Still in Iceland

Dear blog readers, sometime ago I promised you a guest post--and here is the first of, I hope, many. Kristen and I spent several amazing days in Reykjavik. Not surprisingly, she captures the mood--and our mood--far more profoundly and succinctly than I ever could. Visit Kristen at her two wonderful blogs, Sigh Club and Sound Check.

My love for Iceland is a brutal, suspect love. I often find myself there in that stream-of-consciousness sort of way. Anything from teal high heel pumps to a building painted red will take me back to the streets of Reykjavik. Sometimes I am still at the top of Hallgrimskirkja, overlooking the bright city of Reykjavik.

Big yellow Hummers do that, too. Range Rovers. Any big vehicle that can handle the Icelandic terrain make me think of small, cramped streets and abandoned bulldozers at the ends of the Earth. When the Spirit Rover landed on the moon, I thought of Iceland, because when I arrived at Keflavik airport I was faced with a planet whose existence I had dreamt about but never before laid eyes on.

I wasn't prepared for my feeling the first day--of worry that we had made the wrong choice, that September was a little too late to visit Iceland and now it was too late to go home. What were we going to do for five days in the bitter cold? And I hadn't expected that by the end of the trip I would leave my heart with the Tower Guesthouse. I hadn't expected the small greatness that is Reykjavik. A tiny capital alive with creativity, youth, pride. We encountered a haughtiness about most Icelanders, but forgave them, for they had a right to feel superior. They are not so far from the North Pole and yet have managed to create a world for themselves full of knowledge, music, culture, and are blessed with a country whose natural beauty matches that of the only other natural formation that I have truly been in awe of: the Rocky Mountains.

Where to next?