We’re reading Jane Smiley’s The Greenlanders for class this week and I keep thinking of Iceland. I took this picture one afternoon. We had driven all the way up from Reykjavik to the West Fjords, and were on our way to the town of Ísafjörður. The route on the map indicated that we’d pass by a beautiful waterfall, Glymur, one of the tallest in Iceland. As you drive, the fjords and the light are maddeningly beautiful. But once you step out of the car, it feels as if the wind will drive you off the cliff. We ended up going slower than we would have liked; the GPS kept telling us the waterfall was below us—and we peeked our heads over the edge, which you see here in this picture, terrified, just to check. We were also behind a lone man in a rental car, who constantly stopped to take pictures. We’d often would pull over at the same lookouts and stand, leaning all our weight against the wind, snapping pictures of the light, the view, the land. When we finally resigned ourselves to the idea that we had missed Glymur, we descended, and there, as we rounded the bend into a fjord, we saw a lush, green cliffside. And this beautiful, sparking waterfall. The air was quiet, the wind gone; we were protected by the bluffs. It was truly awesome to realize how quickly the landscape changed, how a mere ten minutes ago it felt as if we were going to be blown off into sky, and now, here we were, drinking water from the waterfall, with nary a breeze to make the water do anything but gently mist around us. 

We’re reading Jane Smiley’s The Greenlanders for class this week and I keep thinking of Iceland. I took this picture one afternoon. We had driven all the way up from Reykjavik to the West Fjords, and were on our way to the town of Ísafjörður. The route on the map indicated that we’d pass by a beautiful waterfall, Glymur, one of the tallest in Iceland. As you drive, the fjords and the light are maddeningly beautiful. But once you step out of the car, it feels as if the wind will drive you off the cliff. We ended up going slower than we would have liked; the GPS kept telling us the waterfall was below us—and we peeked our heads over the edge, which you see here in this picture, terrified, just to check. We were also behind a lone man in a rental car, who constantly stopped to take pictures. We’d often would pull over at the same lookouts and stand, leaning all our weight against the wind, snapping pictures of the light, the view, the land. When we finally resigned ourselves to the idea that we had missed Glymur, we descended, and there, as we rounded the bend into a fjord, we saw a lush, green cliffside. And this beautiful, sparking waterfall. The air was quiet, the wind gone; we were protected by the bluffs. It was truly awesome to realize how quickly the landscape changed, how a mere ten minutes ago it felt as if we were going to be blown off into sky, and now, here we were, drinking water from the waterfall, with nary a breeze to make the water do anything but gently mist around us. 

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