From Iceland with Love

"You should have been here last week, this is nothing."
I stood outside my friend's house in Faribault, Minnesota, desperately trying to convince my nordic lungs that this substance I forced down into them was indeed, air. Her reaction to my struggle was just a laugh, and she handed me the bug spray. Apparently, heat and humidity over there, countless miles away from where I'd previously travelled at any point in my life, turned the air into a wall.

But it was beautiful. Everything was green and alive, and even if my friend told me the green would soon turn brown from the heat, I couldn't help but be amazed. Short walks provided incredible experiences like squirrel sightings (yeah yeah, I can hear you laughing from over here on my very squirrel free island out on the Atlantic), dragon flies and some bugs buzzing loudly in the sun. I was told they were a pest, but to me it sounded glorious. Nature, where I'm from, is gorgeous. It's green and black and sprinkled with vibrant colors, clean and fresh. Birds chirp, the occasional honeybee buzzes past you in the summertime... But this was something else. There was an ever-constant feeling of presence, of depth. Never complete silence but an odd serenity that came from being surrounded by living creatures at all times. Perhaps I wouldn't enjoy it as much if I lived there, but as a visitor from a vastly different world, as it truly felt, I was in awe.

My friend had planned several days of exploration for us to dive into during my stay. One of those days we drove up to Duluth. The journey there was an experience of its own. It took about 3 hours, and started with quite a bang. As we prepared to leave Faribault it started to rain.

Now... When I say rain I generally mean those little drops of water sprinkling, and sometimes dropping aggressively, from the sky. I definitely do not mean large drops of water literally shooting from the sky with such force it creates a frothing white layer on the road and the wind shield of the car seems likely to give in at any moment. Looking back to the incredible wall of storm weather once we cleared it was breathtaking. Grey clouds from ground to sky stretched as far as the eye could see in both directions and in front of us: Sunshine. Sunshine and amazing distances of land, mountains in the extreme distance, endless sky that seemed so much bigger than back home. I was very far from little Iceland, with its close huddled mountains and narrow fjords...