Midges. A Waterfall. Friends at the Fence.

Some days Iceland hands you everything at once. The good, the beautiful, and the biting.

Let's talk about the midges first, because they will not be ignored — that's kind of their whole thing. They come up out of the grass in clouds. They find your eyes, your ears, the back of your neck. They do not read the room. You wave. You blink. You keep riding. There is no winning out here, only continuing.

Glytja would have thoughts about the midges. None of them polite.

And then, the way Iceland does, it makes it up to you. A waterfall opens out of all that green — loud, cold, throwing spray sideways into the wind — the kind of beautiful that makes you forget your own face for a minute. You stop. You look. The bugs are still there. You just stop caring quite so much.

But the best part came from the horses on the other side of the fence. As we rode past, a whole crew of them came thundering up to the line to see who we were — manes flying, absolutely certain they belonged in whatever we had going on. Curious. Nosy. In. That's the pull of the herd. You feel it even through a fence, even between strangers. Nobody wants to be left out of the moving thing.

Bitten, misted by a waterfall, grinning anyway. That's the trek.

More from Iceland soon. The herd back home is waiting for the rest of the story too.

Boss Mare. She doesn't ask twice.