03-30-19
I’ve spoken a few times on my Icelandic travels. It was over the Christmas season in 2017, my wife and I had gone for our honeymoon, both to experience the north during Winter Solstice, as well as experience the majesty of Iceland in the height of one of their extremes.
We landed at 6:30 in the morning in complete darkness, I didn’t really think much about it. After we had gotten out bags, and gone through Duty-Free, it was nearly 7:30. Still pitch black, still not thinking much about the situation. We waited for our rental agency to come to pick us up for our vehicle exchange. They seemed to forget about us not arriving until 10:30-11am… where it was still pitch black, and by that point, I was starting to understand a bit more about the extremes this country lives in.
After getting everything squared away and loading our car up, it was close to 12:30, we set off on our adventure in a foreign land having a reservation several hundred miles away. We found a Costco and a supermarket loading up on all manner of provisions we could think of, it was 2:30 pm and the sun was in a weird rise state, it kept feeling like it was going to continue to rise, but it just hung there, never moving any further in the sky.
We were back on the road driving, and by 4:30 the sun had already set. Only a faint ember remained on the horizon adding light to the sky. In all, there was maybe 3 ½ hours of light, and it was never brighter than dawn.
This was how every day transpired for the next few weeks that we were there. That was until just after New Year’s. We were exploring the Eastern side of the country, having just left Reykjavik. We left early in the morning, especially about the sunrise expecting it not to come up until after-noon. We were driving through these snow-covered fields and could see a slight glimmer of the light starting to build. We were captivated by the landscape; plumes of steam were billowing from all directions. We had our Icelandic playlist going strong, we became lost in what felt like a specially curated journey. Look at the Light came on as we began to come around a bend in the road, and the sun broke over the horizon, the way it lit the countryside was blinding, the snow-capped hills reflected like a sea of diamonds.
The intensity of the light was surprising, having grown accustomed to the darkness this now seemed foreign. To our surprise, the sun continued to rise and rose higher than we had seen yet, and considerably higher the days preceding it. To have been paying such close attention to its movement we were blown away by how quickly the transition of light happens.

Lyrics:

We look at the light while we pull the stones up the well
A mountain with eyes
Opened it’s mouth and swallowed me
(Swallow me)

Breathe into my mouth
Write your name in my palm
I couldn’t speak for a long time
Everything you did was some sort of sign for me to read into
But I couldn’t understand you

It hurts to breathe around you
My lungs fill up with sea I know
It hurts to be around you
I know you feel it too I know
(Swallow me)

If I go back to that place I know I’ll see you
But I don’t want to even though I want to
On my way home I told myself one day I’d be a shining light
For you to look at
(Swallow me)

It hurts to breathe around you
My lungs fill up with sea
It hurts to be around you
I know you feel it too
(Swallow me)