Through Shades of Blue

I spent eight months in Iceland working at a hotel six hours from Reykjavik. We had no neighbors except sheep, and the nearest grocery store was over an hour away. Life was quiet, but the landscape made up for it — mountains at our backs, the sea at the horizon, and waterfalls in every direction.

One of the perks of the job was free tours. That’s how I ended up inside an ice cave for the first time. We geared up, helmets on, and stepped into a tunnel of frozen blue. The caves change shape every year, which makes it feel even more surreal — you’re walking through something that won’t exist the same way again.

At one point, we reached an opening where a streak of daylight cut through the darkness. The ice around us glowed, shifting from deep blue to almost silver. Looking up at the sky framed by all that ice, I realized how small I really was compared to the scale of this place. That’s the moment I fell in love with Iceland.