Note from Iceland by David Gilmour

Dear Woonians, In the Faroe Islands, the Streymoy Island capital town of Torshavn, I have been fascinated by a small river that runs like a rushing, babbling brook through the town from high in the hills. Locals give directions to various places by its course, naming it simply the little river; it runs like one and has noisy falls down basalt rocks in places. The splash of narrow cataracts is prominent in one area particularly, the City Park. Built for people to experience a woods on a treeless island, the planners shaped the arboretum around the brook. It is magical, an Arcadian coppice, thickets among ferns and sprawling deciduous trees, the canopy merely feet above the wanderer’s head with leaves dripping from recent rain showers. The paths are likely damp and soft underfoot with perambulator tracks marking the course of nannies’ walks with infants, who so early in their sensory life can enjoy nature’s ambient sounds: the aviary of twittering, clacking, cawing and whistling birds, the little river babbling and hissing beneath the ferns, and friendly engaging gossip of nannies’ crossing paths in the maze of trails, which are steep from the incline of the escarpment the park was planted on. If any of you know the experience of Tacoma’s Pt. Defiance Park, similarly riven with damp trails hammered down to rocks and roots from years of runners and tramping hikers, this island’s version of it has the advantage of the waterway. Having spent time meandering along the maze of paths, encountering a statue of a nixie maiden or the memorial to local fishermen lost to U-boats in WWll, or sitting by a bridge when it isn’t raining, taking in the birdsong, my destination is the Faroe Islands National Art Gallery, situated at the north end of the park. Here I might reference Seattle’s Volunteer Park and its art museum and botanical conservatory, but they are in plain view and the road through it with parked cars and the lawns with scads of picnicking families often make it a people’s crowded commons. The Torshavn park with its gallery secreted in the woods is like a maze, barely frequented even now in tourist season; and so I am able to enjoy it like one of Theocritos’ shepherds, expecting to hear Pan piping around a corner. The gallery, once discovered, is a must see for art lovers. On one occasion, I had a private viewing of the collection, no other soul had arrived. The attendants did not want to engage about the exhibition, and the coffee server looked shocked when I asked how she liked the collection. With no one to discuss the art, I felt some slight disappointment. I asked if people, especially tourists, know how to get here, given the maze test for entry. A shrug of the shoulders was my response. OK, this wasn’t my only visit.Back to the idyl and the Enchanting Brook and Koon’s admonition to “Look Beyond.” My host, whose bnb house I presently stay in, told me about his boyhood years paddling in the town’s little river and being cautioned by his mother not to pick the watercress or bring frogs home. He and his friends spent long hours in the summer playing and splashing in the cool stream. Sometime lieing down in it and having it stream over them. Later he learned it was a sewage runoff in the old days, downhill from the sheep pens, when he was unconcerned to notice the flotsam and jetsam that floated by. He was amazed that none of his gang ever had E.coli infections. Myself, I played in such a city “stream” in England which ran through cow pastures, rich in brown patties and portobello mushrooms, which—only the latter, mind you—we kids often collected. Besides that, I would gather big bunches of watercress from the cow-tromped banks, and my grandmother said, “Lovely! Good lad!” And tea-time salad was made with the cress and even fresh dandelions from the back yard, where I, short-trousered, often took a quick pee before dashing back to the street games. In those days, hygiene was optional, never a precaution, and cleanliness was next to the torture of a rough kitchen-sink wash before Sunday school. The taste of ash on toast fallen from the fork into the grate or the mud on carrots plucked and chomped fresh from the garden was considered a dose of protective medicine: “A bit of dirt never hurt” was my grandmother’s proverb about probiotics; her looking out for me, looking beyond. We played football (Soccer) in cow pastures and besides coming home slimed up, we often had a few choice, shiny dung beetles in a jar to add to our frog spawn collection. Though I say truthfully, I never was inclined to drink from the neighborhood frog pond. —David