Iceland

Driving on a bus, we begin to exit the capital of Iceland, Reykjavik. A modem city with a sleepy one hundred thousand people to make it the most populated city on the entire island. We are driving out to what the Icelanders call the "Golden Circle". The "Golden Circle" is a loop of national park containing the famous Blue Lagoon, Mid-Atlantic Ridge, geysers and the golden waterfalls, Gulfoss. The billboards start to wind down as we travel along the typical highway you would find in America or any other first world country. Sixteen letter words containing symbols I had never seen before and couldn't even begin to fathom how each of them is pronounced start to diminish as we continue along. Before I know it, the six lane wide highway shrinks down to two lanes, with barely anyone on the road. The housing and buildings begin to become more scarce. Dark ancient green moss washes up on the edge of the buildings. It looks like it is slowly digesting these concrete beasts that were never supposed to step foot there. The green moss crawls up and along the small hills that create the only landmarks in this land. The bus turns around a curve of one of the hills and the island opens up to complete emptiness. The moss is the only distinguishable characteristic of this panorama. The sky is stretched over the landscape like a canvas being stretched over a frame with no room to give. Stretched anymore and the sky would rip open. Although it is twenty degrees, the sky is a perfect blue. You would think it was a warm sunny day in Los Angeles day. Never would anyone think that below this ocean sky, laid a sheet dirt of covered in green moss with no civilization to show for it at all. The only mark the Icelanders have made on this land is the one gravel two lane gravel road I am driving on now. Not even tumbleweeds exist here. It seems perfect for a tumbleweed to comedically roll across my line of sight to emphasize how empty it is here, but no. Not even a tumbleweed bothers to roll here. The bus driver tells us that Iceland used to be covered in Birch trees, until they chopped all of them down and never re-planted them. I find that hard to believe. There is not even the slightest tree there used to be any other vegetation besides this moss that covers the rocks and soil that span as far as the eye can see. I would think there would be some tree stumps still or a hole where the trees used to be. The area of green moss off the side of the road is the same as the one before. It becomes indistinguishable after seven minutes of this. I feel like this is what is pictured when someone says "nowhere". Nowhere to go, nothing to do, except just look and walk from one pile of fur-covered rocks to the other batch of green moss that has swallowed another pile of rocks.