My life has felt like a volcano about to burst these past few weeks, which is why I’ve abstained from blogging or posting pictures.  I return now after the ash has settled – the eruption at the Holuhraun lava field has ended, and so have at least some of my stressors.

Before I got into the swing of Iceland Airwaves, I decided to book a sightseeing flight from Reykjavik that would fly over the south coast all the way to Vatnajökull National Park, which is Europe’s largest glacier and also the home of the Holuhraun lava fields, where the eruption of 2014 was occurring.

By the time I visited in November, the lava wasn’t shooting up as high into the sky as some pictures had led me to believe it would, but the hardened lava stretched to an area of 70 square kilometres, making it Iceland’s largest lava flow since 1783.  Having never seen an active volcano in my life, I jumped at the chance to fly above it in a tiny plane with just five other people.   As the plane shook and whirred, my hand holding my camera shook as I tried to capture the experience as best as I could.  I swear my feet could feel a faint bit of heat beneath me, as the earth spurted out its deepest contents, its molten secrets, onto an endless field of ice.

See a video of the sightseeing flight here.