Alien Landing in Reykjavik

[Series. Melting Point: Planet Iceland] Vol. 1 - Alien Landing in Reykjavik

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The Ominous Night Flight

Two passengers. Four crew.

It was a night flight from the UK, in the dead of the off-season.

Silence hung heavy in the cabin. The only passengers were myself and one stranger.

A bizarre ratio: more crew than travelers.

The drone of the engine filled the void, and the flight attendant’s question—“More coffee?”—echoed as if in an empty canyon.

I should have known then.

Iceland, in the season abandoned by tourists, is not just a destination. It is a passage to another planet.

The wheels touched down in Reykjavik at 2 AM.

Stepping off the limousine bus, the first welcome was a sharp slap of blizzard across my cheek.

What used to be roads had long vanished under the drifts.

I dragged my spinning suitcase through the alleyways toward the hostel.

The world was entirely white; the streetlamps, the only warmth.

I felt like an astronaut crash-landed on a non-Earth entity. Exactly that.

Feet sinking into the deep snow below, face cutting through the blizzard above, I pushed on.

“Volunteer, and You Shall See the Aurora”

My reason for choosing this struggle was singular: Aurora Hunting.

“If you join this environmental workcamp, they chase the aurora every night.”

That one sentence from a friend captivated me.

The words “environmental protection” didn’t even register.

To me, this workcamp was just a budget package to snap aurora photos in expensive Iceland.

Take photos, hang out, and get volunteer hours? absolute bargain.

It was with this light heart—or to be honest, this thoroughly transactional calculation—that I signed up.

A Gloomy Morning, An Awkward Bus

The next morning, I went to the meeting point. It was late morning, yet the sky remained pitch black.

‘So this is a winter morning at high latitude...’

I walked the slushy streets of Reykjavik.

Roads that were indistinguishable under snow just hours ago had been cleared by some invisible hand overnight.

In the darkness, strangers gathered one by one.

France, Netherlands, Mexico, Japan... We exchanged awkward greetings through puffing breaths.

“Hi... Cold, huh?”

Some came for a gap year, others truly to save the environment. But climbing onto the bus with sleep still in our eyes, we all wore the same expression.

A city buried in snow. A biting cold. The flushed look of people who feel they have landed on an alien planet where anything could happen.

I didn’t know then that something entirely unexpected—not the aurora—was about to pour down on me.

A Letter from the Past

Perlan Museum, atop a hill in Reykjavik.

The camp leader shepherded us into its massive dome.

Wandering through the exhibits, he stopped us in front of a monument.

A slab of ice standing like a tombstone.

And below it, a simple inscription—was it a lesson, or a curse?

Ok is the first Icelandic glacier to lose its status as a glacier.

I read the sentence blankly. I read it again.

I thought I was here for tips on photographing the aurora, and suddenly, I am handed a glacier’s obituary.

In the next 200 years all our glaciers are expected to follow the same path.

It sounded like a prophecy delivered with terrifying certainty.

The stone spoke calmly, but its final line seemed to stare directly at me.

Only you know if we did it.

My heart sank with a thud.

I came to hunt the aurora with a light heart, but instead, I felt I had stepped into a massive trap.

Melting Point: Planet Iceland

That’s when I realized.

Why the name “Aurora Hunting” was tucked inside a volunteer “Workcamp.”

Why the first destination was not a scenic vista, but an archive of a death sentence.

The view outside the bus window began to look different.

Not a beautiful snowy field, but a colossal frontier that is melting away.

I adjusted my grip on the camera—the one I had brought with such high hopes of capturing the lights.

I had a premonition that this trip would flow in a direction entirely different from what I had imagined.

The fact that there were only two passengers on that plane... I realized too late, was a foreshadowing.

🌎Micro-Mission: A Small Act for Earth

As ‘Ok’ warned us, in order to stop another glacier from melting, why not embrace a small inconvenience just for today?

• Walk short distances.
• Take public transportation.
• Take the stairs instead of the elevator for lower floors.
• Turn off the heating before going out.
• Unplug one unused device before bed.

The small inconvenience you endure today might just slow down the speed at which the glaciers melt.

Click the link below to verify your action ⬇️

[❄️Mission Complete! Verify Here]

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