We’ve talked about Iceland a few times around here over the last year. Remember it was about 3 years ago now when Shawna Franklin, Leon Somme (see Shawna comes first again), and Chris Duff completed their Circumnavigation. Mid-westerners should mark your calendars as Shawna & Leon will be doing a presentation on their Iceland trip at the Inland Sea Symposium in Washburn, WI this June.

The summer climate of Iceland is fairly mild yet tends to be cool and damp. In addition, the mix of cold and warm oceans that keep the climate mild can also make for some interesting paddling. Snow, fog, and occasional gales are likely paddling companions.

As I mentioned yesterday, Rotem Ron is an instructor with Terra Santa Expeditions in Israel. She is a certified BCU 4 star paddler and has undergone her 5* training with Nigel Dennis in Anglessy. Although she has done some solo paddling in the Greek islands, this is her first major expedition. Wow! She plans to arrive in Iceland on June 6th and get on the water as fast as possible, leaving Reykjavik and heading north-west to begin her clockwise attempt. The trip is about 1500 miles and could take somewhere around 12 weeks, depending on weather etc. Rotem will have an English language website coming soon and I’ll post that info as soon as I get it.

Rotem would also like to thank these folks in Iceland that are helping her as well;

Fanna Palsson from Sportbud
Porsteinn Sigulaugsson from SeaKayak Iceland
Ari Venediktsson from Kajakkluburin Kaj

To be fair I like rain and heavy clouds. In fact it’s hard for me to stay in. In the end, I cut my day short and abandoned a warm house for a six mile hike under the waterfall. Rain is my yoga, my personal meditation. Rainy days give me time to listen to radiohead and take my wounded inner child for a walk. I don’t need to ask, he’s happy to get out. And under the clouds he’s good company.

In rain, emotions are heightened, magnified and distorted. The world around me slips out of focus into swirls of reflective neon earth tones. The forest melts like candle wax. Faces appear in the bark. They don’t say anything but they give you that “look”. They know you know. For me the tin drum sound of the rain eats away at reasoned thoughts and soon I’m slipping through logic, silliness and nothing. Sometimes my brain just goes right over the rainbow. It finds silly tasks. I may start repeating stupid words or silly names. Then repeat them in various tones and pronunciations. I blurt and giggle all to myself under my attractive black rain hood.

Sometimes in the rain, I’ll think about what would happen if I were king!! How I’d bring peace to the world and put a chicken in every basket, and include a Vegan alternative. If I were king I’d ban jet skies, Hummers, and 8 billion square foot houses that are all the rage recently. I’d stop spending government money to promote Kentucky Fried Chicken in China or Pepsi in the former eastern block. I’d be a benevolent king who would fight to put power back in the hands of the people! I’d have a Populist Monarchy!! Oh, but who am I kidding. With all that power & riches I’d probably not notice the people. Or at least they’d fade away behind my walls and posh curtains. There in my really big house, on my really big throne, with all my beautiful servants, I’d ask, “Why are they complaining?”. I’d spread my arms out over my bountiful table. I’d gesture to the variety of food before me that I could never hope to eat and say “We live in such a wonderful land of wealth and opportunity”, “Why do they complain so?, “Let them eat cake!”, I’d say. . . See, evil hides everywhere!

In the pouring rain you are sometimes an actor. You’ve left somewhere and you’re going nowhere, but you just keep walking. Forward is better than back. Movement is better than stagnation. You’re feet crash down on uncertain ground. You’re running from something. You feel queezy and alone. Actors need no facts to feel emotion. In the rain the facts are not important. The facts are “off set”, through a door and under the sunlight, somewhere to the east of the parking lot. Facts have no business in the rain. “Just because you feel it, doesn’t mean it’s there”. . .

In rain you are finally part of the earth. Immersed. Water that has risen to the clouds is reborn into the earth and drops down upon the high canopy. It slips down every crook and angle of branch, gutter, glass window or leaf, then hurls itself down into the dancing concentric wave pools below. By sheer mathematics a walking body is in the stream. Drops of liquid probability will find every exposed surface. Water rolls down the curves and imperfections of your face to leap from your chin or continue down the curves of your neck then to race beneath your collar and down your chest.

In the rain I want to live forever. Renaissance artists saw the eternal in sunlit clouds, I find it in the liquid immersion of a cloud veiled wood. I often think this whole growing old and dying thing is a bit much. We certainly don’t live long enough. While I was walking yesterday my shoe came untied. So I bent over and retied the muddy strings into a double bow. I thought to myself, “Double bows could have saved me years of anguish had I just known how to do it years ago”. I was always having to retie my shoes. I was 38 when I learned to double tie. We don’t live long enough.

Preparations for a long few weeks on the road are in full swing. Mostly that means I’m trying to wrap up web projects for a few clients this week before I head out. I’ll still be packing my stuff when I’m turning into O’hare! I expect to stop back home May 31st, but then I’m only home for about a week, before we’re off again.

Let’s get happy and see some more fun pictures of Rowland’s Rapier . . .