A Secret at Dritvik

by Chelsey McEvoy (United States of America)

I didn't expect to find Iceland

I spent my first days in Iceland running from tour buses. Despite the dark, despite the cold, the country swarmed with tourists the week before Christmas. And with no plan beyond “show up”, I found myself caught in the current that flowed, frantic, from one natural wonder to the next. Desperate to find the quiet, secret beauty I knew still lingered on that island, I woke long before dawn one day and drove north and west until I ran out of road. There, I found a path, and following the path I found Dritvik, a beautiful hollow of a beach, wave-carved from soft volcanic rock. I wandered the breadth of it as the sun slipped slowly over the North Atlantic. The shores used to be crowded with fisherman and their boats, but that morning there were just scraps of rusted metal and me, chasing tides and turning pebbles in my hand. The morning was sharp as cut-glass, a fierce wind sweeping through every one of my layers. I shivered, and sea smoothed stones slipped beneath my feet as I turned to leave. A flash of pink caught and held me, bright against the two-toned world of black sand and white snow. I knelt and brushed ice away. A starfish. I cupped it in my palm and brought it close, my warm breath skating over it. It was a marvel frozen in time, pristinated in the exact moment of its death. Rosy and pale orange, it mirrored the exact shade of the winter sun that had just crept above the horizon. I turned it over in my hand, drawing the shape of it with my fingertip. The crunching of feet on snow sounded, startling me. I turned to see a family walking towards the beach, another following a few hundred feet behind, and another after that. I’d been found; we were no longer alone. Stooping, I dug a hollow, clickclickclick, black stones tumbling to the side. I set the starfish inside, whispered a thank you, and swept the handfuls of sand back in place. A secret, just for me. I walked back up the path full with the knowing of it.