Accompanying Songs:
• Television Land by Konradsen
• A Calf Born in Winter by Khruangbin
• Winter by The Dodos
• Sky Above by Jacob Collier
• Bloom by Blue Lake
Saturday, August 31, 2019.
I was halfway around Iceland’s Route 1, a freeway circling the perimeter of the island also known as Ring Road, exploring the country with Denver. With no exaggeration, I count it as the best day of my life.
We arose in Eskifjörður, a sleepy fishing village of about 1,100 people on the eastern coast.
Our host, a kind, burly man named Einar, greeted us with a pot of coffee as we drowsily sauntered upstairs into his common area. Einar was rough around the edges in all the best ways—scruffy and barefooted, he sported dark trousers, tattoos, and a braided ponytail. He was comically opinionated and unafraid to direct friendly jabs at American healthcare disparities relative to his Nordic quality of life. It was impossible not to like Einar.
There we sat with him, chatting next to a lofty glass window hosting a view of Hólmatindur, a 3,231-foot mountain standing guard over the fjord across from town.
Somehow, we got to trading YouTube videos on his TV, specifically live musical performances. He turned on a Deep Purple performance, and after he mentioned his love for jazz and experimental music, I asked him to queue Snarky Puppy’s live performance of their tune, “Lingus.” He was made a fan.
“Do you play?” he asked.
“I do!” I said.
“Here, come,” he said, and beckoned us to a room next to his common area, full of musical instruments. The walls were lined with bookshelves and guitars, the floor adorned with rugs and plants and guitar amps.
I perched myself on the stool at his electronic drum set in one corner of the room. A much more seasoned guitar player than a drummer, I hadn’t touched a drum set in years. After auditioning for percussion as I entered sixth grade, the middle school band director told me I had no rhythm. On the first day of school, he placed me on french horn—a ghastly instrument—and I quit band shortly after. In spite of that duly scarring experience, I would let Einar’s spontaneous invitation unfold however it would.
He plugged in his guitar, clicked on on his amp, and began shredding away with crunchy, improvised metal licks. I followed his lead, intuiting what drums might sound like over his licks, thinking mostly of all the Metallica I had listened to in middle school. By the grace of God, I played in time.
With a quick peek behind me, I found Denver sneaking a video of us playing. It is a five-second video and it is a treasure.
It all happened so fast.
4,200 miles from home and strangers to each other 24 hours prior, Einar and I made music that morning.
~
Impromptu jam sessions happen every day, as do insane dinners, hypothetical debates, bets on empty museums, and every other variety of moment with others that makes one thankful to be alive and ought to be counted as divine miracles.
All of these things and more, when experienced outside the bounds of one’s home, emerge and propagate for the very reason that they are born outside the bounds of one’s home—outside the bounds of one’s comfort.
Something about the act of travel, of leaving town to abandon the domestic rituals of comfort and routine in search of the renewal that awaits, is inexplicably transformative.
Leaving town unlocks questions, ideas, and neural pathways made unavailable to us in the automaticity of our daily groove. We wonder why we do things the way we do back home. We confront our discomfort abroad because there is no alternative. We chase novelty and bewilderment and good conversation like a prayer.
And once we step out, we wake from our absentminded slumbers, rendering ourselves available to that sweet serendipity that awaits us. Our heads nod when asked to play music with a new friend in his own living room, returning home with a saccharine account of all the rich possibilities to be discovered in kindness.
Far from home is where uncertainty abounds, safety rests on intuition and the goodwill of strangers, and the presence of setbacks and heightened emotions is an underlying assumption. To dive headfirst into the waters of the great unknown is to believe in our ability to adapt and navigate the world we were born into.
Of course, one can become skilled at leaving town. Booking reservations and scouring lodging websites becomes its own ritual over time. One can discover which pocket of town is most walkable, which rail line proves most efficient, or which hole in the wall bistros to take a chance on ahead of time. At the core of research before a trip is anticipation, and anticipation is among the best parts of traveling.
Beyond the anticipation, one can even become a seasoned veteran at minimizing the uncertainty of a trip. Everybody knows the friend on a trip that speaks fluently in directions, foresees every hiccup in a day’s agenda like an actuary, and scarcely forgets their sunglasses, phone charger or extra cash. We love these friends, especially if we happen to be these friends.
Regardless of whether you are planning a weekend jaunt to a nearby campground or an epic months-long excursion across western Europe, and regardless of whether you are a budding nomad or an experienced globetrotter, the appeal of going remains unchanged. The constant in the beautiful equation of travel is the very absence of constants.
~
Today was the day Denver and I were headed to Seyðisfjörður, a tranquil port village burrowed along a fjord between two 3,600-foot mountains.
We said goodbye to Einar, thanked him for his hospitality, and hopped in our red Kia Rio to continue our trek on the Ring Road.
Iceland is a vast expanse of open sky and open road, a quiet emerald canvas home to towering waterfalls, winding rivers, and dramatic contrasts in landscape alternating between plateaus, icefields and mountain peaks.
With just under 400,000 Icelanders across the country, it is common to find that you have significant pockets of land and sky all to yourself. In no other country have I found gliding over the freeways to feel as liberating as it does in the Land of Fire and Ice.
On the way to Seyðisfjörður that morning, we experienced little miracle after little miracle.
Departing the Ring Road and diverting onto Route 93 headed east, we soon approached a personal landmark. In 2013 as juniors in high school, Denver and I saw Ben Stiller’s film The Secret Life of Walter Mitty in theaters, embedding in us the idea to go visit Iceland together one day—a common origin story for many who have decided to visit.
Cutting through our route to Seyðisfjörður were the zigzag roads featured in the iconic scene where Walter Mitty sails down a mountain via longboard. I linked my phone to our CarPlay and queued the blistering, propulsive tune from that scene, “Far Away” by Junip. We sang and hollered and celebrated, whipping around the mountain in our Rio. Six years after that night we caught the film, we materialized the dream. Little miracle number one.
An hour in, we pulled off onto a rough gravel road, taking us into a golden valley that harbored a roaring waterfall called Gufufoss. Taking a quick pit stop, we got in a good stretch, skipped rocks over the glacial river that Gufufoss fed into, and remarked that it felt awfully similar to somewhere you might find Hagrid. Not a more rejuvenating pit stop to be found. Little miracle number two.
Afterwards, I fired up my Spotify’s Release Radar playlist, composed of new and notable singles from the week. Denver and I were chatting over the music until one song called for our silence: “Television Land” by the Norwegian duo Konradsen.
Have you ever heard a song so good, so lush and clear and resonant, so tailored to the whims of your ears, that you can’t help but laugh?
The moment at the 1:34 mark, where the beat comes in accompanied by cozy synth pads and warm family vocals, fully washed over us. Jenny Marie Sabel, the group’s lead singer, belts out a gorgeous melody that seemed to perfectly complement the rugged landscape rushing past our windows on Route 93. When the song finished, we looked at each other in amazement.
“Oh, my goodness,” we muttered, about all we could offer, and then we played it again.
Oftentimes, I’m confident in my ability to paint a picture of the mental and emotional fireworks that go off upon listening to something. A song sounds airy, or punchy, or communal, or vibrant, or devastating. Adjectives usually arrive on time. But this wasn’t one of those songs. To explain how a song sounds is one endeavor; to express how a song moves you is entirely another. Thus, words to describe the emotion that Television Land brought out of me on that drive remain sincerely difficult to conjure up.
Television Land was less of a song and more of a feeling. A vast, delicate feeling, made up of jubilation, of disbelief, and of gratitude.
In that moment, Television Land was crowned as song of the trip. Little miracle number three.
Music has forever been a companion abroad. On every trip I’ve been on since 2017, I’ve made an accompanying playlist with each song from that trip. It is a remarkable occurrence when you hear a song that sounds exactly like where you are. It is especially astounding when you later hear a song that transports you right back to where you were when it clicked.
When I was younger, I used to chase that high to great lengths. I’d hear a tune that caught my ear and think to myself, I’ve got a trip to California next month, I should save the full album for when we’re driving along the coast, or Colorado is coming up, this would be great through the mountains. Then I’d wait for the right moment on said trip to spin said record: the perfect recipe for future nostalgia.
Sometimes, it would be worth the wait. Other times, the full album was disappointing, or the conditions weren’t right, or expectations weren’t met. Over the years, I found that forcing these moments reduced the music to precarious fuel for anticipation and forced reverence; a vain means to a wishfully nostalgic end, which was often unfounded and unrealistic.
It was a science I could never quite get right. And when abroad on precious time, it was also a science that shouldn’t have been of any priority. The missing variable, it occurs to me these days, was the confidence in letting go. The willingness to let be, trusting the core belief that music and strangers and momentary magic will find us and leave their own marks in their own time.
Indelible memories aren’t to be chased, but patiently received. Television Land was proof.
~
As one of my oldest friends, Denver is the person who knows me best. We met our freshman year of high school and after learning we attended the same church, shared four classes and mirrored each other’s music taste, the rest was history.
In high school, we hosted the school announcements together—a dream come true for us, a regrettable nightmare for the school staff. Between classes, organizations, summer camps, and workshopping fresh comedy material for the announcements, we spent hundreds and hundreds of hours together hanging.
Denver is as kind and personable as they come, supremely gifted at turning strangers to homies in a heartbeat. He is funny as hell, willing to follow me into whatever mindless burrow of banter we go down. He is exceptionally reliable, refreshingly candid and more contemplative than most. His curiosity cuts through conversation like a knife. And, don’t tell him this, but his dancing at wedding receptions absolutely rips.
Like all of my greatest friends, Denver understands the delicate balance between sincere and silly. One minute, we’re sharing about aspirations, family, and beliefs; the next, we’re constructing the mythology about the gourmet chicken fried steak and Glen Campbell’s haunting track record. We’re lucky to speak both languages, recognizing each as equally vital to quality time.
Denver and I have lived in different cities since we started college in 2015. Among voice messages, memes, and visiting each other about a dozen times a year, traveling together has been one of our favorite ways of sticking close.
Over the last decade, we have gone on 25 trips together across the globe.
Since our first trip in 2013, we’ve grown alongside each other immeasurably. Through our good fortune surviving blizzards, flight delays, mysterious illnesses, and shoddy dining experiences, we have our travel cadences down by now. This leaves much room for shooting the breeze abroad.
Most times on long hikes or commutes, we’ll share our latest dating app developments, catch each other up on life back home, or build up a repository of recurring jokes based on who we meet or who we already know.
But other times, nearly once a trip, we’ll invent a new fictional universe in which we dream up characters and conflicts and locations to pass the time. On a hike in Kauai, we imagined a universe headed for an ice age, where tribes of hyperintelligent animals are forced to fight wars for resources and control.
“So, basically,” I explained, “the Mountain Tribes, of bears, moose, and eagles, are mobilizing to invade the Jungle Tribes of tigers, lizards, and monkeys.
“Climate change is reversed, and because the world is entering an ice age, the Mountain Tribes are desperate to relocate before it’s too late.
“Osno the bear, the leader of the Mountain Tribes, has built up an army of tens of thousands of animals to lead into battle. War is near.”
The plot holes were evident and the environmental science was spotty, but we weren’t bothered. Our beautiful hike along the Hawaiian coast was only enhanced by our imagination.
Along with fictional stories and bits, sometimes we’re lucky enough to invent games.
At Lake McDonald in Glacier National Park, we invented a game called Ripple Rock. Home to many thousands of smooth and colorful rainbow rocks, Lake McDonald contains the glassiest water I’ve ever seen—a perfectly still body of water ripe for skipping rocks, if not outright chunking them.
The game requires 2+ players, and is played as such:
All players grab a rock about the size of their palm
Player One begins by throwing their rock into the water
Within one second of Player One’s rock splashing, Player Two (and all other players) must throw their rocks, aiming to land inside the ripple created by Player One’s rock
If Player Two (and all other players) lands their rock inside of the ripple, they earn one point
Now, Player Two throws their rock, and the process repeats
The first player to five points wins, and must win by two
At sundown on our last night in Glacier, we played a best-of-three. While it was fiercely competitive, I don’t remember who won. But I do remember the crushing feeling of having to leave Ripple Rock behind at Lake McDonald.
Traveling with anybody who knew me less, felt less comfortable being themselves, or tended to be less open to the joy and mysteries of the road would not be quite as exhilarating. There is no chance I would leave town and return home with as much to say and feel about it if it weren’t for a best bud like Denver.
~
At midday, we finally arrived in idyllic Seyðisfjörður. Fishing boats, quaint cottages, and crisp mountain air gave a warm welcome as we rolled up in our trusty red Kia Rio.
Built on the edge of a fjord, Seyðisfjörður boasts a flurry of color. Green and tawny snow-capped mountains stand tall set against swirly blue skies, a magnificent backdrop to any given spot around town. Pastel houses abound on chalky gravel roads. A real-life Rainbow Road, assembled by painted streaks of rotating colors, pierces through town to a blue steepled church known simply as The Church.
At the center of town lives a lake called Fjarðará. While exploring, we stumbled upon a trail lining the perimeter of Fjarðará, where I felt it necessary to FaceTime my parents to show them what we were seeing. Though noon for us, it was 7am in Texas, on a Saturday, and I woke them up by accident.
“Oh wow, Michael, that is just beautiful!” my mom exclaimed, rubbing her eyes. She scooted over in their bed to share the screen with my dad, who looked more half-asleep than my mom.
“Oh, wow, yeah! That is nice, Michael,” my dad said, chuckling with my mom at how off-guard I was catching them that early.
Unfortunately for Denver and I, Ripple Rock had not yet been invented, but would be about a year later. We were blissfully unaware of what a missed opportunity we had to play on the still waters of Fjarðará.
Starving, we made for the closest restaurant we could find, where we devoured a plate of fresh fish and a frosty pint of Viking, a hearty Icelandic beer. Having graduated college only a few months prior, our wallets ached for a PB&J and Lay’s diet for most of the week. Scarfing down fresh fish and chilled beer felt to us like feasting as kings. Purely ceremonial.
A few hours passed. Seyðisfjörður had treated us well beyond our imagination. By now, the day was winding down and we had a 2.5-hour drive ahead of us, southbound to Stafafell where we would stay that night.
Few things stirred us with excitement more than our last landmark of the day: the Hvalnes Lighthouse, just fifteen minutes east from Stafafell. We barreled down the Ring Road before the sky turned black, listening to The Dodos’ fantastic folk album Visiter through a sun-drenched valley, and arrived just as a hazy blue dusk was setting in.
Situated on the coast, the bright orange, 38-foot beacon stood guard over the rolling sea, blinking at seafarers and passersby. To the west, a craggy mountain of ancient volcanic rock called Eystrahorn presided over the peninsula. Seagulls sang and wafted overhead. We flung out of the Rio towards the unwavering flickers of Hvalnes on a stretch of earth we had completely to ourselves.
Two years prior in August 2017, Denver tore his ACL playing basketball, an injury that would disrupt his previously active lifestyle founded primarily on long distance running. He underwent surgery two months later in October.
The two years following were years best described by frustration, compromise, and physical limitation. In Canada the summer before visiting Iceland, Denver struggled on long hikes and frequently needed breaks to rest his knee. Running was put on pause indefinitely. During any physical activity around that time, his injury permeated his experience.
At Hvalnes, that skin was shed.
Sprinting towards the lighthouse, winding along the black sands and coastal rocks, then back towards me in a flash, Denver was unrecognizable. The ocean breeze picked up, the blue haze turned pink, and his speed only grew. We began sprinting together in an entropic daze, screaming and howling like madmen in a display that might have convinced potential lighthouse visitors to avoid pulling in.
After two years of patience, this moment was symbolic of Denver’s recovery. Hvalnes was a new beginning. A rebirth.
Denver was invincible.
By now, the sun had gone and we made haste to Stafafell, where we were expected at our home for the night: a tent garden.
For months leading up to the trip, the almighty Stafafell tent garden became its own running joke. It is exactly what it sounds like.
The photo on Airbnb showcased a blue tent in broad daylight, staked in the ground surrounded by dirt and brush. It appeared to have been shot at the worst angle possible. It was transfixing. It may be the worst Airbnb picture I have ever seen.
Nevertheless, we had heard magical tales of the area and decided to take our chances.
Our PB&J’s and Lay’s ritual had been performed four distinct times at this point and we caught another appetite before we knew it, too far from any delicacy either of us would want to eat. Lamentably, PB&J’s and Lay’s were on the menu yet again.
My peanut butter and jelly was spread on a slice of bread balanced on my leg in the Rio. If balling on a budget had been a competitive sport, we were Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen.
With full stomachs, we hauled our duffel bags into the tent and began settling in after a full day. The tent was surprisingly well-padded with two insulated sleeping bags that could have kept us warm in an icebox. In spite of its robust amenities, we laughed immediately when we finally saw the tent in person. It was real, and we had to sleep in it.
A new moon the previous night, tonight’s moon was hardly visible and the pink skies had gone jet-black. Scrambling back and forth with bags and groceries, our eyes caught a glimpse of something irregular overhead.
As the stars peeked through a black curtain unfurling, the night sky started to appear bleached and alive. What appeared first as milky clouds gradually took shape and color, assuming the form of a silk scarf tossing in the night.
“Denver!” I yelled. “Look, that’s it!”
Above us, we witnessed a cosmic dance.
Pale-green veils of light poked out of the black sea overhead, swayed and twisted, bending, pulsing, and fluttering in a ballet of chaos and beauty for anyone lucky to notice. Our bucket list grew smaller with the spectacle we had waited years to attend: the Northern Lights.
“Woooah,” we marveled in unison. “Dude. Wow.”
What else can one say as a witness to such a procession? One of the best feelings on earth is to feel as if you aren’t on earth, and naturally, that feeling is not especially helpful for finding the right words to encapsulate the wonder.
All week we had remarked that Iceland felt like a different planet—now, it almost felt as if we had confirmation.
Denver and I looked up and talked for a long while, keenly aware that these conditions were rare as could be. Hey man, want to hang out under the Northern Lights tonight? is certainly not in anybody’s lexicon back home in Texas.
A few yawns later, Denver stepped into the tent to get some shut-eye, and I stayed outside to commune with the light show as long as I could keep my eyes open. It wasn’t lost on me that it may be years, perhaps decades, before I experience this again.
Conveniently, musical polymath Jacob Collier had released his stunning, multidimensional folk record Djesse Vol. 2 the previous month. Lodging my AirPods in both ears, I queued up his gorgeous and fitting song “Sky Above” and received one of the most enrapturing listening experiences of my life.
Quiet guitars and wondrous three-part harmonies set the scene, slowly building to a lively crescendo of claps, synths, bagpipes and percussion.
“Sky above,” the trio of voices sing. “What are you dreaming of?”
Just the same as Television Land, I couldn’t help but laugh heartily while listening. Sky Above was nearly spiritual for the moment, yielding a connection and intimacy to the stars and space, the wonder of existence and the planet we find ourselves on.
I thought of a quote from Joseph Cooper, spacefarer and main character in Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar, when he observes, “We used to look up at the sky and wonder at our place in the stars. Now we just look down, and worry about our place in the dirt.”
These words carry a great deal of thematic weight, not least of ambition and humankind’s potential and astonishment at the universe.
More potent is how these words resonate within the context of day-to-day living. How often I am lost in my place in the dirt. How easy I bury my head in the sand of a work week. How change feels infinitesimal in the moment and immeasurable looking backwards. How growing up feels like the blink of an eye.
Yet, wonder at our place in the stars can be uncovered all around us, exhibited here and now by the rippling kites of light swaying over Stafafell.
Consider the tiny building blocks of matter that we call atoms, as Bill Bryson describes them in his singular book A Short History of Nearly Everything: “[Atoms] are fantastically durable. Because they are so long lived, atoms really get around. Every atom you possess has almost certainly passed through several stars and been part of millions of organisms on its way to becoming you. We are each so atomically numerous and so vigorously recycled at death that a significant number of our atoms—up to a billion for each of us, it has been suggested—probably once belonged to Shakespeare. A billion more each came from Buddha and Genghis Khan and Beethoven, and any other historical figure you care to name.”
Consider, also, the sheer size of the universe that our atoms are privileged to call home, which Bryson also wonderfully articulates: “On a diagram of the solar system to scale, with Earth reduced to about the diameter of a pea, Jupiter would be over a thousand feet away and Pluto would be a mile and a half distant. [...] On the same scale, Proxima Centauri, our nearest star, would be almost ten thousand miles away. Even if you shrank down everything so that Jupiter was as small as the period at the end of this sentence, and Pluto was no bigger than a molecule, Pluto would still be over thirty-five feet away.”
On an atomic level, we are marvelously interconnected beyond comprehension. On a cosmic level, we are impossibly microscopic beyond measure.
That is our place in the stars.
It is entirely possible that there are other intelligent life forms very, very far away, indulging in their own display of auroras as you read this. And at midnight in Stafafell, as I look up at my own solar system’s display of auroras, that is my place in the stars.
August 31, 2019 lives on the top shelf of my memories abroad for good reason. This day remains a keen reminder of why I choose to go. In no other environment do I find connecting with strangers, songs, my friends, nature, and the human experience to be as palpable as when I am away from home.
Among the lessons that our day in Eskifjörður, Seyðisfjörður, Hvalnes, and Stafafell graciously offered:
Friends are everywhere—meet others, and with a little luck, follow them where they’re headed.
To call foreign is to make foreign.
Music is a universal language.
Leave room for spontaneity.
British essayist Pico Iyer once wrote, “A person susceptible to ‘wanderlust’ is not so much addicted to movement as committed to transformation.”
In my experience, traveling is the one tried-and-true practice guaranteed to break stagnation and set one free. To travel is to undergo metamorphosis.
Unbeknownst to me, that night of sleep in our goofy tent under the Northern Lights would be the best night of sleep I would have in a while. The mysteries of the road sure are incomprehensible.
I sure love it that way.