the things she carried

i travel light. unless there is interesting nature at my destination. at which point i travel very, very, very heavy on the way home. a portrait of iceland, STILL blog style.

a collection of nature bits from iceland’s snæfellsnes peninsula

if i lived near the sea

if i lived near the sea, STILL blog would be a very different place indeed. i could happily spend days, months . . . hmmm . . . years? . . . yes,  i say years, photographing the colorful bits of dried up algae, kelp, and seaweed that wash up on beaches. and don’t even get me started with shells, sea glass, and driftwood. oh, and beach rocks. and coastal plants and lichens. and fish skeletons. and sharks’ teeth. oh, and . . .

washed up brown alga from an icelandic beach (laminaria hyperborea)

a new planet

this photo looks to me like an undiscovered planet with bulbous volcano ranges spewing black lava,  and hundreds of tiny moons circling chaotically overhead. it would be a very strange planet if it existed. so strange that if i discovered it and were asked to come up with a name, i would call it “iceland.”

volcanic (basalt lava) rocks from icelandic beaches

re-entry and recovery

i brought several things home with me from iceland: 1) some awfully cool black lava rocks, 2) a new understanding of just what those bodies of saltwater are way up north in the atlantic, 3) a flu virus, 4) this image of a quirky, proud, nicely proportioned houseplant from my airbnb in reykjavik. i’m happy about almost all of these things.

(unidentified) house plant in my airbnb in reykjavik

back to where it’s summer

the temperatures forecast for iceland before i left were in the 50s. the 50s i thought to myself. and by the time we get there maybe even the 60s! add a little sunshine. a little walking to warm the body up. i shouldn’t need an actual, you know, like jacket or anything. well it was not 60s at all by the time we got there. it was barely 50s. and the sun was not shining, it was spitting chilling little hard drops of rain. and i should know better than not to account for wind. and, well, when all is said and done, i was chilled for four days and now i’m in bed fighting something with the sniffles and the aches. more to come, surely, on the subject of iceland, but this first report is a straight-up weather report, and the weather kicked my a..

common ground-cover flower (deadnettle)