It is not hard to climb to the highest point in Illinois, unless we are accounting for tedium. Charles Mound (elevation 1,235 feet) is on private property, and open to the public only a handful of weekends a year—including, to my good fortune, the Saturday and Sunday before Presidents’ Day. To get there, I cross the Mississippi River heading east from Dubuque, then drive another 20 twisty miles through the snow-covered pastureland of northwestern Illinois. 

Charles Mound is just outside the village of Scales Mound (population: 400) and there are few indications of its claim to fame within town limits, except for signs advertising the High Point Storage facility. Once there—and by “there” I mean the side of the road, at a point marked only by orange arrows indicating what appears to be the entrance to a snowmobile trail heading into the woods—I pull on my wool hat and stuff my pockets with my phone and my last snack, a Hershey’s bar with almonds. I follow the snowmobile trail along a flat, slippery, snowy trail. After perhaps 10 minutes, the trail splits, and I follow more arrows, pointing east—only to realize after a few minutes that the snowmobilers and I may have different objectives, at which point I turn back down the hill, retracing my path. 

As I do, I encounter another lone highpointer, who has followed me or the arrows in the wrong direction. 

“Hey,” I say. 

He nods and raises one hand halfway to his ear, the universal sign for “I’m not taking my AirPods out.” 

I correct my navigational error and hike up this unspectacular hill—the sort of hill that might be known to children within a 12-minute driving radius (but not farther) as a good spot for sledding. I pass a pretty red barn, then a sign that reads: “HI-POINTERS: PLEASE PARK HERE ON GRAVEL ROADWAY AND CONTINUE BY FOOT.” 

Is this true? Could I have actually skipped the hiking altogether and just started my ascent from here? Whatever the answer, I have arrived at the highest point in Illinois. Some states mark their highpoints with ornate monuments, but Illinois has made a different choice; I walk right past it, until I simultaneously encounter a “no trespassing” sign and recognize that I’m going downhill. After I turn around and retrace my steps, I see a flat marker that might be cheerful in the summer but in the winter has the look of a firepit used by a fugitive bank robber to roast squirrels. A few steps away is a marker boasting the stamp of the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey. Beyond, a panoramic view of rolling, dun-colored hills and bare trees. I take my pictures. 

I am standing higher than anyone in the state of Illinois, unless they’re standing at the top of Chicago’s Willis Tower, which rises several hundred feet higher. 

“Not much to it,” I say, to another solo highpointer, who reaches the summit a few minutes behind me. 

“There sure ain’t,” he replies. 

Midway down the hill, I pass another hiker, who asks me how much farther it is to the summit. 

“Do you see that barn?” I say, eager to be helpful. “It’s that far, and that again.” 

It’s the most I, or to my knowledge anyone, has spoken all morning. 

Highpointing is a strange, singular endeavor: Hiking all 50 state highpoints requires the technical ability necessary to scale Denali, the highest point in both Alaska and North America, but also the frame of mind to seek out Ebright Azimuth, at 447 feet the highest point in Delaware; the primary danger at the latter is impeding traffic, since the actual highpoint is in the middle of an intersection. Few facts illustrate this unlikely combination of traits better than this one: About 6,000 people have summited Mount Everest, while only about 10 percent as many have climbed all 50 state highpoints. A 50-state highpointer will have hiked 40-plus miles through Wyoming’s Wind River Range to reach Gannett Peak and also journeyed out to Nebraska’s Panorama Point, which is only accessible by vehicle and is surrounded by bison and wind turbines. 

Panorama Point has a rating of 3.5 stars on All Trails (even Charles Mound has a 3.9), but in the plaintive reviews I see signs of a psychological profile with which I am entirely familiar: 

“The high point is not much to show but still counts.” 

“Unless you’re peak-bagging the state high points, I would probably bypass this.”

“Not impressive; it is just to say you’ve been there.”

My morning drive was tedious. The hike was not unpleasant, but all things being equal, I would rather be in my bed, or a classroom, or a car wash. Except—except—I can now say that I have been to the highest point in Illinois, and that knowledge fills me with a strange but luxurious sense of self-satisfaction.

Happily, there is an organization filled with people intimately familiar with that sensation: the Highpointers Club. 

* * *

The Highpointers Club was founded nearly 32 years ago by Jack Longacre, a long-distance truck driver with a steadfast love for the natural world. A former Boeing employee, Longacre explored the peaks of the Pacific Northwest with the firm’s Boealps club, and over the next five years made it to the top of all 50 states, finishing with Wyoming’s Gannett Peak. In October 1986, while living within a short hike of Taum Sauk Mountain, the highest point in Missouri, he wrote a letter to the editor of Outside magazine in which he announced his plan to organize a club dedicated to summiting the states. He called for all interested parties to meet at a hotel in L’Anse, Michigan, the following April, which would afford them the opportunity to recapture the highest point in the Great Lakes State. Seven people showed up to what would be recalled as the first Highpointers Convention, several of them eager to correct a surveyor’s mistake: They had previously summited Mount Curwood, before discovering that neighboring Mount Arvon was 11 inches higher—and thus Michigan’s true high point. 

Thus, was born the Highpointers Club—with its unlikely mix of accomplished mountaineers and eccentric “listers,” as 48-stater Mick Dunn called them—and during the ensuing three decades, the rolls have swelled to nearly 3,000 people, of which a handful have climbed all 50 highpoints. “We’re a bunch of neurotic people—that’s how I describe it,” Dunn told me in the run-up to the 2013 convention, in Millinocket, Maine. “We’re people who want to accomplish everything on a given list. Maybe it’s highpoints. Maybe it’s state capitals. Maybe it’s kayaking the largest lake in each state. That’s one my girlfriend and I made up.”

As Dunn demonstrates, Longacre had dialed into a durable if unlikely frequency: whimsical adventurers, that unlikely subset of true mountaineers and people who are curious about all the legends on all the map, including the stylized plus sign indicating a state’s highpoint. And also the wanderers: I stumbled upon my first highpoint, Massachusetts’s Mount Greylock, in the middle of a four-day backpacking trip through the Berkshires with a high school boyfriend. Who were these people who scurried out of their cars to stand beneath the War Veterans Memorial Tower there, snap pictures, and take off? They might well have been highpointers—maybe in a rush to get down to Mount Frissell, the stateline-straddling Connecticut highpoint. (In fact, the summit of Mount Frissell is in Massachusetts, while the highest point in Connecticut is only part-way up the hike to the peak.) 

Since my accidental summit of Mount Greylock, I have been to low-altitude highpoints such as New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Mississippi, Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina, Rhode Island, Delaware, Tennessee, Michigan, and Illinois. I have also been to the highest point of Indiana, something I forgot until I was driving to the East Coast from Iowa City last Christmas and almost detoured two hours out of my way to make a second (deeply unnecessary) trip to Hoosier Hill. I joined the Highpointers Club in 2010, but I thought of myself more as an observer than a participant, a chronicler of this strange pursuit with my recorder always at the ready.

I never met Longacre, who died on October 15, 2002, not long after attending a last convention at Black Mesa, the highest point in Oklahoma, where friends and members met him on the summit for a final farewell. Shortly before his death, he had worked with a longtime member and close friend, Jean Trousdale, to publish his memoir, Keep Klimbin’ (The repeated Ks are a Highpointers joke, the legacy of a broken typewriter key.) Trousdale accomplished that goal, and then he set about fulfilling Longacre’s final wish, to have his ashes scattered at all 50 highpoints. As the club founder put it in his own eulogy: “It is my impassioned desire that my ashes be placed on the top of the continent’s loftiest peaks, allowing the rains to wash them down and over the lands. Then, I would become a part of the world and not hidden beneath it as I would be in a grave.”

“Jack had 50 little 35 mm film canisters with the name of each state written on them, and he showed me exactly how to seal them,” Trousdale told me following my first Highpointers Convention, at Mississippi’s Woodall Mountain, a few years before her own death in 2016. “He couldn’t see me quite getting to all 50 highpoints.” 

Over the next year, Trousdale—a clinical psychologist who hiked most of her 44 state highpoints in her 60s—sent off the canisters of his ashes so that they could accompany climbers up Denali and Mauna Kea, Britton Hill (Florida) and Mount Katahdin (Maine), until they’d ascended all 50 highpoints. And she didn’t stop there: The canisters went on to Mount Fuji in Japan, and Argentina’s Aconcagua, the highest point in South America. Soon, Longacre’s ashes had reached all of the Seven Summits but Everest. ​

“There was a fellow I heard from, Stuart Smith, who’d done a few highpoints,” Trousdale told me. “He was going off somewhere and wanted to know if he could take ashes, and I said, ‘Sure.’ He’d already completed the adventure grand slam—the Seven Summits and North and South Poles—and he said he wasn’t going back up to Everest, but he was going to the Himalayas to climb Lhotse.” Midway up the Lhotse face, Smith crossed paths with a Mexican climber, David Liaño González, who was en route to Everest. “A couple weeks later, I got a call from Liaño González, and he sent me a picture [of Everest’s peak] and said he was sorry he couldn’t take a picture of them scattering the ashes because it was too windy,” Trousdale said. “That’s how we got the last of the seven highpoints, and it’s at that magical place that Jack Longacre’s ashes rest.” 

When we last spoke, Trousdale was carefully guarding the remainder of Longacre’s ashes. “At this point, we’re just about out,” she said. “He wasn’t a big guy, but he had very heavy bones.”

* * * 

After a two-year, pandemic-induced delay, the 2022 Highpointers Convention takes place next month (June 22-24) near Mount Davis, which is the highpoint of Pennsylvania and the summit of a ridge in the Alleghenies known as Negro Mountain. It may come as a surprise that both those names are shrouded in controversy: Pennsylvania State Representative Rosita C. Youngblood tried to have the latter changed in 2009, while the former has been criticized for honoring a white settler rather than a valiant Black man who gave his life to protect fellow members of a party under fire in 1756. (It is believed that man was the intended honoree behind Negro Mountain’s current name.) 

I attended the last convention before the pandemic took place in July 2019, on the shores of Lake Superior’s Keweenaw Bay, a 40-minute drive through the forest to Michigan’s highpoint (still Mount Arvon). Nine months before COVID-19 would bring an end to such easy conviviality—a dinner honoring highpointers past and present, a watermelon feast at the top of Mount Arvon, everyone crowded together for a group portrait—it would have been impossible to predict that the next two conventions would be canceled. 

Nine years had passed since my first convention, in Mississippi, and I had attended only one other, at Ohio’s Campbell Hill, in betweeen. By this time, though, I could no longer tell whether I was writing about the highpointers —observing them—or if I had become simply a fellow traveler, among like-minded company. There are pros and cons to both, but the benefit of the former was that I had a built-in excuse to talk to all the highpointers, many of whom knew each other, had climbed mountains together, and could recite all of each others’ jokes and bear tales. 

In Michigan, I got to know Jim Sutton, who finished his first tour of the 50 highpoints when he was 36 and joined the club in 1991, after sending Longacre a tidy payment of $5 by mail. His first highpoint was, in fact, Mount Davis, an unexpected detour during a trip home to see family in Pittsburgh. “My wife was pregnant with our elder daughter at the time—[my daughter] Nora wants to claim she was there, but in utero doesn’t count, because she didn’t physically touch the rock,” he said. Since then, he’s revisited most of the highpoints, and he describes the conventions as “a lot like a high school reunion, especially in that most of the people here are over 50.”

We discussed how the easy availability of information on the internet has reduced some of the convention’s utility. “It used to be a thing where you’d tell people, ‘Don’t take this route, take that route,’” he said. “And it’s a misery-loves-company thing.” 

A what? 

“Listen,” he said. “Who in their right mind will drive 300 miles out of their way to go visit a small mound covered with cow dung in western Kansas, simply because it’s slightly higher than the other cow dung-covered mounds around it? In Minnesota you get eaten alive by mosquitos. At Denali, two days out of five you’re going to be stuck in a tent, and the average trip is two and a half weeks. If you’re doing Wyoming, round-trip, and you walk it—we did part of it by horses—it’s over 50 miles to get in and back, depending on the route. ‘Misery’ is part of the game: ‘You can’t believe the weather that I got!’ It’s one-ups-manship in how miserable you are.”

More than that, thought, the draw is the camaraderie of doing the same weird thing, together. “In Maryland, there was a restaurant called—I kid you not—Piddle Griddle,” Sutton said. “Now, who wants to eat at a place called Piddle? But we did. And when I took my family back there, they wanted some lunch, and they were looking at McDonald’s, and I said, ‘No, no, we’re going to Piddle Griddle. You go to places you would never go to otherwise. And you meet the greatest people out there.” 

The choice, as he laid out, between McDonald’s and Piddle Griddle felt like all of our biggest choices, writ small: corporate versus independent, global versus local, slow versus fast. Highpointing is a vote for the Piddle Griddles of the world: the homemade, the unexpected, the human-scale. Highpointing, in its way, is the scenic route as a lifestyle choice. It has proven to be a lifelong distraction, a to-do list that will spool out endlessly. 

Last summer, I got close enough to see Denali from the ground, and that was close enough; barring a late-in-life pivot that is extremely unlikely, I will never be a 50-state completer. But highpointing has reshaped the way I look at the world. It is a vote for the path not taken—one that prods me forward, to Sunflower Hill (Kansas) and Hawkeye Point (Iowa), and from there to the great mountains of the West: Granite Peak (Montana), Mount Whitney (California), Mount Rainier (Washington), and all the rest.

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On May 2, 2014, with $12,000 saved, Angela Maxwell left her best friend’s home in Bend, Oregon, to start a five-year walk around the world. There’s no pre-approved path for the small ranks of pedestrian circumnavigators, the dozen or so people who’ve claimed they’ve walked around the world—so Maxwell devised her own route. She traveled the 175 miles to Portland, and then across western Australia. She next headed to Vietnam, where she hiked 60 miles from Da Nang to Hue and then spent three weeks recovering from dengue fever. A year into her circumnavigation, she arrived in Mongolia. One night, a two weeks’ hike from Mongolia’s capital city of Ulaanbaatar, in a valley surrounded by mountains, a stranger entered her tent and raped her. “It was the moment that every woman is afraid of before they go out into the world,” the 37-year-old former business consultant says.

After the attack—“it was over in minutes,” Maxwell says—her assailant left. Maxwell packed her gear, hiked a few miles to put distance between herself and her attacker, and sat down next to the cart that she used to carry her supplies; she worried that if she set up her tent again, she might be spotted. The next morning, she walked a day and a half to a nearby village, paid for a room in a family’s home, and sought out local authorities. She also called her best friend in Oregon, whose front door Maxwell had walked out to begin her trip. “I needed to actually say to someone I trusted that I had been raped,” Maxwell says. “We wept together, she wept for me, and after we felt that pain and that horror, she said, ‘I need to give you a pep talk. You knew this was a possibility. To walk alone in the world, as a woman, is to become a vulnerable target—not to most people but to those who wish to do harm. And now that this has happened, you have faced your worst fear. So now is your time to be the woman you set out to be. To be brave.’”

Maxwell says she never considered abandoning her trip. Instead, she took the Trans-Siberian Railway to Moscow and then flew to the country of Georgia and walked from its capital, Tbilisi, to Turkey. Over the next three years, she pushed ahead. She traveled back and forth to Australia, where she had developed a relationship with a rancher. She ping-ponged from Sardinia and Sicily to Scotland, to New Zealand, to England, and then back to Italy to avoid overstaying her Schengen visa. But she struggled to keep her emotions in check: “I blamed myself,” she says. “I had disdain for anyone around me for the first month. I had images of Kill Bill–style cutting the guy’s head off.”

As time passed and Maxwell began to tell her story—first on social-media posts, and then in a TEDx talk at the University of Edinburgh in February 2018—women who had experienced abuse reached out to her. Maxwell still remembers the first email she received after beginning to publicly share the outlines of her attack. “It was from a woman in her twenties, who had grown up being abused by the men in her life,” Maxwell says. “She found herself staying in her comfort zone, even though she wanted to go on an adventure.” Maxwell encouraged her to travel. “She sent me pictures from the Camino de Santiago,” Maxwell says. “And I realized it was my responsibility to answer all of those emails and help these women through it.”

This summer she made her way from Virginia to New York City to Ohio, and after a one-month break in Georgia, she has returned to the road to finish her circumnavigation, with a final push from Columbus, Ohio, to Denver and then up and over the Rockies and back to Bend. When Maxwell arrives back in Oregon, likely sometime in early 2020, she will have walked nearly 24,000 miles. Most people change over the course of five years, and those changes are especially pronounced throughout an expedition across a dozen-plus countries. The attack in Mongolia, though, shaped and channeled those changes in Maxwell: if she left Bend an adventurer, she will return to it as an advocate. Maxwell has dedicated this U.S. portion of her journey to raising $25,000 in support of Her Future Coalition, an organization devoted to creating a safe haven for survivors of gender violence and human trafficking. (She’s raised $8,600 so far.) She is pitching a television show about women at work—whether as firefighters or farmers—in communities around the world. And she has become a digital pen pal and supporter of women who’ve suffered abuse but dream of traveling the world as she has.

Before she left, Maxwell’s parents had beseeched her to stay home. Her father and stepfather warned her against the perils of her trip. Both men died during her walk, her biological father from a heart attack in August 2016 and her stepfather from lung disease earlier this year. Now Maxwell meets parents whose daughters want to travel the world, and she strives, she says, to balance candor with encouragement. “That was the challenge. How can I talk about this so I don’t make people more afraid?” she says. “I say to them what I said to my own fathers: ‘I’m less afraid of being attacked than I am of being resentful of you for holding me back.’” In this, Maxwell has created a high-wire act of delicacy—to be an example of a woman who has encountered violence in the world and to also be an example of going forth anyway. “It is a tricky place to walk, and I’m still navigating it,” she says. “I won’t diminish what happened but neither will I let that be the memory I take away from this time in my life.”

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Susan Miller runs my life for Cosmo: Fact: 2019 was not working out. One week into January — in a move ripped from Legally Blonde — my boyfriend broke up with me (by email) instead of proposing (in person). Two days later, a scamster emptied my checking account. I was obsessing over a still-in-progress novel, which had been “for real, almost finished” for two years, to the detriment of every other part of my life — including the romantic one, which for the foreseeable future consisted of letting my niece swipe through Tinder on my behalf. 

I’d tried yoga, meditation, swimming, stress-eating, catatonically sitting through three seasons of Prison Break. I already slept with citrine and malachite under my pillow. What if I resolved to follow the instructions of America’s favorite astrologer to the letter for the next 30 days — since I clearly couldn’t do any worse on my own?

For guidance, I reach out to Susan Miller of AstrologyZone, whose celebrity fans range from Emma Stone to Emma Roberts and include Pharrell Williams, Raf Simons, Jennifer Aniston, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Katy Perry, and Spike Jonze. Miller is quite possibly the most famous astrologer in the world. Over 10 million readers visit astrologyzone.com every month to pore over her epically detailed horoscopes; in 2014, when illness forced her to post some forecasts late, bereft fans created a Facebook group (“Abandoned by Susan Miller”) in protest. Who better to ask?

The first thing Miller tells me is that she’ll help. The second is that, in her astrological opinion, my premise is all wrong. “Astrologers work much further out than a month — we think in terms of many months or years,” says Miller. “Six months would make more sense.” I assure her that I’ll continue my practice beyond its official completion date, and she gives me an uber-goal for the next 30 days: “Focus on collaborations,” she says, urging me to look for a new literary agent or other professional partner.

With that, we begin. Pleasingly, I am first instructed to “focus on rest and retreat,” a suggestion I adopt wholeheartedly, and with snacks. (And more Prison Break.) I’m told to expect “a swell of kindness and compassion from friends,” so I preemptively tell the closest among them how grateful I am for their help. (This actually results in “a swell of kind and compassion” — which maybe makes it a self-fulfilling prophecy, but also qualifies as a win.) At the midpoint, my horoscope says that I “now have energy to focus on your finances.” I set up a payment plan for my overdue 2012 taxes (oops!) and use an app to identify all of the recurring payments I’d forgotten — including a $4 monthly fee for an image-editing program I’d used once. As Miller predicted, none of these actions trigger a life-changing result: There are no winning lottery tickets. My mood, though, has improved remarkably, and in 12 months, I will be $48 richer.

Three weeks into my experiment, Susan offers to interpret my birth chart — a map of the sun, moon and planets as they appeared to astrologers when I was born. Each placement — beginning with my sun sign, in Taurus — influences aspects of my personality. The reading is equal parts magic, therapy, life-coaching, and performance art. Over the course of an hour, Susan paints my portrait. I love my family and travel almost equally — a key conflict. Had my dad experienced a reversal of fortune? (Yes.) Did I have any health concerns related to my throat — “and that includes your thyroid?” (Just ask my thyroid surgeon!) There is also the exciting news that I may marry a man I interview the following month. “He’ll be older, or have an old soul,” she says. 

My 30-day experiment ends a week later — coincidentally, the day before my birthday, right at the start of Taurus season. I thought I might be relieved to press pause on 24-7 astrology. Not so: Following my horoscopes has forced me to tend to all aspects of life — love, money, family — rather than only on work. Success in those areas counterbalanced the tribulations, a state of affairs I was happy to see reflected in my final horoscope: “You’re coming alive in unexpected ways,” it reads. “You know the only way to live the life you want is by doing things you’ve never experienced before.” 

For the record, I’ve never experienced marrying a man I’ve interviewed, though I do look forward to it. According to Susan, I have four weeks to get the job done, before my Taurean focus should shift elsewhere. By the time you read this, those four weeks, and its romantic opportunities, will be over; maybe I’ll have met my one true love over drinks and a voice recorder. The stars should prove so lucky. 

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“Halloween comes earlier every year” is a thing we say with all the regularity of Halloween itself. In part this is because of how time collapses: The 12 months between my first Halloween (costume choice: bumblebee) and my second (tomato) equaled 100 percent of my lifetime. The time between my grandmother’s most recent Halloween (costume choice: retiree) and the one to come (she’s thinking about it) will account for 1.08 percent of hers. Our first Halloween is a titanic overload of ghosts and goblins and glitter and our mothers, usually so familiar, dressed as lions. Our 30th might be a parade of sexy teachers, sexy nurses, sexy peacocks, sexy bananas. Our 92nd—pfft. Halloweens arrive with the regularity and insignificance of passing commuter trains.

This is a situation compounded by matters not of perception but of science, and broken seasons, and catastrophic dislocation. Last Thursday, the third day of October, the high temperature in New York City was 91 degrees, and so our bodies said Where is the beach? rather than What can I be for Halloween that is not a sexy banana? Meanwhile, pumpkin spice lattes have been on sale since the week before Labor Day, because Starbucks decided to test the limits of our appetites for PSLs and PSL season writ large. And so, seasonality—and the underlying pleasures of a thing that it is more valuable because it is less available—becomes just another kind of scarcity. Why have scarcity when you can have more, and everything, all of the time?

No wonder Halloween feels like it comes earlier every year: As a percentage of our time on Earth, it does. Our bodies are telling us that it’s mid-summer, not early fall, while our flavored coffees, with entirely their own agenda, would have us believe that mid-fall starts in late summer.

It’s a mess. There is, though, a way to right some of these wrongs.

Last year, I was “too busy” to come up with a costume until Halloween morning, and ultimately decided to go to a party in Paris as “an American woman”: camo T-shirt, camo Elizabeth & James jeans, Forever 21 camo sweatshirt, French Army camo jacket. (“Et voilà, I am both celebrating and satirizing your French expectations of American fashion norms!”). I slowly walked up rue Oberkampf, knowing my costume was a failure; I bought the cheapest possible pinot noir at a convenience store, went to my friend’s apartment, knocked gently on the door, put the wine next to the doormat when no one answered, and turned to go home, though I could hear the party stirring inside. Halfway down the stairs, though, I passed a man on his way to the party I had just abandoned. Eleven months later, I see him perfectly: He was dressed as a French mime, his face painted chalk-white, with a lemon-yellow beret and a blue-and-white striped marinière. In his arms, he cradled two baguettes, wrapped not in standard paper but vintage French linen. It was like seeing a deer walk through my living room. I can barely remember the five Halloweens that came before that one, but I will never forget that mime.

His commitment was magnificent, and in its magnificence, we find a solution for our problem. We cannot force Starbucks to respect the natural timeline of the pumpkin harvest, but we can reconfigure our sense of time, and how we spend it. When we create things that are magnificent, we regard their debut with apprehension, and excitement, and wonder, and trust me, if you sit down today and dream up the greatest Halloween costume anyone has ever created, the time between now and Halloween will dribble by, like the slowest trickle of seasonally appropriate maple sap. Things we want seem to arrive more slowly; for proof, let us momentarily return to those commuter trains, which never appear more irregularly than when we are late. I am too busy, you are too busy—and yet I just spent the last ten minutes busily staring out my window. An amazing idea rarely takes much time—it takes, instead, the desire to have one, and a sense of the possibility that we might be magnificent. (Pinterest can help.)

Without that sense of possibility, we will be caught off-guard, in our camo non-costumes, and Halloween, and the holidays that follow, will hurtle toward us, another undone task coming due. With it, though, we can do the hard work of making our holidays magical ourselves. Like everything worth having, they will take forever to get here. The alternative is a world moving ever-faster, filled with sexy peacocks. We can do better, and be brilliant.

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In the last photo I have of my father, he and my mother are watching the Eagles play the Bears last November.

My father, carefully buttoned into a light-blue shirt, waves toward the camera. Someone who had not known him — who did not know how his knowledge of the world had dwindled from reveling in the intricacies of organic chemistry to feeding the dog, with help, to querulously parsing the intentions of these three strange people, his wife and daughters — would have thought my mother was the sick one: she looks exhausted, anxious, determined. However hard it is to have Alzheimer’s, it may be harder still to take care of someone with it.

What makes the picture bearable is knowing that the Eagles game is on the other side of it. I grew up with an Eagles game on TV every Sunday from September to January and a radio tuned to 1210 WCAU the rest of the week. I grew up judging my uncle’s stubborn defenses of the cheering after Michael Irvin’s career-ending spinal cord injury in 1999 (“The people clapping had no idea how bad he was hurt”) and the booing and battery-shelling of Santa Claus in 1968 (“What you have to understand is, this guy was a terrible Santa Claus”). I was in the backseat of my parents’ station wagon, leaving for summer vacation, when we heard on WCAU that Jerome Brown had died, and I was improbably in the stands for 4th and 26, one of the few football plays to have its own Wikipedia entry.

The latter is a moment I remember as the psychological opposite of the destruction of Alderaan, as tens of thousands of voices suddenly cried out in unexpected joy. I was sitting in the upper, upper reaches of Lincoln Financial Field, between my sportswriter friend Brandon (from the Philly suburbs, he’d somehow morphed into a Patriots fan) and a man named Loony who’d spent most of the game with his head between his knees. When Freddie Mitchell caught Donovan McNabb’s 28-yard pass, Loony jumped out of his seat, screamed, hugged everyone around him who would submit to his drunken, unsteady embrace and then returned to his previous position of agonized and desperate hope.

“Agonized and desperate hope” may be the default psychological setting for an Eagles fan. I have never been anything else, so I cannot know if this is the natural state of being for others — surely it is not for Brandon, the Patriots supporter. Philadelphia is singular in its veneration of the underdog, the backup, the guy who didn’t expect to get the call. We worship at the altar of a fictional boxer and line up to take pictures with a statue of Super Bowl MVP Nick Foles, “presented by Bud Light” and inscribed with the immortal words, “You want Philly Philly?”

I was far from home when the Eagles won the Super Bowl two years ago, three months after my father was finally, officially, diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. When they were behind, I texted my friends, enjoying the familiar sound of their grumbling; when they were ahead, I sat with my chin on a table and my hands tented over my eyes. Resignation was familiar; anticipation unbearable. During halftime, I tried to pull it apart, why a victory felt so important, before settling on the hope that winning the Super Bowl — something so big, so improbable, so belated, so desired — would pierce through the dark clouds gathered in my father’s mind.

Once it was over, I called home. “Daddy,” I said. “We won!”

I waited for something I could shape, burrow into, a meaningful pause suggestive of activity deep inside him: recognition, which is what everyone who loves someone with Alzheimer’s waits for, hopes for, like a farmer studying the sky and praying for rain. But there was nothing, just the sound of him passing the phone back to my mother and her voice, sewing our conversation together, wondering if I’d be home in time for the parade.

My dad died four weeks after the Eagles beat the Bears — a few hours before they lost to the Dolphins. (“Your father didn’t need to see this,” my mom said at one point.) I took my uncle to the Cowboys game a few weeks later. I think I went looking for my dad — but he wasn’t that guy, the lifetime season-ticket holder tailgating in the parking lot. He just loved them because they reminded him of South Philly, of his family, of his brother calling midway through the fourth quarter with a new and unexpected gripe: “What now?” my dad would say. I never heard the answers, just my father’s laughter in response.

My friend Courtney took me to see the Eagles play the Seahawks a few weeks ago, at the start of what we hoped might be an unlikely but unstoppable march to the Super Bowl. He lives in Los Angeles but is, after my father, the biggest Eagles fan I’ve ever known. Court’s own father maintains no allegiances; his mother, he said, was rooting for Seattle. Her father had loved the Seahawks like mine had loved the Eagles. And she had grown to love them even more after her father died, Court said, and I understood then, as he said it, what it meant: to wear the jersey, to go to the game, to spend three hours every Sunday with the living and the dead.

Our night ended not as we hoped but in a Center City parking garage, watching a woman berate a man in a Carson Wentz jersey for his ongoing support of the concussed quarterback. For the brief moments Josh McCown et al. held onto a 3-3 tie, Courtney and I had made plans: we could meet in Green Bay, and then San Francisco; Miami would take care of itself. I would drive, he would fly; we would get a hotel room in Chicago if we had to. If we could just make it out of the Wild Card game with a 40-year-old former ESPN analyst at quarterback, who knew what lay ahead of us? Wasn’t this how it always worked: Wentz got hurt, and someone else pulled off a miracle? There might be so much time together: planning and hoping and commiserating, and hugging the Loonys sitting next to us. Winning the game would give us another seven days, and maybe seven more, and maybe even more beyond that. I will never be able to spot a penalty before the flag is thrown, but I understand what it means to be enraptured by excellence, in the feats a body is able to perform — and how this can be the easiest way to justify the time we spend together, friends and brothers and fathers and daughters.

Courtney and I stayed until the end, after D.K. Metcalf’s down-field catch with 1:40 left in the fourth quarter: “You’re not helping,” the guy in front of us bellowed miserably to the early deserters.

I had wondered how I would feel when the Eagles lost this season, the season that my dad died. I wondered if I would feel like something between us had broken. I did not, though. I felt it — I feel it — like a physical thing, an electrical current, unimpeded, as undeniable as the field itself. I do not doubt it will endure: next season, and the next, and all the seasons that follow.

“See you in September!” someone behind us sang out to the emptying stadium, and those of us left cheered.

The post The Philadelphia Eagles for InsideHook appeared first on Clips.

Tonight, Jeopardy will crown the winner of its Tournament of Champions. Everyone knows it will likely be James Holzhauer—or else Emma Boettcher, who in June ended Holzhauer’s 32-game winning streak. The key moment, though, has already come: On Monday’s show, instead of writing an answer to the clue (“In the title of a groundbreaking 1890 exposé of poverty in New York City slums, these three words follow ‘How the’”) semi-finalist Dhruv Gaur wrote “What is We You, Alex!” Host Alex Trebek had just announced his return to treatment for Stage IV pancreatic cancer—a disclosure that sent Twitter into paroxysms of anguish that felt, for once, utterly justifiable.

(The answer: “Other Half Lives.”)

Despite its wide international syndication, Jeopardy is one of the U.S.’s rare TV shows, like Saturday Night Live, that is possessed of a rich cultural relevance but fails to translate fully outside our borders, the American equivalent of television Marmite. (I’m writing this in France, where a generation of teenagers grew up with The Big Bang Theory and How I Met Your Mother.) And while it’s not impossible to stream or download Jeopardy while overseas, there’s something lonely and uncanny about the experience, like accidentally driving past your childhood home. Jeopardy is meant to be watched live, with other people—in my parents’ house in New Jersey, at 7 p.m., on Channel 7, after the dishes are done.

I’ve spent much of the last 10 years outside the U.S., so for me, Jeopardy is home and home is Jeopardy, something—like Thanksgiving and summer nights at baseball games—that cannot be properly replicated away from it. I can (barely) remember watching it with my grandparents at their farm in Pennsylvania, not long after Alex Trebek started hosting. Then I, along with the rest of my generation (and the generation after), grew up with the show. (Please enjoy this argument between Gen Xers, Millennials, and Generation Zs about who loves Jeopardy most.) My family has its own rules for how to watch it—primarily to refrain from saying the easy answers out loud. (“You’re embarrassing yourself,” I’m pretty sure I said to one grandstanding boyfriend, over his first American Christmas.)

Like most things that last, Jeopardy has become ever more valuable over time, along with our connection to Alex Trebek and the values they together represent: excellence, resilience, discretion, collegiality, the worth of knowledge. Those qualities have of course been magnified during a period of American history synonymous with the desecration of our national institutions, as our National Parks are sold for parts and the agencies meant to protect us now idly permit our harm (sample headline: “A Terrifying New Plan to Poison Air, Water, Humans”). Jeopardy—unlike the NFL, television news, or church—is the one place Americans still gather together, or at least simultaneously. It’s no accident that the most public and affecting reconciliation between MAGA America and Black America happened on “Black Jeopardy.” That accord wouldn’t survive the Final Jeopardy category of “Lives That Matter”—but, as Kenan Thompson’s host, Darnell, said, “It was good while it lasted.”

At a time when the baseline national mood is so consistently chaotic, it is hard not to think of what endures and what doesn’t—and to want what is good to stay forever. Of the 35 years my family has watched Jeopardy, my father has had Alzheimer’s disease for the past five. Five years ago, he could have told you how to manufacture allergy medicine. Now, if we are lucky, he will look at dark clouds gathering on the horizon and say something like, “Storm’s coming in,” and we will be grateful, because his mind has allowed him to connect a cause (the clouds) to an effect (the storm). He retains little new information from day to day—but one of the few things to stay with him was the news of Trebek’s initial diagnosis in March. “He doin’ OK?” he would ask, as we settled into our seats for the show and Alex appeared, to introduce the contestants.

“Absolutely,” we said.

“He doin’ OK?” he’d ask the next night.

“Absolutely,” we said.

“He doin’ OK?” he’d ask the next night.

“He’s going to be just fine,” we said.

And then we would watch the show, and my father, who once could have recited the periodic table of elements backward, would stay quiet—except, every once in a while, when an answer came to him, an Alexander Fleming or a Krakatoa. I did not write it down, because there is only so much wonderful/terrible I can stomach, but once this summer, he knew the Final Jeopardy answer when no one else did—not the contestants, not my mother or I. And we said to ourselves: At least something is left, for now.

We have discovered that the milestones of the disease reveal themselves only in retrospect: We did not know that that would be the last family vacation until we returned from it, and my addled father, so worried that we would leave him behind wherever we went next, preemptively packed his old work suitcase with two clock radios, a pack of AA batteries, a landline telephone, and a jumble of cables. We do not know if this will be the last time he climbs the stairs on his own. We do not know if this time is the last time he will remember the dog’s name, or my name, or his own.

I do not know if Krakatoa or Alexander Fleming will be my father’s last Jeopardy answer. I hope it isn’t: I hope tonight, he has an answer that James and Emma do not. I do not know if this will be Alex Trebek’s last Tournament of Champions. I pray my mother and I were right when we assured my father that yes, absolutely, he is going to be fine. If Alzheimer’s has taught me anything, it is that there is relief in not looking forward, not looking back. We are here. Alex is here. We are all of us together, in our way, and what can we do but be thankful for it?

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NAMED FOR THE STORES of sandalwood incense that once perfumed its export docks, Hong Kong—that is, “fragrant harbor”—remains an intoxicating meeting place of East and West.

British forces raised the Union Jack over Possession Point in 1841 during the First Opium War, fought to protect the Queen’s trade of the narcotic. That flag would fly over the island for 156 years, until a ceremonial hand-off that saw the final British governor, Chris Patten, in tears, and reduced Prince Charles to angry diarist mode. “Appalling old waxworks,” he called the new Chinese masters.

Fourteen years since, Hong Kong remains an intriguing example of exuberant capitalism within a communist state. The dominant image of Hong Kong is its spectacular skyline; the enduring sentiment, the voracious urbanism that skyline evinces.

Among other superlatives, Hong Kong claims the highest percentage of residents living above 14 floors of any city. That skyline also attests to Hong Kong’s rapacious appetite for the new: Few examples of traditional Chinese or more recent colonial architecture stand outside of museums, while contemporary works by Norman Foster and I.M. Pei figure prominently.

The vertical cityscape belies the fact that around 40% of Hong Kong is official park land, with wildlife reserves holding Chinese porcupines, macaques, leopards and wild boar. It’s well appreciated from atop Victoria Peak, deservedly one of the city’s top attractions.

Hong Kong has long battled Shanghai and Singapore for the crown of Asia’s financial, cultural and tourism center. And while it’s maintaining front-runner status in those power realms, it’s also becoming a premier destination spot for adventurous foodies.

Hong Kong is unique in its democratic exaltation, with street vendor grills celebrated alongside a growing number of restaurants conceived by celebrity European chefs. As conundrums go, it’s a happy one—and best debated over a meal of barbecued pork buns at Tim Ho Wan, one of the least expensive Michelin-starred restaurants in the world. The common thread between these eateries is a tangible love of making food.

Trust the city to manage a poke at its competitors when possible: A spring-opening Ritz- Carlton hotel will feature the world’s highest infinity pool. As rivalries go, it’s a profitable one, at least for the guests lounging poolside, 118 floors above the earth’s surface. —Diane Vadino

The Fashion Insider: Carol Lim

New York-based co-founder of the Opening Ceremony brand (with partner Humberto Leon); frequent Hong Kong visitor

Twenties Revival // Lily and Bloom. The two-story Prohibition Era-inspired space is gorgeous. Upstairs is Lily, a cigar and whisky room. Downstairs is Bloom, a raw bar and brasserie. I particularly love their oyster selection. LKF Tower, 33 Wyndham St., lily-bloom.com

Late Bites // Tsui Wah Restaurant. For after-hours eating, this franchise location is the spot where all the night owls go for inexpensive, tasty food. My favorite dish is cheese-baked rice with crispy pork chops. 15-19 Wellington St., tsuiwahrestaurant.com

Two for the Road // Sevva and Feather Boa. Sevva’s great for fantastic skyline views. Feather Boa is more discreet; there’s no entrance sign at this late-19th-century salon that serves cocktails like “choco-straw martinis.” Sevva: Prince’s Building, 25th floor, 10 Chater Rd., sevva.hk; Feather Boa: 38 Staunton St., 852-2857-2586

Shopping Tour // Rise Commercial Building. This micro-mall features cool local designers, retro-jewelry and I can always find home accessories there. 5-11 Granville Circuit, Tsim Sha Tsui, off Granville Rd.

Show-Stopping Hotel // The Mandarin Oriental. It’s nothing short of spectacular. Its Clipper Lounge has one of the best high teas in the city and the Man Wah restaurant is gorgeous. 5 Connaught Rd., mandarinoriental.com/hongkong

The Architect: Daniel Libeskind

Designer of the Creative Media Centre for the City University of Hong Kong (opening this year)

Thrill Ride // The Star Ferry. Taking this scenic ride back and forth over the Victoria Harbour is cheap and as exciting as anything in “Casablanca” for the shifting perspectives of people and faces. 852-2367-7065, starferry.com.hk

Bank Job // HSBC Main Building. It was designed by Norman Foster, and was one of the most expensive bank buildings built in the ’80s. Its awe-inspiring lobby was designed with the help of feng shui consultants. It’s still breathtaking 26 years later. 1 Queen’s Rd. Central, 852-2822-1111

Loo with a View // Felix, in the Peninsula Hotel. The Philippe Starck-designed space is on the 28th floor—a feast of lights—and the men’s bathrooms have sculptural granite urinals that look out over Kowloon. Salisbury Rd., Kowloon, 852-2920-2888, peninsula.com

Cuisine Royale // Fook Lam Moon. This place has the best duck, and thousand-year-old eggs! It’s where you expect James Bond to walk in at any moment. 35-45 Johnston Rd., fooklammoon-grp.com

Cheap Eats // Lei Yuen Noodle and Congee Restaurant. Any hole-in-the-wall café works for excellent dim sum day or night—but this one’s a favorite. You can sit all day while having endless cups of Lapsang Souchong tea. 539 Lockhart Rd., 852-2832-4978

The Chef: Alain Ducasse

Michelin-starred chef and principal of Spoon by Alain Ducasse at the InterContinental Hotel, Hong Kong

Secret Ingredients // Yau Ma Tei. The city’s local food markets provide a unique insight into the Chinese culinary culture. There is no better place than this to discover all the ingredients used in cooking there. Reclamation St. and Waterloo Rd.

Precious Ceramics // Hong Kong Museum of Art and the Museum of Tea Ware. The museum has more than 15,000 Chinese art treasures, and the branch museum is the place to learn about the art of Chinese tea drinking, while having tea yourself. Hong Kong Museum: 10 Salisbury Rd., hk.art.museum; Tea Ware: 10 Cotton Tree Drive, 852-2869-0690

Shell Game // Tim Ho Wan. A new local restaurant, it serves delicious spicy dim sum, exclusively. It’s very small and extremely casual. Shop 8, 2-20 Kwong Wa St., 852-2332-2896

Sum Like It Hot // Tin Heung Lau. During fall’s hairy crab season, I enjoy this delicacy there the most. It serves classic Hangzhou cuisine from the Yangtze River Delta—like freshwater Longjing shrimp stir-fried with tea leaves and wine. 18C Austin Ave., 852-2366-2414

Final Frontiers // Hong Kong Space Museum.This planetarium dome is amazing, filled with spacecraft replicas. Through Feb. 28, the OMNIMAX theatre is showing “Under the Sea,” featuring bizarre sea creatures. 10 Salisbury Rd., hk.space.museum

The Restaurateur: Alan Lo

Co-owner of The Pawn, The Press Room, Classified and SML, all in Hong Kong

Barbecue Joint // Joy Hing Roasted Meat. Order a regular plate of char siu, which is a tad more expensive, but you get the best cut, and a rice bowl. Drizzle both with the signature sauce—divine. 265-267 Hennessy Rd., 852-2519-6639

Upper Crust // 208 Duecento Otto. Designed by Istanbul’s Autoban, this Italian restaurant has excellent cocktails and to-die-for Neopolitan pizzas. It’s favored by the fashionable Sheung Wan [neighborhood] set. 208 Hollywood Rd., 208.com.hk

Hitting the Links // 4 Wan Chai Market. It’s one of the only remaining street-level wet markets, as our city government is trying to move the stalls to indoor municipal buildings. It’s a must-go-to for items like Chinese dried-sausage and fresh eggs. Cross St. and Wan Chai Rd., 852-2572-6945

Sweet Sensations // Yiu Fung Store. They make everything from artistic fruit and confectioner creations to preserved “super” plums favored by the locals. I go for the lovely dried apricots. 3 Fu Ming St., Causeway Bay, yiufungstore.com

Creative Hub // Para/Site Art Space. This contemporary gallery, which opened in 1996, continues to showcase great upcoming and established artists. The political cartoonist Dan Perjovschi’s solo show just opened. 4 Po Yan St., para-site.org.hk

The post Hong Kong for the Wall Street Journal appeared first on Clips.

Not long ago, Iceland was a spectacularly beautiful but seldom visited wonderland of waterfalls, volcanoes, and geysers in the lonely North Atlantic, still finding its national feet after centuries of Danish and Norwegian rule. Then, an unlikely confluence of events: The economic crisis of 2008–09 turned the country upside down—and paradoxically made a once-prohibitively expensive destination affordable for visitors. A year later, the air traffic–halting eruptions of the Eyjafjallajökull volcano put Iceland, in all its geothermal splendor, on news broadcasts around the world. Now, the word is truly out—and the supremely photogenic country welcomes so many tourists—2.3 million in 2018—that visitors outnumber residents by a ratio of seven to one. How to find a place for yourself, away from the crowds? Make a break for the majestic north, where whales sidle up to sightseeing boats, and the aurora borealis can be viewed from the comfort of geothermally heated pools. Then cap things off with a day in the picturesque capital, Reykjavik, home to a world-class art and dining scene, dramatic seascapes, and a pretzel that’s frankly worth the trip itself. These days, the sun barely sets. The lupine is blooming. Paradise awaits.  By Diane Vadino. Photography by Adrienne Pitts

DAY 1
Tailing whales across Skjalfandi Bay

All is quiet, and all is magnificent. 

We have sailed west, into the center of Skjalfandi Bay. Everything around our ship—land, sea, sky—is some variation of gray, except for our full-length, cherry-red survival suits, which look like the gear crabbers wear during blizzards on Deadliest Catch. My seasick fellow passengers, unsteady on their feet, haul themselves to the guardrail and peer stoically into the distance. 

At first, the wildlife is limited to birds: gannets, Arctic terns, black guillemots with white patches on their wings. (Regrettably, it is the wrong time of year for puffins.) But we are not here for birds. All of us—I hear Japanese, French, English, German, Scandinavian languages that I can’t distinguish from each other—are here for whales. 

The whales cannot be trusted to appear on cue, our North Sailing guide says over the ship’s loudspeaker. We rely on their favor. This is the North Atlantic, not SeaWorld. 

And so we wait. I email my landlord, my boss, and a woman who wants to buy an antique pitcher from me. But then we hear it: a whale surfacing, blowing air through its spout, and all at once, it’s magical. (It sounds like a massive, wet pouf.) We hear it again. Then, suddenly, we see the source of the sound, as a slick black tail flips up and then down, into the water. Everyone on the boat rushes in the direction of the whale, slipping on the wet deck, jockeying for a place at the rail. The whale, a humpback, skims the surface in a desultory way before diving again. It’s soon trailed by a boat from a competing tour company, with the passengers who look exactly like us, except their suits are black and fluorescent yellow. At times the whale swims just below the surface, perhaps 50 feet from us and sinking fast, so that we can see only its massive outline. Another boat arrives, its passengers clad in neon orange. The boats follow the whales; sometimes we get the best view, sometimes another boat does. 

A rhythm establishes itself: tedium, the majesty of whales, tedium, the majesty of whales. The majesty, though, is cumulative: Before we turn and head back to the small port at the town of Húsavík, Iceland’s whale-watching capital, we have seen a dozen of them (or the same whale a dozen times; who can say for sure?), flipping and swimming and turning tail into the water. As we disembark, I feel strangely euphoric, enchanted. I want whales, everywhere, to be happy and safe.

In summary, my dominant impulse is not to eat them. I discover at the nearby Húsavík Whale Museum that not everyone shares this response. “People go on the tours, come into the museum, and ask where they can eat it,” says Garðar Þröstur Einarsson, a whale specialist and former guide. “Sixty percent of the minke whale meat in Iceland is eaten by tourists.” 

We’re surrounded by exhibits that testify to the immense humanity of whales. “That is bananas,” I reply. 

No restaurants in Húsavík serve whale meat—certainly not Naustið, with its bright, mid-century mariner design. What it does serve: potatoes and wild arctic char, caught that day in a lake named Kálfborgarárvatn. (When Naustið’s owner tells me the lake’s name, I simply write down “K-?????” in my notebook.) 

From there, I drive to the other end of Húsavík, to the GeoSea Geothermal Sea Baths, a brand-new pool complex perched on a cliff above the harbor. Pools are central to Iceland’s idea of itself—as primary to its national identity as pubs are to Britain or cafés are to France. (This is not my idea but author Alda Sigmundsdóttir’s.) The Blue Lagoon, a massive bathing complex near the international airport in Keflavik, is the best known, but it’s just one of many in towns large and small across the country. Of all those I visited, none are as beautiful as Húsavík’s.  

Or at least, I’m pretty sure they’re the most beautiful: By the time I get to the pools, it’s pitch-black. (It would be hard to imagine somewhere better to to view the Northern Lights, though the optimal viewing time is late September through March.) The air is cold, so I sit as low as I can in the naturally heated water. The Icelanders are less delicate, walking between the pool and the bar, picking up beers through a service window and drinking them leisurely. 

I have seen my fill of whales, but I know that it should be possible to hear them from the pool, so I stay in the water much too long, waiting for another of those spouting poufs.

DAY 2
A pair of waterfalls and Iceland’s biggest toy box

I’ve been to Iceland several times before, but like many visitors, I stayed in and around the capital, Reykjavík, exploring only as far as the Golden Circle. The attractions on this well-worn circuit—Þingvellir National Park, the Gullfoss waterfall, Geysir—are spectacular. They are also very, very popular, meaning that they are in some ways victims of their own exceptional success. 

So, instead, today I’ve decided to embark on a self-drive version of the north’s equivalent of the Golden Circle: the Diamond Circle tour. (There is also a Silver Circle tour, near Reykjavík; Iceland will run out of gem names before it runs out of scenic excursion possibilities.) To see as much today as I want to, I leave at 6:30 a.m., before anything (including Húsavík’s bakeries) are open. 

My first stop is a 50-mile drive that meanders north (and then south) to Dettifoss, Europe’s most powerful waterfall by volume and the setting for the opening scene in Ridley Scott’s Prometheus. It is staggering, monumental. From there, I head south to the Ring Road, which circles the entire island: If I turn east, and go about 500 miles, I’ll hit Reykjavík. I go west, though, to Mývatn, a wild expanse of a lake that looks broody and Scottish when the sun goes behind the clouds and like a sparkling turquoise field when it comes out. My third stop is Goðafoss, another waterfall. It’s more approachable than Dettifoss—literally, in that it seems less like the sort of thing you fall into by accident, never to be seen again. All things being equal, I prefer Goðafoss (pretty) to Dettifoss (existential). 

My fourth stop is the reason for my non-leisurely pace: Deplar Farm, an unassuming yet beyond-beautiful hotel in the Fljót Valley that’s a magnet for the sort of celebrity or finance executive who would be drawn to no-expense-spared vacations. “You’re going to Deplar!” a guide I meet at Mývatn exclaims when I share my itinerary. “They’ve got the biggest toy box in the country.” Justin Timberlake, he adds, is a fan. 

I don’t understand what “toy box” means until a couple of hours later, when I see it while trailing behind my guide, a mountaineer/artist named Thorlakur Ingolfsson. He goes by Laki, which is pronounced like Loki, the god/Avenger. (Tom Hiddleston has some serious competition.) Each guest at Deplar is paired with a guide, and I am lucky to have Laki, who is excellent company, as mine. The lodge offers a huge variety of activities, from helicopter skiing in the winter to salmon fishing and kayaking the nearby fjord in warmer months. Equipment for all of these activities is stored in the “toy box,” a hut stocked with snowmobiles, hiking boots, snowshoes—anything you might need for expeditions big and small. 

Due to my depleted physical state—so much driving!—we opt for an easy hike into the surrounding hills, followed by a very late lunch of locally caught salmon with lentils and beets at the property’s Ghost Farm. This gives us plenty of time to discuss the best way to travel through Iceland. “The weather has such a huge impact on what you’re able to do here,” Laki says. “Really, the thing to do is check the weather in the morning and go where it’s good.” That’s easy, I say, if you’re not coming from far away, and if you didn’t have to make hotel reservations six months in advance. “If you can, being flexible is better,” he replies. “Imagine the sort of adventure you’d have if you just rent a car and follow the weather, if you truly go and explore a world that’s beautiful, pristine.” I can imagine it. 

Afterward, there is yoga, and a massage, and the opportunity to soak in an outdoor pool. (Clouds scupper my northern lights ambitions.) Dinner is served at 9 by chef Garðar Garðarsson, and it is tremendous: beef medallions with beetroots, followed by a port that insists I turn into bed early. 

One last thing to do, though: I’ve stayed in hotels all over the world, and Deplar just might be the best. Before I fall asleep, I send imploring emails to my friends, with pictures of the property—even in an all-day mist, with low, gray clouds, it is beautiful—asking them to come back with me.

DAY 3
Reykjavík from land and sky 

In the morning, I leave Deplar Farm with regret, after a breakfast of delicious, crepe-like Icelandic pancakes with powdered sugar and berries. From here, it’s either a tidy helicopter ride or a straightforward drive to Reykjavik. Not being Justin Timberlake, I opt for the latter: a five-hour trek I make under sullen skies. Even without any sunshine, the scenery is dizzyingly beautiful; I have to fight the impulse to pull over and take photos at every turn.  

Reykjavík is so compact that it’s easy to see a lot, fast. I begin with the city’s most distinctive landmark: Hallgrímskirkja, which looks somehow both Art Deco and ancient and isn’t even 75 years old. The exterior is striking—it looks a fighter jet tipped on its bottom or, equally, where elves might worship in a Tolkein book—while the interior resembles the Lutheran churches of my childhood (read: like a Marriott ballroom). It’s well worth the wait to go to the observation tower: At 240 feet, it offers superb, 360-degree views of Reykjavík, the harbor, and the mountains to the north. 

Two hundred miles of driving followed by some intense church viewing mean that I’m both (a) ready for a walk and (b) starving — so I head toward Grandi—a once-industrial, now-up-and-coming area by the harbor that’s home to a popular ice cream spot, Valdís, and the city’s buzziest brunch, at the Coocoo’s Nest. I’m bound for Kaffivagninn, the city’s oldest restaurant. Having sampled a fair assortment of Reykjavik’s fish and chips, these might be my favorite: crisp fries, lightly battered cod with three accompanying sauces (remoulade, mustard sauce, and cocktail sauce). 

Sufficiently reenergized, I head to my second stop in Grandi: Studio Olafur Eliasson. If you don’t know Eliasson’s name, you may know his work: He installed waterfalls that seemed to hover 100 feet above New York City’s East River in 2008—and, later, above the Grand Canal at the Palace of Versailles. He is also the author of my favorite book about Iceland, a collection of 35 images, submitted by Icelanders, of their cars stuck in rivers (title: Cars in Rivers), and the designer of the glass facade at Harpa, Reykjavík’s opera house. 

The studio, which is open to the public, is at Marshall House, a former fish factory. I wander past Eliasson’s works, including Untitled (Spiral), a tall spiral of metal spinning up (or down), and then I see the artist himself. (In case you couldn’t tell, I’m a fan.) I know it makes sense, that an artist would be working in his own studio—and would be involved, it seems, with the taking down of one installation or the set-up of another—but it is too great. I stop, and stare, and then run away as quickly as I can, before anyone catches me staring. 

I have one more stop in Reykjavik: Brauð & Co., which makes pretzels that might be the finest anywhere in the world. I buy three (one for now, one for the very near future, one I will save for a post-dinner snack) and head to the heliport. The weather has cleared, and the sky is cloudless for my flight with Reykjavik Helicopters, which I share with a British mother and her teenage daughter. We fly from the city to a geothermal area, with burbling hot pots and steam vents. Sheep cling to the side of a hill, undoubtedly enjoying the warmth: It’s like standing above a laundry vent, except it smells of sulphur instead of fabric softener. The Brits and I trade travel suggestions (and seats on the way back, so that both the daughter and I have a chance to sit in the front, next to the pilot, an Austrian who trained in Oregon). They report particular enthusiasm for their northern lights tour. “We saw them the first night, and it was nothing special,” the mother says. “But the second night—truly one of the most wonderful things I’ve ever seen.” They show me an app that provides a positive forecast for tonight’s aurora: Like the whales, the northern lights might appear. Or, they might not.

 As we fly back to Reykjavík, we agree that it’s all spectacular: the lakes and mountains, the Eyjafjallajökull volcano in the distance. But is this more spectacular than the whales? The cliffside pools? The continent’s most powerful waterfall? The other, less obviously murderous waterfall? The sheep, the hotel, the view from Hallgrímskirkja? If there is a problem with Iceland, it’s that the spectacular becomes everyday. (Confession: I spend the last 10 minutes of our time at this geothermal area, one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen, playing Candy Crush.) Can you burn out on natural beauty? Is there a point when too much is too much?

As it turns out, I might be at that point. I head to the Retreat, the new five-star hotel attached to the Blue Lagoon, which offers a more exclusive experience of this exceptionally popular attraction. In the pool, I watch an Instagram influencer do a photoshoot, surely a daily occurrence here. Another vote for north Iceland! At this point, I take my directions from the hotel’s name and retreat to my room—specifically, to the tub that’s positioned in front of floor-to-ceiling windows and the shockingly turquoise water outside—before heading to chef Ingi Þórarinn Friðriksson’s showcase restaurant, Moss. My favorite dish is made up of scallops set in a shell on a bed of actual snow. Nothing could be prettier, or tastier.  

It’s about time for bed, but first, I take I look outside for the aurora. When I don’t see it, I feel not disappointment but relief. At a certain point, so much beauty feels immoderate. Also, it’s good to have one more reason—besides the whales and the volcanoes and the puffins and the quiet—to come back. 

SIDEBAR: Pool Etiquette 

Of the wide array of Icelandic souvenirs—from the ubiquitous wool sweaters to every iteration of puffin memorabilia—none will offer a window onto the national psyche like Alda Sigmundsdóttir’s The Little Book of the Icelanders, a collection of essays on local sensibilities. If you heed just one of her advisories, let it be this: Before entering a public pool, take a shower. (No clothes. Not optional.) “You need to shower, naked, at the pool, before going in,” she says. “It sounds kind of facetious and silly, but not showering really does upset the local population.” Swimming pools, Sigmundsdóttir says, are crucial to the culture—and their customs must be respected. “You have to shower very thoroughly,” she says. “It’s not where you just don’t look at the next person and sort of move on.”

WHERE TO STAY

The Retreat at Blue Lagoon
The minimalist 62-suite Retreat opened last year, offering a super-exclusive experience of the popular geothermal dayspa. Retreat guests can enter the adjoining Blue Lagoon, but Blue Lagoon day-trippers have no similar access to the Retreat, where every angle reveals an Instagram-ready vista of the turquoise, mineral-rich water or the surrounding lava field. The staff, four restaurants, and spa treatment options are all top notch. From $1,210, bluelagoon.com

Alda Hotel, Reykjavík
Ideally located on Laugavegur street, surrounded by the city’s best shopping and restaurants, Alda is within easy walking distance of all of Reykjavík’s attractions. In addition to the spacious rooms, this boutique property offers a sauna and outdoor hot tub, plus three buzzing spots on the ground floor: a design-y lounge, the busy Brass restaurant, and a hip, award-winning barber shop (book a cut in advance). From $135, aldahotel.is

 Hotel Berg, Keflavík
Well over 90 percent of foreign visitors arrive in Iceland through Keflavík, home to the international airport, but few stick around to explore the surrounding Reykjanes Peninsula beyond the Blue Lagoon. Ease your arrival into Iceland by staying nearish the airport at the super-stylish Hotel Berg, which offers a rooftop pool (ideal for northern lights viewing), free airport transfers, and a master class in Scandi-chic. From $145, hotelberg.is

On the Cover
At Deplar Farm, a luxurious resort on the remote Troll Peninsula in Northern Iceland, experience is the keyword. The 13 rooms in the farmhouse-chic, turf-roofed lodge are cozy, but visitors will spend most of their time outdoors taking advantage of the myriad included activities: heli-skiing and fat tire snow biking in winter, fly fishing and horseback riding in summer. Less demanding options include alternating between the cold-plunge pool and the geothermal pool—ideally under the northern lights. elevenexperience.com

Have nine perfect days to spend in Iceland? Circumnavigate the country on Hurtigruten’s expedition voyage, and explore every aspect of the wild and alien landscape, from the western fjords and northern volcanic lakes to picturesque coastal towns like Bakkagerdi,  where locals will tell you tales of elves and trolls. Onboard, enjoy in-depth biology lectures and even a photography workshop (gotta get that whale breaching shot!) along with locally-sourced meals. There’s also outdoor hot tubs and a sauna—this is Iceland, after all. From $4,444, hurtigruten.com

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