Wednesday, September 6, 2012 — Journey to the Center of Myself

In Snef­flls Iokulis kraterem kem deli­bat umbra Skar­taris Iulii intra kalen­das desk­ende, audas uia­tor, te ter­restre ken­trum attinges. Kod feki. Arne Saknussemm.

Away from com­put­ers for awhile, as I’ve spent some time out in Ice­land’s spec­tac­u­lar land­scape. The inte­ri­or of the island is vir­tu­al­ly unin­hab­it­ed, but even the coastal areas are large­ly moun­tains bare of trees, roads, build­ings and peo­ple. The moun­tain­sides are extra­or­di­nar­i­ly steep, and often unclimbable as they con­sist of loose peb­bles on which you can get lit­tle foothold. You look for patch­es of green, which usu­al­ly mean the slope is gen­tle enough for the moss­es and grass­es to take hold. Most of the moun­tains are slabs cre­at­ed by ancient lava flows, and they are bro­ken into cliffs of aston­ish­ing sharp­ness. Mixed in with these are vol­canic cin­der-cones. It is pos­si­ble to walk enor­mous dis­tances, with an unim­ped­ed view of many miles, and not see a sin­gle per­son. But you always run across sheep, and, in low­er areas, untend­ed hors­es. Walk­ing over long stretch­es of this land­scape requires a will­ing­ness to accept sud­den and unpleas­ant changes of weath­er. It may be warm and sun­ny, but an icy wind may pick up at any time, or rain clouds roll in with­in minutes. 

It was my ambi­tion, since the first plan­ning of this trip, to climb Snæfell­sjökull. I have now ful­filled this ambi­tion, though it took a lot out of me. I’m not so phys­i­cal­ly well-suit­ed for this sort of thing, anymore.

The Defi­ant Ram

I start­ed from the ocean shore, just east of the fish­ing port of Ólafsvík. The blue North Atlantic lapped rhyth­mi­cal­ly on the beach. The path towards the extinct vol­cano was guard­ed by a defi­ant ram, who seemed to object to me turn­ing up the grav­el road, and was not in the least afraid of me. About twen­ty km of walk­ing would bring me to the glac­i­er — not a great dis­tance, but it would be all uphill. The road, of which the ram was so pos­ses­sive, was not much more than grav­el­ly car track even at its begin­ning, and it would dete­ri­o­rate sig­nif­i­cant­ly after a short dis­tance. My plan was to take it as far as I could, then switch to open ter­rain when I had to.

Snæfells [Snæfell­sjökull prop­er­ly refers to the glac­i­er on top of it] is pos­si­bly the first moun­tain I knew by name, unless you count the minis­cule Kamisko­tia ‘moun­tains’ of the Por­cu­pine region of North­ern Ontario, which rise no high­er than a few hun­dred feet. Snæfells ris­es 1833 meters from sea lev­el, mak­ing it one of Ice­land’s taller moun­tains. In Jules Verne´s Voy­age au cen­tre de la terre (1864), the stal­wart Vic­to­ri­an-era heroes are led by a mys­te­ri­ous cypher (quot­ed above) to the crater of Snæfells, from which they descend deep into the inte­ri­or of the earth (not to its exact cen­ter, as the Eng­lish trans­la­tion of the title sug­gests). Snæfell­sjökull is also the locale of one of the sil­li­est of the Ice­landic sagas, the Bárðar saga Snæfell­sáss, which should be read by those who inter­pret the sagas as real­is­tic nov­els or reli­able chron­i­cles. It has a smor­gas­bord of mir­a­cles, giants, trolls, and absur­di­ties. But I was­n’t seek­ing trolls and giants, and did­n’t expect to find any route to the inte­ri­or of the earth — I was more inter­est­ed in the cen­ter of myself. I usu­al­ly under­take such ven­tures into the wild in order to think through per­son­al prob­lems, and I have some weighty ones to deal with, of late.

The going was tough, even on the road. The grade was steep, with no reliev­ing hor­i­zon­tal stretch­es. Bro­ken up lava, pumice and ash are not a kind sur­face. But the land­scape was breath-tak­ing. It was not long before I could look at the sea, far bel­low, and at fish­ing trawlers bob­bing in the Atlantic. With no for­est, the moun­tains were a con­fus­ing jum­ble of abstract shapes, and it was impos­si­ble to tell what was near and far, what was big and small. This prob­lem of judg­ing dis­tances got more seri­ous when I left the road. I had to rely on guess­work to guide me in climb­ing steep slopes of sharp peb­bles, nav­i­gat­ing around thou­sands of boul­ders, and great fields of a spongy lichen which is famil­iar to me from the Cana­di­an arc­tic. My main fear was that I would mis­cal­cu­late time, and find myself at too high an alti­tude at night­fall. For­tu­nate­ly, the days are very long in Ice­land’s September. 

The slow progress, usu­al­ly requir­ing only rou­tine atten­tion, allowed me plen­ty of time to think. This is the kind of place I go to for seri­ous think­ing, prob­a­bly because they under­line the soli­tude that is the recur­ring theme of my life. I’ve lived most of my life alone — far more alone than most peo­ple ever expe­ri­ence. It has not been my choice, mere­ly the way the cards have been dealt. This is why soli­tary jour­neys through forests, deserts, and waste­lands fig­ure promi­nent­ly in both my fic­tion writ­ing and in my real life. 

When I crossed a fresh snow­fall and came over a crest, the sum­mit of Snæfells came into view. The sum­mit is a black spike of rock stick­ing up like a fin­ger through the glac­i­er. This is an entire­ly new phe­nom­e­non: through­out the thou­sand years of his­to­ry that humans have known Snæfells, the actu­al black, rocky peak has nev­er been seen until this year, when the dra­mat­ic shriv­el­ling of the glac­i­er revealed it. 

Just before I left for this trip, I had some very dis­cour­ag­ing news. For three months, now, my left should has been extreme­ly painful, and my left arm is restrict­ed in its mobil­i­ty. The pain varies in inten­si­ty, but it is always there, and often it is strong enough to pre­vent me from sleep­ing. Any twist­ing of the arm, or abrupt motion can be extreme­ly painful. It has act­ed as an irri­tant, mak­ing my tem­per sour. Over the last month, I’ve wast­ed a good deal of time tak­ing car­diac tests, which med­ical pro­to­col insists must be done first, though I was cer­tain the prob­lem was mechan­i­cal or neu­ro­log­i­cal. A few days before I left, it was made clear that the prob­a­ble cause is a mus­cle that has been frayed and dam­aged in my shoul­der, a side effect of the work I do deliv­er­ing den­tal mate­r­i­al for a lab­o­ra­to­ry. I walked around every day with a bag of rea­son­ably heavy mate­r­i­al slung on that shoul­der, and the rep­e­ti­tion, rather than the weight itself, has done the dam­age. I am not a salaried employ­ee, but a con­tract work­er with­out ben­e­fits. When the pain start­ed, I switched the shoul­der I use. How­ev­er, it is like­ly that this will do the same thing to the oth­er shoul­der, in time. So I can’t pur­sue that kind of work much longer. 

I had count­ed on the deliv­ery job to keep my rent and expens­es paid while I write two books — one a syn­the­sis of my aca­d­e­m­ic work in his­to­ry and social issues, the oth­er a sec­ond nov­el. The first nov­el nev­er found a pub­lish­er, but I still believe that what I have to say is best said in fic­tion­al form. How­ev­er, I have been more suc­cess­ful in writ­ing non-fic­tion, and my small rep­u­ta­tion is mak­ing it plau­si­ble that I can put togeth­er a pub­lish­able book. The phys­i­cal demands of the deliv­ery job have always tak­en a lot out of me, and progress in both of these books has been slow. But I’ve not had to wor­ry about pay­ing the rent, and I live com­fort­ably in a lit­tle apart­ment. Some shoe­string adven­tures, such as this one to Ice­land, have kept me sane. They cut into my secu­ri­ty, but with­out them I would live so hope­less­ly as to make the effort futile. 

Now, it seems, I can­not main­tain the deliv­ery job too much longer with­out turn­ing myself into a crip­ple. I am con­front­ed with a much greater urgency to get my intel­lec­tu­al work done. Over the next year, I must estab­lish myself as a suc­cess­ful pro­fes­sion­al. This is not the age of Dar­win, when an ama­teur coun­try par­son could shake the world with his thoughts. I have nev­er been any­thing more than an upstart ama­teur, and that has to change. So, over the next year, I will be under great pres­sure to accom­plish some very dif­fi­cult goals. I will have to sharp­en my con­cen­tra­tion, increase my work­load, and elim­i­nate side-tracks. 

The crit­i­cal fac­tor in this is morale, which has always been my Achilles’ heal. I long ago resigned myself to the fact that I would nev­er have any of the things in life that most peo­ple take for grant­ed as their due, and I would nev­er get from peo­ple any of the nor­mal forms of respect. It is not the kind of life I would have cho­sen for myself, and I would not wish it on any­one else, but it is what I’m stuck with. It makes for a weary­ing, cold way of life, punc­tu­at­ed by bouts of despair. But I can no longer afford to tol­er­ate some aspects of it. To sur­vive, I will have to con­cen­trate on the few peo­ple who show at least some signs of warmth and affec­tion, and those who at least respect my work. The work I’ve done over my life­time has been hard and flinty stuff, dri­ven by a desire to learn truths, and I think it deserves some respect. So any­one who has nei­ther respect for my work, nor warmth and affec­tion to offer, I must remove from my atten­tion. I can no longer afford to do any­thing else. 

When the peak of Snæfells hove into view, the lush musi­cal score that Bernard Her­mann com­posed for the 1959 film of Jour­ney to the Cen­ter of the Earth popped into my head. It stayed there, play­ing in snatch­es as I made my way to the glac­i­er. The glac­i­er has been retreat­ing quick­ly, and has left bar­ren, scraped alley-ways that betray its for­mer pres­ence as vivid­ly as a skele­ton betrays the for­mer pres­ence of a human. When I reached the ice, it did not take much trav­el on its sur­face to see that it was too dan­ger­ous to pro­ceed. Above me were crevices and stress lines in the ice show­ing just how rot­ten the under­ly­ing ice sheet must be. I would be a fool to climb much high­er. But I had walked upon the glac­i­er, and I had seen what I most want­ed to see.

By the time I made it back down to the sea, my hik­ing shoes had been torn to shreds. Now they are held togeth­er with elec­tri­cal tape. I had dressed well, but I had still caught a chill. By the time I got to the vil­lage of Stykk­ishól­mur, I had a rag­ing head cold. This has per­sist­ed, but I am soothed by the amni­ot­ic plea­sure of geot­her­mal bath. These mar­vel­lous things abound in Ice­land. Now that I know them, I’m heart­bro­ken that I can’t have them back home (unless I move to British Columbia). 

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