TOURIST

jun 21-28 i had the privilege of driving around iceland with my friend frank.

our trip contained moments of magic sprinkled in between long drives, a sore throat, and spiceless food.

these vignettes and inside jokes come to mind: hot water in every form bubbling from the ground, plains and mountains, hostels with one key and showers that were occasionally heated, extra fees for robes. hiking up a wet mountain that was impossibly further away than it looked to discover a sheep’s dwelling under a rock along with a couple of giant black slugs. picked up a french hitch hiker on my way back to fluðir and dropped him at gulfoss. singing along to U2 while frank teared up to his favorite songs or the mountains around us or a combination of the two. buttered sourdough in the car. petting wild horses. 10 macchiatos at once from an over eager espresso machine. driving a stick shift. crying in front of the church in Vik - letting out what, i’m not quite sure. fear, anger, longing. standing outside the hill hotel freaking out as karl told me she got a tattooing apprenticeship. 

you simply can’t adequately photograph or describe the beauty of gulfoss, jaksoluran, the lupins and volcanic lava fields; the wild horses running through plains that give way at a near 90º angle to snow capped mountains; an iceberg freshly calved from it’s glacier, the 9th largest on earth; the panoramic view from the glass fronted sauna at sky lagoon; thermal hot springs feeding a river in the mountains.

fully appreciating these sites, however, required some work to drown out the yapping of the asian, american, european, and exactly 0(?) black tourists surrounding me. they all want their picture taken in front of the iceberg like me and frank.

when among a large group of tourists, i don't identify with them.

it’s the same feeling of sitting in traffic wishing there wasn’t so much traffic as if you aren’t one of the pieces of traffic. still, the thought goes, if these people hadn’t been here on my way home, there wouldn’t be this wait at the light. was i the tourist in someone else’s way? did my participation in consuming this landmark cheapen their helping of it? or could they tell i wasn’t one of them? a boarder stalker in their midst - a shark momentarily entering this odd school of herring, pretending to swim the same direction, annoyed when there are too many of them. they pass my jaws unscathed because i can’t be bothered. is this narcissism at it’s finest or what? 

the fact is, i am here as a site seer as well. i want a photo of the waterfall, too. i’ll take a video to show my partner and my mom, maybe a few friends and clients who are willing to put up with vacation stories, then it will live on a piece of silicon in a datacenter apple owns, right next to the 5,000 other videos of the waterfall people filmed today. it’s proof that i encountered something real with beauty and magnificence - an artifact of my rich experience, a receipt proving i was here at all. more than that - proof i am set above the lowly mortals too afraid to leave their hometowns on an adventure. yes, standing in this line of ponchos grants me status as one of the world’s explorers who so bravely ventured from the parking lot, through the gift shop, past the cafe and water closets, to one of the wonders of the world.

the lack of effort involved in obtaining these experiences cheapens them. when there are no stakes, the reward doesn’t matter as much. it's a quick hit at best. human psyches are built to chase and earn the fruit's of our labor as quickly as we can and mine is no different. to see some of the most amazing things on our planet, you don’t have to survive a harrowing journey into the unknown full of peril at every turn. you don’t have to get lost and go days considering the nutritional value of your leather boots. you don’t have to wonder if you’ll ever find shelter or see your lover again, or if she’s found another assuming you’re dead - how many months has it been, after all? you don’t twist your ankle on an invisible hole in the moss covered lava field. no, you’re bussed to the visitors center, a short walk from a jaw dropping vista that once was only attained through winning a wrestling match with the wild. the original explorer's reward wasn’t lobster soup and a coke - they had an encounter with Nature’s raw power. for a moment they forgot their sore back and growling stomach. it didn’t matter. they had made direct contact with a higher power - concrete reality at a vastness and scale that squashes any ego, worship being the appropriate response.

it's this encounter i believe most of us signed up for, however unwittingly, when we bought the tour package.

paying 1200 ISK for an express line just doesn’t hit the same.
but i'll pay it none the less.

it's manufactured magic sold at just over a bargain to hungry masses of consumers for their temporary gratification. by ensuring everyone has a unique experience, you guarantee no one does.

would a soccer player and his teammates scream and celebrate his world-cup-winning goal if the ref had restrained the goalie and placed the ball inches from the net? what if there were a line of fans behind him who were all going to kick their own world-cup-winning goal? would fans burn cars and loot shops for each goal kicked by the skill-less participants? perhaps they would drink away the mediocrity of their “win” on the flight home, having defeated no one in particular. i can’t say i would like to win a world cup or play drums at warped tour or receive an olympic gold medal if all i had to endure was a red-eye flight.

it would feel like cheating. a voice whispering in my ear, "you didn't earn it."

maybe i traveled to iceland for an encounter with Nature. to be humbled and put in my place by the scale of a mountain too big to fit in my head. i certainly did just that, don't get me wrong, but i leave feeling embarrassed that my participation required no substantial sacrifice or suffering on my part. i feel indebted - the cost for me was nothing but dollars - yet It bore the weight of the tour busses and sapiens and all our iphones.

while something old and primal in me pines for the mystery and hardship of the road less traveled, i must admit it is my nature to take the smoother path, to cut the tsa line, to pay extra for premium access, to do all of the available activities and devour the amenities. yes, deeper than my curiosity for the unknown, my evolution asks the ref to place the ball squarely in front of the goal.

i am seated comfortably in 13C next to my camarades having gone further than anyone we know to the ends of the earth. we return to our villages victorious vikings, bearing trophies from the gift shop of our pillage and plunder.