bright lights.... big city?

not so here, but we have had spooooky effects from the moonlight these past few days. The moon is at the peak of the cycle, and last night the glow off the sea was very lustre-of-midday-to-objects-below. I could see Akrafjall glowing across the bay with a dusting of fresh snow, and even the horizon line was visible in the distance, dotted with boat lights. I also was thinking of when I first came to Iceland last year and saw bright glowing lights on the horizon, I marvelled at the hugeness of Reykjavík since it seemed able to throw light that far into the atmosphere. Then I realized it was the northern lights.

The descending darkness lately has forced me to appreciate light in all the wan variations we get here, from the leaping green and purple of the northern lights to the pale wash of noontime sunshine. When the workday starts hours before the light has touched the sky, sunrise is more exciting than a coffee break. The windows on my side of the office offer a great view of the northern sky, and on the other side I can watch the light illuminate the mountains. This morning the sky was peach and turquoise, and on the other side the glow from the sunrise turned the distant mountains into white pastel sketches on a teal background. I remember loving sunrise in my old place in Boston when I awoke, but instead of these huge horizontal expanses of color it was little peeks of it above the buildings and between the trees. This uninterrupted wash of intricate color is sometimes too much for me to handle.

Ship Sighting: I've been keeping an eye on a ship called Atlas that's been getting painted over the past week. It's not in Skipaskrá (no Icelandic ID number- where is it from?), but I saw it last month in the outer reaches of gamlahöfn. I remember it because the hull was shaggy with peeeling paint so I'm glad to see it is getting a makeover. In other ship news, J and I went to the Eimskip offices to get the paperwork for my load o' stuff. While we were down there I saw lots of crate moving and Reykjafoss blazing with lights in the midst of unloading. Soon I will have my loom, and a way to process all this sky-beauty in scarf form!