Legends of the Falls: An Icelandic Cliffhanger

"Common sense," our tour guide advised, "is essential in Iceland. Use it and you'll be fine."

I am crouched on the ground with my left arm extended toward Gary. The nubs of my fingers grip his as his feet slide backward toward Gulfoss, one of Iceland’s most powerful waterfalls. Our rueful chosen path back from the attraction’s prime photo zone is slick with dense ice, smooth like marble and formidably downward-sloping until a dip, another icy landing, then the falls. Tourists around us stare but there is no safe way to intervene without also slipping. If Gary's boot doesn’t catch traction on a pebble or dirt patch, he’s going down both slopes and beyond leaving me reaching for nothing but glacial mist.

The trip up to this point was a relative success. I persuaded my boyfriend to come with me to the Nordic country during January, a month that afforded approximately 5 hours of daylight and stinging cold in the countryside, in order to witness nature’s functions at its boldest; ancient rifts in the earth, temperamental volcanoes, the elusive northern lights, geothermal springs, and eternities of nothing but snow and sky.
The added perks were plenty. I satiated my foodie side with curious Icelandic cuisine at Fiskfelagid: its plates riddled with salted cod dollops, hunks of langoustine, miniature pickles and dewy rhubarb gems. To satisfy my party streak, we joined downtown Reykjavik’s weekend bar crawl. Here, mobs of Icelanders invoked their Viking roots, pillaging bars of their beer then haughtily toting the mugs down Bankastraeti. In the echoing aftermath, we enjoyed gentle serenity I had only interpreted through Sigur Ros songs; Reykjavik’s somber, periwinkle mornings, haunting and watercolor-smooth. And its golden afternoons, with shy beams of sunlight that unveiled quaint white churches, cheerful storefronts and narrow cobblestone streets.
Keeping in line with my action-packed itinerary, we traveled to Vatnajokull Ice Cap. We drove for hours, snowmobiled along narrow mountain paths and ran the last stretch of journey up a small mountain to see the surrounding quiet void. The air at the top was dense and lonely - the horizon pristine and glowing in one distance, threatening with swallowing dark in another. To stand at the summit - eyes closed and heart still in the enveloping silence – was to feel bittersweet loneliness and peace.


Tragic sudden death for either of us, however, is not on my itinerary. As my hand loses grip, I graduate to full panic and start to yell. Miraculously, Gary’s foot catches a blessed patch of dirt and he stops sliding. Glorious anticlimax. We both dance a careful scramble to our feet and inch toward the cliffs surrounding the falls. People approach us in shock and pat us on our backs as we retreat up the ramshackle wooden stairs, still shaking, toward Geysir. The planks creak, the sky exhales and I look back at the falls, my little heart bursting at the romance of navigating the fine line between common sense and the pursuit of my big adventure.