With every trip we take, I become more and more in love with all that Iceland has to offer. Although I am sure that each of our adventures will stay in my mind forever, our South Iceland trip in particular has a special place in my heart. Never before have I been so touched by a landscape as when I was seated at the foot of a glacier.
The beauty of a mountain and the pristineness of the ocean are in themselves enough to take one’s breath away. Glaciers, however, are magical in that even their destruction shows the most beautiful story of their sheer might. Each one has descriptive patterns and layers in its ice, scours adjacent cliff sides with unique scrapes, and litters outwash plains with glacier erratics. The huge chunks of floating ice and the crystal blue lagoon waters found at their base are likely to leave one speechless, and led me into some intense personal reflection during our visit. I found myself asking questions like, “why am I finding beauty in a place that is so blatantly the result of negative human activity on the planet?” and “how I can find joy in being here while I know this feature is most likely going to continue to melt and eventually disappear?”
Although I cannot answer these questions fully, I have come to understand how valuable taking the time to realize how special our planet is in order to make the change this world so desperately needs. Hiking and exploring to find the treasures the earth has to offer is what drives a passion to keep and improve what tends to be taken for granted. It is critical to see the beauty and the harmwe have caused here on earth, and glaciers are perfect examples of where these two extremes meet and even overlap. Although there is still beauty found in places that show obvious impacts of climate change, humans should learn to acknowledge and understand that these changes are leading us into devastation. Rather than taking this information and becoming scared, however, we have the opportunity to become enlightened and inspired to be the spark and advocates for this incredible planet we all call home.
Ashley Aupperle