words by Alex-J Moskovitz
Israeli photographer Yoad Shejtman is back home from Iceland, and he’s sent us a breathtaking album from his 2-week trip to the land of pristine glaciers, active volcanoes and the beautiful Northern Lights.
Yoad and two of his close friends rented an SUV and geared up for their long drive along the renowned 1,332km (833 mile)-long “Ring Road”, the longest road in Iceland that connects all the major towns along its periphery.
These pictures tell a story of creation, isolation, and some of the oldest forces of nature on the planet.
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During the day, the friends bathed in the tonic thermal springs, and at night they witnessed the primordial geysers reaching up from the belly of the land and into the Aurora-lit sky.
They walked the beaches, black with volcanic sand and rock; a reminder of the fickle and violent temperament of the land.
They heard the endless rushing of ancient waterfalls and felt their spray on their faces. They saw jagged cliffs cloaked in their mist. The puffins soared in the blue skies and the hardy sheep grazed in the lush, grassy slopes.
At a farm one afternoon, a horse spotted the three travelers and trotted up to them.
“What joins the past and the future, and always arrives too late?”, the horse said, and wandered off to lie down on a rather soft-looking patch of grass.
The drive to the next guest house was quiet. The vastness of the expanse drew in their breaths and their thoughts like a vacuum.
Later that night the three friends trekked to the edge of the peninsula and looked out into the black sea, hoping to find a clue. As they listened to the choppy waters batter the ruins of an island not very far out, a large wave slammed into the eroded rock, shaking them.
One hundred thousand years of change flashed before them in a single, crashing second.
