I woke early that day. The sun was up because it never set.
My room led out onto a cramped spit and spiral staircase that traced the north face of the house down.
I saw few guests around, and with dirty acrylics daubed ‘North Route 1’ on the carcass of an empty cardboard beer case.
The plan was to get out from Reykjavík for the day and find Glymur.
My approach to hitching remains the same. Straight road and hair down. So drivers think you’re a girl.
The first were a keeno Italian family. A weathered lady, her son and his little boy.
Chatty and bright, I tapped Hveragerði on their rudimentary map. Told them to take a diversion on their way back.
They dropped me at the whale fjord intersection. Many tourists skip it so I waited a while for the next lift.
The driver was Icelandic, dropping back a borrowed van after a Reykjavík wedding.
He didn’t take me far.
So few cars, I began to get a little stressed. Pacing east, barley fields reminded me of the continent, not a volcanic rock in the north atlantic.
A roaring behind me, and over the crest came the largest offroader I’d ever seen. Climbing aboard the vehicle borrowed, we followed the road all the way to Glymur.
You’d never know the turn for what it led to. No room or reason for tourbuses or the bored.
There were a lot of midges though, scrambling down the dirt path a kind local picked me up for the last km. Said he’d lived here his whole life.
At the trailhead I couldn’t spy the fall, just undergrowth and walls of lupin. Until caves through red rock lead me down a cliff.
I came to a river, muddy and wild. A log across served as my only possible route.
Once over I climbed and scurried up, higher and higher to the firmaments above, the sky a common treasury for all, each step uncovering more and more of Glymur’s infinite fall
I haven’t had much happier days than that. No beard, shirt or shoes at the top, wading through the boundless water. The day I saw Glymur infinite and free.
Despite its themes of isolation and loneliness, Caroline White's latest batch of folk-pop confessionals is an LP brimming with confidence. Bandcamp New & Notable Aug 7, 2019