Worlds Together and Worlds Apart

I am so desperately far behind on blogging on travel, which was the original point of this blog a decade ago.  So, I suspect there's going to be a mad rush of blog posts about a number of trips, without nearly enough commentary, with the hope being that in a less chaotic time I'll come back and add more detailed and mature reflection.

Here's a picture I snapped in Iceland.  The American and Eurasian tectonic plates run through Iceland, which helps explain the island's seismic activity (including a mild series of earthquakes when my son and I were visiting).  There is a bridge, fairly close to the airport in the far southwest of the island, where you can stand on a bridge connecting the two plates.  Apparently you can also arrange to dive between the two plates, although I've forgotten whether it is in the north or the south of the island.  The gap between the tectonic plates enters Iceland around 8:00 o'clock and exits around 12:00 o'clock, if you view the island as a clock face.

I think the plates are separating a centimeter a year, which led me to ask my son how soon it would be before the bridge fell into the chasm.  And it also reminded me of my Mom "feeling" the Washington Monument moving, and hurrying down on the elevator once the guard told her that tests had revealed that in two-hundred mile and hour winds the monument would sway a sixteenth of an inch.  She, alarmed, and on the way to the elevator, said, "I knew it."