JULY 2023 · ADVENTURE

Lava fields - Iceland Highlands trek, days five & six

Southern Highlands, Iceland

Two days across the same lava field. That's not how it announced itself. It announced itself as featureless, dark, open — volcanic ash plain stretching to the hills, the kind of scale that makes a group of backpackers look like punctuation.

Hikers cross expansive barren volcanic ash plain with distant hills — Two miles an hour across the open field

— What the field is

But you walk at two miles an hour with weight on your back. Two miles an hour means you see things. By the end of the first hour the field was already different from how it had looked at the start: yellow-green moss in the crevices, rusty iron staining on the upper faces of the rocks, small geothermal vents that you smelled before you found them. The rhyolite slopes at the field's edge were banded in colour — yellows, greens, rust — erosion revealing the layers deposited by different events over different centuries.

A hut marked the day's halfway point. Red roof, sitting alone on the plateau, no context around it except rock and sky. Inside would be dry and warm, which was the only information that mattered by mid-afternoon. The huts were the route's skeleton; without them this was a different kind of trip.

Close attention was what they required. They didn't offer themselves to a glance.
Icelandic Highlands lava fields — July 2023

Red-roofed mountain hut isolated on barren lava plateau — The route's skeleton — mid-afternoon

— The first day — detail accruing

The second day pushed into a deep moss canyon before the lava opened again. The walls on both sides were dark and vertical, the moss so thick and bright it looked applied. At the bottom, a stream ran over stained orange rock. The canyon felt temporary, a cut through something that had been here far longer than the route.

Backpacker hikes down moss-covered lava canyon with steep walls — Into the deep moss canyon, day six

Moss-covered lava rock with flowing stream and mineral staining — Orange stain, bright moss, running water

— The second day — the canyon

At the hut that evening I looked back across the plateau from the hut window. The light was flat and grey, the ridges distant. The detail that had accumulated over two days — the staining, the colour, the close geology of individual rocks — collapsed back into distance and darkness, the field returning to the thing it had appeared to be at the start.

View from tent across Highland lava plateau with distant ridges — Detail collapsed back to distance by evening

— Evening — distance returns

A single mossy rock close to the hut: rusty mineral stain, bright lichen, a running thread of water over it. That's what two days in a lava field produces.