Sadness is gripping my heart this morning. But it is an ordinary sadness that all readers will be familiar. For today, the second chunk of my family departs this intriguing land of water, fire, and ice, heading back across the Atlantic to our homes in the Pacific northwest, another land of ice, water, and fire. Denise and I will have 24 more hours here and then we too will depart, trip over.

I love to travel, to explore, and to learn. I have an insatiable curiosity about this wonderful cosmos in which we live. There is so much of the world I don’t know, so many thoughts that have not been exhausted. There are so many wonderful people with whom I’ve never sat down with over a cup of coffee. My favorite people in the world, though, reside within my family. I don’t know how I was so blessed to have them.

My Minnesota family I will not see again until Lord knows when. Separation is the great suck.

Coming to Iceland is a trip that filtered into my imagination last September when I first started to feel better from my new chemo program. Just a couple of months before that, such a trip would have been unimaginable. Will this be my last family trip? It is doubtful I will ever leave American soil again. But I never know what tomorrow brings . . . nor does any of us.

Maybe it is this melancholy morning, made so by the contrast of such a glorious week, that I find yet another reflection point. The only negative, in a sea of positive, has been the many hikes on my wounded leg. It still hurts like a knife misplaced inside my knee.

One of my favorite things to do, besides hiking, is to sit in a coffee shop and write and I’m waiting for the Reykjavik coffee shops to open. This city never gets dark this time of year and never really sleeps, but it is only 5 AM.

I haven’t done that in a long while, sit in a coffee shop and write. I’m hoping that the exercise that has always lifted my spirits will once again work its magic.

I wrote The Stones of Yemen in a sauna while on strict home isolation due to COVID. But I wrote Butterflies in the Belfry at the Alice Springs outdoor coffee shop in Malta. I visited it when it opened each morning for weeks. It was a wonderful time before I was sick. Feet away the Mediterranean, where fishermen were hard at work on their gondolas (not like the more familiar ones in Venice). I wrote Ristretto Rain in the Anacortes Starbucks. But a bone marrow transplant followed by an aggressive chemo program has left my tastebuds permanently altered, leaving a burnt taste for everything and can no longer tolerate Starbucks coffee brand, or afford it that I’m not employed.

Whether I have only have months to live or twenty years if I am really lucky, I know I’m living in the evening of my life. A time of reflection. Many reading this must realize the same. Yes, we all hope to die in our sleep at a ripe old age, but reality bites.

This is my reflection point. How do I spend these final years . . . or months? I want to be a better person, but I have always wanted that for myself and often have come up short. But I want to do better this time. I do want to do a better job in communicating. I’ve often failed in that too, and I call myself a writer? Somehow I must learn to speak truth without alienating people, friends I consider precious.

I’ve considered giving up on writing my blogs, but that is hard to do after twenty years. I feel I do have a perspective that some people need to hear, and I speak it with great candor. But I must find a non-threatening way to voice these ideas. I know that I’ve alienated some, but my vivid imagination assumes that I’ve alienated many more. Politics and religion are held dear by many people and on a very emotional level. Since the 1990s, I’ve never wanted to persuade someone with deeply held beliefs that they are wrong, that they must recant from those ideas and convert to my perspective to be a better person. Most of my friends don’t think like me and that’s okay.

As I’ve stated before I have two major points with my writing, to speak about truth, meaning that which is consistent with reality, and to do it with candor. If there is a God, he exists within reality. The better we know reality (practical truth) the better we can know God.

I want to be a better person. I’m selfish. I don’t like helping other people, preferring working on my own stuff, even more so now that my days are numbered. I am amazed at those who sacrifice their time without hesitation, so that others can flourish.

But I do want to move forward in my blog writing, seeing to find as much positive things to write about as I can. No, I’ve never been a fatalist. I do not think the sky is falling. Postmodernism will end and turn into the next great philosophical movement. It too will eventually go to seed in an unhealthy place. If no one listens to me, the world will not be lost. It is full of good people. I do believe in God, but not a god who micromanages the world, but does have the cosmos he invented best interest at heart. Hope prevails within this notion.

It is a good morning in Reykjavik. The city is awaking. The sun is breaking through the north Atlantic clouds. The coffee shops still closed on this Saturday morning. The Americans are rolling their suitcases up and down the streets cobbled with cut basalt, the only rock in this country, heading back to the airport or to their cruise ships. The Icelanders are looking at them through their windows, thanking them for their commerce, not so much for their invasion. My kids will soon follow suit. Tomorrow we will turn in my Land Rover 110 Defender, what I consider the prefect vehicle, returning to our beloved Fidalgo Island and my old Defender 90 . . . and I hear there is a cottage that will not build itself. First, I must get my labs and a day of chemo infusion, through which I’m sure my jet-lagged brain will sleep. But the trip has been spectacular and it is a well-earned sadness that comes at the end of a wonderful time. I don’t deserve such a family or such an unforgetable trip.

Mike