Exploring Iceland
Vacation is a chance for me to take a pause and recharge creatively, mentally, and physically. I find that I get fueled-up by exploring new places, experiencing new scenarios, and from meeting new people. This doesn’t necessarily have to be far from home, but this time I flew across an ocean to visit Iceland.
It’s a country I’ve been interested in because of its geologic wonders, and it didn’t disappoint. The landscape is grand and inspiring – it’s almost hard to describe or explain the vastness and the beauty that I witnessed. The raw power of earth is on display around the whole island and I loved imagining how our planet came to be as I came across each amazing spectacle of nature.
From pools of bubbling clay or boiling water, to geysers shooting out of the ground 100 feet in the air. Huge, cloud-reaching, lava-formed mountains looked like folds of fabric stretching to sea level. One hundred plus year old, two-foot thick moss carpets the rock. Sheep and horses are everywhere.
One of my main highlights was getting to descend into a (dormant) volcano. After a two mile hike, I donned a hard hat and stepped into a window washer lift. Seven minutes later, past long ridged stripes of chocolate syrup-like drips of lava, we had been lowered to the floor of the volcano. Black, red, yellow... colors of iron, sulfur, and copper minerals stained the walls – remnants of trace minerals after the molten magma drains away. It was indeed awesome to be dwarfed by the might and still present energy of the volcano walls. And, to not just see the origin of earth itself, but the roots from which gems get their start. I can’t wait to get back to my design bench!