This image was taken at Diamond Beach in Jokulsarlon, Iceland during the last major photography trip I took before the Pandemic.

 

For my first trip to this land of fire and ice, I chose September 2019 because I had been told that the weather would be more temperate then.

 

The weather was anything but temperate.  It rained, then it sleeted, then it rained some more.  The winds were breath taking and could knock you over.  Still, we soldiered on.  We saw some of the most spectacular black sand beaches on the Southern coast. Here the ocean boiled turbulently and visitors were warned to stay away from the surf as someone had been dragged away several days earlier.  We saw the magnificent glacier at Jokulsarlon and watched as the calved ice moved regally through its lagoon and out to sea.

 

Early one morning, we drove to Diamond beach.  As dawn broke, glittering shards of ice were revealed in the surf and on the black sand beach.  It was other-worldly.

 

As were the immense water falls, moss covered lava fields, sea stacks arising from the turbulent ocean and rugged mountains shrouded in mist that I experienced in Iceland.

 

I hope to return someday.  When I look back on that experience, it is as if it were a dream.