Farmhouses along Skeidflatarvegur, South Shore Iceland

Like most people, through the intimate moments of crafting our relationship, we’ve discussed our list of most desirable travel destinations. The bucket list that would await retirement, when free of work schedules, we would have the time to travel. Last year a colleague from school who was an avid hiker and athlete, my age, dropped dead suddenly of a heart attack in his kitchen. Then a co-worker of Greg’s dropped dead at work, just after his office partner had a brain aneurysm that dramatically affected his balance and ability to travel, the year before his retirement. Over the Thanksgiving holiday we decided to initiate the bucket list, now. We booked tickets to Iceland and then sat down one weekend in January, with research books, itinerary notes from a friend’s trip, and charted our way along the Ring Road, noting what we would like to do each day, and booking farm stays and guesthouses on Booking.com. We scheduled 10 days and an average of 150-200 kilometers per day to circumvent the island nation and see as many geological and natural wonders as possible. Second semester concluded with a date at SFO to fly direct to Reykjavik. What lay ahead was the adventure of a lifetime, beginning with the jagged glaciated mountains of the southern coast, draped in brilliant green turf rolling to the sea, always crowned by a convention of clouds, roiling in the upper atmosphere of fierce arctic winds. Our now opens before us like a magical oasis in time; immersed in adventure ten days seems like months. This is the way that our now is meant to be – infinite – because it actually is!