It’s a drive day. Forecasts called for a good twenty-four hours or so before the next storm, so the plan was to position ourselves further east along the South Coast, setting a base to explore the region as conditions change. I was up early to pack.
I have a pretty simple system in two bags. One large duffle for personal gear —an ancient watertight Patagonia bag that’s been from Lake Baikal to Fiji to Central Africa—and my camera pack. I have a smaller pack that fits in the duffle for foul-weather outerwear and waders; I usually just stow it in the van so it’s at arms-reach when necessary. My camera bag is bit on the large side, but I’ve yet to wean myself from carrying two too many lenses, and here in Iceland I’m carrying an extra camera body, just in case. The pack is almost heavy, but it’s not too bad. I also have some filters and a bag of extra batteries for the cold… Hold it… No, you’ve got to be kidding me… Where is the battery bag? The top pouch on my pack, where it typically rides, is wide-open—no bag, no batteries. That also means no back-up SD cards.
The bag and batteries are on the beach next to the plane at Soldheimasander. I can see it happening. I swapped batteries in the dark, proud of my no-headlamp maneuver, and dropped everything back in the appropriate pouch. Without the final zip—as always, so embarrassing. When, later, I grabbed the pack and flopped the top pouch in place, out dropped the battery bag. A black battery bag, in black of night, on a black beach.
I sit back on the hotel bed and consider my options. Go now, wake-up Thor to drive out in the dark before or during breakfast? He’d do it; he’s a nice guy. Maybe I will see if the group wants to go back to the plane for sunrise photos? Neither dramatic nor surreal, no way it lives up to anything like last night, just a broken plane on a barren beach some distance from actual light-catching surf. They’d do it, they’re nice people. Either option, however, puts undo burden on all of us, and we’ve a long drive planned for the day. I’ll just forget about it. I’ve still got two batteries and two SD cards plus a back-up drive. It’s my offering to the aurora, trolls, elves, and some lucky tourist who can use four Canon batteries and a few hundred gigs of storage. Spit. At breakfast, I quietly mentioned my idiocy to Thor and a few teammates, mostly because it had now grown funny to me. But we also had a few other nights of aurora photography coming up (hopefully), therefore, lesson learned: everyone double-check your gear as we leave location. I could see Thor pondering the same recovery options I’d already dismissed, so I insisted we stick to the current plan and we loaded into the van. Actually, what was Thor pondering? He’s a Canon shooter. He’s got friends around here. He could always use more batteries. Too easy.
After the stormy drama of our first sunrise shoot, catching the calm sunrise at Vik í Mýdar was somewhat anticlimactic. The skies were crystal clear and the scene was beautiful, but I could not decide what to shoot. Overlook shots need some clouds to get some depth and interest. The volcanic outcrop above the village is striking and leads to the abrupt coastline and rocks stacks at Reynisdrangar. There’s a pretty church in the foreground, but after black church, this one isn’t compelling to me. I’m drawn to the rugged mountains rising to the east with long colluvial aprons, landslide scars, and summit crags. But now I miss the intensity of the scudding clouds and dramatic wind. Silly me. In the cold, we watched a vanload of tourists (like us) set up their tripods on the grass (like us), frame identical compositions (like us), and capture images (like us). But they were still in their van (so not like us). Seems each one, before returning to their seats, set an interval timer, leaving their lonely cameras to continuously snap photos of the slightly changing light. It went on, I’d guess, after we’d packed up and hit the road. They may still be there.
For the second day in a row, we drove the ring-road through the extended golden hour. Glaciers crumbled from mountain ridges. Waterfalls debouched from every cliff. It almost didn’t matter, we were now aurora addicts, the Kp index was good, and we wanted the Vestrahorn tonight.
The light faded as we arrived at the iconic Glacial Lagoon. This wasn’t our planned destination, but we made time for a recon, as we’d planned a full day in this area tomorrow. I’d seen many scenes—English is hard—from the lagoon but the scale was hard to take in. The glacier was far away and the jumble of icebergs and crystalline ice-shards in the tidal outlet of Jökulsárlón was chaotic. I’m glad we had this opportunity to scout the location even in the fading blue light of evening.
We checked in at Hali Country guesthouse, near Glacial Lagoon, and fueled up for another night out. Beer, fish and lamb, coffee. We had developed a definitive pattern. The caffeine soon faded, however, and the next couple hours, once again in the van, passed quietly. Thor eventually left Highway 1 and steered us onto a dirt road where a small group of buildings, the Viking Café, soon appeared in the headlights. Providing the necessary fee, we passed through a simple gate, Nick following close behind. We were at the frozen tidal pool of Stokksnes, the prominence of Vestrahorn rising to the north.
We gathered on an expanse of ice just as the glow greeted us yet again—this was three nights in a row. Not a record by any standard, but we were fretting and responding to storm warnings as our journey began a few short days ago. We could only dream of this good fortune on our first wind-driven night. The ice at our feet mirrored the distant sky, spreading the luminescence of the aurora rising above Vestrahorn. We critiqued the performance, better and worse, like the light-show connoisseurs we now were. The curtains and spires of light were subtler than the displays of previous nights, but, for me, the natural setting provided so much more. I stood heartily awed and peaceful, once again laughing aloud at the spectacle. This wasn’t a church, or a plane, it was the stage where aurora has danced forever, in the mountains where longitudes collide.
Keep going.