TRIPS & EXPEDITIONS
ICELAND Maggie Jarman recounts the highlights of an exhilarating week, and introduces some creative writing inspired by the landscape and history of this extraordinary country I n late August 2017, 28 Lower and Middle School boys spent a week in the land of Ice and Fire, which included an afternoon’s crevassing on the glacier ice of Sólheimajökull, and a two-night stay on Heimaey, the largest of the Vestmann Islands, blasted into the headlines for six months in 1973 when a new volcano, Eldfell, was born without any warning. On our first afternoon, an Atlantic gale curtailed exploration of Eldfell’s 200m cone. Battling into the wind, all senses were heightened as the boys ascended into the eerie cloud obscuring the volcano rim. However, they were not deflected from using hand lenses to discover and describe the hidden world of the red and black basalt scoriae of which the cone is constructed:
Thick fog surrounded us like the ash cloud from the eruption that created this stone. The landscape was lunar, almost alien, isolated from the world we knew.
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