Colder & Darker

Two months have passed in Iceland. I am just now cracking open my bottle of organic Vitamin D-3 to supplement the lack of sunlight. We are losing over six minutes of sunlight every day. The sun rises around 9.30 or 10.00 and sets between 17.30 and 18.30. It’s great on the weekends because I get to watch the sunset every morning no matter how late I sleep and I get to readily use the morning and evening suns to help heal my eyes. I am diving deep into a self-healing of my own eyesight, which has been unperfected over years of improper use: staring at the television, spending hours on the computer, squinting my eyes at small cell phone screens, straining to see things without my glasses. I have been reading Ben’s book entitled, Mind and Vision: a handbook for the cure of imperfect eyesight without glasses by Dr. R. S. Agarwal and inspired by Dr. W.H. Bates, which is opening my eyes (literally) to a new world. I am re-learning how to blink properly, how to relax my eyes, how to use the sun to treat them, and how to read correctly.

I am still getting used to waiting for the water to get cold when you turn on a faucet. Back home the water coming out is cold and I had to wait for the gas-powered water heater to warm it up. Here the closest source is boiling water underground so I must place my finger under the steam to test if the cold water being piped in from a nearby farm has reached the faucet yet. Below is a picture of the pipe that pumps water up from underneath Solheimar. After the hot water circulates and is used throughout the village it is sent down this natural spring and steam rises all the way down.

Snow has finally made an appearance. The previously bare brown surrounding mountains are now snowcapped and seem much closer and more present in Solheimar. In fact, it is snowing right now, harder than it ever has yet. This is the first time it has stuck to the ground as well. I finally feel like I’m in the arctic. Every Icelander we’ve spoken to has commented on how warm it has been lately though. They say that at this time of year it is usually 5 or 10 degrees C cooler. The CELL group is getting a sobering look at climate change in action.

I have been pretty busy lately with mid term assignments and assessments. I have also been asked to take on the special task of photographing every Solheimar worker and resident for the updated phonebook. This has been an amazing opportunity to literally meet every single person here and practice my Icelandic conversation with him or her. This week marks the beginning of my anthropological journey here. I will begin conducting interviews with people here for the sake of my ethnographical research. Solheimar is the first eco-village and intentional community I have been in and I hope to gather some useable information here to compare others to that I may visit in the future. To get an idea of how many other eco-villages there are, click on the “Eco-Villages” tab at the top of the page.

Many more links have been added to the "Enlightening Links" page if you have not yet checked that out. I have been exposed to so much new content here that I have a deep desire to share with others, so make your way on over there and take some time to challenge your thinking and wake up to some urgent issues we all face.

Reforestation in Hekla Forest

Q: What do you do if you get lost in an Icelandic forest?

A: Stand up!



From Wednesday, September 29 until Saturday, October 2nd the CELL group traveled to Hekla Forest to contribute to the reforestation of Iceland. The word "forest" has a different meaning here than elsewhere in the world. As the joke at the top insinuates, forests are very sparse and consist of fairly short vegetation. Iceland has almost reached an Easter Island status of deforestation, who cut down every last tree on the tiny Pacific island. Unlike Easter Island though, Iceland still has a chance of survival. Forests have gone from covering nearly 40% of the island at settlement in year 871, mainly concentrated around the perimeter, down to slightly over 1%. The birch woodlands were cut for timber and heating, cleared for agriculture and grazed by domestic sheep. Destruction of forests leads to uncontrollable soil erosion, which furthers the problems of deforestation. Iceland's harsh climates and regular volcanic eruptions do not favor forests much either. Therefore the afforestation goal of Iceland is ambitious and in the early stages, one that we were all anxious to get involved in.


Hekla Forest lies on a small farm near the base of Mount Hekla, Iceland's most active volcano, which was visible from the guest hut we were staying in (pictured above). We arrived during a downpour, which kept us indoors for the first day. Our hosts prepared us a bountiful lunch and we met our reforester guide, Hreinn, who gave us an in depth presentation on the reforestation efforts in Iceland. It was still raining the next morning, but I didn't mind going planting in the rain since I could try out my brand new rain boots, which I paid much more money for than I had initially calculated in the store. 7,950 krona does not equal five dollars... more like fifty! Lesson learned.



So we all hiked from the farm to the forest, got equipped with planting supplies, broke up into groups of two and ventured out into the barren landscape. One partner would have a red and green belt with six compartments to hold up to seventy five baby birch trees (left) and the other partner would have a hollow pogo-stick looking tool (pictured up top) to transplant the seedlings into the ground. Each pair would plant clusters of trees, each about 2 meters from the last, with expectations of wind and birds naturally spreading the seeds to fill in the gaps between the human-planted clusters. As a group, CELL planted 3,455 birch and rowan trees in a total of six hours over a span of two days! On the afternoon of the second day of planting, a graduate student from the University of Iceland in Reykjavik taught us how to collect birch seeds and we spent a few hours strolling through the forest squishing wet seedpods into plastic bags. Both the planting and seed collecting were very meditative activities that brought me great joy and peace. On our bus ride back to Solheimar, we stopped at several gorgeous waterfalls, a hydroelectric power plant, the ruins of an ancient viking longhouse, and one of Iceland's rare "old forests" with tall trees (pictured below).


I will be planting more trees this upcoming Sunday on 10/10/10 for 350.org day here in Solheimar. The interns here have extensively planned this global work day toward climate solutions and the CELL group is assisting in the several activities planned from 14:00 to 18:00. I will be helping Icelandic participants plant trees in the shape of the number 350, which will be photographed from above.