Memoirs of a Glacier
(or "How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Sólheimajökull")



I should eat my wedding ring.
Marin Headlands, California - Febraury 2006

I woke up this morning at home, in my bed, with Tanja pushing me, via her body pillow, up against the wall, and looked out the window at two pigeons on the fire escape. I was in Brooklyn.

Four months of anticipation, planning, stress, external forces messing everything up, and worrying that everything was going to go wrong were gone. It was hard to believe that two days ago, I was standing on the edge of the Sólheimajökull glacier in Southern Iceland, and now I was staring across the street at a bunch of vestigial TV antennae on top of a brick apartment building. I was calm and relaxed, and felt like I'd just woken up from a really elaborate dream. The previous week had come and gone so quickly.

I can't say enough about the trip. Iceland is a beautiful country. Every day, I saw and did something new that I'd never done before. The people are friendly, helpful, and generous, and even the man-eating trolls were were kind enough to leave us alone. I honestly can't recommend a trip there enough. If you're even thinking of going, go. It's expensive, but worth it. Tanja, Jay and I travelled together really well (Thanks for being great tavel partners), we got along fantastically, and everything went off smoothly, more smoothly than I think I ever imagined. I want to go back.

I keep going back and forth on what my favorite part of the trip was. Was it the long solitary drive out onto some peninsula? Was it the geyser? Walking on the glacier? Windshield wipergate? I don't know yet. I really haven't had time to process things, and figure it all out yet, but I'll have good stories soon.

Over the last couple of months, I kept thinking about all of the great photos I was going to be able to take. I couldn't wait to take a bunch, and I think I did pretty well. I finished off five 36-exposure rolls, so that's about 180 shots. Not bad, but since it's March, the weather was foggy and rainy most of the time, so almost all of the shots I got were either your every day vacation snaps (Here's Tanja and Jay standing outside the car, or here's Tanja and Jay eating hot dogs), or shots of empty bleakness, which gets tiring. I'll have the photos I took soon enough, uploaded, sorted, et cetera.

A photograph I didn't take was of Tanja standing to my left, just after asking, telling, almost nagging, but in a good way, Jay to stop clowning around and get off the damn glacier before he kills himself. She had gotten me to come down a couple of minutes earlier. I'm sure the fact that the only sound we could hear around us was that of water that had melted from somewhere far up on the glacier running off and falling into a pool below, drip, drip, slowly, scared her a bit. The liquid water on top of ice couldn't do anything but make things even more dangerous, more slippery than they already were. Jay had come back to solid ground, and was walking to her left along the edge of the ice. I took a step sort of in front of her, facing but not blocking her, watching the wind blow her hair, and was about to take her photo, when I noticed her smile, and the glacier reflecting in her blue eyes. It was an awed smile that looked like it said "We made it," satisfied. We'd gotten to the glacier, we'd stood on it, and she kept two knuckleheads from killing themselves. It was kind, concerned, and motherly. I turned my camera off, put it away, and turned back to look at the ice.