Ocean | Camino Bay Books

2022 The Northern Route – Flatey Iceland

Robin — Thu, 29 Jun 2023 13:30:09 +0000

16 September: I left Westfjords last evening, taking the ferry across Breiòafjoròur, a large bay separating the Westfjords from the Snaefellsnes Peninsula and am a hundred miles or so north of Reykjavik in a community called Reykholt; in two days I leave for Oslo. (About that bay—it is unusual in having an enormous number of “islands, islets, and skerries.” One of those islands, Flatey, is inhabited year-round. I have to wonder what motivates people to have settled there and to remain. It’s an hour by ferry from one side of the bay, an hour and a half from the other and tiny; it won’t stand a chance with sea level rise and it’s only a short walk from one side to the other. I understand and am drawn to isolated living, small villages, islands, and so forth, but this seems extreme. I need to see if I can discover what brought and keeps them there.) In my mind, leaving Iceland divides the trip in half, not just temporally with five weeks in each area, but psychically. I have been on islands—Greenland, Iceland, Faroes—and now go to the northern reaches of the European continent. The four remaining countries have a coherent feel about them that is lacking with the islands. I have no idea how far to take this notion or what if anything to make of it, but it feels different. There’s no question that I didn’t connect with Greenland as I have with these two neighbors to its east. It has to make a big difference that I was restricted to flying and sailing to get around Greenland whereas I’ve taken a car and moved more freely and widely in the other two locales. In Greenland people essentially cling to the perimeter of the land/ice mass and without the time and effort of getting on a ferry they are restricted to their local areas by the lack of roads. Nature in all three is large and powerful yet, once again, in Iceland and the Faroes I could move into it, get closer, as opposed to the sense of just hanging on in Greenland. The Faroes is a much softer landscape, green practically all over and even the high, precipitous mountains were themselves ensconced in grass and seemed only another expression of it. And the people—Earth would be much better off, as would all the people who were part of it, if population density everywhere were what it is in these two countries. (When I get a chance, I want to figure what the people-to-acreage ratio is in both.) Earth seems more comfortable to itself with less of Homo Sapiens (is this projection?) and I suspect most of us members of our problematic species would be as well. Small communities of a few hundred people are better suited to the spirit and relational capacities of humans than those with many thousands. The other notable feature of each of these countries is the less visible presence of commodity world; there are fewer businesses, and they make less effort to announce their presence. I think they realize they are subsidiary to the community and not intended to dominate it; they are there for support. Which is bound to reflect also in people’s view of what they live for. I saw in the Yukon many years ago and in Westfjords a few days ago a very similar tableau: small café and general store with a woman doing domestic type things, tending young children in their corner with their toys, ironing, preparing the food I asked for, and the men doing their sort of work but coming in to help. Integrated lives and seemingly happy ones even if, by most standards, relatively poor ones.

Photo by Einar H. Reynis on Unsplash

2022 The Northern Route – Isafjordur Iceland

Robin — Wed, 28 Jun 2023 13:30:35 +0000

My introduction to the Westfjords was to rolling country for the most part including even the fjords. But as I’ve driven farther, especially since Holmavik, the valleys and mountainsides have grown deeper and higher. This is how I imagined the whole vast (for Iceland) peninsula would be. When the roads are not tunneling through a mountain, they mostly hold to the coast so I find myself going up to the head of a fjord and then down to the mouth and then up and back again. There aren’t a lot of people out here but there are more than I expected. Isafjordur, which is two tunnels back east of the village where I’m staying (or one tunnel—it’s unique in that the tunnel has an intersection where I turned right for 3km after leaving Isafjordur and driving 2-3km into the tunnel; two-lane to the intersection and then one-lane afterwards) is a town of over 2,000 people, built, naturally, on a fjord in a dramatically beautiful location. It’s a real town and one could forget that he lived in virtually empty surrounding space as far as human presence and impingements were concerned. The village where I’m staying, Suòureyri, has about 200 people. In all these places I feel under the sway, or domination or ever-presence, of climate and geology. I don’t see how one could live here and lose that sense, although I’m sure people do, some just from habituation and easily recollected and others from blockheadedness. I like the feeling of it; it reminds me of when I drove through the Yukon and Alaska the first time and realized I was a small visitor to a large landscape, not exactly hostile but definitely one to respect. Wherever we live we are vulnerable to its climate and possibly other or related factors (earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes), but it’s the sense of Nature in its larger and stronger expressions—ocean, mountain, desert—that most attracts me. I certainly feel that here; it’s part of what would draw me to live here if I were younger and could manage it. It was blind ignorance on humans’ part to separate themselves from Nature and choose to think of it as something exterior and only usable rather than something to revere and live in accordance with. It has led not only to immense destruction but to psychic and spiritual emptiness. Incalculable loss in all dimensions.

The only thing lacking here compared to the Faroes is the small scale I so appreciated there, although I imagine on a people per acre basis Iceland’s more sparse than the Islands (not that population is the only factor). But it doesn’t feel it. Iceland is also a more diverse landscape; both though are quite beautiful and satisfy my soul. To live in an isolated village on an isolated island apart from the strivings of most of the present world…that’s something that should be preserved even while not isolating people from knowledge and cultural input from outside. It’s a balance that people are famously inept at managing. And the world won’t stay away if it thinks there’s money to be made here (and world will find those who dance to the same time locally). I can’t help feeling almost as I feel about the vanishing tribal people of the Amazon. What chance have they in a world that cares nothing about respecting otherness when there’s an opportunity to profit monetarily?

Photo by Joel Rohland on Unsplash

2022 The Northern Route – Akureyri Iceland

Robin — Tue, 27 Jun 2023 13:30:47 +0000

Big weather change: wet (although not much so), foggy (much so), and temp in the mid-30s. I’d rather this wasn’t happening just as I prepare to launch into the Westfjords region, said to be the most unpopulated except for the Highlands. The main problem is visibility—driving is difficult, of course (and I’m surprised at finding Icelanders seemingly in so much of a hurry when behind the wheel) and equally important, I can’t see the countryside. I had a clear hour this morning after I left Akureyri and it was a landscape I especially like: great valleys, meaning deep and wide, presumably glacier-carved for the most part. There are few trees although small acreage areas here-and-there that have straight-line perimeters suggesting either remnants from cutting or tree farms. The country is softer than I anticipated, not as rocky, although there is abundance of lava field, but even it is very often softened by moss and wonderfully diverse little “fields” of leafy plants and grasses, all very low to the rock. The valleys and mountains are often covered by a variety of plants but rarely trees. Lots of sheep and horses (for pleasure riding, I assume), very few cows and almost no row crops among all the hay fields. Isolated homesteads are always multi-building with barns for animals and equipment, a house, and a variety of smaller shelters. I thought, as I peered through the fog at these home places and the few small communities I passed through, about the wide variety of environments people make themselves at home in, and I wondered which, if any, are overall best for the people inhabiting them and what makes them so. Relative isolation and regular contact with limited numbers and kinds of people would seem a possibly impoverished way of life, yet I think that bigness of towns and populations is depleting in its own way, and if I had to choose would go small. I imagine that the fewer people in an area the greater the solidarity among them; certainly, there can’t be anonymity or impersonal relationships and people are likely to feel more accountable to and for one another. Chances for depth relationships might even be increased.

Photo by Josh Reid on Unsplash

Gull Colony

Dr. Brestrup — Tue, 17 Aug 2021 13:00:27 +0000

I’m just back from a walk along the bluff overlooking the Pacific, my primary Nature source when home. A beautiful, mild sunny day. I decided a while ago to stop asking whether this or that instance of weather was a result of climate change. This is commonly done in the media where I read speculation about whether this hurricane, flood, drought, etc. was a result of climate change. The question is almost meaningless since everything to do with climate now happens within the context of growing anthropogenic disruption; in one fashion or another to one degree or another, weather events are associated with climate change, and as greenhouse gases steadily rise those fashions and degrees will grow more pronounced. Ironically, the effects are sometimes benign—as today’s mild day in January reflects—and sometimes catastrophic, as were the drought enabled wildfires of last year. This isn’t surprising; the climate experts predict and describe it; the future will be increasingly unstable. But for the climate change deniers a day like today makes it easier to disregard the full reality. If every day were miserable, radically different than the historical norm, would that convince them? Not many, I fear. Another irony lies in the fact that ample information about just about everything is now available at the movement of our fingers on keyboards—it should be a time when being well-informed is common, no one need persist in ignorance. And yet it seems a time when willful ignorance is epidemic. Large numbers want to believe what they want to believe and that’s the end of it. A sorrowful thing and waste of good minds.

The storm in the far ocean reaches that brought immense waves over much of last week have obviously abated as we are back to normal seas. Not normal is the sight of hundreds of gulls and other water birds gathered on the sandbar separating river from ocean. They’ve been there every day for a week or so. Has the period of winds wearied them, so they need more rest? Have there been more creatures they enjoy consuming near shore and they come to beach and sandbar for post-prandial relaxation? Does it have something to do with the coming breeding season, the present period devoted to finding mates in preparation? I don’t know but I do know how moving it is when hundreds of them rise at the same time and some circle and others move away but remain over the beach, sort of a sea gull mini colony. It shows dramatically that they are involved with each other in some manner, act in unison, and have mysterious shared purposes. Though it is never as populated, I have the same feeling of exaltation when a flock of pelicans flies past in formation. Nonhuman animals have their own thoughts and goals, and they reveal them more visibly in these seemingly spontaneous group excursions. Every creature has a life course whose biography, if known, could open our eyes in wonder.

Photo by Johanna Buguet on Unsplash

A Part of the Whole

Dr. Brestrup — Tue, 10 Aug 2021 13:00:53 +0000

Looking out at the Pacific this morning I watch an osprey hovering high above the water, so high I can’t imagine him hunting, and then down he goes like an arrow, hits the water, comes out empty in beak and talon. He flies back up and along comes another and either in play, territorial conflict, or factors beyond my ken, off they go southward. Life is doing such things throughout Nature all the time, rarely visible to us; events and plot lines that need only our leaving them alone to work out for lives ending, beginning, flourishing, subsisting according to their own ways and rhythms. I love reminders like that osprey, upsurges of beauty and natural presence, the sense of belonging, recognition that the whole, which all we parts help to compose, is the central value of Being, its character and substance. I’m glad to be here.

Photo by Mathew Schwartz on Unsplash

Bursting Into Sprays

Dr. Brestrup — Thu, 05 Aug 2021 13:00:25 +0000

I got back five days ago and for the first time have the leisure to write a bit, although it’s late in the day so it may not be much. I walked on the bluff above the Pacific yesterday and noticed the contrast between ocean sound and desert silence. Nothing new about this but it stood out since I’d been in so much desert recently. Even with the week-long period since I left there the silence had remained a sensory presence ready to be “activated” upon exposure to ocean sound. It’s interesting that that could happen, especially when one of my primary responses when I return from a trip from anywhere is to the higher busyness level around home—an immediate response, not delayed a week like this one. I wonder if I unconsciously move into a different sensory realm when in such settings, once protected somehow from normal life? Anyway, I prefer the silence, but the sound has its place in ocean turbulence. The crash of waves against the rocky islets and their bursting into sprays and showers of droplets, sort of a watery and denser version of fireworks, pleases me; a different sight/sound combination than desert offers, obviously. For the next several weeks my Nature exposure will be almost exclusively ocean.

Photo by Georg Eiermann