The Cataract
Westfjords June 2015
I look up at the vast Dynjandi waterfall and I realise that all creative acts are linked. Writing is like the plastic arts: there is first an overall sense of design & then gradually the piece is mark-made into being – it is a relief, a carving, an accumulation of strokes.
I threw three twigs into the ravenous cascade: one symbolised the false accusation, the second my own sense of injustice and anger, the third my need to put past events behind me. All that matters here is the thunderous deluge of water pouring at an incredible speed and volume over those terraces of volcanic rock. Dynjandi is like a foam-laden pineapple, a profusion of black rock terraces bristling with bubbles and foam. The water-foam is more like snow than liquid; the waterfall’s roar blocks out all other sounds & turns the quiescent landscape (a landscape indented with steep fjords and gravel roads) into a cavalcade.
The rocks scattered about me are spotted with moss, lichen and bacterial growths that thrive in the damp, waterfall-misted air. A rainbow: tremendous, evanescent, contingent, flickers mid-drop. It is a rack of colour beneath the lizard-like stoop of the waterfall which disappears off eventually into a boisterous river concourse joining the Ariafjorður. The impression of volume and speed is astounding.
833 words a day 