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.

The post The Highpointers for United’s Hemispheres 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

The post Hemispheres Magazine Iceland Cover Story appeared first on Clips.

Baden Baden for United’s Hemispheres: Ten weeks to the day before I arrive in Baden-Baden, I learn my father has a terminal, terrible disease. Two days after that, I am asked to move out of my apartment in Paris posthaste (“Four weeks, six, we can be flexible”) to make way for my landlord’s son, about to commit his own Brexit from London and return home to France. Three weeks after that, I am laid off from the job that provides my health insurance, which had, miraculously, uniquely, covered the $5,000-a-month drug I take to control the growth of a tumor lodged next to my brain. 

What can you do? What could I do? 

I weep. I listen to the saddest songs from my favorite musicals on repeat and at great volume, no longer concerned with currying the favor of my neighbors. (Now we all know the words to “Sonja Alone.”) I apply for new jobs and new apartments. I stop hoping bad things will stop happening, which, strangely, is calming. 

And then, two months after the start of this cascading series of calamitous events, I check into my room at Brenners Park-Hotel & Spa. 

Because it is too dark by the time I arrive to see the gardens or the River Oos outside, I take a series of photos of an astoundingly ruffled canopy bed and then set off, in my slippers, to find the hotel’s sauna. I enter the hot, dry space alone, in my bikini, though this will be the only time I do so on this trip: In a hotel, especially a hotel like this, a courteous guest can proceed as she pleases. In the public saunas and baths I will visit over the next few days, nudity will be not only permitted but required. 

It is Monday night. 

Baden, with the mineral-rich thermal waters that seep up through its 12 hot springs, has served, for millennia, as the healing place of choice for Roman soldiers, at least three emperors, a bevy of canonical Russian writers, Bill Clinton, and Mark Twain, who wrote, in A Tramp Abroad, that he had left his rheumatism in the soothing baths of the Friedrichsbad. (“Baden-Baden is welcome to it. It was little but it was all I had to give.”) 

Is it too much to ask a spa town to fix my life by Thursday morning? 

* * * 

Baden-Baden has been a favored destination of ailing European royals since it was known as “Acquae” (“Waters”) to the Roman soldiers garrisoned at Argentoratum, now known as Strasbourg, 26 miles southwest. The Emperor Caracalla, who not coincidentally constructed the second-largest bathing complex in ancient Rome, visited here in the third century, hoping for relief from his gout; grateful for his rehabilitation, he provided new marble fixtures for the city’s imperial bath. Baden-Baden — the name indicates the city of Baden in the region of Baden, like New York-New York — recedes into history over the next 1000 years, as local nobles committed various acts of battle and siege. In 1473, Holy Roman Emperor Frederick III, a.k.a. Frederick the Fat, combined business and pleasure here with a princes’ assembly and extended cure. Catastrophe was averted in the 16th century, when Baden alone was left “miraculously preserved,” according to Charles Francis Coghlan in The Beauties of Baden, as surrounding cities fell to plague: In Baden, “all the hot springs had been let run through the streets, and it is very possible that the vapor rising from these salutary waters purified the atmosphere, and thus arrested the progress of the scourge.” 

Its modern revival would not come for another 250 years, with the construction of a racetrack and casino for the 19th century’s one-percent, as well as a propitious marriage: Princess Louise of Baden to Alexander of House Romanov — and their elevation, in 1801, to czarina and czar. (Propitious for Baden-Baden, anyway: Much to the displeasure of Catherine the Great, her grandson’s marriage produced only two girls, both of whom died in childhood.) When Louise — newly christened Elizabeth Alexeievna, Empress of Russia — made her annual trips home from St. Petersburg, a retinue of hundreds accompanied her, and in its wake came the authors who would provide the city with its still-evident sheen of literary luster: Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and Ivan Turgenev. Dostoyevsky sold The Gambler to settle debts he incurred at the town’s casinos. Turgenev lived in Baden for seven years, sharing a villa with his lover and her husband; he detailed the “green trees, the bright houses of the gay city,” in his novel Smoke. For his part, Tolstoy tersely recorded “Roulette to six in the evening. Lost everything” in his diary on July 14, 1857. 

Nineteenth-century French journalist Eugene Guinot, an enthusiastic chronicler of this transcontinental beau monde, pronounced the city Europe’s summer capital. (Paris, with its balls and débuts, was its winter opposite.) “Where shall we go? Observe that this question is nearly always answered before it is put: ‘Where shall we go?’ means ‘We will go to the spas,’” he wrote in A Summer in Baden. “But what spas do you choose? Fashion has issued her decree, and among all the watering-places she has chosen Baden as her favorite abode.” 

Though fashion, and millennial jetsetters, may now look elsewhere for their summer haven, Baden has retained much of its Old World, new-/old-/all-money cachet. Brenner’s alone has hosted Dalai Lama, Barack Obama, Queen Silvia of Sweden, Posh Spice, Clinton (a repeat guest), and thousands of others seeking a respite from rheumatism and gout, old age and ill luck, bad news and lost jobs. 

* * * 

My first stop on Tuesday morning is the Caracalla Therme, named for the gout-stricken Roman. This is a modern complex, with a tremendous indoor pool encircled by a two-story facade of floor-to-ceiling windows. Thermal waters bubble up through strategically positioned jets, allowing bathers myriad options for pinpoint pressure. 

I cannot stop thinking of the episode of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia that ends with Mac massaging his bottom on a pool filter. 

Set on finding my own space, I am drawn to a large stone fountain in the middle of the pool, which sprays water in a ring around it: I am close enough to be splattered by the drops. Maybe if I duck under the ring, I think, I will have the heightened satisfaction of being next to the fountain without actually being sprayed by it. Because I am here to achieve if not a cure than the perspective to better understand my own troubles, I try to align my situation with a larger idea: Perhaps the best way to deal with disruption is not to shy away from it, but to get as close to it as possible, to seek shelter in the eye of the hurricane/fountain. 

Are you my metaphor? I think. 

I dive down, intending to scoot under the ring of splattering water, imagining I will pop up on the other side of it, beneath the canopy of spray. Instead, I smack my hands against a stone wall, invisible from above the surface, which apparently protects the fountain from people like me, planning to cling to it. 

I turn around, duck my head under water, and glide back to the steps.

* * * 

It’s OK because here’s the thing: I’m not here for the pool. 

I am here for the saunas. 

At Caracalla, a separate sauna complex includes a forest sauna (200 degrees Fahrenheit), fire sauna (185 degrees), a steam bath (115 degrees, 100 percent humidity), the meditation sauna (150 degrees, with bird sounds), the intriguingly/terrifyingly named Spectaculum (190 degrees), and more. My goal is to try all of them. 

The saunas are several flights of stairs above the pool. It is not clothing optional. It is no-clothing non-optional. I am flummoxed by this for a minute — not because of the prohibition per se, but because I cannot decide where, precisely, to remove my bikini. Being naked is one thing; becoming naked seems to be another, more private condition. I timidly open the door to the complex, sticking my head in far enough to see: The coast is clear. I scamper in, marching purposefully to the closest thing resembling a nook, a corner between a shower stall and a hallway. 

Once undressed, I hang my bikini on pegs and wrap myself loosely in a towel — increasingly loosely as I study my fellow spa-goers as they circulate between saunas. (I am trying not to look like I am leering, which has the effect of making me look both leering and furtive.) One woman wears her towel like a cape, covering only her shoulders.

My grip on my own towel further loosens. 

I hop from sauna to sauna, never staying too long in one, eager to move on to the next. (You are my metaphor, I think.) In the vitality sauna, a woman with ash-blond hair, perhaps my mother’s age, nods to me and points to her own towel, which she has arranged so that she sits on one end of it and her feet, on the next step down, rest on the other. Her towel is positioned like the runner on a two-step staircase; I have spread out mine below me, American beach-style. I adjust my towel accordingly. 

From this protected position behind tinted windows, I watch the sauna-goers: No one can see you leering in the dark. Or not leering, exactly — but I am curious, about the comfort that surrounds me, and all the different sorts of bodies on view. The most explicit reminders of the no-clothing policy affixed to the complex walls were written in English — a reflection, surely, of the fact that we Americans are so unaccustomed to stripping off in public, and of doing so in a non-sexualized way. Before coming, I had read through dozens of online posts detailing the concerns of prospective visitors and the encouragement of veterans (“Not a fraternity party by any means!” “Relax and go naked!” “For those reviewers who complain about people staring…….get over it. You are in a spa with many naked males and females.”) I wish I could show them, my fellow Americans, not just the ordinariness of these bodies but the tedium of their nakedness. How much happier would we be, how much less desperate, if we realized how much our bodies looked like everyone else’s? 

I conclude my visit in the aroma sauna (today’s scent: rose) and then endure a cold-water shower for as long as I can. When I leave, my skin is clear. My cheeks are rosy. On the way back to the hotel, I pass the famous, tourist-favorite Café Konig, and buy a cellophane bag of almond cookies, most of which I eat by the time I hold my electronic room key to the door. 

* * * 

I have lunch in Brenners’ Wintergarten restaurant with Bärbel Göhner, the hotel’s head of PR. Usually these meals, a required element in covering a hotel like this, are interminable rituals of mutual obligation. Bärbel, though, is the exception to prove the rule, and marvelous company. I am ignorant about most local customs and delighted as she explains the meaning of “kaffee und kuchen,” the afternoon practice of coffee and cake. (We also discuss recycling, veganism, the politics of the 2013 Matt Damon film Elysium, and the inability of American spa-goers to cultivate relaxation without the first, necessary step of physical exhaustion — running, hiking, cycling — unlike European guests, who begin, and finish, by doing as little as possible.) 

Bärbel details the amenities of the rooms in the adjoining Villa Stephanie, the 15-bed, spa-centric addition to Brenners. One of them is a “digital detox switch” that not only forces guests to power off their phones at night — this is child’s play — but eliminates wifi signals and other electronic effluvia from the environment.  

I do not tell her that I have taken to sleeping with my phone under my pillow, ever alert for the next, inevitable crisis, or the undoubtedly related fact that I cannot now remember the last time I slept the night through. 

* * * 

Many hours later, I wake up from a nightmare, convinced my bed’s canopy is about to collapse. In the morning, I discover my laptop and books all piled neatly on a bedside table, where, in my half-dream state, I had believed they would be safe from the crash. 

* * * 

On Wednesday I awake and slide back into my slippers: I have an appointment with a massage therapist for a body treatment. 

I had been hoping to schedule an appointment with the hotel’s renowned shiatsu therapist, Pierre Clavreux, who is, sadly, unavailable. (Another high-profile staff member, European kickboxing champion Henri Charlet, offers sessions on martial arts and mental training.) I like cheap, intrusive massages — more function, less luxuriating — but as the massage therapist slathers my body in algae, my stomach begins to quiver. It is not sexual. It is not muscular. It is just … something else. It is so unusual, so unexpected, that I almost look back at the therapist as if to say: Did you just see that? 

I feel like strange, injured things are being pulled from my body, like a literal form of physical therapy. 

* * * 

After my massage, I have one more destination: Friedrichsbad, the historic bathing complex where Mark Twain sought treatment for his rheumatism. He was less enthralled with the city than his Russian counterparts. “It is an inane town, filled with sham, and petty fraud, and snobbery, but the baths are good,” he wrote in A Tramp Abroad. “The appointments of the place are so luxurious, the benefit so marked, the price so moderate, and the insults so sure, that you very soon find yourself adoring the Friederichsbad and infesting it.”

My position is rather opposite of Twain’s. After two days of exploration, I am hugely enamoured of Baden-Baden, with its pastel-colored city center and noteworthy architecture, including the Richard Meier-designed Frieder Burda Museum, devoted to contemporary art, and Friedrich Weinbrenner’s neoclassical Kurhaus. Unlike Twain, who complained that Baden shopkeeper “swindles you if he can, and insults you whether he succeeds in swindling you or not,” I have found them to be friendly and forthcoming. When I stop in a bookstore to search for an English-language history of the city, a clerk says none are available. Why not? “Because I do not think anyone would be interested,” she says. 

Similarly, Friedrichsbad is not quite the luxurious bathing palace Twain describes. Some rooms are as beautiful as the building’s 19th-century exterior. Others feel industrial, as if a very large high school’s gym had been repurposed as a spa, with unflattering lighting and few evident frills — perhaps reflective of the democratic entrance fee of just €25, without massage. 

I have come for the 12-step Roman-Irish bath, a proscribed procession through various steam rooms, showers, and soaking tubs. “You understand you will not be wearing any clothing,” the receptionist warns me. 

“Of course,” I say, because I am now a veteran of such things. 

We begin with a shower. I am worried at first that the water pressure will be too low, or the water too tepid — but I realize as soon as the torrent of water hits my head that this is what they do; this is their one thing, and it is perfect. The water temperature is controlled by a long bar, allowing a high degree of precision. Except for the soap, which is dispensed from a utilitarian metal box that looks like it has been stolen from a gas station, it may be the best shower I have ever had. 

From the shower, guests move to the second room, heated but not hot, where we are left to recline on wooden lounges. 

I think about what Bärbel said, about how Americans believe the best solution for exhaustion is more action, which inevitably leads to more exhaustion, and a need for more action. 

After 10 peaceful minutes in this warm, calm space, I move on, and on, through the rooms. 

As I do, I realize that the receptionist’s warning was, in fact, warranted: Caracalla was naked but Friedrichsbad is naked. At Caracalla, guests had moved expeditiously between saunas, where they sat in the darkness, on their precisely situated towels. Here, under the cool, artificial light, we follow each other, at more or less the same tempo, from steam room to hot bath to whirlpool to cool bath. The male-female ratio — which at Caracalla seemed roughly 50/50 — is upended. At one point I count, and there are eight men for each of the two women in the room. I am not uncomfortable. I do feel outnumbered. (This is easily avoided; I have come on a mixed-gender day; other times are reserved for men or for women.) 

Toward the end, I find myself hurrying through the pools. At the end, I spend a long time under the shower. 

On the way back to the hotel, although it is late, I stop, again, at Café Konig — if not for kaffee und kuchen precisely, then for a watery hot chocolate and a slice of Black Forest cake.

* * * 

The next morning, I pack my things. My time in Baden-Baden has been a worthy distraction while things in the outside world have continued apace. I still need a new job, and new health insurance, but my landlord has shown signs of wavering; perhaps his son will not be returning from London after all. (Only a profound sense of relief keeps me from wondering what, exactly, has transpired here.) 

My father’s prognosis — which is, after all, the only one of these small apocalypses that matters — is unchanged.

I did not expect miracles from my stay in Baden-Baden, but I nonetheless feel as if some strange exorcism has begun. I wonder if Baden-Baden has done what it could, as quickly as possible, and if healing can now happen by half-life: if my time here has begun a process of renewal, and the ever-smaller steps will be left to me to climb.

I am home in Paris in time for dinner.

I make do without caffeine. I leave my phone plugged into an outlet in my kitchen instead of the one next to my bed. 

For the first time in months, I sleep until morning. 

The next day, I tell my friends about this miraculous occurrence, and they are nonplussed: “You didn’t need to go all the way to Germany for that!” 

She might not have, I tell her. But I did. 

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