Another Dose of Humility, Please

Sitting in the lobby of the City Centre Hotel in Reykjavik. It’s midnight on a Friday and the scene up and down the street outside is, to put it bluntly, rockin’. Alas, I have an 8am flight to catch so I’m behaving: a couple of pints of Guinness and now I’m getting ready to turn in.

This town really is incredible: small enough to be digested in short order; interesting enough to keep someone busy for a very long time. I did the culture/history thing today: museums. Under an overcast sky that occasionally spit a few raindrops, I hit the Culture House and the National Museum. In the latter, I got a detailed rundown on the history of this island, this nation, this people. It was fascinating and very well presented, and I quite enjoyed myself. To be honest, I don’t think I gave myself enough time for the National Museum — there was just so much to digest.

The Culture House, on the other hand, was spectacular in an understated manner…especially if you’re into the written word. The emphasis at the Culture House is just that: the written word. So the focus is on the published versions of the Icelandic Sagas and Eddas and other national treasures that set this small island’s culture apart from more mainstream European history/culture.

Upon entering the main display at the Culture House, I got a little upset: everything was just a reproduction of the books that contain these amazing stories dating back more than a thousand years. BUT…in the back corner of the main room there was a little sign saying: “This way.” And for those who followed…wow. Real, live, actual books that were almost a thousand years old (from the 1200s in some cases), under glass, protected from ultraviolet light and humidity and other degrading impacts. Stories that were written down so they’d survive from generation to generation — and all gloriously crafted, with beautiful calligraphy and gorgeous illustrations. It was truly awe-inspiring, especially to one who bitches about how writing with pen-and-paper is just sooooo trying…how he writes more easily on a keyboard. Boy, did I feel like a big wuss. It was a truly humbling experience.

It was a fitting send-off. Tomorrow morning I’ll jump a flight to the northwest part of Iceland, to Isafjördur, where I’ll rejoin Polar Bear and we’ll head to Greenland. Maybe. Yesterday, on the flight over the southern cape of that mystical land, I saw quite a bit of ice so we’ll see what happens (last week, Polar Bear was turned back by the ice). I’m hopeful of reaching Greenland via boat but again: it’s not up to me. Either way, we’ll give it a shot. And assuming we get through, I’ll be incommunicado for the three week-long trips on the schedule. My next connection to the modern world will come upon our return to Iceland in late August.

So enjoy the rest of your summer. I lived in Alaska, but even I’ve been shocked in the change in the light at this latitude in just two weeks: it’s pitch dark out now whereas when I was here last, it was a pleasant surprise to see the moon in an otherwise daylight sky. The lesson is clear: light and summer (and a few other things…) are fleeting. They are to be savored, made the most of. Because it’s a long time till they come ’round again…

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Comes A Time (again)

“This morning…I felt a longing for the sea. It has a great cleanliness. There are moments when everything on land seems to me torturous, dark, and squalid”

               — Dr. Stephen Maturin in Patrick O’Brian’s “Post Captain”

Just as there came a time to leave Lerwick, Shetland, and also Bodø, Norway, now comes the time to leave my home here at Plum Island, Massachusetts. It’s time to hit the road — er, water — again. Tomorrow morning I’ll head to Boston and board a midday flight back to Reykjavik, Iceland.

The original plan was to fly to Constable Pynt, Greenland, on Saturday and rejoin Polar Bear, the boat having journeyed there in my absence. But the boat was unable to push through the sea ice last week and was forced to return to Isafjördur on the north coast of Iceland. So I’ll fly there Saturday morning and we’ll shoot for Greenland next week.

Frankly, I’m psyched. I’ve heard that the flight to Constable Pynt is one of the loveliest in the world: winging low over the ice cap and mountains of Greenland. But I’d rather my first view of that strange land (not counting the times I’ve seen it from 36,000 feet) be from the deck of a boat. There’s just something unique and enticing and captivating about making landfall in a new place.

“It was not that he did not like the land — capital place; such games, such fun — but the difficulties there, the complications, were so vague and imprecise, reaching one behind another, no end to them: nothing a man could get a hold of. Here, although life was complex enough in all conscience, he could at least attempt to cope with anything that turned up.”

               — O’Brian writing about Capt. Jack Aubrey, also in “Post Captain”

I’m looking forward to getting back to the simplicity, the clarity, of life at sea. I’ve loved watching my beloved Red Sox have a great July, but this being connected 24/7 — via phone, Web, text message, email, radio, TV — is just too much. I detest the Pavlovian way we respond to the ringing of a bell or the “you’ve got mail” sound. And though it’s my own damned fault, I just get too distracted — I’ve missed writing day in and day out.

And perhaps that’s what the point of this interlude was (in addition to taking part in the beautiful wedding ceremony between Deana Moody and Tom McLaughlin on Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire): to realize that once I return to the “real” world for good, I need to knuckle down and apply myself.

“It’s easy to be a wise man in the mountains,” say the Zen monks. Maybe the corollary is: it’s easy to write regularly when you’re on the sea.

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American Interlude

I arrived in the United States at midday a week-plus ago after a five-hour flight from Reykjavik…and what a transition it was.

I left behind the soft, cool blue of the northern summer sky at almost-66 degrees latitude and arrived in the hazy, 90-degrees-Farenheit heat of a New England summer. I left behind a small, chic city of a hundred thousand and landed near the gritty sand of Revere Beach. I went from the routine and isolation of being on a boat in the middle of the sea to the go-go-go lifestyle of 2011 America, complete with ubiquitous Web access and 24-hour news cycles that leave one numb (and not writing). I left the tranquility of blue ocean and white snow and green hills and wound up being bombarded by never-ending tales of an ineffective government acting like a bunch of spoiled, petulant kids.

Seriously: in just a few hours I went from 32 degrees with wind-chill factors in the teens, fog and drizzle to a scorching, 100-plus-degree-with-equally-high-humidity heat wave that rivaled any I’ve ever experienced anywhere. Throw in the BS going on in Washington, D.C., and I’ve been counting the days until I return to the much more benign soap-opera drama of Polar Bear and its owners.

But I’m here in the United States for the wedding of two dear friends. That will take place this weekend in the Lakes Region of New Hampshire, as lovely a place as any I’ve seen on this summer’s trip. And that’s been one of the great takeaways from this year: that every single place on this planet is nothing short of spectacular; it’s up to us to see the beauty — and that perspective is something we carry with us everywhere we go, it comes from within and not from a mountain or an ocean or a sunset or a whale sounding.

I’d always thought that what made Americans American was the land, that sense of frontier and wide-open spaces that evaporated from the Old World so long ago that it had been lost from the collective unconscious. It always seemed to me that this land ethic infused our culture to such an extent that it created our sense of who and what we are, and so a sense of location, of home, has always been so important to me in my life.

For instance: I was born in New York City. On the edge of Harlem, as a matter of fact. But I’ve always considered myself a New Englander whose home was a small island about 30 miles north of Boston. And over the course of the years, I’ve lived in some pretty amazing places, including some that I’ve come to regard as home. The lineup reads like a vacation wish-list: Utah, Montana, Idaho, San Diego, Austin, Alaska. I’ve even lived in Europe. Some places resonated with me more than others, but that sense of location, of where I was on the planet, informed, I believe, who I was.

It was upon leaving San Diego last spring that I realized that I’ve enjoyed and hated every single place I’ve lived. I love Anchorage, Alaska…but when I’m there I miss the beach and even the night sky in summer. I always bad-mouthed Southern California when I lived there…but the climate afforded me the active lifestyle I so cherish.

So I’ve come to realize — prior to this summer, to be sure, but this trip has cemented the notion — that while I may have what I consider to be a home (or two), I can be happy in any place on Earth. That every single location on the planet is special and unique and beautiful, and I should take joy out of every place and every moment I’m here.

And right now, that means reveling in being home in New England with friends and family. For another week I’ll be here, eating lobster rolls and sweating bullets, and then I’ll head back to Iceland and on to Greenland for the home stretch of this summer adventure.

And then it’ll be on to the autumn adventure…

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