To Iceland and Back

Upon returning from Iceland last Sunday, one of the first things that struck me was the sound of crickets. Crickets are ubiquitous in Minnesota in late September. They chirped all night through our open bedroom windows. And I realized that I didn’t hear a single cricket in Iceland. What I did hear in Iceland was a quiet that doesn’t exist in Minnesota.

We – my partner Mick, our friends Ned and Susan, and myself – arrived in Iceland from Minnesota the morning of September 18. The very first thing I noticed was the wind – bracing, cold, nonstop. I noticed that wind every single day of our trip, learned that pulling a knitted hat over my head was the best way to keep my hair from permanently tangling. I was grateful that I brought lots of moisturizer to slather on my face as a shield against that wind. And I learned that the wind could hit the side of our rental car hard enough to force me to slow down way below the speed limit to maintain control, which mattered a great deal on narrow roads through mountains and along the coastline. Horse manes and sheep fleece flew in the gales, and the very few trees around Iceland were tilted in the general direction of the prevailing winds.

The second thing I noticed was that no one spoke in a loud voice. Everywhere we went, people spoke quietly. There was so much quiet everywhere that loud voices were jolting. Sure, the wind could howl and the waves from the sea could crash, but loud voices were unnecessary. There was something very soothing about all those soft-spoken people.

The third thing I noticed was the lack of trees. There are very few trees in Iceland. For someone from Minnesota, that makes for quite an alien landscape. Somehow, I didn’t miss trees until very near the end of our 10-day drive along the Ring Road (Hringvegur in Icelandic) because I was so taken with the beauty of the volcanic landscape.

And it was indeed beautiful. Everywhere was light, sky, waterfalls, black beaches, sheep, horses, open spaces without developments and billboards and other human scars. Lava flows and glaciers and crater lakes and craggy cliffs. Unpaved roads and scrubby vegetation and millions of stars in the night sky.

I haven’t yet had a chance to go through all my photos and figure out what it is about Iceland that will stay with me going forward. But I can share a few highlights that delighted me as we explored this nation that is the second-largest island in Europe (after Great Britain) and is about the size of Kentucky.

Iceland was on my list of places I wanted to visit for years. Specifically, I wanted to drive the Ring Road and see that volcanic landscape, experience the light that I imagined was unique to Iceland. I wanted to see northern lights. That I got to do all those things is a little miracle.

Images from the Golden Circle, which is near Reykjavik and includes Geysir (the geysers spouting very hot sulfurous water), Gullfoss (the giant waterfall), and Kerid (a volcanic crater lake).

Images from Reynisfjara – Black Beach.

Horseback riding in Vik. Icelandic horses date back over a thousand years and are the only kind of horse allowed in Iceland. They were brought by the original Norse settlers in the 9th and 10th centuries. Photo courtesy of our riding guide.

Aboard a Zodiac boat ride in Glacier Lagoon in Hofn, right on the edge of Vatnajökull National Park. We were given red suits to wear that made us look like sunburnt Michelin men, but they kept us warm and dry. That so many seals were hanging around on icebergs amazed us.

Northern lights in Seydisfjordur.

Hiking around Leirhnjúkur, a rhyolite formation that has turned to clay thanks to the geothermal activity in the area.

There is, of course, much more to Iceland than what I’ve shown here. Once I sort through the 1800 or so photos I took and think a little more about what we experienced, I’ll write more. But, for now, this little taste of Iceland might be just the invitation for someone out there to pack their own bags.

All photos by kcmickelson 2025, except as noted.

Preparing my Packing List

One Minnesota Crone is packing her bags, getting ready to road trip around Iceland the last half of this month. 

And I do love a road trip. I grew up going on them, my dad always the driver and my mom always riding shotgun with an atlas on her lap. We never knew where we were going until we got there, but we managed to fill two-three weeks with roadside attractions, motels in tiny towns, AM radio stations that offered local stories wherever we were.  We got lost somewhere in Kentucky, played softball with a bunch of kids who lived across from a motel in West Virginia, drove through the middle of Manhattan during a garbage strike, took a local shortcut to get back to Boulder that had such a rough road with a sheer drop on one side that my mom almost cried. I learned that in some parts of the country, all sodas are referred to as “Coke”, which confused me when I was asked what kind of Coke I wanted. I learned to always look at a motel room before agreeing to stay in it, and my parents walked away from more than one room. I learned that being in really close quarters for a couple of weeks requires some flexibility when tempers flare.

Road trips are really different now, not just because I’m often the driver and my parents are no longer here. They’re different because there’s not the same sense of surprise thanks to the internet and travel apps. We (my partner Mick and two friends) already know where we’re staying all the way along the Ring Road. But our activities will unfold when we get there, depending on the day, the weather, what’s available. We’ve left room for surprises. We’ve left room to learn a thing or two.

Surprises are the best part of travel. See you later.

Photo of Seljalandsfoss Waterfall, Iceland, courtesy of adriankirby at Pixabay.com.

SUMMER MOOD #4 

I had a whole other piece written for today’s post – mostly – with photos to share. 

But my hometown of Minneapolis has been grief-stricken for the past week. It doesn’t feel like it’s appropriate to focus on state fair food or beautiful flowers or the cool tree frog who came to visit our deck. It doesn’t seem quite right to share memories of happy walks with a growing puppy Finn or a birthday dinner out with my best friend. These are all wonderful things and they keep me sane, but I’m at a loss as to how to balance happy moments with the recent tragedy of children shot to death at the first children’s Mass of their school year, other children injured, families’ peace shattered.

And we cannot claim that this tragedy is ours alone. This kind of event is a daily reality for children in Gaza, Ukraine, Haiti, and other war-torn places. It’s also a reality for kids who live with the crossfire from gangs fighting each other, domestic terrorists trying to make a point, or from adults whose mental health struggles result in the purchase of weapons that they then fire upon others in their own community. This kind of event happens all the time at this point in history and, every single time, people are shattered.

Yet here we are again. We seem unable to let go of our ideas about what it means to bear arms or what it means to balance personal freedom with the good of society. We are unable to move to a different idea about the safety of our children and ourselves that puts a pin in the acquisition of modern weapons by ordinary citizens.  Here in the U.S., we still adhere to ideas about bearing arms that were written down in the 1700s, when the arms people had access to were completely different. 

And it’s killing our children. It’s killing us. 

Do not offer thoughts and prayers. Make the changes that matter. Demand and then vote on laws that control access to weapons that no one outside of the military needs to have their hands on. Demand and then vote on health coverage that includes mental health care and counseling. Demand and then vote on school curriculums that include empathy training. Demand and then vote for representatives who put people first rather than some bottom line, some business deal, or loyalty to a party. Get out in your community and take care of each other.

We need to act. There is no more time. Winter is coming. 

Summer Mood #3

Monday afternoon 

Wildfire smoke much less than it was. Cool enough to open the windows. White butterflies flit in and out of the catmint. Giant bumblebees make wild bergamot flowers sway beneath their eagerness. A black butterfly with blue, white, and orange markings hovers over blue vervain, spreads its wings open like an iridescent picture book. My dog finds dirt scattered on the deck beneath two freshly planted containers; the squirrels flung dirt all around. I bring out cinnamon, red pepper flakes, scatter both on the new plants after patting the dirt back in place. 

Quiet fills the neighborhood. Even houses that hold families with kids are quiet, the kids gone for the day, for the summer. The next-door-neighbor’s daughter-in-law arrives to mow the lawn, and it’s quiet no more. Back and forth across the grass she mows, almost never in a straight line, but somehow she gets it done.

When a small airplane rumbles overhead, I think of my childhood afternoons, how there was the sound of planes in a summer sky then, too. How the backyard was a place to play with my Barbie dolls, pick clovers, look for salamanders and daddy-long-legs in the window wells. I still have those Barbie dolls, dressed in their old swimsuits on stands in my office. Right now, I’m not sure why I’ve kept them. Maybe it’s that connection to when I made up stories every day and they felt real. When things felt safe because I didn’t know any better.

Tuesday afternoon 

For the first time in ages, I took a 20-minute nap. Three nights in a row of being awakened by a dog with tummy troubles. Muggy afternoon, soft summer clouds – perfect for resting. Soft summer wind. Birds chirping and twerping here and there. Sweep away the cobwebs on the front porch. Apologize to the dislodged spiders. Find the glass icicle my now-passed friend Zola gave me on a shelf in the garage. Hang it on the quadruple shepherd’s hook under the crabapple. Blue swirled through the clear glass. It cannot melt. Oh how it catches the afternoon light. 

Two neighborhood women walk dogs on the street post our house. Clouds billow. Shadows fall. Humidity builds. A storm brews while I heat water for tea. 

Humid Wednesday midday  

Invited to a St. Paul Saints baseball game. Excellent seats. Gray skies but no rain. Private planes overhead aiming for the St. Paul airport. Speculation that some of those planes hold musicians arriving early for the Farm Aid concert that’s this weekend. The Saints’ ball pig emerges on a leash wearing an orange tutu in one inning, a little saddle with Kermit the Frog seated in it in another inning. We leave at the end of the seventh inning as the Saints are behind the Iowa Cubs 7-1. Fun anyway – beer, brats, our friend Mark. Lots of little kids in matching t-shirts sitting in groups all over the stadium. I could spend a lot of summer afternoons like this.

 Saturday morning 

Massively humid. Dark clouds, thick air, water puddled on the deck. Trees so still you think you’re in a photograph. Joe Pye weed and wild bergamot bent over from heavy rain. Low rumbles in the western sky. Bluegrass on the local jazz station. Lucky we took a mile-long walk with the dog before breakfast. Now he stands beside me, waits for me to pet his soft cream-colored hair. No one moves outside. When I look through the patio door, its screen holds a million drops of water.

Sunday morning 

So humid it looks foggy outside when I get up with the dog. Soaked grass. Dog’s paws covered in dew. Little stray hairs curl up on my head. By mid-morning, the fogginess diminishes but the air still feels like we’re breathing underwater. I’m enchanted by water droplets sprinkled across leaves, slumbering bumblebees snuggled into flower heads. The older I get, the more joy I feel over small moments: seeing my partner Mick dig in the garden or granddaughter Maeve jump on a backyard trampoline or dog Finn leap after a ball. And the bigger my grief gets over so many people who cannot find that joy, cannot stop themselves from wrecking the world.

Another Monday 

Cool enough to shut off air conditioning for the first time in two weeks. I could not live where it’s hot and humid all the time. Or could I? Would I just move at a slower pace, get used to feeling moist everywhere all the time? Learn to live in linen clothes that swish when I walk, drink iced tea instead of hot coffee, eat more salad? Lay down in the afternoon when the temperature is highest, read book after book after book? Okay, maybe.

Another Tuesday 

A near-perfect August morning. Soft breeze. Birds conversing. Purple petunias in a pot on our deck. Sun streaming through the open front door. Dog curled nearby on the floor. A friend’s poetry manuscript to read. Fresh coffee in my mug. This is how to set aside the day’s news for a few hours. 

Smell of those petunias strong as I work at the table on the deck. Our copper whirligig garden art twirls in the wind, flings fragments of light across the garden. Wind chimes sing in soothing temple-like tones. I get up to stretch, walk the garden, pull lambsquarters and nightshade from the dirt, toss them into the compost. Bumblebees continue to be everywhere among the flowers, buzz in all parts of our yard. 

Finish doing my copy editing. Finish a blurb for my friend. Realize I seldom feel accomplished anymore as I relax into a less-structured life. Remind myself that achieving a peaceful life is an accomplishment and a privilege. 

All photos by kcmickelson 2025

Summer Mood #2

Days of storms – wind, rain, hail, garden drenched, softball games cancelled, trees snapped, power outages. Days of humidity and heat broken by those same storms. Days of wildfire smoke fogging the landscape, the smell filling our nostrils, breathing sometimes difficult, windows closed.

Still there is beauty.

And there are joyful dogs just waiting for us to take them along wherever we’re headed when the rain and smoke clear.

All photos by kcmickelson 2025.

Summer Mood #1

Sticky hot days. Wildfire smoke blows into Minnesota from Canada. Puppy Finn now four times the size he was in February. The garden bursts with St. John’s wort, wild bergamot, coreopsis, lavender, yarrow, and day lilies. Bumblebees scuttle into flowers face-first, their fuzzy butts the only visible part of them.

Time slows if we let it. TV and computer both turned off. Cool drink within reach. Rustle of leaves from the birch trees overhead. Rabbits freeze in place, ears twitching, eyes locked on ours, until they boing-boing-boing away to safety.

Dogs know. Lay down, be still, sleep but open your eyes every so often to look around. Say yes to walks and snuggles and treats – this is how to avoid regrets.

Listen to the crows. They have a young one they watch over in the neighbor’s back yard. The whole crow family pitches in. This may be how crows define love, loyalty. Everyone together, adults alert, babies safe.

Peace.

All photos by kcmickelson 2025.

Summer Shift

Attention spans are curious things. We work with children to develop attention spans so that they can concentrate on learning, on making commitments, on completing tasks. But if you’re a writer or an artist or some kind of influencer, you are admonished to post on social media daily lest you drop out of everyone’s newsfeed and people forget you exist. Something else nice and shiny will come along to claim everyone’s attention.

This bugs me. Especially in the summer, when all I want is to sink into languid warmth, be still, hang out with my dog or my family. I’ll be damned if I’m going to spend every free minute either posting or looking at social media. I do it enough as it is – enough to feel restless and anxious and realize when I need to step back. 

And this is when I need to step back. Summer is unfurling in all its petaled and leafy glory, the Fourth of July is looming, and the bad news of the world just keeps coming. 

I often go on a blog hiatus in the summer. I’m thinking something different right now, though. I’m thinking about images that feel peaceful and that is something I can offer, something that soothes those ever-shorter attention spans of ours. For the rest of the summer and maybe longer, depending on how I feel, that’s the direction I’m taking One Minnesota Crone. It’ll get my Nikon back in my hands and maybe spread a little peace.

And it’ll focus my attention on what’s in front of me. How very Zen, don’t you think? Enjoy. If some images spark some poetry or a story, even better.

Doe enjoying some summer respite in our back yard. Photo by kcmickelson 2025.

Raw Emotions, Steely Resolve

As I began writing this post on Friday, it rained outside my window and the local jazz station kept me company. I was in a foul mood. The week had been shitty on all fronts – in news of what happened in the world and news of what happened in my family. I got a stomach ache watching the coverage of the protests in Los Angeles and the subsequent over-reaction of the Trump administration, then fretted about my grown son whose father had a heart attack Monday afternoon that resulted in a triple bypass on Thursday. I hung out with my three-year-old granddaughter a couple of days to help out Shawn and Beka as they navigated Beka’s last week of school before summer break and Shawn’s long hours at the hospital. Maeve was in perfect three-year-old form: her answer to everything was no. By the time I sat down at my writing desk Friday morning, all I really wanted to do was sit on our deck with a shot glass of whiskey. Alas, the deck was drenched in rain.

My stomach was also in knots thinking about Saturday’s No Kings rally in St. Paul, which Mick and I decided we must attend. This year marks the first year I’m afraid for my safety at such events. I’ve been to several demonstrations in years past – when the RNC was in St. Paul, the big women’s march in 2017, the March for Science, a big anti-gun rally after Parkland, two demonstrations so far this year. The one for Saturday had me worried, but, of course, that’s exactly what the current administration wants. So, I decided to stuff that worry and go anyway. Everything about our lives – safety, health, freedoms enshrined in the Constitution, a future – is at stake.

And then Saturday morning arrived. We woke to the news of a shelter in place order for the northwestern part of our metro area because someone impersonating a police officer had shot Minnesota State Representative Melissa Hortman, her husband, Minnesota State Senator John Hoffman, and his wife. Hortman and her husband died. Both Hortman and Hoffman were Democrats. The shooter, who ran away on foot when real police approached him, left behind a vehicle that looked a lot like a police vehicle and contained a list of many other lawmakers as targets, along with a manifesto. The list, apparently, mentioned the No Kings demonstrations. Public safety announcements went out, some events got cancelled.

But the one at the Minnesota State Capitol went on. Thousands of us showed up. The idea that someone would do such a thing, target lawmakers, try to scare people into staying home, pissed us off. It fired us up. We listened to Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, and lawyer and activist Nekima Levy Armstrong, and others talk about the necessity of standing up for what is right in this moment. And continuing to stand up and oppose an administration that ignores the laws of this country, ignores the well-being of people everywhere. An administration that foments violent acts against anyone who might disagree with what’s happening.

This all feels surreal. Chilling. Whipping up fear to control an entire population is not a great long-term plan.

My mood has not improved. My resolve, however, is getting stronger every day.

Scenes from June 14, 2025 No Kings rally in St. Paul, MN. Photos by kcmickelson.

Lessons from Our Dog

As I write this, our wheaten terrier Finn chases around the table where I sit, playing with a latex pig dog toy that grunts when he mouths it. It really sounds like a little pig. He loves to chew on the ears, which makes the pig grunt some more. He plops in front of the patio door where light streams in, chews his pig, stretches out, and is happy.

Having a puppy around reminds me how little it can take to be happy. At five-and-a-half months, Finn is already over 25 pounds. He loves everyone, has discovered rabbits and squirrels, and can last through a four-mile-hike. His needs are simple: food, water, shelter, a place to poop, playtime, and people to love him. 

Summer is unfolding here in Minnesota. Now that we are post-Memorial Day, our moods have shifted to embrace days of gardening, hiking, grilling, beer on the deck, evenings outdoors until it’s dark. Time spent with friends and family is easier, less planned. Life feels simpler for now.

This is the time of year when I realize I often loathe planning things far ahead, preferring to do things as they pop up. Being in the moment and scheduling stuff on the calendar feels like a dissonant pairing to me, forcing me away from what’s in front of me. I know planning has to happen for some things – job assignments, doctor appointments, milestone celebrations, that kind of stuff. But nothing beats spur-of-the-moment – seeing a neighbor while out walking and having a chat, calling friends down the street for an impromptu happy hour in the back yard, having a kid or two show up for dinner. This is the sort of lifestyle I like best. Laid-back, easy, no need for a dog sitter or a babysitter or a change of clothes or circling around looking for parking. Room for everyone.

Room for daydreaming, too.

Mick and I continue to read aloud from Pico Iyer’s Aflame over breakfast. The questions examined therein – What do we learn from silence? What to we bring back to our daily lives after sitting in silence? What do we really need to be happy? – fit right in with my summer mood. Especially the “what do we really need to be happy” question. 

Not as much as we think. That shift has been happening for me for a long time. The less stuff there is to worry about, the better. Travel was where I truly learned less is more: packing too much stuff hinders how we move around. Traveling lightly makes trips much more enjoyable, makes me feel freer. I stopped worrying about having lots of clothes to choose from – just in case – and now take only what I absolutely need and can rinse out in the sink if necessary. 

Making the leap from traveling lightly to living lightly is harder but just as satisfying. I’m in the process of paring down my wardrobe at home, too. But being satisfied with less is about so much more than clothes or shoes or whatever it is that we feel we should have to be happy. 

It’s about considering how open space in our lives invites love and connection, leaves room for moments of awe. 

As Mick and I read about Iyer’s loss of his mother’s Santa Barbara house in a fire, we talked about what would happen if we lost our house and the stuff in it. What would we really miss? What would we replace and what would we let go of? It’s an interesting exercise in understanding what is truly valuable in this life we’ve built together. I look around at our old furniture – we put off replacing our 20-year-old couch because of Finn – and figure if it’s clean and can still cradle our bodies while we watch a movie or listen to music, it’s fine. Our books are overflowing from our old bookshelves and that’s the way I like it. My memories of wonderful times include people, conversation, food shared, wine sipped, flowers perfuming a summer evening, a table outside somewhere, a dog at my feet. 

And half of those great memories are not from this house. They’re from all over the world.

I do love this spot where I’m working on my laptop. I have an office, but seldom sit in it when the weather is warm and the patio door is open to the back yard. Working at the dining room table doesn’t separate me from this little sanctuary of ours; it plops me right into the middle of it. The office happened because I needed a place where I could shut the door sometimes to write. And it has served me well. But now that there are no kids living here, I don’t need the door as much. There is a lot of quiet time – mornings with birds chirping right outside, Finn asleep on the floor, Mick watering new seedlings in the garden. I turn on the local jazz station, brew some tea, and go to work. It’s all I need on these summery mornings.

But I know I can do this in other places. Mick and I have no idea if this home is permanent or if we’ll be somewhere else in ten years. We live as if it is permanent, caring for this space and allowing it to be a buffer between us and a less peaceful life. Permanence is an illusion. Planning doesn’t save us from everything. And that’s okay. 

For now, I am grateful that this is the space I live in. I do not need more.

Finn would agree.

In Praise of Reading Aloud

After reading Aflame by Pico Iyer twice within the last month or so, I am reading it yet again. This time, I’m reading it aloud at breakfast with Mick. 

We have a history with reading books aloud at breakfast. We started during the pandemic when we read Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind by Shunryu Suzuki together.  We had decided to deepen our meditation practice and there was no better time than when we were stuck at home for an unknown and frightening duration. Then we read Not Always So, also by Shunryu Suzuki. We re-read both books, trying our best to understand Zen Buddhist ideas and metaphors. We tried Norman Fischer’s work to see how a different Zen teacher talked about the same practice. I loved talking about these ideas early in the day, letting our conversations percolate in my head over the next several hours. The way we experienced the world changed a little bit and sitting zazen helped us navigate the pandemic. Our Zen practice, though spotty, has stayed with us.

Mick and I moved on to reading Margaret Renkl’s books, starting with The Comfort of Crows and then moving backwards to Late Migrations. Her work, so grounded in the natural world, struck deep chords for both of us. The books resonated because of our gardening and hiking habits, because of our efforts to go against the ideas we grew up with about having a lawn and bending our natural surroundings to human will. Renkl pondered what climate change did to plants and animals, how that spilled over into people’s lives. And, again, the conversations reading these works aloud sparked have stayed with me, allowed me to absorb the ideas in the books in a very different way than reading in silence by myself ever would. 

Reading as a communal experience is a gift. Our choices have all been nonfiction books so far, on topics that matter a great deal to us and with sections that are short enough to complete during our breakfast reading time. We don’t move through the books quickly; we limit how much we read each day to just a few pages. That means it takes weeks to get through one book, but that one book gets profound attention. The reading aloud piece makes it a much more intimate affair than when each of us read the books on our own and talk about them later.

Aflame is sure to elicit many deeper conversations in the weeks to come. A small flame of insight can burn for a lifetime.