“A quarter full cappuccino, no lid.”

There’s a fuel company called N1 in Iceland, their petrol stations have big red signs that say ‘N1’. Although we rarely need to get petrol, we have made a stop to N1 everyday of our 15-day Iceland trip.

Getting a machine coffee at this chain of petrol shops every morning before 7AM is the least cultural thing to cling onto, but I guess that’s what you do when you’re so far from home. My dad would like it here, at N1, he would say, “this is the worst coffee I’ve ever had, but I still like it,” and that would make me laugh. The guy behind the counter is roughly his age, but with grey hair. We hand him 100 ISK each, which translates to about one Australian dollar, it’s basically free.

It’s our final day in Iceland before we leave for our next adventure in Madrid, so it’s bittersweet to be ordering petrol shop coffee at N1 for one last time. It’s seriously bittersweet, the milk always tastes off. The cold air finds every vacant space, in between my toes, behind my neck, underneath my pony tail, making my nose drip. The machine competes with the howling wind outside as I place my hiking shoes on the window sill, my mouth clinging to the rim of the cup — another day in paradise.

The two N1 workers are singing, one of them more effervescently than the other. I watch them, laughing. They’re both in their mid 60’s, with completely untameable beards and tired eyes, but they’ve got this little thing burning inside them, fuelling them to sing ‘Fighter’ by Christina Aguilera on a stormy day, in the middle of nowhere. I think they’ve lived in Iceland forever. Icelandic people have really caught me off guard, they sing in the cold, they get-up and go, they smile when it rains and strangers look pleased to see you all the time. I didn’t expect it to be this freezing in summer, but it feels special to be here, at the top of the Earth; howling winds push your car from side to side on the road and pick up gravel, you have to pay far too much for car insurance — then all of a sudden, fifty rainbows appear and the sky becomes a deep blue, sheep cross the road, and waterfalls pour across the mountains. There’s something incredible here. It’s urgently creative, wild and dramatic. Icelandic people are so warm in such a cold place. People need people, they join soccer teams so that they can meet up on a pitch blinded by stadium floodlights, to pretend in the sun, and talk about lighter times, “it keeps us from going insane,” the 15-year-old airport shuttle bus driver told me. I believe in Icelandic people.

We left N1 when the guy with the glasses started singing the riff of ‘Material Girl’ by Madonna. We drove across the fishing village of Grundarfjörður, in the west of Iceland, and arrived at the Kirkjufell Mountain. It stuck out on the Snæfellsnes peninsula — the most photographed mountain in Iceland, composed of volcanic rock, Pleistocene lava and sandstone. I pace across the main street of Grundarfjörður town, curiously feeling like I’m looking for something.

There’s movement in front of a large shed. I’d somehow found it, the thing I was looking for. The man’s denim overalls are blended with smears of paint. This man is an artist, I can tell from the way he’s bending over the pile of rocks, moving slowly through life, intentionally. The shed was messy but brilliant, artworks were strewn across the tables and hung from the ceiling, each one overlapping the other on all of the walls, charcoal, acrylic, pencil drawings, collages. He was proud to tell me immediately, “I’m from here.”

It was just him and the Kirkjufell Mountain. His eyes met mine, eyes that tell the truth, the quietest blue, as if they had just been soaking in the sky. I decided then and there, that connection is one of the greatest qualities in human beings, particularly when strangers become friends, and when friends become strangers, but you continue to believe in them.

I’ll never forget the hours I spent with the artist from the Icelandic fishing village, rummaging through his drawings and chatting about life. Iceland is built on volcanic rock, and you’d think that in a place like this, everything is dead, desolate, a wasteland, but it’s the most alive place I’ve ever seen.

“Sometimes I turn off the lights and just reach for colours in the dark and do something,” the man smiled, “I can paint the sky green, the clouds pink and the mountain purple — something new happens.”

Some people see the magic.

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