Close Encounters OfTheThird Kind-on a hike.

from "THE NEXT TASTE" - SPRING 2023

The Turkey Birkie

Tracey and I both agreed that we were a little nervous and knowing that made it easier and less scary somehow.

We hiked about one mile on flat road to where the 2021A and trail B split. Trail B was closed makingA the only and clear option. There were a lot of people. More people were coming down the mountain than going up. Soon it would be dark.

“We didn’t choose this place! We didn’t choose these people!They were invited!”.

Close Encounters OfThe Third Kind

The plume was no longer visible. Like ants we marched with strangers to an unknown destination. It felt like we were all called to this place. Like us, everyone here could not resist the invitation. Instinctively driven by wonder, each of us putting one foot in front of the other toward a special phenomenon the world was talking about.

The trail was steep in places. Both of us are strong and experienced mountain hikers. I was surprised by the ill prepared among us. In 2021 tourists got hurt, lost, and I know of at least one death at the eruption site. It wasn’t the volcano that caused injury or death, it was the weather and the terrain.The landscape is black with moss.All it takes is fog to roll in and you can become totally lost without a GPS.

The temps can drop with rain or snow and hurricane force winds without notice, and there were tourists in jeans with no backpacks.

It was hard not to stop and look every few minutes.The sunset turned the sky pink and orange.As we climbed higher the horizon became an interstellar landscape. The first quarter moon hung big and low, sinking with the sun. Wispy clouds distorted its brightness and made it look as other worldly as the earth in front of me.There were black craters, and a vast thousand-year-old plus lava valley stretching to the blue sea against a cotton candy sky.

Slowly and steady, like pilgrims, we walked.The wind and my breath drowned out any chatter around me. We stopped only to remove layers and to take quick photos. Our taxi pickup from the parking lot back to Reykjavik was scheduled for 3am.

TheTrail that gave me HESITATION!

There were two parts of the trail that gave me hesitation.Arocky boulder-y trail with loose stones on a ledge with a 500 ft drop off that was very navigable in the daylight, but I wondered about the darkness.Also, the flat part of the trail just after the rocky boulders that I made note of not to miss (also in the dark) on the return.

I askedTracey if we should turn back. The light was dimming. Did we feel comfortable following the crowd? She and I both agreed that we need to be responsible for ourselves and rely on our own skills to get us in and out. We talked about scenarios and what we would do if …….

We pressed on.

The plume was visible again and that’s what we walked toward.

I started to notice that there were sticks placed by the EMS crew marking a trail.This gave me some relief. At one point we came to the edge of the 2021 lava field that was cold rock and shortly after the same lava bed had steam and small fires poking out of the ground right next to the trail.

I noticed the grey plume we had been following was now pink.At first, I thought it was the sunset reflecting on the gas. It was dark enough that the crater was lighting up the plume. I spent a lot of time looking down to avoid holes that could break my ankle, and for large rocks that could trip us. The light became dimmer.

Around midnight, I noticed a stream of white lights making their way toward us in the dark with a large pink gas cloud behind them, and another stream of white lights were behind us completely engulfed in darkness against the black hills and twilight.

Each sparkling speck a pilgrim. Like life. Everyone on their own journey at different points of the journey. No point of the trail is better than the other and we all eventually “get there” in our own time.At the 3-mile mark, the pink plume was closer, but still very far. We agreed that we would go through the next valley and to a crest in the distance where we could see tiny black figures of people illuminated against the fiery cloud of gas.

In the dark valley we walked at against the people leaving the crater. I walked straight into the stream that parted like a school of fish before crashing into me.

What happened next is the stuff that makes me believe in the cosmic connection we have with strangers. In the darkness, through the river of black silhouettes and glowing white faceless heads, my headlamp illuminated a friendly character in crowd. He had a brown mustache, with a father’s voice he said to us, “you have about 20 more minutes, and it’s spectacular.”

I especially love the moment between two linked points in time. For example, the space between the birthday wish and blowing out birthday candles.

When making a wish, there is a pause; time to gaze around at your loved ones smiling faces, a chance to slow it all down, and to look inward, even if only for a breath.To set an intention for the next year, give gratitude, or put a dream into the Universe.

Then, poof! It’s over. Cake is served. Gifts are opened. I try to hover in the space between anticipation and gratification as long as possible during special moments. -To savor the experience. When we I reached the precipice, my feet stopped before I could see what was on the other side. Human shadows were coming out of the pink plume, and I could see lava shooting up in the air.

I didn’t want to go.

I wasn’t afraid of death or injury.

I was afraid of the beauty I was about to see and that my knees would buckle. My heart didn’t feel ready to accept it. I felt that by letting it in I might be overtaken and lose control, like those who feel the Holy Spirit at revivals. And I didn’t want that feeling to go away.

As soon as I see what’s over the edge, the secret is over.

My eyes looked at the ground.

I turned back toTracey, who was a few steps behind me. I’m sure I covered my eyes and I exclaimed at the same time,” Look at that!” Pointing to the plume, the apparitions, and the liquid fire.

I hoped she’d want to linger with me there for a moment. On the contrary, she encouraged us to get closer.

“I Stepped on the Edge of ARed Lake”

I wasn’t sure what was over that ledge. I was expecting a black hole with a long red crack of glowing lava.Already I could tell, I underestimated Mother Nature’s spectacular show.

I stepped onto the edge, to a red lake which sat on natural amphitheater at least a mile wide in all directions. My face was glowing red from the reflection of the lava about 500 ft below me.

I took in a deep breath and hoped to slow down my heart, my thoughts, and time itself. What I was witnessing was extraordinary. Iceland is geologically a special place because it’s the highest point of the mid-Atlantic ridge.The mid-Atlantic ridge is a mountain range that runs north to south and is the boundary between NorthAmerica and Europe.

Due to underwater volcanoes creating more seafloor, North America and Europe are getting further apart.This can be seen above the waterline in Iceland at a rate of about 2 inches per year.

Under Iceland is a mantle plume, basically a direct line to the mantle of molten lava. Consequently, there are about 130 volcanoes in Iceland. The last eruption from Ejafjallajöküll took place in 2012 and disrupted air traffic between NorthAmerica and Europe.

This isn’t the first time a volcano in Iceland wreaked havoc far from home. In the 1783 Laki and his crater friends (a volcanic system) erupted over 8 months. It almost wiped out the entire population of Iceland, killing most of the livestock.

The immense amount of gas thrown into the atmosphere caused temperatures to drop into an early winter in the northern hemisphere, a drought on the Nile, and potentially triggered the French Revolution.

Millions of people and animals starved to death thanks to a volcano in Iceland. This fissure is not like those eruptions.There is no ice to explode off like a cork on a champagne bottle, and no ash.

As far as volcanism goes, this is the most gentle and kindest version of liquid earth hemorrhaging onto the crust.

I wasn’t sure what was over that ledge. I was expecting a black hole with a long red crack of glowing lava.Already I could tell, I underestimated Mother Nature’s spectacular show.

I sat in awe for a few minutes, not quite sure what to take in first. I know other people were there, but I felt like I had a front row seat to the creation of life. Despite their destructive tendencies, volcanic eruptions leave behind a layer of basalt with minerals that help to fertilize soil for growing food.

There was a single row of lava fountains across the top portion of the lake spewing fire geysers. I could hear the sloshing of liquid falling into the lake like waves crashing on a reef.The fountains caused a slight clockwise movement as more lava was added to the lake. In some places it began to ooze over forming smaller pools. I could feel the heat on my face as warm air moved up the crater wall.

EdwardAbbey in his book Desert Solitaire wrote about a time he witnessed two gopher snakes engaged in a mating dance. Curiosity pulled him by the shirt collar. He got on his belly and crawled across the sand for a more intimate observation point, moving slowly to not interrupt them. Suddenly the snakes broke from their ritual, and he found himself playing chicken with the two serpents who were on a head on collision course with his face. He panicked at the last minute and jumped out of way of the two snakes and watched as them disappeared into the desert.

He wrote : “If I had been as capable of trust as I am susceptible to fear I might have learned something new or some truth so very old we have all forgotten it.”

It was curiosity and the thrill of a challenging experience with a good friend to share it with that got me here, but now we had to get back. LikeAbbey, I had my belly in the sand, and my own version of two flickering, forked tongues slithering towards my face. It was time to face the very thing that gave us the most hesitation about coming here, and that which we each compartmentalized and shrugged off for our future selves to deal with, -- the descent. Not the act of walking back down the mountain, but the challenges like unpredictable weather, holes that will swallow you to the knee, getting lost in the darkness or fog (or both), falling off a cliff, to name a few.

Yes, as I write this now, some of these are monster in the dark basement feelings. None of that happened. No creature stuck its cold scaled hand out and grabbed me by the ankle. I lived to tell the tale.

The adrenaline was wearing off. I felt a chill prick at my core.The temperature was dropping, and I shivered from the wind biting through the long sleeves of my wool shirt. I pulled my rain jacket out of my pack and threw it over me. I instantly felt warmer with only my puffy vest for insulation.

I looked at the fissure, it’s boiling fountains and oozing lake. I wanted to stay in the glow of it. I wished we didn’t have to go. I wasn’t sure how long it was going to take us to get back down the mountain. I was alert but could feel the tired deep in my bones.

As we walked away from the glowing red crater the darkness crept in, enclosed around us. When I could no longer see or feel the glow of the fissure there was only blackness ahead.

Out there was a monotonous sea of stones and moss. My headlamp lit the rocks in front of, me and illuminated my breath as it lingered above my lips in the cool night air.

I looked ahead and walked toward a point in the void where I could see headlamps of people walking toward the eruption. Occasionally one of the sticks that the EMS crew put out to mark a trail showed up in my beam. I was thankful for the reflective tape.

My headlamp was strong, and I could scan ahead to find the others.The night was so clear. If there was fog, I would have had to rely on the track back of myGarmin.

Instead, I keptAlltrails open on my phone and made sure my little blue dot was making its way in the right direction.

We didn’t talk much. I was in my head for most of the walk down. It was impossible to look at one another because the headlamp would blind the other person.

Walking in a single file was best to avoid holes, and of course we had our heads down, bearing down, nose to the grindstone, feeling like mile 25 of a marathon.

My spirit was tired. My body was on autopilot.They felt disconnected. Suddenly, the cool crisp air smelled like a campfire. I snapped out of my trance and strained my eyes in the dark.

There were fires all around me. I walked onto the crust of the 2021 eruption in a place that had seepage from the lava flowing underneath. I don’t know anything about lava hydrodynamics and therefore was probably not in any real danger, but I also know it’s not safe to walk on steaming earth that is on fire. I spun around and walked, leapt, as quickly as I could to get back on the trail. I wasn’t 100% sure what that was because all I saw were tiny fires everywhere.

My eyes started to play tricks on me. I thought for sure all the stones were quartz because they seemed clear. I looked back and saw a row of headlamps trailing behind us and the big red plume against the black sky.

The sunrise was beginning, so in front of me was black and behind me was blue and yellow. My mind pictured the rest of the route I mapped in my head on the way to the fissure. I knew there were two valleys, and we were about to come out of the second, a long ridge, a steep rocky boulder trail with a drop off, and then a steep wideATV trail.Then it would be just over a mile to the parking lot.

At 2am I realized we were not going to make to our 3am parking lot rendezvous. I called the taxi company. I walked in the dark listening to their hold music for about 10 minutes.

Afriendly dispatcher answered. I told her we were running late and wondered if she could tell our driver. I estimated that we would be there by 330am. She said the driver was already on his way, but she would tell him, and he will wait.

What a relief. We marched on.

Over the long ridge, down the boulders with the drop off, and onto the very steepATV trail that was only dirt and loose gravel.At 3am he driver called. He was so cheery and supportive. He said for us to take our time and not run. He will get comfortable.

My feet would stumble over rocks occasionally and I’d roll my ankle and catch myself with my poles.

Tracey laughed each time, and it warmed my heart, and lifted my spirit. With a laugh she’d say, “It looks like you are drunk.” Something about hearing her voice back there after very long period of silence made me remember I wasn’t alone. I reacted internally the way my dog wags her tail and cocks her ears when I say, “Wanna go for a ride?”,

“At 3:00AM the driver called…cherry and supportive.”

My friend who 8 hours ago sat across from me at a Domino’s pizza in Reykjavik, and masterminded this plan with me.

My friend who shared my fears and had my back from start to finish. My friend who laughed with me all the way up the mountain, and still made me laugh in our 6th hour. The sky was bright again. Our taxi driver greeted us with a smile. He took our picture.

Exhausted, I fell into the back seat and popped the top of the can of the IPAwith the Puffin on the label, that I had hauled up and down the mountain to a place where the earth was actively oozing its glowing guts. I shared it with the other person who onAugust 4-5 made possible a once on a lifetime experience.

DearAlltrails User Kaila Morgante, you were right. Totally worth it.

About the author: Tara Short is the Founder; CEO of Green EdventuresTours which specializes in eco adventures for women’s travel groups and educational tours for students in over 15 destinations worldwide.