ICELAND

I cold-showered my way around the island, trying and failing to not be a zealot about it.

Can you get addicted to showers? *shrug* Probably.

But I don’t think I am. I think my body just knows how to keep me alive.

She demanded my acute attention in 2022, screaming at me to slow, to listen. To acknowledge how much she knows and to stop ignoring her needs and her wants.

To heal, I learned to heed her. She has since saved me again and again.

And in 2024 she’s requesting uiscefhuaraithe: “The feel of coldness only water brings.”

::

Entering cold water yanks you into “the now,” whatever that means.

And actually, this is exactly what that means: you cannot carry your anxiety, your stress, your cringey memories, or even your anticipatory joy into cold water and expect to keep a hold on them. You will set them down, and you will just…be cold. Now. This is The Now.

Cold water abruptly takes all your little narratives from you and says, “Sweetheart, you can have these back later, but you can also live without them, just for a bit.” Cold water hugs your frigid body like a steel trap: “I know it’s hard, hun, but if you surrender your cute façade, you get to be real.”

It seems cruel but remember—you consented to this. You took the plunge.

Uiscefhuaraithe.

I honestly can’t recommend it highly enough.

::

Every time I’m in cold water, I laugh. If I don’t laugh, I cry. Apparently, bodily uiscefhuaraithe—yeah, I can (kinda) help you with that, it’s pronounced ish-KOOR-heh, flip the r—bodily uiscefhuaraithe deals in extremes.

I don’t even want to subscribe to extremes, but they constructed my entire cultural heritage. I fear that extremism lives in my blood. Like any normal person might say sorry, pal, but obsessively scanning the metaphorical landscape for grey areas is...still not chill, and I know they're right but I just can't stop (!!!). I am perpetually pulled to the black and the white, ping-ponging in hopes that my average over time wears some kind of middle path.

Why do I even care? Moderation is not inherently moral, a moderate take does not guarantee I’ll be taken seriously, and “medium” excites no one. Maybe it’s just middle child syndrome.

Beautiful Iceland—mountainous and oceanic, volcanic and icy—does not court moderation. The island juxtaposes natural extremes, pushing them to their limits then placing them side by side. And particularly in the darker half of the year, Iceland pushes you to your own limits. The rougher the country and the more it demands, the more you find yourself rising to meet it.

But ay, there’s the rub. Moderate terrain seems more inviting, offering reasonable and clearly survivable challenges, whereas becoming immortal requires weathering outrageous circumstances. “The greats” throughout history embraced extremes as access points to The Now; then, they set up camp.

For the rest of us, fortunately, The Now keeps a 24-hour line open, accessible through somatic extremes.

::

After a very cold and very wet week, I come back home and jump right into a cold shower. I chase that unique water-cooled feeling. Uiscefhuaraithe guides me to my selfiest self, who remembers (again) that now is now and here is now and there is there and then is then.

With cold and heat specifically, the two extremes inform and mimic each other. Very cold fingers can feel weirdly warm, and as they warm back up, they tingle numbly as if still in the cold. Somehow, the most extreme cold and the most extreme heat register almost identically in our, well, extremities.

So my favorite part of experiencing The Now of a cold shower comes after I am out of the water and dry again, when my body sends pinpricks of heat across every inch of my skin. The warmth comforts me for hours, a physical reminder of having lived large and raw and real.

Though the cold is manufactured by an external source, that warmth is purely self-generated.

My wise body loves The Now. I'll embrace this extreme.