the web cam pt. 1

It was November of 2002 and I hadn't had a vacation all year. I was working my fingers to the bone at my old job, plowing straight through weekends, working 18 days straight in places. (And for you Icelandic readers, no, not getting paid extra for this. Ég veit, ég veit, bara brjálað.) So I was tired, and I had been wanting to get back to Iceland all year. Now I finally had my chance for my week of vacation and it was already dark and wintry up there. But I kept to the Iceland plan, stubbornly refusing to let November get in the way.

One of the things that kept me going through all those days was that I had a series of webcam shots on my computer's background. I had set them up to refresh every five minutes and sometimes when coming in at 5 a.m. on another Saturday morning to face a weekend of work, I'd daydream and look at them. The top 3 on the screen were from Iceland, and the one in the top left corner was from Ísafjörður, a place I had never been. In the foreground were the still waters of a fjord, and in the background the gentle Icelandic slope of a mountain coming down to meet the water. And a little road where there was sometimes a bus going by, and a stretch of lights at the base of the mountain, reflected in the water.

I dreamed about this remote place, and wondered about it every day when I saw the picture. I watched the sky get light and dark again, and then stay light all summer. The mountainside became faintly green. Then the light faded again as fall came, and the mountainside became covered with snow. Ísafjörður, wherever it was, seemed far off and lonely and peaceful.

I had to go there.

(To be continued...)