The wind picked up on the deck of the ferry as we turned toward the northern island of Kalsoy.

We altered the angle of the tent three times. We put rocks on the tent pegs and tied the guy lines to fence posts. As night fell, we tucked our heads deep into our sleeping bags to muffle the sound of the tent creaking in each gust of wind.

I can remember sleeping through a windstorm while camping in South Dakota at age 11. I woke up to the feeling of the tent pressing against my face in the middle of the night, laughed in the dark and fell back asleep with all the untroubled confidence of a child. When I was 18, I solo camped on the north coast of France and had to run for shelter at 3 AM with my tent bundled in my arms and a flashlight clenched between my teeth. I nearly buried a tent in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains three years later and weathered the storms of the Canadian Prairies the year after that. All of which is to say, I don’t sleep as easily in heavy wind as I did when I was 11.

The night on Kalsoy wore on. I swore under my breath and hoped the wind would die down, settling into a light sleep. It didn’t. I woke up to the walls of the tent flexing sideways; I woke up to the tent floor shaking underneath my pillow. I was still awake when Sarah’s alarm went off, signalling the coming dawn and a sunrise to catch.

We packed up camp and had a quick breakfast in the early morning light. As we reached the steep bluffs overlooking Mikladalur, the wind was all around us. It raced through the grass and disappeared amongst the rocks. It danced across the water towards Kunoy and traced the pink edges of clouds above the island. It whipped my backpack straps against my face and pressed my jacket against my body.

This was no peaceful sunrise. It was dramatic and unrestrained, tumbling towards us with the dangerous grace of a cliff on the dark edge of a spinning earth. The wind raced on as the sun lit the sky above us, daring us to follow.

The fjords of Norway

The highlands of Iceland

An afternoon on the Head River