Between Continents

I am standing on no continent.

A late spring wind, still bitter, careens through the air as if escaping from a tunnel and whips across my face, stinging the tip of my nose.

There are few trees here. Mostly handfuls of brittle red brush and cornmeal-colored grasses. A river winds through the valley, so clear and icy emerald in places that I can see twelve feet down, straight to the bottom.

Several bold tourists strip to nearly nothing and jump into a fissure of glacial water. For good luck, someone has told them. They last only seconds before leaping out again in a mad dash, their skin gleaming beet red from the cold.

In the distance are shallow mountains, their peaks covered in snow. And beyond that, uninhabitable ice fields stretch for miles.

I am in Iceland.

To my left, a towering wall of rock marks the eastern boundary of the North American continent. On my right is the Eurasian tectonic plate, a similar edge of jutting rock. At Þingvellir National Park, I am literally between these two continents, observing a phenomenon so rare it is visible only one other place on Earth.

This is my final stop on a two-month solo journey across Europe. I got food poisoning in Hungary and pickpocketed in Paris. I caught a chill in drizzly Brussels that I still haven’t shaken. I ate meatballs in Sweden, pierogi in Warsaw and fondue in the Alps. My body is exhausted, my spirit exhilarated. But somewhere along the way I got caught up in the bustle of my nonstop pace. I became so focused on getting to the next market or monument that I forgot I am still somewhere even when between destinations.

But now, bordered by two continents, I realize that being in between is a unique stance. It is a stretch of space, of time, between here and there. It is a pause, a breath, a parentheses. It is the night train from Amsterdam to Copenhagen. The pavement between a breakfast croissant and the Eiffel Tower. It is the minutes until the next metro arrives. Here, I can look back on what was and anticipate what is to come. It is a place of imagination and reminiscences. The moment where all other moments catch up to you at once.

I am standing on no continent. A place neither here nor there, neither North America nor Europe. Somewhere incredible, right in the middle. There is something ethereal in the air, almost crystalline. It tastes like sulfur and skyr and is rough on my skin, like sandpaper. But it suits me and I breathe deeply. In this moment, I have felt no place more.