Fagradalsfjall · Reykjanes · March 25, 2021
We landed in Iceland on March 19, the same day the eruption began. There had been weeks of earthquakes, and that evening I went outside and saw what looked like a second sunset in the wrong direction. I remember thinking, why does it look like the sun is setting over there too?
It was the volcano.
Then five days in quarantine watching it on television. The morning our tests cleared us to leave, I headed straight for it.
That day the gas had shifted and closed the trail everyone had been using, so we took an undeveloped route instead. Steep, rough, and pretty miserable in places. After hours of hiking you came over a crest and suddenly the eruption was right there below you.
The sound is one of the things I remember most. Fine china, constantly breaking.
The man in the photo was an ICE-SAR volunteer. He had a gas detector with him, and just before I took this its alarm had gone off. He told several of us to move farther back from the lava. I thanked him, then asked if I could take his photograph.
The way down was in the dark, on your backside most of the way. At the bottom I turned the wrong direction, toward the closed trail. I finally found an ICE-SAR truck and just lay down beside it, exhausted. The driver came out, lit a cigarette, looked down at me and asked, “You going to die?”
“No. Just exhausted.”
He finished his cigarette and got back in the truck. I remember thinking it would have been nice if he’d offered me a ride. But that wasn’t his job. So I got up and kept walking. Home at four or five in the morning.
I went back with the kids a few days later.
Fuji X-Pro2 · XF 16–55mm at 16mm · f/11 · 1/125 · ISO 800
