5
Location: Húsavík
Today everyone woke up to a warm and hearty breakfast of eggs, potatoes, and breakfast conversation. After breakfast we all prepared for a day of volunteer work that consisted of planting and fertilizing birch tree saplings. The intent of this project is to restore some of Iceland’s now barren forests to their former glory. Around 9 in the morning the bus picked us up to take us to our working spot for the day, 130,000 hectares of land belonging to a man named Dadi Fridriksson whose family has owned and worked to restore the land since his great grandfather. We were quickly assigned partners and began planting and fertilizing birch saplings for about an hour and a half before we stopped for lunch. Lunch consisted of homemade sandwiches, leftover curry and a hike up a nearby inactive volcano, followed by another hour of tree planting. For dinner my sous chefs, Max G, Maurits, Patrick, and I made pizza dough and chopped onions, peppers, garlic and tomatoes to create a fantastic vegetable pizza which was soon devoured by 12 equally hungry teenagers and our two counselors. At the time of writing this, a couple of us are going through photos of the past four days and I couldn’t pick a better way to end the day.
Maxwell Hudgins