Sandscapes of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge

· by Michael Welland

Sand 1

I have just returned from an utterly memorable two weeks in the stunning, extraordinary, landscapes of Iceland. I have never seen anything quite like it. Iceland is, quite simply, unique - and wonderful. There will undoubtedly be further bulletins, but for a start, a modest gallery.

Sand 2

Sand 3

Sand 4

Sand 5

Sand 6

Sand 7

Sand 8

Sand 10

Sand 9

Sand 11

(this, by the way, is the end of the lava flows from the 2014/2015 eruption of Bárðarbunga and Holuhraun in the central highlands)

Sand 12

Sand 13

Sand 14

Sand 15

Sand 16

and, after two weeks of daily practice and testing with a variety of patient Icelanders, I can now pronounce Eyjafjallajökull more or less correctly - if slowly.

Comments

  • Richard Bready
    Spectacularly beautiful. More, please. It is a theatre floating through the clouds, Itself a cloud, although of misted rock And mountains running like water, wave on wave, Through waves of light. It is of cloud transformed To cloud transformed again, idly, the way A season changes color to no end, Except the lavishing of itself in change, As light changes yellow into gold and gold To its opal elements and fire's delight, Splashed wide-wise because it likes magnificence And the solemn pleasures of magnificent space The cloud drifts idly through half-thought-of forms. The theatre is filled with flying birds, Wild wedges, as of a volcano's smoke, palm-eyed And vanishing, a web in a corridor... \--Stevens, Auroras of Autumn
  • Sandglass
    Thanks, Richard - and thanks for the wonderful and appropriate Wallace Stevens poem (that I was previously unaware of). I see that Reykjavik shut off its city lights last week so that people could enjoy the aurora - we had kept a routine nocturnal lookout, but it seems that our timing was slightly off...
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