I arrived in Iceland in August 1974, ready to teach for ten months. It was a great year and my first time to have second graders. I was coming from West Germany and was in my sixth year working as a civilian teacher in a DODDS school. These American schools are provided for the children of military personnel that are assigned to an overseas post.
It is difficult for some people to understand that I was in a regular American school that was just not on American soil. We had the same grade levels, art teachers, music teachers, gym teachers and very well provided libraries. One big difference was that we also had a Host Nation teacher. This person was a native to the country where we were living and provided weekly lessons to all the classes about the language and culture of the country where we were living as guests.
Iceland was so different from any other place that I had lived. Instead of visiting castles and art museums...man made things ... Iceland's tourist spots were mostly creations of Mother Nature. Various volcanos had left beautiful lava fields. The older the fields meant the rocks had a thicker growths of moss that were wonderful fun to jump on. It was like being on a green spongy trampoline. We would bounce from boulder to boulder. It frightens me now to think how easily one of us could have slipped into one of the crevasses
Two weeks before I was to leave the island, about 10 of us took a 12 day 'safari' to circumvent and further explore the island. We rented a 12 passenger four-wheel-drive van. The handsome driver was a policeman in Reykjavik, the capitol city of Iceland. For two years he had been part of the United Nations police force. Now he took his two week vacation time each year to drive tourists around Iceland.
Behind the van we pulled a trailer that carried the tents, sleeping gear and 12 days worth of food for all of us. Several 5-gallons of gas were strapped to the roof of the van.
In the 12 days we had 7 flat tires and broke strut-rods on the van. It was constant excitment and fun while driving past beautiful vistas and dozens of waterfalls.
Every evening we would stop, set up camp and fix a dinner. Then the driver would un-hitch the trailer and take off in the van. Next morning he would come back with a clean van, a repaired tire and a smile on his face. He was proud of starting off each day with a clean van and it seemed that he had a girlfriend to visit near every place that we stopped overnight!
The most exciting night in my memory was the one when we couldn't find a satisfactory place to camp. Beside a good stream the ground just wasn't flat enough for us. Someplaces were ones that the driver was worried about the chance of rising water during the night, etc. etc. We just kept driving and looking for a good place. Since this was in Iceland and it was mid June, the sun was bright as ever ... even past 8:00 and 9:00. And we kept driving and looking for a place to camp.
I'm sure that it was after 11:00 p.m. when we finally stopped. It was a nice flat and smooth place to set up the tents. The ground was kind of sandy, so it was easy to set up the tents. The stakes easily went into the ground with just a push from my shoe. And it was just beginning to be twilight. Later when I was finally sleeping, I started thinking about what would happen if the wind started blowing. My tent would have just taken off flying because it certainly wasn't secure.
The next morning we loaded up the trailer, got settled in the van and started off. After about 10 or 15 feet the van pitched a little to the left and kind of sunk ... or something. There was no traction. The driver got out to look, shook his head, and was speechless. So we all got out.
It seems we had spent the night sleeping on a sandy crust of land. Under that crust was a semi-liquid mud. The weight on the left side of the van caused us to break through the crust ... and this chocolate pudding-type stuff was oozing out to the surface. My goodness. It was something to look at.
Before we left on the start of this trip the company had made arrangements with the military people to rescue us in case of trouble. Our driver said that they would send out a helicopter if necessary. I was seriously thinking that this was going to be time for the helicopter.
(story to be completed later and I'm going to try to get pictures of this on my profile page) aj
