I filed that vacation away as something that would happen later, when the time was right, whenever my intended would change his mind and be more open to the idea. On hold indefinitely -- on the backburner -- another dream deferred. I spent much of my marriage feeling like an alien, as if the things I liked or wanted were weird, and not in the cool, quirky way, but in the odd and undesirable to "normal" people way.
We traveled to other places, and these trips were mostly spurred on by weddings, or, in one case, a couple we knew had a timeshare opportunity that allowed us and another couple we knew to piggyback on their vacation to Rome. That was a wonderful trip, and at the same time, I wasn't exactly a fan of group trips. I don't believe more is always merrier. That means there is more socializing and small talk to entertain, more people to get on your nerves, and more people jockeying to fill up the trip itinerary with items on their agenda. The group trip makes for great comedic scenarios in movies, sure, but life isn't a movie.
Fast forward to last fall, I was on the cusp of divorce and Iceland was now well known for its tourist attractions. Forecasts for the Northern Lights were optimal because of the solar cycles, so what was stopping me? I had attempted to plan a trip the previous year with a friend, and I bailed. I chose my travel dates and planned for my youngest kid to join me. With four days to fill I had to figure out what to do. A close friend of mine sent an email listing the hotel she chose and the tours she took when she had visited, and that was a decent start. As I planned, I realized it was the first trip I had planned completely on my own.
When you spent most of your adult life married, almost everything becomes a joint venture. Sometimes you get what you want, sometimes each side bends to meet in the middle, or in some third neutral territory, and sometimes you concede what you want because it's not going to work for anyone else. This time I could choose how much or how little I wanted to do, I could choose which tours I wanted to take, and there was no committee to vote on any of it. I booked a one bedroom apartment in the hotel my friend recommended. I booked the flights. I booked one of the tours and decided I would watch the Northern Lights forecast and choose that tour after we arrived. There was some anxiety over it because what if I traveled all that way and something was a bust, or I chose something disappointing? There's no one to blame but myself if that happened, and that felt heavy.
On top of that, we flew out days after the election. The only thing I recall from election day was waking at 2 the following morning, looking at the results and saying, "I can't do this again." While mentally preparing for my trip, I scolded myself. How could I plan something so frivolous in a time of despair? What was I thinking? I know what past me was thinking. That guy isn't gonna win. I had made the fatal error of allowing myself to think it wasn't even a possibility. Didn't anyone watch those debates? This shouldn't even be close!
We flew out on a red eye on a route that curved along the North American coast; every time I looked down, I saw the the Atlantic seaboard glittering below. If I looked straight out of the window, Orion greeted me in the clear black night sky. About an hour before landing, I noticed what looked like thin streams of clouds. But they weren't clouds, exactly -- they moved, slowly, and I realized I was seeing the Northern lights.
They don't look like the photos. Digital cameras have made it easy to tweak settings and see the colors flourish in real time as you're capturing the moment. My eyes couldn't pull out the colors, so what I saw looked like a thin, fuzzy, grayish-white stream. Time lapses speed things up into a mesmerizing and vivid dance of colors fluctuating in the sky, but that's camera magic. Regardless, it was a new-to-me experience, I was still in awe, and grateful I could see them before we even landed.
We arrived at our hotel in Reykyavik at 8 in the morning and the sky was still completely dark. While we were there, the sun rose at around 9:45 and set at 4. It was enough time to walk around and see things, and a great excuse to return to my room after dinner to shower and get cozy. We had one big day tour where we saw waterfalls, a windy beach with black volcanic sand, and a glacier. Everything ran so smoothly, and I simultaneously felt grateful to see it and guilty for being a tourist trampling through in a few short days, piling on and off of the tall passenger vans the tour companies used to cart us around.
We did our Northern Lights tour on the last night we had in Iceland. The tour companies are kind enough to cancel if it's unlikely to catch them, and rescheduling is easy. We piled on to our bus and the driver got us away from the city onto roads that faced unobstructed expanses of night sky. Then we waited. My 13 year old didn't like the tour guide as much as the one we had a couple of days before, and kept making an exaggerated pouty face to show her disappointment to the point that it's become our running joke. As soon as things looked promising, the guide parked the bus and told us we could go out when the lights showed up. It was cold, I was layered up, and I had adjusted my iphone camera settings. This was nearly two decades of dreamy bucket list wishing about to come true.
And we saw them. My 13 year old was not impressed, but I stayed outside capturing as much as I could. Even after taking the photos, I continued to tweak the adjustments on some of the pictures to saturate the colors for dramatic effect, but the landscape ended up looking so red it might have been mistaken for Mars.
I'd like to go back with both kids and see Iceland in summer, but I'd also like to plan more trips to other destinations. I hung on to Iceland for so long that there's a bit of grief now that I've checked it off the list. I'm the dog who caught the car and is now realizing maybe I didn't actually want the car; I wanted something to chase.
1 comment:
Sad but a true personal reality.
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