Falling from the sky

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June 20, 2019

It was the 26th of August. That has been the last date I actually can remember. Hereafter everything turned out to be more important than any description of time or the effort of trying to measure it or keep it in a defined order. Well, it was the 26th of August. Something changed around my normal surrounding. I left the protection of my mother-cloud and fell towards the ground. Not in a dramatic manner. It was just like flying, but down to a mystical appearing piece of earth. It was all black and green I was flying towards.

Me, and all my friends. I was just about wondering where this fall may lead me to, as I espied two little blue points in the wide of black and green and icy snow. They became bigger and bigger, and I was falling right towards them. Well, not exactly right towards them. The wind was blowing hard and rigid, thus I was sailing crooked above the landscape, but still towards them. My liquid heart was throbbing anxiously and wild, they looked dangerous and creepy. But then I heard their friendly hearts, throbbing as wild as mine, exerted from hiking through storm and rain and this freaking cold. They were human beings although they appeared extraterrestrial.

But when I splashed onto one of these blue caps, I knew everything about them. Water can feel through every soul. The two earthlings were backpackers on a vacation in a land called Iceland, hiking through the highlands of the south. A trail called Laugavegur. Lots of my friends landed here as well, many and many. But the humans were still walking along. I was interested why they did and were their journey would lead them to. Thus, I decided to stay with them.

I learned that one was called Wiebke, that ought to be a female’s name, and a guy called Johannes, maybe a Viking. German Viking. I accompanied them, sometimes being sweat on their bodies, sometimes being a warm tea or excreted … you know what I mean … but most often as water on their jackets, pants or alien costumes. We had a wild trip, met lots of lovely people we walked a few days with, playing cards and laughed so hard that I cried tiny water drops. We travelled through lively rivers, where I chased a while with the cold feral water of the streams before I coupled back on one of the humans legs.

I enjoyed being a riverdrop, but I cannot tell how stunning and overwhelming it was to become a waterfall-drop. We saw lots of waterfalls and the humans came pretty close. So I flew over. Massive and tremendous my colleagues and I swirled to the edge, and then whooshed down. It was better than falling, better than flying; it was like living, truly and for real.

And then after a while, something changed. We exchanged our tent or staying in a hut by living in a camper. A colourful camper. I was surprised, that I was able to live in an accommodation on wheels, so we were able to awake at another place than we were about to fall asleep at the next day, hundreds of meters away, sleeping warm and cosy, having everything you need without carrying it. It was the first time I nearly understood what the word ‘home’ is about.

We were able to eat the best food I was ever part of, we saw black rocks made by trolls and huge black crater close to a sea famous for mosquitoes. No idea, why we decided to go there, but it was awesome.

And then I decided to do something freaky. I was a little bit afraid, when they decided to visit some smelling sulphurous fields. It seemed to be a dangerous place for innocent water like me. But the two humans looked forward to it. Their hearts kept no fear at all.

Thus I decided to join them and I will never regret playing with the gases. But just me. I ensured that none of them both ever came too close to these bubbling pots of hot paint or whatever it was. I flew with hot steam into the air, twirling through the sky so much that it was even hard for me to tell, if I was still aqueous vapour down from the earth or if I already mixed up with the white clouds in the air. So I flew with them up to the Námafjall, watching the play of colours from above. I have been a bit smelly when we climbed back into the camper, but the two humans didn’t care. They smelled as well. But I never minded them to be a bit smelly.

You want to know, what we did next? Let’s see. Oh yes! I swam with the whales. First I decided to stay as a raindrop on the raincoat of the female. But then everybody shouted. A whale appeared on the other side of the boat. But I couldn’t see it. So I changed from rain to ocean. The rain had stopped anyway. And then I saw him: A huge humpback whale. He was diving, coming up for breathing, showing his hunched back and a wet spout. I let him absorb myself and came back to fresh air with exactly this fountain. I flew high over the ocean, spotting the boat right next to me and was even more delighted by the excited heart and happy smile of my girl in the warm overall and the orange raincoat, standing on the boat and watching me. Of course she was watching just me!

Ok. Now you might think it couldn’t get any better. But, ha … It was the same day actually. It was a hard ride for me with the camper van all the way from Húsavik to the Snæfellsnes right to Ólafsvik, because the two heated the camper as much as they could. But I stayed in the fresh water they carried in a big plastic jerrycan. When they stopped at the campsite everything happened just quickly. They brushed teeth and then walked out to the ocean, climbed the rocks separating the street from the ocean and laid down, looking to the sky. I jumped into the ocean, watching both of them alertly. They were still looking up into the dark of the night. What could have been so special above? Their hearts jumped in joy, something miracle seemed to delight them.

So I turned my attention towards the endless sky and what I saw next, is hardly to explain. There were lights. Not normal lights like the sunlight or from shining stars or streetlamps. These lights were falling from the sky like … like nothing I’ve ever seen before. It fell, but floated. It moved, it wafted, it was alive! I felt like I was hit by an apparition. Green and bright light flew right above me, towards me. I felt like touching it. It gleamed, rotated, stay calm for a moment and then dissipate into nothing. I was stunned. My fellows as well. And then again huge stripes of liquid light evolved from the dark. I looked at myself. I was gleaming, too. As if I was a part of it. It was unbelievable. And suddenly all sky was covered with Northern Light. Aurora! A picture like painted, but being in move and changes at that moment you are trying to grasp it. It was overwhelming! Take me back to Iceland. Take me back to that very moment in perfect harmony, whenever something tears me down. I will always remember that.

But the journey of these two humans was not at the end. They climbed a part of the way up to the glacier famous for to be the entrance to the centre of the earth: Snæfellsjökull.

They saw the beautiful basalt coast of Arnarstapi with me swimming in the ocean.

Then they took a moderate hike to a river. People were sitting in it, laying in it, in bathing clothes. And my fellows undressed as well. I though they all went nuts. But then I followed. My colleagues in the riverbasins were perfectly warm. It was fantastic. A welcome warmth in that cold weather surrounding us. We stayed until the two humans were close to decomposition. They visited the meeting point of the American and the Eurasian continental plates as well as of the Icelandic people when deciding important issues in the past years.

We also went to the geyser Strokkur. I decided first to watch the geyser erupting, but then I jumped in and joined the ride. I was heated up far beneath in the ground. Then I was pushed upwards again as warm aqueous vapour, glancing through the cloche of water right before I was smashed high above in the sky, sailing softly back to earth and landing tender on the shoulder of my guy, standing in the smelly steam. That was fun!

As well as the ride onto the greatest waterfall we saw so far. They called it the Gullfoss. The name seemed to emanate from the pot of gold said to lie at the end of the rainbow which shimmered above the waterfall. Plenty of my colleagues were smashed into the narrow canyon generating thick clouds of aqueous vapour which rose from the depth. I was in heaven.

But a strange feeling got me when I came back to my human fellows. They went away happy, but also kind of sad. A few hours later I understood the reason why. I was with these humans for 2.5 weeks. Accompanied them as rain, as sweat, as boiling water, as a part of the ocean, as ice, as smelly steam.

And though I wanted it or not everything seems to end sometime. So in the last moment of companionship I had with my two humans, I ran down the face of one of them saying goodbye to that mystical island in the north of the Atlantic Ocean, sparkling wistful from the last beams of the setting sun which stained the colours of the ocean, and falling to the seat of my new camper home as a tear with no regrets at all.