Jonathan C. Lewis
Author and Artist
Something Fishy
A fictional travelogue; four minutes to read.
After a bone-chilling week of dogsledding, hiking on lava bed, snowshoeing across tundra and other scheduled sightseeing activities in northern Iceland, my body parts are worn out. Now, overheated and sweating in layers of thermal clothing, I am a fish out of water in Reykjavik.
I am tramping across an icy, slick, hilly pavement which is determined to break one of my bones. I am racing the clock to make my dinner reservation. I did the same last night, and today at lunch, and will do the same tomorrow and the day after.
Travel is my dictator. To see, smell and taste the world, the mechanics of traveling—timed tours, concerts, festivals, museum openings, cruises with onboard, by-the-hour attractions and restaurant bookings—rule me. My only other choices are a beach with sand lodged in my butt crack, a campsite with mosquitoes or a gambling casino where my pockets are legally picked.
Just a few minutes ago, I was warm and toasty in my hotel room. In winter, Iceland has a mere five hours of a daylight so my window view, if it can be called that, was a dark void. No one else appeared awake or, if awake, they were doing what they were doing in the dark.
I should have considered the obvious signs of danger. Peaked rooflines heaped high with dirty, week-old snow warned me to stay indoors. Instead, calculating that I had to eat anyway, I shifted my sightseeing from museums to food tourism. From one destination to another. When I am traveling, my critical thinking skills are dulled.
Scanning for spots of particularly slushy ice, I’m headed to a local bistro for an appetizer of Minke whale blubber. Whale meat is subtle, sublime, smooth. Savory dipping sauces make the meal. I expect to blubber when the check arrives, but the price, I’m told, is a whale of a deal. I can’t wait to tell my high school students that joke.
For my main course last night in a cloth-napkin restaurant featuring a nautical décor, I ordered an arctic char. The taste is like a salmon filet, but sweeter. A crisp, clean sea air smell rose off my plate causing my nostrils to quiver.
Breakfast this morning, eaten in the dark pre-dawn of the day, was a black, deliciously dense, sweet rye bread baked underground with thermal heat called Thunder Bread. This local specialty is buttered, then topped with fresh-caught smoked trout. I wanted breakfast to last forever, the day to never begin.
Another Icelandic favorite is fermented shark. With what I hope will be an innocent smile, I plan to ask my waiter if there is an actual job getting the sharks inebriated. If I survive my slip-and-slide walk to the restaurant—my snow boots seem to have their own idea about that, I will have another joke to tell my students.
My GPS says the restaurant is just around the corner, but up an incline. Another slippery eel of a sidewalk to climb. Looking at my watch, my body tenses.
After falling and sliding backwards a third of a block, my bruised body starts the climb again. This time more slowly, more cautiously.
The tyranny of time is not served by rushing.
