Nomadic Vignettes: Iceland

The earth from above

There is at least one redeeming quality about Play Airlines, the low-cost carrier I’m flying from Reykjavik to Boston. The planes are equipped with cameras that cast a live birds eye view onto screens in the cabin as they fly. Apparently some PJs have this too… I wouldn’t know. 

I’m flying over northern Nova Scotia and it occurs to me that the dimples, craters, and striations of the earth’s surface resemble the skin of a living creature. For this particularly ancient and unbothered patch of earth, the dermis resembles that of an elephant. 

As someone who embraces the earth’s existence as a living breathing organism, this realisation is both interesting and confirmatory. 

Thinking of mother earth as a mortal being reframed the role of humans on the planet. In this context we are no longer the centre of the universe, but a colony of minuscule, microbial, organisms. Bacteria, or fungus. 

What kind of fungus do you want to be? Penicillium the root of Penicillin, a compound that helps its host fight off deathly disease? Psilocybin, which provides its host with a more enlightened and cooperative community? Or black mold, slowly and quietly rotting its host away from the inside? 

Up to you. 

In the meantime, let’s try to be in symbiosis with this old elephant of a planet, shall we?