A timeless moment

A tiny ray of the porcelain-white sunshine was reflected on our faces as with the help of our iceaxes we were making our way up to the top of Sólheimajökull, avoiding the yawning crevasses that were patiently waiting for their future prisoners, catching a glimpse of the sea below that kept playing seek-and-hide with us as we gradually got to the top.
When our boots finally finished their fight with the ice which they had been holding on to and helped us to reach our destination, twelve curious pairs of eyes were fixed on the picturesque landscape and admiring the sight the glacier had to offer – the icy lace of the rigorous steeps entwined by small streams with their crystal-water that our hands forming little white cups could still bring to our lips and take a sip from without any risks – at that moment those eyes from Singapore, Sweden, or Hungary could go back millions of years in time, at that moment I could feel as if I had found myself at the exact minute when the world was created and its creator was proudly contemplating his masterpiece. Had the various bird species not waken me up from this daytime reverie I might have stayed in that reflection forever.
And as the group one by one was trying to climb up from an ice cave that nature condemned for only a few weeks’ more existence, I recalled travel experiences from earlier times of my life, however neither the southern beaches with their calm, green sea or the capricous pine-groves around the polar circle of the north where I could see the cottages of the indigenous samis could be compared with this treeless landscape of Iceland where mythology and modern culture could mix so harmoniously.I wanted to say something that expressed my feelings but I did not know any of my group mates as there had only been a very short introduction at the beginning of our wandering. I remembered that one of them was from Sweden and as I had had the pleasure of studying this language and culture at the university back in Budapest some years ago, I decied to turn to her in order to share my thoughts. Just like the rest of us she was lost in the admiration of the beauty aroud her and it took a few seconds to grab her and so prevent her from falling as she almost lost all her control by the surprise that someone addressed her in her own language at such a remote place of the world. That is how time, boundaries and nations melted away to go back to the dawn of creation for a little while.