Music of the mountains

by Stephanie Mair (Australia)

A leap into the unknown Iceland

I was looking for a whale. The Frenchman standing next to me, in head-to-toe Lycra and a ukulele on his back, was looking for the fjords. I don’t think we ever exchanged names. We had missed our connecting bus and according to him, our only option now was to hitchhike. Australians don’t hitchhike; at least not in Australia. We’re raised on tales of the madmen of the outback; preying on naïve backpackers who usually meet a ruthless end. I hear my mother’s voice as I stand there with my thumb out towards the road “we did it in the 70’s but it was a different time. You’d have to be mad to do something like that now” We’d walked a kilometre or so from the service station where the last bus had dropped us off. Cars whizzed past us every few minutes. I realised how absurd it was to feel safer doing something stupid with a person I’d only just met. After about 20 minutes, a woman pulled up in what I’d refer to as a ute. A border-collie dog grinned at us from the back-seat. “Where are you headed?” “The Freezer at Snaefellsbaer” “The fjords” The woman frowned at us. “You don’t look hopeless enough” We glanced at each other sideways. “Listen, nobody is going to pick you up unless you look truly hopeless. You can see the town from where you’re standing. You have to convince people that you have no chance.” The woman pointed behind us. The buildings weren’t close but we could easily make the walk across the fields to them if we wanted. “I’m not going in your direction, but I can drive you a few kilometres up the road so that there are no buildings and hardly any cars. You will have a much better chance that way”. I wasn’t convinced of the woman’s logic, but it didn’t seem to be a day of logic. Besides, a few kilometers was better than nothing. We got into the car and the woman with the wild hair sped us down the road. “So how long are you here for?” “Until I have achieved my dream of playing my ukulele on the fjords “I’m only here for 4 days. I’m hoping to see a whale. Thank you so much for the lift; I’ve never been hitchhiking before” “Oh in Iceland it is very common. There is an urban legend that there is a hitchhiking ghost. If you drive past somebody who needs a lift and it happens to be the ghost then she will hunt you down.” “Oh…that’s handy for us then!” I had a tiny hope in my heart that our saviour would decide that a three-hour drive in the wrong direction might be exactly what she and her dog needed that day. True to her word, once the road narrowed and the flat plains turned to walls of mountains, she pulled over. “Alright, here you are! Now you are truly hopeless! Good luck!” We thanked her with as much enthusiasm and politeness as we could as she triumphantly turned her car around and drove back towards town, with her dog barking excitedly. I gaped at the cloudless sky, the endlessly high waterfalls, the jagged mountains. Breathing the air, which even seemed more beautiful as it entered my body, I finally understood how so many great writers had been inspired by this magical place. I had to pull myself back to reality. I had somewhere to get to. “What should we do now?” The Frenchman looked me up and down, then raised his eyebrows. “Do you happen to like to sing?”