Day 1: The South Coast

It is shortly past 6 AM when we land in Keflavík, an industrial fishing town and former U.S. military base on the Reykjanes Peninsula, in the southwest of Iceland. The sky outside is shrouded, and the runway lights glow in the wavering dark of the early morning. Despite my window seat, I got very little sleep on the five-hour flight across the Atlantic; I think anticipation has kept me awake. I look back a row at Jane, who swapped seats to allow a pair of honeymooners to be together; she has not slept much either.

Keflavík International Airport is bright and geometric, though not in an oppressive way. Perhaps it is because we are the first arrivals of the morning, and the terminal is largely an empty expanse of angular furniture and well-lit kiosks. I am reminded (not unpleasantly) of power-walking through Ikea with Jane, both of us fully aware of the game plan: yes $5 Swedish meatballs; no $10 post-modern, monochrome, self-assembled home furnishings. In the airport convenience store, we pick up a pair of sandwiches, bottles of juice, snack chips, and two cups of a mysterious substance called skyr. According to my extensive pre-departure research, a consensus panel of experts (i.e. the first few results in Google) has concluded, through rigorous and scholarly analysis, that skyr is "Greek yogurt, except it doesn't taste, smell, and feel like a fart." We shall see. We grab our rental car keys and head out.

In the airport parking lot, daylight is beginning to creep over the landscape; everything is coated in a pale blue. This amplifies the coolness of the sharp, northerly wind; I stare at the patches of snow and ice on the pavement, and in my head I quickly re-calculate every detail of this five-day, 800-mile mid-March road trip in Iceland, resulting in this totally reasonable, actionable thought: "Oh. Hmm..." There is some fudging around as we reach our car, a hatchback Volkswagen Golf, and, never having rented a car together before (!), we examine it like a pair of touristic aliens from a distant planet. The first dozen photos on my camera are totally non-contextualized macro shots of the side of the car ("Is that a dent? Is that a dent? That's a tiny scratch. Yes it is. Jon, what about this little smudge thing?"). Inside the car, more fudging around; we set up our GPS and discover it is mighty difficult to spell "Seljalandsfoss", let alone the name of whatever town/highway/road it is located nearest to. Fortunately, in a fit of inspiration two nights ago, I wrote down latitude/longitude coordinates for every parking turnoff on our trip. Estimated driving time to Seljalandsfoss is two hours, and Jane will be hearing me brag about my coordinates the entire time.

We set off on the highway that leads northeast toward Reykjavík, crossing the lava-covered peninsula which is one of the geologically freshest parts of the island. It is all very eerie; in the early morning light, a strange, bumpy green-and-black landscape extends from the roadside as far as the eye can see; the eye follows this out until it is caught off-guard by the distant mountains, fully two-thirds of their height coated in snow. "Iceland!" I exclaim. We return our concentration to the road: the landscape will be plenty more visible in an hour, and we are two young California drivers who need to master the roundabout.

Near the suburb-town of Hafnarfjordur (I find this amusing and lovingly repeat it multiple times at Jane), we turn off and begin our long journey east on the Ring Road (Highway 1), the major roadway that encircles the entirety of the island. We pass familiar yet utterly foreign blocks of suburb (Grocery stores! Gas stations! Ikea!) that are totally deserted on this early Sunday morning. As we leave town, the road begins to climb until we crest a plateau. Suddenly, everything is white. In the distance, massive plumes of white steam rise hundreds of feet over the land - signatures of Iceland's incredible geothermal power, smartly married to a national love for clean energy. The single lane highway stretches into the horizon, icy but with a clear track for our tires, and all around us is a massive flat plain of whiteness, punctuated by a white sheet of lake ice and a ridge of mountains seemingly composed entirely of elevated ice. Jane and I have both driven in snow: up in the mountains in California, where you knew you would be permanently done with it after so many more switchbacks; and in Maryland, where if less than an inch has fallen over three consecutive days,  your city's entire cohort of drivers will calmly assemble into a several-hundred-car pileup necessitating intervention from the National Guard. But we have never driven in this kind of snow, across a landscape so utterly barren and devoid of heat that it reminds me just how close we actually are to the Arctic. "Iceland!" I exclaim again.

We soon descend the plateau, continuing eastward toward the town of Selfoss, and dropping below us is an expanse of yellow, flat farmland. To the right (south) of this land, I can see the Atlantic Ocean, dark grey waves pounding on dark grey sand; to the left (north), a ring of tall cliffs and mountains shields the interior of the island, like a mystical wall concealing some horrible, ancient secret. These were formerly sea cliffs, and the entire landscape before us was formerly underwater; mighty rivers transformed over eons into mightier waterfalls, and estuaries transformed, with volcanic aid, into enormous black flood plains that defy imagination. I marvel at the scope of the geology at work here - an entire island lifted out of North Atlantic by glacial melting and isostatic rebound. When we reach Selfoss, it is an utterly gray little town, still deserted (Iceland must take its weekends seriously, we conclude). There is construction on the main road through town, sans construction workers; the broken-up pavement, the gray mist from the nearby river, and the lifelessness of the entire place is haunting, evoking the ghost town of the Silent Hills series. We detour around the construction zone and proceed east along the coastal plain; the car radio plays a Celine Dion compilation.

We see Seljalandsfoss from over a mile away.  More than most waterfalls, when you look at it, the river seems to truly flow off the cliff, forming a lovely arc that lands only reluctantly in the icy pool below. We pull into the parking lot and take in the scene with breakfast from the comfort of our car. I pop open my cup of strawberry skyr; Jane has vanilla. Verdict: skyr is absolutely delectable. It is a wondrously creamy, flavorful cross between yogurt and a protein bar. It has none of the fart sensation that accompanies Greek yogurt, the consumption of which, to me, is like eating concentrated vomit from a leathery udder. Jane and I had zipped open the wrapping on our sandwiches, in anticipation of needing a major breakfast - but a cup of skyr later, we feel satiated and strong. We don our outerwear; Jane debates between two equally silly hats before deciding to wear neither for the remainder of the trip.

We walk up to the falls; I am just learning how to shoot fully manually, and most of my photos are unsuccessful. We take a few long exposures at the base of the falls before climbing up an ice-covered slope and staircase beside the waterfall, slipping all the while. We are pelted by the spray - glacial water, augmented by melting winter ice from the highlands of one of the northernmost countries in the world. There is a path that leads directly behind the waterfall, such that you can stand beyond the curtain and get pelted even harder - but it is even more treacherous, and we decide not to push our sleep-deprived luck on this, the first stop of our trip. Up above us, the kittiwakes and gulls circle from their nests on the moss-covered cliffs; and to the northwest along the cliff, smaller cascades are visible less than a mile away. There is a sizeable crowd here, even in the shoulder season before complete thaw; we dodge a few tripods on our way back to the car (and quickly realize we are just a pace ahead of the tour buses; they arrive at 11 AM).

Jane takes a quick nap as I drive down the highway to our next waterfall - Skógafoss ("Forest Falls"), an enormous, 200-foot, rectangular cataract that plunges perpendicularly off what clearly used to be a sea cliff. I take a self-portrait (above) as Jane regains consciousness in the car. We climb the stair steps that lead to the top of the cliff. We clamber to the edge of the cliff to stare at this mighty wall of water head-on, watching the seabirds fly from one cliff hollow to the next. At the top of the stairs, a world-famous trail runs for miles up the Skóga River toward the central highlands; regretfully, it is much too early in the season and we are unequipped and unprepared for the adventure.

Back in the car, we continue down the highway toward an unmarked turn-off on the right (south) side of the road. Rain has begun to fall; we are due today for a true Icelandic gale-storm. Our goal today was to drive an unofficial, unpaved road through the black sand wasteland, to the wreckage of a U.S. navy plane from the World War II era. But we are acutely aware of our tiny car and the road condition - and in the five minutes we spend on the highway, the rain has begun to pour. We easily find said turn-off (at an old farm field about 1 mile past F211 to Sólheimajökull), but conditions are deteriorating; pools have formed in the track, and decently sized rocks are strewn across the gravel. We bump along for a few seconds before deciding upon risk mitigation. I turn the car around and retreat to the highway. I am a bit saddened, but mostly just relieved that we are closer to the end of the day, and not stranded in a stormy, black desert. We will be returning this way in two days, but this doesn't register with me, at the moment.

We do, however, make a five-minute detour from the highway to the black sand beaches at Reynisfjara. The rain comes in horizontal sheets now, pelting us at high velocity. In the parking lot, we squeeze out of the car as carefully as possible, holding the doors with an iron grip against the ripping wind. As the North Atlantic rages, we walk along the beach with our ponchos equipped, laughing at the whole situation. I photograph Jane, wearing one of the world's least photogenic outfits, standing beside some of the world's most photogenic rock formations. The seas are swollen, and the whitecaps seem to have barely any distance to travel between when they crest and when they pound the shoreline. As we stand beside the basalt columns, a rogue wave rushes in, and we nearly become another pair of foolhardy beach drownings - but escape with only our shins wet and our boots filled with black sand. We flee to the beach cafe for coffee, soup, and smoked salmon croissants.

After drying off as best we can, we leave the shore in a surf-battered daze. As we drive back to the Ring Road, the wind shakes our small car from side-to-side, and intermittent hail is announcing itself on our windshield. Jane is genuinely worried. Fortunately, we only have a few minutes' drive to the southern coastal town of Vik, in the outskirts of which we will be staying for two nights. As we enter town, its wide ocean views and picturesque hilltop chapel are completely obscured by the gale. We pull off into the town gas station to refill our sandwich supply and purchase the next morning's breakfast (cheap, convenient grub will be the modus operandi for this trip). In our checkout basket are a smoked lamb sandwich (unfortunate), a tuna salad, a loaf of bread,  more skyr, more juice, and a box of chocolate milk adoringly labeled "Kókó mjólk" (Jane and I will pronounce it thus for the rest of our lives). We drive another two minutes east of town to the Hotel Katla, a plot of country-style cabinettes nestled against a bend in the cliffs. Our building is beside a small lake, which I am confident will be quite lovely tomorrow, but is currently quite agitated, filling beyond its brim, and lapping perilously beneath our window. It is 4 PM. We undress and dry off our rain-and-sea-logged clothes with every towel, toilet paper roll, and blowdryer at our disposal. Jane passes out and will be asleep for the greater part of the next 12 hours; I drink my kókó mjólk by the windowsill as wind and rain howl across the lake. "Iceland!"I whisper, shaking my head.

Day 2: The Lava Plains

My sleep is fitful over the following 12 hours. Ensconced in our small room with the storm raging outside, totally removed from time and routine, I feel like a deep-sea diver recovering in a hyperbaric chamber. Jane is snoring; I rise a few times throughout the evening and overnight, checking the status of our clothing (wringing towels and replacing toilet paper as necessary), eating a half-breakfast-half-dinner, and working through my photos from the day. Ultimately, I get plenty of rest and awake feeling refreshed - at four in the morning. Jane is awake by this point as well; we have a long day ahead, but agree to depart only shortly before dawn for the sake of not missing the landscape in the dark. We sit and munch on breakfast in bed while watching Icelandic television, which has two available channels: one is playing The Elephant Man, a 1980 movie about a hideously deformed man and the torment he suffers. The other is Pop Girl, a British teeny-bopper music channel which, for lack of programming at 4 AM, is endlessly looping a saccharine, comically off-tune theme song whose lyrics (reproduced here in their literary entirety) are: "POP GIRL. POP GIRL. POP GIRL."  This is all very surreal. Jane bites into her smoked lamb sandwich and promptly decides that traditional Icelandic food is out of any future question for her ("Is this rotten?" "We bought it half a day ago." "I think it's rotten." "It technically might be."). I have better luck with my tuna salad; Jane settles on fruit and another cup of wholesome, nourishing skyr.

At around 6 AM, we pull out of the hotel's dirt driveway and resume our eastward course on the Ring Road.  I am driving to afford Jane some more nap time. The weather is beautiful and calm, and the dawn slowly encroaches upon the land as we speed past it, winding through the coastal flatlands, past steep old hills that dominate the landscape, and across an neverending plain of bulbous, ancient lava flows overgrown with delicate moss. "Moss poops," says Jane, who is enjoying the landscape too much to sleep. "They look like moss poops." I take this statement at face value.

Just before we reach the small parish of Kirkjubaejarklaustur ("Church Farm Cloister" - thankfully Klaustur, for short), we turn onto the upland road toward Laki. We will only be traveling the first few miles of this road, if our car will let us, to Fjaðrárgljúfur ("Feather River Canyon"), an imposing, moss-covered ravine carved out by the Fjaðrá River before it winds into the lava plains of the southern coast. Just past a guesthouse on the road, the pavement turns rough, and soon becomes a bumpy gravel ride. We are not far now, and the Volkswagen is sturdy, but the bumps grow uneven, and there are good chunks of ice to dodge, and a slippery final slope to descend.  Jane reaches her threshold and transforms into team safety captain ("Okay. Just turn around if you don't think we can make it. Whenever. Feel free. It's your call. How much further?") Carefully, I ease the car into the canyon's trailhead parking lot, which has more potholes than parking spaces. "See, there's an outhouse here, and an informational sign," I say reassuringly; we are the only ones there. Outside the car, the wind gusts down from the mountains towards the plains behind us; yesterday's storm is past, but its ripples reverberate. We don our winter wear and ascend the grassy path; the earth is springy and soft underfoot.

At the top of the cliff, we gaze down the steep canyon walls, the sides of which are blanketed by dark green clumps of moss. Upriver, the canyon curves beyond our view, disappearing into the mountainous highlands; downriver, it widens into a broad channel, and the water passes under a highway bridge and out into the flatlands. Jane climbs a grassy ridge and looks out over the vista to our south - endless moss-covered lava cross-cut by numerous rivers. The coast stretches away beneath us; we can just barely see the Atlantic beyond the barren plain.  From the canyon edge, a grassy path extends terrifyingly out into the middle of the ravine, seemingly suspended in mid-air.  I look down at the cliff base and see the tell-tale signs of a harsh winter - rock piles and shattered moss clumps evident of cataclysmic erosion. This is not Disney World, and there are no signs, handrails, or fluorescent caution tape. We decide not to take our chances with the canyon path.

On our way out of the canyon, we again tackle the icy slope, and our little VW Golf earns its permanent moniker. "C'mon, Baby!" we both whisper as the little hatchback crawls up the valley. Thankfully, we are soon back on the main highway, Baby none the worse for the wear. We pass Klaustur, a one-roundabout town amidst the rolling moss-covered plains. The Ring Road continues north and then east, winding past farmyards and hamlets, tucked beneath picturesque former sea cliffs dotted with waterfalls - some large cataracts, and some mere rivulets, mountain streams flowing off the cliff edge and being blown skyward by the updraft. In half an hour, we reach the base of Lómagnúpur, a mighty palisade famed as a living stone guardian in Icelandic folklore.  We stop by the side of the road just before it curves around the mountain; the mesa, nearly half a mile tall, is utterly imposing.

Once past the mountain, we cross into a truly nightmarish landscape. The road narrows into a massive one-lane bridge as we cross the Skeiðará River; all around us, an expanse of pure black. To our left, we see a titanic sheet of diamond-blue ice, the glacier from which the river originates; it is distant yet impossibly large; I can see a visible width of at least ten miles, and the ice recedes into a gargantuan landmass, a mountainous blue shield upon the island whose size is incomprehensible to me. The Skeiðará sandur (outwash plain) stretches on as far as the eye can see, hellish and desolate. I have seen the infamous helicopter footage of this bridge, its entire kilometer length, crushed and swept away in recent decades by a jökulhlaup - a glacial outburst flood generated when planetary fire wells up inside a continental block of ice, and the latter's barriers break. I shiver as I imagine the entire shield of ice in the distance, transformed into water and mud, raging toward us at a hundred miles per hour. Truly terrifying.

Beyond the bridge, we are in a land of ice. All around us, the sea cliffs and mountains have given way to great azure slabs that we cannot outrun despite miles and miles on the highway - the largest glaciers in all of Europe. We reach Skaftafell (now part of the larger Vatnajökull National Park), entryway into southeast Iceland's mighty ice valleys and glaciated mountain ranges. At the visitor center, we get a cup of hot chocolate and flip through beautiful books of Icelandic photography, but are disappointed to learn that our planned hike - a 1.5-mile walk to Svartifoss ("Black Falls") - is unofficially closed due to icy, muddy conditions. Unofficially being the operative word here, we move Baby to the trailhead and, after a few moments of tenuous investigation, decide to be daring this particular time.

The trail up the mountainside is actually quite passable, and in the muddier segments we are careful to avoid stepping down on wet ground, which would damage the trail with the weight of our bootprints. We ascend along a river with numerous skips and falls, and reaching an open hillside, are rewarded with sweeping views of the glacial outwash plain to our south. Further along, we cross the swollen river of snowmelt along a wooden bridge; the path continues uphill but becomes icier, and in some places we must skirt the path edge and skate along carefully. As we crest the hilltop, the path drops away before us, and we finally see Svartifoss far below in the valley, sitting in its black throne of basalt columns. It is not obvious to us where or how we should descend into the valley; we can plainly see a footbridge in front of the waterfall, but our track disappears high up, into mounds of ice and snow. We trudge along for a few steps, our legs sinking deeper and deeper into the snow, before we decide against continuing. We are unfamiliar with the landscape, and a single slip, loose rock, or hidden crevasse beneath the packed snow could place us in true danger. We sit on a small boulder and spend awhile gazing upon the scene below. On our way back to the car, we look east and west, trying in vain to spot some end to the mighty ice floes surrounding us. We look south, watching as gray clouds blow in rapidly from the coast. The elements are ever-present here - primal, powerful, and utterly apathetic to our presence. We feel dwarfed by the changing weather, and the clouds are visibly sweeping toward us.

We reach our car not a moment too soon. Rain sets in over the span of five seconds, followed by ten seconds of hail, a momentary pause of good weather, then ten more seconds of rain. This basic pattern continues as we drive out of the park and resume the main highway eastward, stopping soon at a gas station for fuel and lunch. We sit inside as the weather moves through its caprices, almost comically. Jane orders a delicious lamb burger with bearnaise sauce, and I order a basic cheeseburger; they come with a generous helpings of paprika-topped, crispy fries. We eat ravenously as a tourist family argues behind us. We purchase more sandwiches (of safe, standard construction), more juice, and a souvenir magnet, and we are eastbound again, Jane at the helm. I turn my shutter speed up and lean out the window, capturing a few tiny glimpses of the southern coast.

Around two in the afternoon, we arrive at the eastern terminus of our road trip - the famous Jökulsárlón (literally "glacial lagoon"), a massive lake of ice created in the wake of a receding glacier. From the parking lot, we climb to the top of a sandy hill, where we encounter gusts that stymie all movement. Far below, the lake shores recede, surrounded by glaciers and mountains on the far two sides.  Jane sits on a little bluff on the edge of the lagoon, legs dangling. On the shoreline (and sometimes in the freezing water itself), photographers crouch to frame their shots over slabs of glowing blue ice.  I am about to consider doing so myself - I am in the process of taking my ND filter out of its box - when hail suddenly rains down from a totally clear sky, the Icelandic weather mounting a painful, vengeful assault.  All of us sprint, laughing or screaming, into the little parking lot cafe. Thirty seconds later, we are given the all-clear.

We move the car just across the highway from the lagoon, where the black beach meets the Atlantic Ocean again. This side of the road is much more isolated and, to me, actually much lovelier than the lagoon proper. The little icebergs that sweep out of the glacial estuary and under the highway bridge are met by ocean waves, which push them - car-sized chunks of them - back up onto the beach. Jane runs forward to touch and walk among the cold, luminous boulders - then dashes back, in fear of the relentless tide.

Heading back west on the highway, we take a right-handed (northward) turnoff that leads toward another glacial lagoon, Fjallsárlón ("Mountain Lagoon"). We find a gravel road, and though it appears eminently passable, we pull over and decide upon the mile walk up the valley - partially in deference to our rental agreement, but also because we are itching to spend more time on foot before the long drive back to Vik. We walk along the track, admiring the mossy terrain and reflecting on our time studying oceanography and earth sciences together in high school. To the east of the glacial cap, a pair of horns rise from the mountainside, two proud spires remaining from an age of ice. We race each other to the top of the hill, and are quite taken aback by the valley below us, studded with rocks and boulders, dropping into a lake before the glacier's face. To the west, the gravel road continues past the crude hilltop parking area; the late afternoon light shines softly across the rolling floodplain below.  We spend what feels like an eternity here, silently admiring the landscape.

I take the wheel for our drive back to Vik. On our way, we pass the same blue glaciers, the gaping void of the outwash plain, all the rivers, the streams, the sea cliffs with their teary rivulets, colored in the golden warmth of sundown. Nearing Vik, we make a final stop by the roadside at what appears to be a picnic area. There is enough of a footpath here that we are able to gently creep in among the moss-covered flows without disturbing much vegetation. Sitting there on the lava, we try to imagine a time before all of this existed, back when the distant mountains were the continental shelf, separating Iceland from the sea.

Back in Vik, we stop at Hotel Katla to unload some of our equipment. The lake outside our window is, indeed, quite lovely, especially at sunset. We drive into town and find ourselves a meal of cauliflower soup, fresh loaves of bread, and grilled Arctic char from a local river. At dinner, Jane casually suggests that since we will be returning west via the same route, we could rise extra early to catch what we missed in yesterday's rainstorm - sunrise at the promontory lighthouse near Vik, and if weather permits, an early morning hike to the downed U.S. Navy plane.  It is not like Jane to mention rising early, and I feel profoundly in love with her.

Day 3: The Golden Circle

The next day, we load the car in the deep blue dark of the early morning. The day, as scheduled, was already going to be a long one - a westward drive out of the southern coastal plains and around the famous Golden Circle - a loop encompassing the most famous sights of the capital region. Our destination and home for the next two nights will be the capital city of Reykjavík. Tonight, the skies over the city will be clear, and electromagnetic energy generated by the confluence of the Earth's magnetism and the Sun's ionic radiation will peak in the upper atmosphere around 10 PM. I have already picked out a prime viewing spot on the coast - all we have to do is arrive safe and awake. We encounter difficulties at the self-serve gas station in Vik, but calculate that we have enough fuel to make it out of the southland. So we are off.

We soon turn off on a southerly road leading to the top of the headland west of Vik. The promontory, Dyrhólaey ("hill with a doorway") features a magnificent sea arch that was visible two days ago from the beach at Reynisfjara, and a lighthouse where we hope to see sunrise and sweeping views of the black sands below. But we quickly discover that we are foiled; Jane stops the car, befuddled. The highway, quite sardonically, descends literally into the bay before emerging a quarter mile away, rising toward toward the bluffs. I can see bright orange traffic cones dotting the flooded stretch - some standing neck-deep in sea water, some floating off into the ocean. The previous storm has taken its toll; grateful that we were not on the peninsula two days ago, we decide not to drive our rental car into the Atlantic Ocean.

Our next stop is the abandoned farm turn-off at Sólheimasandur, the desolate black wasteland that forms the outwash zone of the glacier Sólheimajökull. We pull onto the gravel path again, and park at the makeshift lot beside the highway.  From where we sit, the road looks much better than Sunday in the downpour, but there is no telling how we will fare once we get among the sand dunes. On GPS, the line distance to the wrecked Navy plane is less than two miles - an out-and-back trip of no more than two hours. Time is not an issue - it is not even 7 AM, a silver lining of skipping sunrise on the headland.  We weigh the relative risks of getting our car stuck out in the wasteland, or getting ourselves stuck in poor weather; it is quickly obvious that we both trust our feet more than the road, and so, jamming our ponchos into our hiking pack, we set off across the field.

What follows is the most haunting, most memorable two hours of our time in Iceland. In practice, walking down a flat stretch of black gravel and sand is not so different from walking down a city block. We follow the car path - it is even generously delineated by the ubiquitous yellow road markers found on every other roadway in Iceland - chatting as we go. But soon we turn silent. Jane pushes ahead while I walk, sometimes sideways, sometimes facing backward. The landscape pushes away from us, until we are truly engulfed by the mountains to our north, the ocean to our south, the endless black wasteland all around. I stand still, and all is quiet except for the beating of ocean surf, several miles away, and the occasional howl of wind from across the desert. From our gravel path, water is less obviously present in this sandur than in the one we saw yesterday, but I know that the flat black plains and the carved, rolling dunes could not exist here by mistake. I think of a torrential glacial flood pouring over this topography, and I resume walking, my pacer quicker than before.

The track bends and rises over a dune, and suddenly we are in view of the plane wreckage, about two hundred yards away.  Jane runs down to the derelict vessel, and I follow with my tripod out. As the camera records, we climb into the cabin, over the battered metal plating and under frayed panels and wires. Jane nudges her way into the cockpit, where the forward roof has partially collapsed, and the pilot's seat gazes north toward the mountains, as it has for nearly fifty years. I poke my head out of a cabin window and look left and right, finding the view to be quite charming. Several hundred yards from the tail of the plane, past the last sweep of sand dunes, I can see Atlantic waves crashing upon a beach.  In every other direction - black sands, solitary hills, and snow-covered mountains. It is as if we are voyagers who have crash-landed on a distant planet; we are totally alone in this land of volcanic earth and snow. Jane, in a trance, wanders off across the dunes. I photograph her before following.

Walking back toward the highway, I feel a cold droplet on my lip. A single snowflake. We can see the sky in all directions, and we figure, from the clouds we see and the wind we feel, that inclement weather will be blowing in from our west within half an hour. The land is so flat that we can see Baby from a mile away, a tiny gray speck wedged between a line of asphalt and the old farm field. We cut across the sand and through the field, breaking into a jog as we near the car. We climb on board just as snow begins to fall.

On our way out of the southland (I am driving as Jane munches on leftovers from last night's dinner), we stop by an open field where a horse herd is grazing. I tiptoe toward them and watch as they eat, their hairy manes flecked with snow. The snow falls harder as we drive past the familiar faces of Skógafoss and Seljalandsfoss. "Goodbye Skógafoss,"says Jane wistfully as we pass it on the highway. Half an hour later, in the town of Hella, I wake Jane up and we re-fuel at the gas station. Across the street, I photograph her making faces at me in front of three bright, primary-colored houses. We head into the convenience store and buy more sandwiches, a box of cookies, more skyr, a big bottle of juice, and a bag of hard fruit candy. My job is to feed candies to Jane whenever she drives for the rest of the trip.

We depart Hella, but instead of continuing west toward Selfoss and Reykjavík, we take a northward turn toward the Golden Circle. As we move away from the ocean and further north, the road becomes snowier; we wind our way through valleys and mountain passes, little one-lane bridges and small farmyards. More horses stare at us from the roadside. At length, we reach the northern tip of the Circle, and pull into the ice-covered parking lot above Gullfoss ("Golden Falls"), one of the mightiest and perhaps the most visited waterfall in the country. We slot Baby in beside two tour buses.

Even snowbound, Gullfoss is flush with visitors. We rummage through the lopapeysas (Icelandic wool sweaters) on sale in the visitor center, touching the soft fleece and fiber with both hands. Outside, the boardwalk is glazed with ice, and we skate along it to the edge of the canyon and down a flight of metal steps. Below us, the Hvítá River rushes over the frozen land, dropping over two stages into a deep chasm. We lean and peer over the canyon edge as much as we dare - the ground is slippery and unstable - but we cannot see the bottom. The river roars and plunges out of sight, as if disappearing into the center of the earth. There is a steep sloped path that leads down the canyon wall to a lower lookout, but it is treacherous and impassible, covered in a sheet of solid ice. All around us, the land is white and the air biting; we are no longer in the south.

We pull out of the frozen parking lot and drive five minutes west to our next destination, the geothermal park that is home to the world's original Geysir and many of its cousins. Sadly, Geysir, after nearly 10,000 years of activity, has become obstinate and shy as of late, clogged with silica and perturbed  by alterations to the local water table over the decades. In recent years, it has hardly erupted at all. Its neighbor, Strokkur ("churn") is a social butterfly by comparison. As a crowd of us, in our multi-colored winter parkas and coats, gather to watch, Strokkur joyously spews forth a mighty jet of steam and water; the fountain shoots up over a hundred feet skyward before raining down upon us in a lukewarm mist.  It does this again and again, at intervals of no more than five minutes, while the adoring crowd claps and laughs, encouraging this display of  geothermal showmanship. We walk around the dirt path and gaze into orange, yellow, and green mud pools bubbling like cauldrons of rich, earthy stew. Jane has particular affection for Litli Geysir ("little geyser"), a veritable bathtub of water that bubbles and spurts with great determination, producing tiny pops of water no more than a few inches high.

In the car, Jane drinks a coffee and I switch out my camera battery. We drive southwest now, down the highway toward Þingvellir National Park (anglicized: Thingvellir). By the side of the road, we stop at a large field where a family of horses is grazing. The afternoon sun is shining brightly now, lighting the horses' rich brown manes in a sheen of golden light as they stand in their field of winter grass and snowmelt. We walk up and offer our hands cautiously; these impetuous horses, residents along  Iceland's most popular tourist circuit, come forward excitedly at the sight of potential strangers bearing gifts. They search our pockets, nibble at Jane's coat sleeve, and snap at each other jealously. "Look at you!" Jane says chastizingly to a black mare. "Is this proper horse behavior?" The mare is undeterred.

We reach Þingvellir ("Valley of the Thing") around 3 PM, and Jane refills her coffee at the visitor center while I gaze out over the landscape, a vast valley coated in snow. To the south, past a massive natural lake (Þingvallavatn), I can see where the land sharpens into a broad range of mountains, a high plateau from which plumes of steam rise into the sky. This was the mountain pass we drove across on the morning of our arrival, and I see more vividly now the vast size and scope of Iceland's geothermal energy. Nearer to me, circling and disappearing into the north shore of the lake, is a cleft in the earth, in some places wide and shallow, and in others forbodingly deep and narrow. We are standing atop a rift valley, a place where tectonic slabs of the earth's crust slide and separate. The plates that adjoin each other here - and indeed, across all of Iceland, which owes its very existence to this fact - are the North American and Eurasian plates. These plates diverge from each other at the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, creating the ocean-spanning, mightily volcanic vent in the planet through which Iceland was born. Jane joins me with her coffee, and we reflect on that fact that we two oceanography enthusiasts are standing together on top of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. The Icelandic settlers of yore must have also felt the gravity of this place; the valley was the original home of the Alþingi ("All-thing") or Icelandic Parliament, and stood as the island's central seat of government for centuries.  We walk along the top of the valley and follow the well-laid boardwalk down into a dramatic part of the canyon; we climb up one side of the igneous formation and find a space to sit, gazing out at the formidable vista for some time. The majesty of plate tectonic theory.

Back in the car, we are done with the Golden Circle, setting our coordinates for Reykjavík. It is 4 PM, and our plan is to navigate to a grocery store, avail ourselves of a stay-at-home feast in our new guesthouse, and nap for several hours before the Sun and Earth begin their electromagnetic dance party. We drive southwest from Þingvellir over the frozen tundra, passing through several minute-long hailstorms along the way. Jane is driving, wearing the kind of oversize sunglasses so favored by Asian housewives eternally at war with sunlight in California. As we near the city, the traffic picks up, and roundabouts and stoplights make their re-appearance. We drive into the capital city, and find slanted parking on a shopping district street where the Bónus grocery store is located. Bónus, to put it simply, is my heaven-on-earth: a no-frills, cheap-as-dirt supermarket whose store logo (Bónus.jpg) is, hilariously, what appears to be a living piggy bank whose expression - presumably one of satisfaction at the prospect of savings - straddles the boundary between developmental disorder and severe intoxication. Here, we buy a loaf of bread, hot dog buns, a twelve-pack of beef hot dogs (a shining example of the phenomenon whereby the most comically unrepresentative portions of American cuisine diffuse into foreign countries through military occupation, becoming wildly popular with an adoring populace; see also: ketchup, Japan), a green salad, a tube of creamy mayonnaise-like sauce whose packaging insists upon its application to hot dogs, a bag of bacon-flavored potato chips, and a bar of chocolate (something to nibble on while aurora-watching, we reason). We check in at the Guesthouse Aurora, which has helpfully upgraded us from a standalone hostel room to an entire studio apartment down the block and on the other side of the street. Unpacking our things and firing up the kitchenette, I grill hot dogs while Jane munches on the bacon chips, her facial expression rapidly approaching that of the Bónus pig. Satiated and exhausted, we fall into a deep sleep.

The alarm awakens me at 8 PM. I throw open the window curtains to look up into the bright city sky and - "Oh crap! Jane, we have to go!" - the green waves are already there, visible even against the glow of the street lamps outside. We throw on our coats and run to our car up the street; the lights are curling like a worm around Reykjavík's central church tower a few blocks away. We hop into the car and drive to my impromptu coordinates - a dark place in Seltjarnarnes, the suburb on the western outskirts of town. Three minutes later, we ease into a crowded parking lot near the water at the Grótta Lighthouse; other aurora gazers are already present, and the atmosphere is festive. The wind blows cold across the water as we climb up on a rock wall beside the shoreline, watching the colors develop in the night sky. To our north across the bay, to our west out beyond the lighthouse and over the Atlantic, and suspended directly over our heads, the green and purple hues glow, rocking back and forth, some waves waxing and cresting as others crash and fizzle into the darkness, like ocean surf moving placidly over a beach of stars. It is a hauntingly beautiful sight. In the darkness, I fumble with my camera settings (having no previous astrophotography experience, I have arrived at a dark place and failed to bring a light). My travel-friendly, lightweight tripod shakes unhappily in the coastal wind.  With difficulty, I manage to capture a few usable images before retiring my equipment. Spellbound, we sit there for hours, on the stone wall over the sea, watching the celestial lights dance above us in the heavens.