I lay in a curled ball of pain near the tent doorway. When would I ever learn that camping on a slope always resulted in my sleeping bag sliding relentlessly towards the lower end of the tent? It was pitch black, not a scrap of light filtering through the flysheet, but Moth’s knees under my head and the pain in my hips said I’d done it again. Why didn’t Moth ever slide downhill? Was it his weight that held him down, or because he seemed to lie perfectly still all night, not constantly wriggling like I did? He was in a deep sleep, groaning lightly with each breath. Was he in pain and his brain registering it even as he slept, or was it the forerunner to a full-throated snore? I shuffled in a snake-like motion back uphill, joints pinging in agony as I uncurled. In the absolute blackness I imagined designs for sticky self-inflating mats that didn’t move on the nylon groundsheet and Velcro attachments that fixed the sleeping bag in place no matter how extreme the slope. The groan didn’t develop into a snore but continued as a low moan of pain. However hard he tried to convince me in the daytime that he was coping, in his sleep he couldn’t hide. Had I really seen a change in his movements yesterday, or was it no more than wishful thinking, hoping for the same miracle we’d had on the South West Coast Path, yet knowing it was impossible in such a short space of time? Rain began to beat on the flysheet, thunderous rain that fell from the tent with the sound of torrents from a gutter. I fumbled around in the darkness and pulled the waterproofs over him.
Leaving the Emstrur huts in warm sunshine, the pounding rain of just a few hours earlier already drying, we climbed away from the ravine into a fresh cool wind blowing from the higher mountains covered in heavy snow.
‘What the hell, what day is it?’
‘I’m not sure. Is it Sunday?’ Moth glanced at his watch to check the day of the week.
‘Winter came early then?’
‘What?’
‘It was supposed to come today, on Sunday – obviously came last night like, with all that snow.’
How could the Icelanders predict the season so accurately in a land where the weather systems seem to emanate from the very earth itself? Accurately enough to set the bus timetables by it? Maybe the 350,000 permanent inhabitants of the island still have an unacknowledged connection to the elements. Maybe even the inhabitants of Reykjavík can look across the ice-grey water and sense a cold front on the horizon. Possibly the ancestry which reaches back to Viking longboats that crossed those same seas still holds in its genes the ability to sense movement in the skies, or a change in the wind. Or perhaps the high level of volcanic activity here means it’s the most geologically and meteorologically scrutinized bit of rock on the planet and great weather forecasting comes from that.
I stopped, panting for breath on a path of loose stones, looking back across the black ash of a valley bottom and another river just crossed. Moth and Dave walked past, chatting easily about life in the boy scouts and the merits of Firestarter badges. Julie strode by in her relentless metronome of perseverance. All disappearing over the edge of the jagged lip of the flat-topped escarpment above. Alone on the windswept mountainside, I was as close to the others unpacking lunch on the flat top as I was to the glacier that moved through this valley millennia ago, carving it into a classic U shape. Or to the deer we’d heard sing on the hillside at Lochan Tuath a lifetime ago, or the green stones we’d picked from the beach at the Bay at the Back of the Ocean. All those moments felt huge and present in the air as it moved along the valley, pushed by the river. A background roar of the rushing elements of air and water, a sense of the earth moving without time. I’ve read arguments that say time doesn’t exist, that it’s only a human construct to measure change. If that’s true, then on that rocky slope I was in a place outside of time, where all things existed and nothing was lost, only re-formed.
What is it about boys and badges that fifty years after they pinned them on their green jumpers and straightened their woggles, they can still hold such relevance in their lives? As I left the timeless valley behind and stepped over the edge of the escarpment I could hear the conversation still going on, as if the badges had been handed out yesterday and the years between hadn’t happened. Moth sat on a flat rock, already holding a cup of soup. Chatting as if he’d just taken a stroll in the park, as if life had barely touched him and his hold on it was as permanent as the mountains. A world without time, or just a moment in life: is there a difference?
The flat top of the escarpment was disconnected from the neighbouring mountain. A high cliff face of red chevrons of rock forced up by huge tectonic uplifts was separated from where we stood by a cavernous ravine where a river rolled and boiled far below. It was as if we stood on a column that had just risen from the earth. A white sea bird spread its wings and glided on the air currents above the river. As I watched it rise high on the wind across the cliff face, stark against the black and red rock, I realized it was the first bird I’d seen since passing a group of whimbrels near the coast while on the bus to the lava head in Landmannalaugar. I watched the fulmar glide into the distance, following the ravine and the river away to the south. All that was left was the roaring, wild silence of an empty land without vegetation or animal life. A heaving, crashing chasm of noise and movement, overlaid by a veneer of stillness.
The earth beneath our feet has no need of humanity. It exists in a state of fixed impermanence, a volcanic equilibrium of rock and ash in constant realignment. The only transition is in the changing state of molecules on its surface. The archaeological eras of Nordic, Neolithic, Roman and Plastic erupt and fold in chevrons of change, across an earth that will undoubtedly eject any presence of life that threatens it, as surely as a splinter from a human thumb. We packed the cups away and followed the fulmar south through a landscape of shrinking glaciers and warming skies.
The molecules on the surface were visibly changing. As the path progressed gradually south, so more and more patches of ash had evolved into soil that held low grasses and thrift. Dave and Julie walked on ahead, casually pointing walking poles at some distant peak. Moth meandered behind them, stopping repeatedly to take photographs or move the weight of his rucksack across his shoulders, but then disappeared from view. The ash thinned, replaced by stony shale, then dropped into a huge bowl in the land. The others were already over the rim on the opposite side, but in the bottom was a bush, just one bush, alone in a hollow, shining yellow. A yellow so bright that it reflected its colour on to the surrounding earth. Not a recognizable shrub to my eye, but something totally unknown, dazzling the dark earth with its brilliance. I walked around it, held by the wonder of it being able to grow in such a hostile landscape, as Moth walked back towards me and dropped his rucksack down.
‘I just went over the top to see if there were any other bushes like this on the other side.’
‘Are there?’
‘No. This is so unreal, like something totally new has been created and just put here.’
‘Thought you didn’t believe in stuff like that? That sounds almost creationist.’
‘No I don’t, but it’s as if the earth has made something that can only grow in this one spot where nothing else can thrive. As if the molecules have moved to allow life to exist in another form.’
A pale yellow light bathed him in the shrub’s reflected glory as he picked up his rucksack and swung it on to his shoulder, then lifted mine for me to put my arms through. A changing landscape, where molecules, life and time shifted and transformed.
As the land fell into a wide river valley the vegetation increased. Scrubby growth of bilberries, birch and tough grasses scattered the riverbank. An occasional insect lifted from the path. Sparse but forceful life was emerging. The final river crossing of the Laugavegur Trail lay ahead. Not one river to be crossed, but a valley of water that separated and diverged and rejoined. Veins of water across a body of rock and shale.
‘How the fuck are we going to cross that? It’s like ten rivers in one.’ Moth’s rucksack was down and his boots were already off by the time I reached the edge of the river.
‘Well, we’ll just pick our way over with the poles, like. I think we should go this way.’ Dave was pointing upstream through a maze of water.
‘Not sure about that. I think here, where it’s wider but shallower.’ Moth was already wading in the opposite direction.
‘What, are you telling me there’s no boy-scout badge for river crossings?’ Julie strapped her sandals on to her feet and headed into the river, delicately testing each step with her walking pole. I watched the three of them, nervous, excited, but sure enough of themselves to step out into the fast-flowing iced water, and then, checking that each step was secure, find their way to the opposite shore. Moth sat on his rucksack drying his feet as I stepped into the water, the noise of the river almost deafening as it pushed at my knees, sharp pain gripping my ankles. But I barely acknowledged either. Don’t tire yourself … and be careful on the stairs.
Refreshed feet warm in boots, we climbed away from the noise of the river into a thicket of birch and undergrowth. Iceland faded away and as we followed the narrow path through the branches we could have been in the foothills of Snowdonia, walking on peaty ground past tiny streams of clear water. But when we climbed a ridge Iceland was back in full view, the edge of a glacier filling the skyline. Then down, down among birch and sky to a tiny campsite by the Langidalur hut at Þórsmörk, the edge of a wide, stony, tree-lined river valley, surrounded by high-peaked mountains. The end of the Laugavegur, but the start of something bigger. Rising beyond, the Fimmvörðuháls loomed, barring the way to something hidden and foreboding.
Clusters of people sat on benches around the hut. We found a space at a picnic table where two men were sitting. Shorter than me with very similar, unusual gnome-like expressions. They stared at us, smiling and nodding. Moth caught their look.
‘Hi.’
‘Well, hello, are you staying in the hut?’
‘No, we’re camping.’
‘Of course, maybe that’s because you like camping?’ They were nudging each other and laughing. Possibly German.
‘It’s okay, getting a bit chilly though.’
‘Yes, but you’re used to it being cold, no?’
‘Well, we’re from the UK, so …’
‘’Ere, come and look down at the bottom, some good pitches down by the river.’ Dave had already explored the site.
We wandered down to the edge of a riverbed that in full spate would be a vast and terrifying expanse of angry muddy water nearly a quarter of a mile wide, but was now a scattering of streams, with just a narrow central river.
A small cooking tent looked out to the mountains. Eric, the girl in red trousers and a collection of others who had come and gone from their group sat inside, filling the tent with steam and food. But – again – no sign of the engineer. They shouted out from the tent.
‘Didn’t think you’d make it!’
‘Well, here we are. Are you all finishing here, or going over the Fimmvörðuháls?’
‘They’re all finishing here, but we’re going over. Just straight over in the day tomorrow. I don’t feel as if I’ve had a proper walk yet, so it will make a good stretch to finish on.’ The girl in the red trousers looked confident but Eric stirred his soup, looking down at the table. He’d probably need to add some more oregano to that, if he was to have any chance of walking the twenty-five kilometres over the mountains to Skógar near the main road to Reykjavík, in one day.
On the opposite side of the riverbed an off-road bus wound its way slowly through the boulders, lifting, jerking and twitching as it came towards a small group of people sitting on the riverbank. Among them was the engineer with her rucksack, straps tightened and looking half its original size.
‘Aren’t you going over with Eric?’
‘No. This hasn’t been a good holiday for me. I thought Eric was my friend, or something more. But I’m just his donkey, his packhorse carrying his frying pan. And I had a dream.’
‘A dream?’
‘Last night, I dreamt about my grandmother who died years ago. I never dream of her.’
‘Was it a bad dream?’
‘No, it was a beautiful dream. She was making kuchen in our family kitchen. She said, “Come home, the strudel is ready.” So I’m going home. Iceland is not for me.’
I waved as the huge wheels of the bus bounced back across the riverbed. Sad for her, but a sadness tinged with envy. No comforting arm reached through my dreams with plates of strudel.
We sat in the cooking tent with freeze-dried rice and the last six jelly babies.
Shivering in the darkness, there was no choice but get out of the tent. The cold had woken me, biting through the down sleeping bag and all my clothes. That and too many cups of tea the night before. Desperate for a pee, I shoved boots on and scrambled to get the zip open before it was too late, but the zip wouldn’t open. The flysheet was solid with ice and the dampness of the night before had frozen the zip closed. I ran my fingers up and down it until it thawed enough to unzip, folding the tent door back like the cover of a hardback book. Beyond the tent the night spread in an ice-still vastness of mountains and sky. The huts and campsite were unlit, as if they had melted back into the birch woods, leaving only a deep dark world of ridgelines, sky and stars. The bonfire of the evening before smoked with only the faintest glow at the edge of the riverbed. Silence. Switching off the head torch as I left the toilet block, a faint light spread and wavered around the eastern horizon. Maybe the first movement of dawn? No, too early. Or starlight refracted from the white glow of the glacier? But the light moved, lifting in brightness, a hesitant spreading mist of light, a fluctuating ripple of energy. Then without warning it broke into fingers of whiteness, then falling, hanging curtains of colour that blew in some wild polar wind from horizon to horizon. Pink, blue and the faintest green painted the sky in moving brushstrokes of charged particles.
‘Moth, Moth, get up, the aurora, it’s here.’
People were emerging from tents and huts, awestruck by the vast magnificent spectacle of the earth displaying its aura. A chance encounter with the atmosphere that’s always there, but so rarely seen. Fingers of the universe reaching down to include the earth in its constant motion. I thought of the engineer in her bed in Reykjavík, sleeping after packing her bags ready to fly away tomorrow, held safe by the call of home and family. There were no dreams of home or comforting arms holding me in some subconscious half-remembered childhood warmth, nothing calling me back through time to a table set and waiting for my return. But Moth’s hand was still in mine and as the light wrapped us in curtains of infinity I held it just a little less tightly. Whatever was lost or found in life he would always be a part of this. A part of the charged movement of molecules from the earth to the universe. He would never leave.