Reports from Iceland

Feeling the abcense of barriers

Hello!

I just got back from Iceland. The volcanic island that sits between tectonic plates. A land covered in lava rocks, glacial waterfalls, geothermal hot springs, multi-colored moss, summer wildflowers, horses, and sheep. So much sky. So much water. Not a lot of people. Not a lot of buildings.

When I sit on the earth in Iceland and shake hands with a flower, I feel a clear transmission that I am in a place with the most effortless access to god* as I’ve ever experienced.

It was a beautiful and impactful two weeks. But returning from this retreat in largely unmodified nature to where I live has been slightly intense. The silence and vastness and purity of this place I was in allowed my senses to open and relax. Coming back to a place that is explicitly not a vast, quiet, wide open field between mountains is quite a contrast between environments. It makes it so much more apparent to me that the frequencies of nature are being intercepted by so many other things. People. Energy. Dis-ease. Stress. Disagreement. Machines. Pavement. Chemicals. Pollutants. It brought me to tears. I could feel it so significantly. So I am being tender with myself and what I choose to do this week.

How can I visit a place and come home to where I have lived my whole life, and yet feel wrong and out of place?

Because home is Earth. And we are sensitive beings. Feeling anything less than immediate access to nature affects our sense of “being in the right place”. The most significant feeling I noticed in Iceland was a complete absence of barriers between myself and the divinity of nature. Everything was just SO clear. Just so right there. I felt the quality of really being at home on the quiet, yet so powerful, earth. To reunite with this feeling is to remember a deeper sense of home. It may not be about the specifics of coordinates on the globe, but rather this quality and connection to nature.

My well is full of new creative inspiration. I feel wild excitement in my spirit. And I am also full of grief. It’s ok to feel both. To be in a place with such purity that hasn’t been plastered over, contaminated, and drowned out by other noise gave me a glimpse of what could have been possible to protect in many other places on earth. Or what all of Earth was like in in the past. The immense beauty of this highlights the sadness of what has been lost in other places I see.

I know the same god found in the clean streams you can drink directly from in Iceland exists in any water in any river, in the mysterious gooey sludge floating on top of the Huron, in every piece of trash on the bank, and also somehow in all of the noise and poison I am complaining about, but to see divinity there seems to require deep spiritual intervention and practice. I am willing to do this, but I can’t help but notice it is more work compared to the unavoidable ease of experiencing the songs of the flowers and rocks and waters that reached my perception and soul so clearly and effortlessly while in this incredible place.

Even though my heart is tenderized by having to return, I do feel newly initiated to a more profound type of connection that I know I can find anywhere if I try. It just requires a tiny bit more effort to contact, but now I have more practice. Now at home, I find an even more heightened appreciation for every flower in bloom in my yard, every rock undisturbed, every little plantain leaf and clover poking through the cracked parking lot. I felt this before, but it has a newly expanded context to it now. Each microexpression is connected to the macro. I am desperately clinging to whatever little thing I can find that keeps me connected. Maybe this is just another sign we need to move to the country. Or at least have an escape cabin.

Here are some words that describe my response to Iceland, words and concepts I am considering both in my life and my creative work:

Proximity

Relationship

Coexistence

Conservation

Respect

Access

Divinity

Transformation

Influence

Vastness

Intuition

Unadultered

Transparent

Safe

Oneness

Vivid

Texture

Care

Dewy

Raw

Alive

Powerful

___

Have you ever visited somewhere or had an experience that impacted you and your creative inspiration like this? I‘d love to hear about it. And thank you for reading. I hope your creative endeavors are feeling curious and ripe this summer!

With love,

-Kristen

*I do not use the word god in any specific religious context here. I am still figuring out what god means, experientially and not conceptually.

Here is a photo of me in a really cool spot.