Hey you guys wanna go for a walk?

That's how it all started... you guys wanna hike, walk, strut, stretch your legs? Let me backtrack a little bit.

I had planned to head back to Iceland to complete the Shape of Water series that I had been working on, and there was a diptych I had in the back of my mind. While I sat in Hawksworth at the end of 2022 with pal Paul Larocque from Arts Umbrella, drinking a dark and stormy, I casually mentioned this to him. A mutual friend who was joining us exclaimed "Paul you should go! You've always wanted to go!" Paul thought it was a good idea and we tentatively agreed that a flight across the Atlantic to Iceland would be a great adventure. Fast forward a few months, I messaged him and said that I was booking a flight, which just so happened to be on his birthday. He immediately messaged back with "I'M IN!". I also remembered that another bud of mine, fantastic painter Jay Senetchko (click his name to see his work… crazy good), had always wanted to go as well. I sent him a long message about timelines and itineraries and when the question was posed to him, "Fuck yeah" was the response. By the time July rolled around we were all sitting in the fancy part of the airplane sipping on Icelandic gin and tonics, finalizing the details of our trip.

By the second week of July, we had managed to get to Iceland, drink beer at the Blue Lagoon (as you do when you're three middle aged men), walk the black sand beaches, see a volcano erupt, boat up to a calving glacier, drive almost 1000 km's and drink a LOT of gin and whiskey in our down time.

But the real reason we were there was for a flight over the braided rivers just to the south of Skaftafell on the south coast. We woke up in the morning and the weather was shit; overcast, cold and rainy which is not ideal for flying and photos. We decided to go for a simple 8 km hike just to shake the booze off and get some exercise before we took a chance at flying, hoping the weather would break.

We got onto the plane, full of piss and vinegar, and we took off onto one of the bumpiest, nauseating and barf inducing flights I have ever been on. Our pilot, Thor (actually), was very accommodating to my every command and we were shaking and baking like Will Ferrell and John C Reilly in Talladega Nights, though this didn’t help our guts. After about and hour and a half we could take no more and we threw in the towel, begging for some steady ground. We drove gingerly back to the campground and without a word, tucked into our respective hovels and tried to sleep off the unsteadiness. 

By mid-afternoon we were feeling better and now had to decide what to do. That's when it was said... 4:08 PM... "Hey, you guys wanna go on a hike?" I'm not sure whose idea it was but it seemed like a good one, so I think we could all take credit for it. I checked the map and found a nice little 10-12 km hike with some good elevation changes, and with that it was decided... we would gear up and go for a short strut then resume eating, drinking and talking shit.

Up the mountain we climbed, passing the casual walkers going to the obvious waterfalls and Insta-worthy spots. It didn't take long for us to be socked in by the fog, praying we would see the yellow-tipped stakes that would ensure our safe return to the RV and our gin.

After an hour and a half we got to what we thought was the top (because it was too foggy to see 30 feet in front of us). Looking at the time, we would get back to the RV just after 7PM, and we would have done a nice little 3 hour hike to work up an appetite.

As I said, we could all take credit for the good idea that was going for a hike but I can wholeheartedly blame one person and one person alone for what happened next. Senetchko said, I think it goes up a little higher that way, and he pointed to the north and west, and sure as shit he was right. I was having a steady conversation with my torn meniscus during the last 45 minutes and I thought, I should probably put some ice on this... or at the very least have some whiskey. But without a second thought Jay was off, followed shortly after by Paul. Jay is 6'5" tall and his gazelle like gait negotiated the rocks and elevation with ease. I am 5'10" and built like a shoebox, and my Marvin the Martian legs were not as effective. To make it even more humiliating, Jay was collecting rocks as he climbed. You read that right... fuckin rocks. Not pebbles. Baseball sized rocks. The hike wasn't bad enough for him, so he decided to fill his backpack with about 50 pounds of rocks. No granola bars, but all kinds of rocks.

Up we went and right when it seemed it was going to flatten out, we went up some more. It was at that time I remembered the year before going for a hike here and seeing an older Italian man in jeans and boat shoes, drenched in sweat and in a state of confusion, begging to know if he was close to the campground. I pointed him down a path and thought, "amateur... being that unprepared is just dumb". I wondered how he could be so tired on such a short hike. As we continued climbing I checked my GPS to see where we were and was astounded to find out that we were now about 15 km away from our camp and at least three hours away. Oh and it was also at that time that we realized that none of us had brought water or food. A little demoralized we trekked on, the distance between each other growing until we could no longer hear my muttering, or the rocks in Jay's backpack banging into each other. But right when I was at my darkest, no longer sweaty because I was completely dehydrated, the clouds parted and we found ourselves in a Lord of the Rings-like valley with a glacial stream running through it. Jay opened his pack, moved a bunch of rocks out of the way and found an empty water bottle which we filled at least seven times and tried our best to rehydrate.

With water in our bellies and new view, free of the fog we could finally enjoy what we came to see. The valley echoed with the sound of the glacier below creaking and slowly grinding its way to the coast. The sun peeked through clouds and highlighted the mountain range that surrounded us. We walked on moss that felt like pillows under our feet, and sat in silence at 4500 feet and watched an avalanche cascade down the hillside, across the valley. We made our way back down the mountain and we laughed about how unprepared we were, the incredible views, and how heavy Jay's backpack was. 

At 10 PM we limped back into camp, fired up the stove and made our dinner. All tolled we hiked for 6 hours, 29 km's, and climbed almost 6000 vertical feet. Oh and Jay got lots of good rocks too.

When I reflect on it though, I couldn't help but think how that day was so representative of my life. Things you look forward to may get sabotaged by things outside of your control. The flight was shitty because the weather sucked, but I took two of my favourite aerial photos to date. Oh and those two pics raised $14000 for charity at the Arts Umbrella Splash 2024 auction, so double bonus. You may find yourself tired, hungry, and thirsty, and you may be weighed down by a bag of rocks, but you never know when smooth sailing and a urine free stream of water will run right in front of you, giving you exactly what you need. When you surround yourself with good people, and you take the time to appreciate the beauty of it all... it's a great fucking ride.