Two weeks after Iceland, I’m still thinking about Iceland. The land is a mood that follows you. It lingers, like the scent of a campfire coming from your clothes days after the fire has died out. Describing its craggy lava fields, its velvety swaths of green moss, the silence of the mountains that watch over…
Tag: travel
How the Writer Sjón Turned An Idiot Into a Fan Girl
This is a story about me being an idiot. Truly. It begins on the living room floor in the home of Halldór Kiljan Laxness, a son of Iceland, a Nobel Prize-winning author, and a guy with great taste in art. And the story ends in the candy aisle of a gas station about a half…
Skyr Hunting in Lopapeysa Country
I hate flying and I’ve been feeling sun-deprived after a harsh winter in the Northeastern United States, so why am I spending spring break in Reykjavik, Iceland? There are two groups to thank: the Iceland Writers Retreat led by the indefatigable Eliza Reid, and HBO’s Game of Thrones (that’s right, I’m a big fan of…
Seeking Enlightenment in the Berkshires
To me, and perhaps to other New Yorkers, the Berkshires look like the Catskills; those same soft blue ripples of rock rising and falling to the north. Yet the Berkshires have a very different narrative than the Catskills. Today, the Catskills feature some of the Rust Belt deterioration that dominates so much of upstate New…
Out and About
Celebrate the Lunar New Year in the Berkshires? Sure, why not. Actually, the scheduling happened by accident, but I’m visiting Kripalu this Friday for a Buddhist meditation and yoga retreat for bucolic escape and the chance to embrace something I’ve been wanting to learn for a while. Kripalu is a three-hour drive away, and wasn’t…