ENDLESS SUMMER
“Travel is not transcendence. It’s immanence. It’s trying to be here.”
–Eileen Myles The Importance of Being Iceland
In the summer of last year, my wife, Krysta Jabczenski, and I were married. We live in Tucson, Arizona, which is calm, cool, and somewhat perfect for nine months out of the year … right before summer hits, and temperatures persist in 3 digits for 120 straight days. Faced with the option of being a newly married couple unable to leave the house, or a newlyweds able to roam the world, the decision seemed relatively clear.
eldhús
“I’m always content,”
Miss Gamelon declares to Miss Goering
in Jane Bowles’ Two Serious Ladies,
“because I know what to take and what to leave,
but you are always at the mercy.”
We too felt Miss Gamelon’s disapproving gaze upon us
our first night in Reykjavík
at that bar, Boston
where we tried too hard
to enjoy conversations
that stopped and started like bumper cars
with strange strangers.
Kantry King

Skagaströnd, Iceland–Johnny Cash’s low rumble fills the cozy, lacquered log cabin interior. The charred aroma of meat on the grill filters through the air and carved wooden Native American figureheads flanked by cowboy hats bedeck the walls. An elderly white haired man dressed all in black shuffles out of the kitchen, slowly up the staircase.