As we rounded the lip of the parking lot, our hearts caught in our throats. Beneath the stark landscape of dust, stone, and moss stretching barren as far as the eye could see, was a lush, hidden wonderland called Gjáin. The waterfalls burst like magical faucets from the stone, materializing from nothing to cascade into our private Eden.
The water swirled around rapids into frothy white eddies and intensely blue pools, misting around lush ferns. We climbed onto and into the domed cave behind me; even the realization that someone had used it as a restroom couldn't dampen our enthusiasm. We scampered across slick rocks like little sheep. We scaled the giant caverns on the opposite side of the valley to survey our paradise below.
We considered camping there for the night. Almost 10 kilometers up a rocky side road [327], the trip was difficult in our criminally neglected SADcar. It was 14 hours into our first day on the road after Secret Solstice. We'd started the day with an argument, then missed a volcano or waterfall on the way. We were really hungry and a little delirious. We didn't know what we were going to do with our summer tent and virgin sleeping bags. If the protected alcove where Toor was standing hadn't been strewn with jagged rocks, we would have made it our home for the night.
Afterwards, we talked about going back--for another visit, for another photo op, for a whole night assuming we could find relatively level place out of the wind. For all of the intense natural beauty of Iceland--the lava tubes and geothermal pools and glaciers and barren, volcanic landscapes smothered in woolly moss and purple flowers, the geometric columns of basalt like prehistoric pillars of a grand hall--Gjáin was the place that felt most magical.
Go to Iceland and visit Gjáin for me. Let her know that I miss and love her.
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