hidden man walking

I just got back from a half-hour solo walk in the pitch blackness of late afternoon on the first of January. We are out in the country and I walked along some dirt roads here, trying not to use the flashlight. There was a little light reflected off the rain clouds from a town some ten kilometers away, and that was about enough to see the path along the road. Around me, trees and rocks loomed, and off in the distance the ghostly expanse of a giant broad snow-covered mountain. There was no sound but light raindrops on my jacket and my feet crunching on the gravel of the road. Then, however, on the way back, things got steadily eerier. It sounded as if someone was walking off over to my left, just off the road. Then he was on the other side of me, walking along, and then just behind me. But every time I stopped to listen, he stopped too.

Legend has it that for New Year's Eve a lot of hidden people come out for their own celebrations. I think I might have brushed into my doppleganger among the huldufólk, on his way back from his own festivities, walking alongside me in the vast and damp quiet of an Icelandic January night.