Iceland

I am keen to write something about Iceland before it all fades. It is already two weeks away but the impact is still detectable in the wider spaces that are keeping me afloat and calm even in the hurly burly and 100 knot pace of the beginning of the academic year. The colours, the natural forms of the icebergs around which a seal swam apparently contented in nearly freezing water, while our boat kept a safe distance away (with a safety boat dogging our tail) in case they tipped over, as they are wont to do - centres of gravity shifting with the melt rate. The power and the energy held within the glaciers. We visited several 'tongues' or 'snouts' - odd terminology I know - of the largest glacier in Europe. They were quiet and immense beasts. I was told you could sometimes hear them groan, but we didn't, although we could see the huge rafts of terminal moraine that they had shovelled up before them, before retreating in melt - effects of global warming therefore visible to us. It seems so odd and contradictory to see these huge containers of energy remaining so still, frozen rivers, unable to flow except for a very slow but inexorable rate. There aren't many people in Iceland, and lots of space - hence the space it leaves in my head. It is also incredibly beautiful, and dramatic - not just the ice, but the hot springs, the lava fields, the green meadows, the dolphin speckled seas, the waterfalls, and the awareness of a volcanic eruption long overdo in one area through which we drove, twice. The earth bubbling beneath our tiny feet. The instability of that on which we stand, which we take for granted everyday, reduces all those little emails and demands that threaten to puncture my own peace in my work day to the proper size they need to be - still does that - long may it last!