Iceland's landscape is ever-changing, whether on the scale of millennia or of minutes. Sea cliffs jut toward the sky, a mile inland, on the southern coast. Volcanic black sand coats sparkling ice diamonds, calved off one of the country's 269 glaciers (11 percent of the nation's landmass is covered in ice). And geysers spurt steam out of the moss-covered ground six times per hour, reminding you to watch your step.
I spent a month traveling the country in the dead of winter, reporting on the hardy people who call this country home. I weathered sudden winter storms in vans, while reporting on a contingent of Icelandic mink hunters on the Snaefellsnes peninsula, sampled fermented Greenlandic shark in Arnarstapi (a mistake), and visited with the nation's glacier guardians at the Icelandic Meteorological offices in Reykjavik.