Sandscapes of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge

I have just returned from an utterly memorable two weeks in the stunning,
extraordinary, landscapes of Iceland. I have never seen anything quite like
it. Iceland is, quite simply, unique - and wonderful. There will undoubtedly
be further bulletins, but for a start, a modest gallery.

(this, by the way, is the end of the lava flows from the 2014/2015
[eruption](https://www.volcanodiscovery.com/bardarbunga/seismic-
crisis-2014/updates.html) of Bárðarbunga and Holuhraun in the central
highlands)

and, after two weeks of daily practice and testing with a variety of patient
Icelanders, I can now pronounce Eyjafjallajökull more or less correctly - if
slowly.

Comments

Richard Bready (2016-10-02):

Spectacularly beautiful. More, please.
It is a theatre floating through the clouds,
Itself a cloud, although of misted rock
And mountains running like water, wave on wave,
Through waves of light. It is of cloud transformed
To cloud transformed again, idly, the way
A season changes color to no end,
Except the lavishing of itself in change,
As light changes yellow into gold and gold
To its opal elements and fire’s delight,
Splashed wide-wise because it likes magnificence
And the solemn pleasures of magnificent space
The cloud drifts idly through half-thought-of forms.
The theatre is filled with flying birds,
Wild wedges, as of a volcano’s smoke, palm-eyed
And vanishing, a web in a corridor…
–Stevens, Auroras of Autumn

Sandglass (2016-10-02):

Thanks, Richard - and thanks for the wonderful and appropriate Wallace Stevens poem (that I was previously unaware of). I see that Reykjavik shut off its city lights last week so that people could enjoy the aurora - we had kept a routine nocturnal lookout, but it seems that our timing was slightly off…

Originally published at: https://throughthesandglass.typepad.com/through_the_sandglass/2016/09/sandscapes-of-the-mid-atlantic-ridge.html#comments