It was somewhere between Vík and Höfn, standing in a farmhouse kitchen at 7 AM with a mug of coffee I hadn’t asked for but desperately needed, watching the host’s daughter chase a very opinionated hen across the yard, that I understood what I’d been missing on my first Iceland trip. Back then, I’d driven … Read more
It was 11:47 PM in July, and I was standing at the base of Skógafoss waterfall with absolutely no business being awake. The sky was the color of a ripe peach, the falls were thundering, and a family of four was eating sandwiches on the rocks beside me like it was perfectly normal to have … Read more
I stood at the edge of Skógafoss waterfall in June—technically summer in Iceland—watching my face get systematically sandblasted by what felt like a horizontal hurricane. The waterfall itself was magnificent: 60 meters of glacial meltwater thundering down dark basalt cliffs, the kind of sight that makes you understand why Iceland appears in every travel magazine … Read more
The GPS on my iPhone read 47 kilometers to the next town. The battery icon flashed red: 8%. I was somewhere between Egilsstaðir and Mývatn in northeast Iceland, on a stretch of Route 1 that felt less like a road and more like the edge of the world. Fog so thick I could barely see … Read more
I never took a gap year. I went straight from high school to college to a career, doing every sensible thing in the right order — and somewhere around 32 I realized I’d been meaning to see the world since…
