bus. The security line rivals ones I'd seen in Chicago! Every flight from this country appears to leave at dawn!

The rains come down, but my plane leaves without delay. Forty-eight hours after landing here, I am taking off. And in six and a half hours, I am in Minneapolis again.

But it is my home state, Wisconsin, that causes woes and worries: just as storms broke over the south-central portion  of the state on the day I was to leave for Reykjavik, so, too, today, torrential downpours and storms roll in and threaten everyone's return.

I say "everyone's," because circumstances conspired to have us all return exactly on this day, this evening, to Madison. The young family, after spending a long weekend in Chicago, is returning home. And Ed, along with some of his sailor friends too, tells me he'll be home tonight. If only the rains would pause and allow us all a safe trip home.

UPDATE:

The order of our returns? Despite flat tire on airplane, despite torrential rains, I'm back home first! Next in line: the young family, driving carefully to avoid the flooding that is widespread now. Finally -- there's Ed, the sailor. He'll probably roll in with his sailor pals just as I cannot keep my eyes open any more.

Good night, Ocean friends! Sometimes it's good not to wait up for the sailors among us.

48 hours in Reykjavik

If Reykjavik is small and a visitor can give it a good once over in a day, Iceland definitely is vast in its attractions. Even if you base yourself in the city, you can do day trips to see geysers, volcanic lava fields, waterfalls, hot rivers, mountains for climbing, and geothermal baths for swimming. If you like being on a boat, you can go out and hope to see the tail of a whale, or, up until about August 20, you can put-put-put over to the bird islands and watch puffins from your rocking little watercraft.

The trouble is you can't do more than one excursion in any one day, and you either have to rent a car (no!), rely on the infrequent bus service (not optimal for gray or wet days), or bite the bullet and sign up to go with a group.

Today is your typical Icelandic summer day: cool, cloudy and occasionally wet. My plan to take a public bus out close to a hike in the direction of a hot river suddenly seems unattractive. And so early in the morning, I walk the deserted streets of the city, thinking that it feels not unlike any European city on a Sunday morning: the locals are sleeping in, the tourists, not wanting to waste a minute, are wandering around in search of a good cup of coffee.





I go to the Tourist Office to discuss my options. I'm hoping to get one of those confident agents who knows exactly what I should do and how I should go about doing it.

That doesn't happen. Even at 8:30, she tells me I'm too late for the day long tours that took off at 8. She pushes whales and geysers. I remember waiting forever to see Old Faithful (the geyser) at Yellowstone when I was a kid. I took a photo. Water went up, water came down. I took another photo. It looked much the same as the first. As for whales -- you already know how far I will travel to avoid being on a boat right now. I would go to see the puffins, because I do love puffins, but I'm spoiled by my incredible up close and personal trip to the islands off the coast of northern England. Watching puffins distantly, from the hull of a rocking boat, is going to be far less fun.

And then the agent says the perfect thing: how about riding an Icelandic horse? Well now!

The Icelandic horse is a unique breed of horse: short, stout, hardy, energetic. Most horses have only three natural gaits (walk, trot, gallop). Some breeds have four (add canter).  The Icelandic horse is known for having five (walk, trot, tölt, canter, and the flying pace; the tölt is so smooth that it is said you can drink a pint during it and not lose a drop, and the flying pace has all four hooves suspended in the air at once -- very remarkable and very fast!).

You could also say of this animal that it is the most purebred horse on earth. It lives in Iceland and has remained exclusive to this island since the Vikings introduced livestock here more than 1200 years ago. It does not succumb to disease, because the law forbids other horses from being brought in (and if an Icelandic horse leaves the island, it cannot come back). Riding equipment has to be brought in new, or be subject to thorough disinfection.

Icelandics (as the horses are called) are social, intelligent and since there are no predators on the island, they rarely spook. But for me, they are simply lovely to look at. And perhaps enjoyable to ride.

But first, breakfast. I'm back at Sandholt Bakery. There are other breakfast places in town, but the pastries here stand out. Again I eat a hearty breakfast-lunch combo -- skyr with blueberry compote, juice, a smoked salmon sandwich and a yeasty poppy seed roll. (Skyr is Icelandic yogurt. Some actually say it's a cultured milk product that is closer to cheese. It's like Greek yogurt, only milder in flavor and always made with skim milk. You'll often see it on my breakfast table -- in the US it often appears under the "Siggi's" label.)





Though Sandholt is again crowded, this time I hear many more American voices. In fact, on both sides of me, I pick up the unmistakable New York accent. To my left, two women are listlessly reviewing every morsel of consumed food, to my right, a couple is acting as if perhaps this trip together was not such a good idea, though he is still trying to stay upbeat. She -- less so. I'm thinking that sometimes it's better not to understand the words of your neighbors. This morning I almost feel their gloom.

Okay, the couple leaves and a young family sits down. Icelandic people for sure. So good to once again not understand a word of what my neighbors are saying.






I have a little time left and I decide to use it for a trip up the tallest structure in Iceland -- the Hallgrimskirkja, a Lutheran church that some say resembles the distinctive basalt stone formations found around Iceland and others (me!) think it looks more like a spaceship.


 


(the views are okay...)




In front of the church there is an imposing statue of Leifur Eiriksson, with a sign boasting of his "discovery" of North America (you see it of course in the church photo above). It's a gift from our country (and if you want to see Leifur without having to cross the ocean, you can go to Newport Virginia, where an identical copy stands) and Icelanders like to believe that it is an American acknowledgement that Leif Eriksson (as we like to call him) was Icelandic rather than Norwegian. It irks Iceland people no end when our politicians (perhaps unaware of the dispute or trying to score points with the somewhat bigger Norwegian community in America) call the great Viking a Norwegian (Obama comes to mind). Just FYI, Leifur was born and raised in Iceland and the label "Norse" attests to the fact that people of Iceland and Norway in those days forged one identity, to distinguish themselves say from Swedes, Danes or Scots.

Okay, enough of local trivia. Let's go ride the Icelandic horses at the Solhestar farms.

Mathilde picks Jennifer and me up at the Bus Station. She works for Solhestar but only for this past year. She is from Denmark. And she has a passion for Icelandic horses.

My mom bought me my first horse when I was one. She had Icelandics and she passed on her love of them to me. I came to Iceland to spend more time with them.

There are close to 100,000 of these horses in Iceland, but she assures me that there are as many that live abroad (never able to return again). Some people just have to have one of these beautiful horses for their own use, even if they have to transport them to South America. Or Copenhagen.

Jennifer is the other rider in our small group of three. She is from Switzerland and as we answer Mathilde's questions about our riding experience, it becomes clear that mine is the most dated. (Until recently, Jennifer owned her own horse. Me, I used to ride when I took my charge to her horseback riding lessons back in my nanny days That would be some 45+ years ago. Since then, so far as I can recall, I rode only once -- in the Camargue in France. Twelve years back. But it's like riding a bike: the feeling of confidence in the saddle never quite leaves you.)

My guy's name is Biknir -- birch tree -- and his bangs grew so long that they decided to scoop them into a man bun, so that he could see where he was going. I'm wearing borrowed rain gear, as there is a definite threat of showers.






Because we are such a small group, we chat amicably during the slower paced portions of our ride. I explain that I was born in Poland and that many Poles are really good horse people. Mathilde agrees: Polish families sometimes come out to ride and they appear comfortable around the horses. You know, 10% of Iceland's population right now is Polish.

It's the same old story: the well educated Icelandic people do not want to do physical work. Mathilde says that construction in Iceland would come to a grinding halt if not for the Poles here.
I comment that I heard that very story in Scotland, which is equally dense with Poles.

And from this, the conversation switches to immigration and politics. But not for long. I need a light and refreshed mindset from this trip. So I take the reigns, so to speak and lead us away from the discussion of what's wrong with America today. Mathilde, who is young (just post college), seems to know a lot about our political and social turmoil. I suppose living in happy Copenhagen (happiest city in the world, they say) causes her to be curious about what's holding Americans back from becoming just like the Danes!
All the Americans that I ride with bring up America's current issues right away. They all have wanted me to know that they are not aligned with the direction your country has taken.

I want to tell her -- all the Americans that come to Iceland and decide to go horseback riding on an English saddle through lava fields may feel that way. Sigh... Too much of front page stuff is coming back to me. We talk about the lupines instead.





These gorgeous purple-bluish flowers multiply like wildfire. Most Norwegians regard them as a nuisance. But here, they keep the wet ground from eroding. They grow alongside the pine forests and they are magnificent, even though they are past their peak bloom.

(I don't have a good photo of them -- I learned very quickly that photographing anything from the shaky back of a horse is a waste of time.)

They came from Norway. As did the pines. Quite recently, actually. Iceland is trying to undo the damage of centuries of erosion and deforestation.

But what's perhaps most stunning about the ride is our passage through the Red Hills -- they are about 5200 year old pseudocraters, scattered across a vast lava field.






Mathilde is sure we want photos here. Who am I to ever turn down someone's photo idea...





We've done a lot of walking and some trotting and tolting. I ask Mathilde if she ever challenges the riders to an even faster pace.

Do you want to gallop?
I do. I have missed that rocking movement: horse and rider, together, in sync. Jennifer agrees. We're off!

It is fantastic! The horses move easily, rhythmically. We come back to it again and again.

(Mathilde checks back to make sure we're still in our saddles!)






I would not trust us to do a flying pace though! She shouts back from the front.
No, I wouldn't trust myself to be on a horse that could fly with the speed of a hurricane wind.

(We watch other riders taking their third horse out for a spin right by the Red Lake, where in the winter Icelandics race over its frozen waters.)






And now we turn the horses home. Despite the cool air, Biknir is sweaty from the ride. Unsaddled, he goes straight for what's good in life. He reminds me of the hens when they are feeling just too warm!)






We feed them some horse treats -- they clamor for more, just like the cheepers!






Mathilde asks us to stay for a coffee or tea, but it's getting late. Time to get organized. Time to walk one more time up past the cheerful Reykjavik houses...


 


... to a restaurant that I booked for dinner.  It's called Kol and it's good, and as everything else -- beastly expensive. I am very glad I could not land a reservation in Reykjavik's top foodie spot (Dill): it would have been more than a stretch.

At Kol, I eat the tiny Icelandic scallops as an entree and then I break from my ever strong reluctance to pick meat over seafood and order lamb. Iceland has a sizeable sheep population and lamb from here is exported far and wide.





I'm very close to the end of my trip. Tomorrow, I have a predawn bus to catch to the airport. My next post should be from the farmette!

48 hours in Reykjavik

Iceland is not large. It's eye catching -- poised there in the middle of the ocean, but its land mass is actually slightly smaller than the state of Kentucky. And there aren't many people who inhabit it. About 335,000 live here. That's a lot less than the population of Wyoming -- America's state with the fewest people.

Reykjavik itself is tiny -- its population is 119,000 (and declining each year). But today, I think it swelled to at least twice that number. In addition to the Marathon and the Culture Night festivities, something else took place here today -- something so unusual that when it happens, people congregate in great masses outside to celebrate: it was sunny.



Everything about my travels today was easy, except that I didn't sleep and I ate poorly. Because the flight left Minneapolis late and was, in fact, relatively short (five and a half hours, flying east), Delta skipped the usual transatlantic dinner service, opting for a basket of snacks in the evening (think: nuts, potato chips and bananas) and then a breakfasty meal before arrival. I would have done exactly the opposite. I had left the farmette at 3:30 and had not eaten properly since breakfast on the porch. Sometimes on these longer flights I doze off. That didn't happen this time. Such is life.

Still, all went well and I even found my way from the Bus Station to the street with my rental apartment without getting lost. Remarkable.

The street where I live -- for 48 hours:






My apartment occupies the ground floor of this lovely little building:






The unit itself is brand new and it is full of beautiful light (witness that glassed-in porch):





But I can't get in. The lockbox has the key, I have the code, but the key refuses to turn. This is when you wish you had a desk clerk downstairs who could assist you. No such luck here.

Fortuitously that lovely glass porch has a door that someone had forgotten to lock. In I go.

All nice, fresh, pretty.





And now I have to start my torpedo run. Sort of like a marathon, only without any prize at the end of the day for pulling it off.

I'm going to post a string of photos. If you've been here, you wont be surprised by them. If you haven't, I hope you'll get an idea of what Reykjavik feels like, on a day packed with Icelandic people running, eating, banging out music, wielding fake swords in fake battles, drinking, pushing strollers with lots of bundled up children with remarkably light hair.


























At the very top of my list for today is a visit to the Sandholt Bakery, to get a proper breakfast (or is it lunch?). There are a number of good bakeries in town and they all will have trays of pastries that are sort of a cross between danishes and Viennese cakes and buns. Like this:






Too, there are a number of good coffee shops in Reykjavik with very good coffee. But few bakeries offer coffee and few coffee shops offer food. Sandholt is the exception here. And it's good! (I had an okay quiche and an exceptionally tasty "Viennese," which is one of the more typical Icelandic sweet treats.






As I walk the crowded streets of this very small city, I am happy that I can shake away my earlier tiredness. Cool but sunny weather, with a strong breeze from the ocean is just such a boost to the soul! (And it is cool here: today's high was 56F/13C and the low will go down to 46F/8C.)

Highlights from my rambles? Well, the sweet, colorful houses of course.






And the Harpa Concert Hall, which was built in 2011 -- a cooperative effort between a Danish team and an Icelandic architect. The geometric panels of glass have different hues and the entirety is just dazzling, especially in its waterside location.






To the side of Harpa, I see a few boats bobbing in the small harbor.






Reykjavik is at the mouth of a large bay and as you look out toward the water, you can just barely see a summit from the shore on the other side of the bay (to the right in the photo below). The summit is actually a glacier and it looks like it is rising out of the water. On the left side of the photo, you see the lighthouse warning of past and present dangers.






It's quiet here, along the shore of the cold Atlantic Ocean. All the noise and action are downtown today. Eventually I return to it, to enjoy the happy gatherings of people who rarely feel too warm and almost never experience the feeling of being just too hot.










In the evening, on the recommendation of my hosts (who are faceless email writers), I had booked a seat at the bar at Snaps Bistro. I'd been warned it's packed full of locals and it surely lived up to that hype. As I placed my order (which had some mishmash of French and English words), the woman sitting next to me asked (in English with that faint Icelandic accent) -- excuse me, are you French?
No...
I was hoping. (??) So... where are you from? (Isn't it obvious?)
The United States.
She waves her hand and shakes her head, but maintains her smile. (My interpretation: love all you creative people, but I'm somewhat mystified right now by your country!)
She is my age, waiting for a friend. He comes, smooches her all over, they chat in Icelandic. Then her brother comes and the whole thing repeats itself.

Earlier, I had told her that I had been in Reykjavik as a young woman.
Iceland has changed so much! -- she tells me.
Yes, you've had some dramatic moments -- the 2008 financial crisis, the volcano...
Oh, the volcano -- that was nothing! It blew all that stuff into the air and no one could go anywhere! So interesting -- we all had to stay put. But the financial crisis -- that changed us. We worked so hard and someone else was getting rich. We said -- fuck you, we're not going to be martyrs. (She is an extremely well presented woman, but she does not mince words.) Those motherfuckers, we're not going to kill ourselves for them. (Do they teach such vocabulary in school? English 101: speak as the natives would speak...)

I eat my slabs of halibut in a fish broth. We are so parsimonious with our halibut in the US, but halibut swims all around Iceland. Indeed, the largest halibut that was ever caught anywhere came from Iceland -- all 220 kilo of him.







After dinner, I watch the streets fill with people. They're all heading in the direction of the big hill that overlooks the bay. It's the fireworks: I'm in Iceland on a day that is like the Fourth of July, only people are huddled in scarves, jackets and caps and the fireworks wont start until 11. It still is not really dark before then.






 I hurry home. Maybe I'll fall asleep before the noise begins. Maybe. I need a little rest for the tail end of my trip here. I have big ideas for it. But I need to rest first.