“I’m not going with you to Iceland.” It had been a week since we last talked and this was all he had to say to me.

I knew in my gut this was going to happen. No one goes on a date to a foreign country right? Why did I even think this would be a good idea… He would bail and I would be suddenly thrust into solo travel.

And so it was. 48 hours before we were supposed to meet in Reykjavik he texted me to tell me he wasn’t coming. No explanation. No apology. I’m not going with you to Iceland. That was it.

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This wasn’t my first solo trip but I would be lying if I told you I wasn’t nervous. My previous solo travels involved wandering around the Old City of Jerusalem at three in the morning, passing through Hezbollah checkpoints and bombed out buildings in southern Beirut, and getting propositioned by way too many men in Istanbul. Those trips were reckless and I really didn’t know any better. Iceland had to be much tamer than CouchSurfing around Lebanon. Right? I was still nervous at the idea of doing this whole Iceland thing by myself.

I hadn’t really planned anything either. I didn’t know what I wanted to see or which direction around the Ring Road I wanted to go. I didn’t set a budget and I had no idea how expensive things might be. All I knew was that I had a plane ticket and a camper van reservation. I figured the rest of the details would just figure themselves out.

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I arrived in the darkness of the Arctic morning. I wasn’t scheduled to pick up my camper van until 9am so I figured I would loiter at a coffee shop until then. Unfortunately, most coffee shops I found on Google Maps didn’t open until 9am. I did what any rational human might do in a foreign country sans daylight: ride the shuttle bus from the airport to the bus terminal and hang out for a bit.

I made it to the bus terminal but I passed the camper van rental office along the way. You know that gut feeling you get when you know you should’ve done something but didn’t? That was how I felt as we pulled away from the intersection where the rental office was located—I should’ve gotten off then and there but I didn’t. Fortunately, Icelanders (is that what they call themselves?) are nicer than most Americans. I went to the main counter in the bus terminal, explained that I needed to go back from whence I came, and literally the shuttle bus company took me back. No charge. All smiles. Thank you Gray Line.

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I picked up the camper van, stopped by the grocery store, and drove to Vatnajökull National Park. Along the way I decided to make a couple stops to break up the drive. After taking a lunch break at a waterfall I stumbled upon a parking lot full of cars and a desolate landscape as far as the eye could see. Naturally I stopped. It seemed like everyone else on this segment of the Ring Road had stopped too. Why not join them? It was about 2pm, I had plenty of daylight left to get to the campground at the national park, right? Ha!

What had I stumbled upon you ask? An hour-long walk to the coast and a ruined plane fuselage on the shore. True story. I expected there would be something a little more epic at the end of the footpath, but alas the fuselage was the main event.

The walk out to the shoreline felt like some sort of exercise where the journey, rather than the destination, is the key. Ocean in front of you, glacial mountains in the rear. I feel like it’s the perfect metaphor for life. Sometimes we’re faced with mountains that appear difficult to climb. Other times we’re faced with the vast expanse of an ocean with nothing on the horizon. You can walk in one direction or the other but eventually you’ll have to make a decision: do I swim or do I climb?

During the walk out and back I found myself thinking a lot on the things that overwhelm me. The fear that I won’t live up to my potential. The doubt that the projects I’m working on will succeed. What I discovered during this pensive little walk is that I don’t need to focus on summiting a mountain or swimming out into the ocean: I need to learn to endure. After all that is what mountain climbing and swimming is all about—endurance. So here is a pithy life lesson from a footpath to nowhere in Iceland: life will overwhelm you; build endurance.

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My detour to the coastline was meaningful, but by the time I returned back to my van I only had an hour of sunlight left and at least two hours left of driving. Oops. What concerned me the most about driving in the dark was not getting lost so much as the likelihood that ice would creep onto the road after the sun set. With the sun up, temperatures hovered in the 30s but once the sun went down I knew temperatures would plummet. With Iceland’s bipolar weather patterns, who knew if it was snowing where I was heading. I suppose there was only one way to find out…

The good news is that I made it to Vatnajökull. The bad news is I made it to Vatnajökull a minute after the visitors’ center closed and I had no idea how to get to the camping area. If it ever was possible to get lost in a one square mile parking lot/camping area, the next 45 minutes was exactly that. During the daylight the following morning I was embarrassed that I had gotten lost the night before. But in the dark, nothing is ever as it should be.

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Vatnajökull is a massive national park and I am disappointed I only saw a small sliver of it. Vatnajökull literally means “water glacier” and it is the largest ice caps in Iceland. I stayed at Skaftafell, one of the glacial outlets of Vatnajökull.

I’m not going to bore you trying to describe the beauty that is a glacier. So I will just leave a picture of it right here. Enjoy.

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Vatnajökull was the furthest east I planned to go. After several hours of hiking and glacier gawking I packed up my van and hit the road. Next stop: Skógafoss.

The best part of unplanned travel is the satisfaction of stumbling upon things you had wanted to see but didn’t quite know how to get there. I decided on Skógafoss because they had a (free) camping area that was open during the winter months. What I didn’t realize was that it was the trailhead for Fimmvörðuháls. Now, for those of you who don’t remember, Iceland experienced a major volcanic eruption in 2010 that left thousands of flights grounded. That volcano was Eyjafjallajökull and the eruption began at Fimmvörðuháls.

There are no words to describe this particular hike. To hike in a glacial valley that is home to an active volcano…HOW COOL IS THAT?! Unfortunately, due to ice on the footpath and poor planning (the hike to the actual eruption site is 14 miles) I wasn’t able to hike out to the crater at Fimmvörðuháls. But I guess this means I need to go back to Iceland soon, doesn’t it?

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My last night in Iceland was spent camping in the small town of Selfoss. Unlike the other two places I camped, there is literally nothing remarkable about Selfoss. It’s a small town of less than 10,000 inhabitants. (A city compared to the farming villages that dot the Ring Road, however). So what does a solo traveler do in a small town during the camping off-season? She goes for a swim.

Iceland is this weird mixture of volcano and ice but somewhere along the way Icelanders developed a love for swimming in geothermal pools. All Icelandic children learn to swim and almost every town has an outdoor heated pool.

What was unique about this experience was that I got to peak into the daily lives of Icelanders. The pool was located in a fitness club. When I got there a couple women darted past me to get upstairs to a spin class. When I made it outside to the pool a swim practice was going on. Side note: there is something ironic about watching a swim coach clad in parka, gloves, and balaclava giving instructions to a gaggle of teenagers in bathing suits.

I watched young mothers playing with their kids in the kiddie pool; a daughter presumably telling her father about her day in one of the hot tubs; and neighbors gossiping with one another. And then there was me. The American who understood not a word of what anyone was saying. And yet, how relaxing that was. To just exist in that moment.

I struggle with living in the moment. My yoga instructors always tell me to live in the moment but downward dog never quite does it for me. My arms ache and my mind wanders as I race through the myriad tasks I have to accomplish once I’m released from the self-induced torture that is yoga. But there in Selfoss, for a period of time I laid in the kiddie pool, watching the steam rise from the surface of the water while staring at the sky as day gave way to dusk. And there I found myself living in the moment. It was so peaceful. What I would do to go back to that simple swimming pool.

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I’m really glad he didn’t come with me. For one, thing the camper van was better suited for one person. It would have been a tight squeeze with two.

Logistics aside, this trip gave me the opportunity to quite literally free myself from the daily grind. To break out of my comfort zone, disconnect from the District for a few days, and just be. To be present, existing in a physical space and time that is wholly separate from reality. No emails. No Instagram (ok maybe just a couple posts). No bosses or bureaucracy. No traffic. No Trump. No news. Nothing.

Iceland gave me that. Iceland let my body wake up when it wanted to every morning. Hiking every day amongst glaciers, waterfalls, and snow fallen ridges gave my mind the freedom to think. For a couple days, Iceland broke me free of my loop (any Westworld fans?). For my body, mind, and soul to be free for just a couple of days—that was everything to me.

Before leaving I had been struggling with the purpose of my own humble existence. I moved to the District assuming I would walk into my dream job. Of course that didn’t happen. I’ve spend the last three years struggling to support myself while trying to give myself permission to let go of one dream in order to pursue another. In the process I’ve let myself get caught up in the grind of DC life, begging a very important question: if life is nothing more than sleeping, commuting, and working, what is the point of living at all?

After spending a few days in pure solitude I found the answer to that question: adventuring to Iceland…then onto Prague, Portugal, and Patagonia. To be so unsatisfied with a status quo life that I find myself choosing a life of perpetual adventure over and over again. That’s the point of living.