Snow Job

A fictional travelogue; four minutes to read.

The sun in the far distance is cresting over a volcanic formation. I’m in a white terrycloth robe, standing at my hotel window. Low In the sky, cotton clouds appear glued in place. The snowscape is mesmerizing.

The snow has an entrancing pinkish tint, soft and cuddly like a fluffy bath towel. Later in the afternoon, every surface will be painted with a pastel blueish-white hue.

Thanks to barren lava rock, fierce winds and Viking shipbuilders, Iceland is denuded of trees. For a Californian like me, surrounded by national parks with protected redwood forests, the starkness is peculiar, unnatural, unlovely and lonely.

My lodge sits in a small settlement with one solitary farm, one church and a single gas pump. Skútustaðahreppur is a one-hour drive from Akureyri which itself is a one-hour flight from Reykjavik.

Iceland in winter is a walk-in freezer. My breath hangs in the air. Smells linger as though waiting for me to pass by. Uncontrollably, my teeth chatter and my nose drips.

I am here in the quiet of a January winter—the coldest month of the year. I experience it in my bones, my lungs, in the tips of my fingers. The icescape pokes at my eyes with a blinding glare.

With snow and ice comes dogsledding. Dogsledding is the most fun you can have while freezing your ass off.

I am bundled into the cargo bed of a dogsled. Ahead of me, two rows of dogs are in harness, barking to get started. The lead dog steers the team and sets the pace. To pull my sled around tight curves, the wheel dogs, the ones closest to me, have bulldozing brute strength.

Siberian Huskies and Alaskan Malamutes dress well—stylishly, I think—for a romp on the ice. Their fur coats are double layered, so they are upbeat and sporting in temperatures as cold as 20 degrees below, Fahrenheit. The dogs wear booties to protect their feet. I wonder if they shop at REI.

Behind me, a musher standing upright shouts, “Hike!” and the dogs jerk forward. The command “gee” turns the team to the right; “haw” turns us to the left. During the run, “on by” is repeated over and over; it means ‘keep going, don’t get distracted.’ When stopped, a snowhook—a parking brake—is planted in the snow.

As the dogs—yammering and cheering themselves on—drag me across rolling fields of snow, my chapped lips are creased in a grin. Never have I been so happy looking at dogs’ asses.

At the end of the run, the musher barks “Whoa!” and the dogs come to a panting halt at their kennels. Inside, the unharnessed dogs and I frolic, nuzzle, scratch, pet and paw each other. Apparently, they think my ass is worth a look, too.

Some things in life need experiencing for yourself. Dogsledding is like that. Travel is like that. Love is like that.

Snowshoeing back to my lodge, a chilling sensation—the numbing irony of my traveler’s life—covers me like a blanket of snow. I have to weather the refrigerated reality of a place before my heart can warm to it.

Click here for more short stories set in Iceland.