Tonight is the Midsummer celebration here on Heimaey. Islanders celebrate the longest day of the year by hiking all of the peaks on the island. "We're not going to do that," proclaimed my new friend, Margo, an American from Milwaukee who moved here in 1973 and marriend an islander, "We're going to climb Klif with a bottle of wine and drink it at the top while watching the sun set, want to come?" "Of course," I said.
I met, Margo, Jean (Margo's friend from high school visiting from Milwaukee) and Sonja (a volcanologist from Germany who did her thesis on a previously unstudied volcano here on the island). We set out about 10:30pm from Margo's house in the center of the village to climb Stóraklif or Klif, as it is called for short, so that we could watch the sunset (and rise about 20 minutes later) from the top. Klif is the peak which protrudes upwards from the harbor, which is where we began.
About half way up it became obvious, to myself and Sonja anyway, that there was no way we were drinking a bottle of wine at the top; we wanted to get back down alive. Klif is one of the steepest of the peaks and we were literally pulling ourselves up with ropes (which are permanently affixed - tied to rocks above - along the trail). About the point I was pulling myself straight up by a rope, like I have not done since junior high shcool, I was silently cursing Margo for getting me into this. But Margo kept assuring us it would be worth the climb, and I am here to report that it surely was.
No comments:
Post a Comment