It has been a long time.
Here I sit, once again, looking out at the sea and mountains in our little corner of Iceland just below the Arctic Circle. I look upon them with fresh eyes, having been away awhile and returned. They are so familiar and yet ever-changing, unfathomable, with the light play and fickle weather that tends to exist on the edges of things.
This winter, like birds, we migrated southwards. Perhaps not as far as most birds might go: we went to my home country of England, and this was one of many views out of my floating windows, taken on a particularly glorious February day. I can hardly believe how different that February looks to the ones I’d had to adapt to in northern Iceland. There I spent my two winters suspended in a lethargy-limbo, curled up inside the darkness. It was time to stretch our legs and wings and try a different pattern. In England we ended up suspended, literally – on the Lancaster canal, as we serendipitously found our winter home in the form of a canal boat.
This was a fitting abode for someone who loves to travel and to be at home. Living on it brought us closer to nature, away from the cacophany and concrete and proved a heartwarming nest to ride out the storm of difficult times. We woke to the sound of ducks pecking at the algae stuck to the hull, and in the deepest winter when the canal froze over, to the eerie sound of the ice cracking as it thawed, heard from underneath as we lived suspended in the water!
It was a raw kind of life, with all its joys and difficulties. Everything we take for granted in houses (water, gas, wood, diesel) must be put on the boat, and waste taken off. The creation of warmth was an eternal concern. There was a lovely wood burner, but supplies dwindle quickly in the icy weather. I soon realised that cycling to the nearby estuary with a big back pack to collect driftwood wasn’t going to cut it. Fortunately I met a kindly farmer who had an excess of wood, and who also wanted to come to Iceland. And so we swapped a stay in our house for a winter’s supply of firewood! There is nothing more heartwarming than an evening by a crackling wood burner, and we were toasty compared to our house dwelling friends. People thought we were hardcore living on a boat in winter, but in truth we were not. The only hard part was deciding who gets up first to light the wood burner when there was frost on the inside of the skylight! But then, you can have your morning brew suspended on an aqueduct that flows over a river. An exhilarating experience to float on something suspended in mid air, over water!
Space and electricity was also a challenge for two creative people trying to do what they love. Orri managed a few sculptures out behind the engine room, which are going to be exhibited by our friends in Lancaster. I was editing a film I had shot just before leaving Iceland, but the leisure batteries were not powerful enough for me to take the time I needed. I didn’t want to disturb the ducks with a generator hum, so I cycled often to where I could find a plug socket or two. A different way of working, but sadly not one that helps the electricity dependent creative flow. I wished at times that I was a painter, so I could immerse myself fully in the boat life, rather than being dependent on the one thing it couldn’t offer me!
Cold weather also means that the outdoors are less likely to be the extension of your living space that they can be in warmer months, so life must downscale, and chattels be kept tidy – easier said than done!
More recently when the sun came out, unhesitatingly (we thought) declaring the True Arrival of Spring, we decided to celebrate our imminent departure northwards again to our Iceland nest, with a floating gathering and a week of cruising before giving up the boat. At the gathering we were blessed with sun which meant our first outdoor cooking adventure of the year. And we enacted a Polish Winter’s End tradition, ‘Drowning Marzanna’, with a twist of our Scottish friend accompanying proceedings on her bagpipes! Marzanna is a winter witch and the end of winter is marked by drowning an effigy in a symbol of death and renewal. We were about a month late to do it, but so was the Spring’s arrival.
On our journey, we went all the way to a village twelve miles down the road, and back again! The difference in the flavour of boat life was incredible. The boat became our reference point, but not where we spent most time. At least not in it. On top of it, beside it, exploring the paths and wooded hollows in its vicinity, cycling into the nearest village to see what local produce was on offer, having friends for dinner and sitting out front as we cruised in the evening sun, a heron our advance party.
Our voyage, though short in miles, was filled to brimming with opening buds, new landscapes, animals recently born into this world or not yet hatched, and a different perspective on our home terrain. A canal is the secret energy channel running through the landscape, known only by boat dwellers, dog walkers and those who know the hedgerows.
A slower paced and a freer life abounds there, and help and shared local knowledge is always close at hand. You witness beauty you might miss living a ‘normal’ life: the midnight mist rising off the water on a full moon, a swan using its wings as a sail – being blown along by an aft wind. I remember thinking that had I lived in former times, witnessing these phenomena would not be such a rare treat. It would have been an integral part of my existence and I would have been far more intuitively knowledgeable about the natural world as a result.
We returned to town in the most magical way, accompanied by a couple of friends. After dinner on the roof at twilight, there came a time when all at once the moorhens climbed into the trees to sleep. Only they know what time this is: the time when the evening whispered “Now!”. We chugged on as the blue turned to inky black and the stars pierced their light pricks in the sky. Orri drove and we lay on the roof, singing to the night, through tunnels and under tree canopies and clear open skies.
Journeys In Between 