The Icelandic Canadian - 01.10.2002, Page 30

brand of right-wing hysteria that damaged
the lives of so many Americans; Pete
Seeger, Paul Robeson, Dorothy Parker,
Anne Revere, Charlie Chaplin, that landed
Harold Christoffel behind bars for his left-
ist leanings and his Allis-Chalmers union
activity.
And so, given his World War II military
service and the time he spent in prison
waiting for hearings in Washington, D.C.,
waiting for trials, waiting for his impossible
bail to be collected, serving his six-years at
the federal penitentiary in Terre Haute,
Indiana Nancy spent much of her youth
without her father. Harold Christoffel, a
villain to some, but a hero to the
Milwaukee masses, almost a Grettir
reminder, but without the embellishment
of time. Nancy remembers watching with
horror as wooden crosses burned for him
at night in her front yard, the work of
intolerant neighbours.
Even today her family has never received
compensation for the tragedy they suffered
at the hands of that reactionary inquisition.
Her father remained a felon, was never
again allowed to vote, or to leave the coun-
try. There have been no suits, no legal
actions. The ruling parties have never rec-
ognized the contribution he made in his
battle for the worker and the common peo-
ple, never acknowledged the life he gave.
And so Nancy, though proud of her
father and his accomplishments, has named
her heart’s first desire; she’d prefer to stay
out of jail.
We walked from our lunch out upon the
open trail. A wheatear flew from a rock. A
raven called. I had thought at first the
absence of trees in Iceland would be more
unsettling, just a few struggling and stunt-
ed birch or spruce scattered far and wide in
the northland. And none at all here in the
valley. Only grass, and wildflowers. Green
grass and painted wildflowers; all the vege-
tation we saw herbaceous and stopping
well below the knee. This treeless Iceland
so bold and so green.
A jumble of porous and volcanic rock
gathering now around us, boulders that
had tumbled from the mountains. And a
small forgotten slough. Marsh reed.
Almost forgotten. Four quiet ponds and a
flutter of red-necked phalaropes courting
on the liquid surface. The way this river
splintered into islands and divergent
streams, the way it folded back together to
race down to Skagafjordur. The way our
path wandered from the river, turned to
meet it again
Suddenly the water seemed to babble
everywhere around us. Brooks and bourns
and streamlets zagging every which way
across the meadow. Over pebbles. Around
rocks. Across our track. Rushing pell-mell
helter-skelter piggledy-higgledy, bustling
down and down to meet the river below.
Meltwater from the ice and snow still
blooming in the mountains just a few hun-
dred metres away. This narrow floodplain
and the mountains soaring on either side.
Babble, and gurgle, and roar. Suddenly
Nancy and I had started calling back and
forth to each other. We were shouting.
Where could we cross.
“Over here!”
“ Do you think we can make it?”
“ What about this?”
“ Could you step to that rock?”
We pulled off our shoes and tied them
and threw them up over our shoulders. We
stripped off our socks and rolled our pant
legs to our knees, struck out again with our
bare feet across the flooding meadow. Over
the toppled grass. Over the pebbles. Sharp
pebbles. Rock to teetering rock. Cold
water. Ice-cold water. Racking, bone-chill-
ing cold. Some fifteen car-lengths, the
width of six city lots, we hobbled. Then,
finding an island of desert, we sat on a rock
to sun dry our feet, to warm our poor
aching feet.
There in the valley of the Hofsos River
sitting on that rock with Nancy I began to
wonder about the meaning of fidelity. I felt
good to be out there in the wilds of Iceland
with a companion. And new friends are
always exciting, new conversations. You
find yourself talking about things you’ve
never talked about before, hearing things
you never heard before. New ideas. And
the two of us seemed to fit together. I asked
Nancy if her husband back at home in
Wisconsin would be jealous of our walks
and conversation. She said no. She was sure
of that, he trusted her. And I asked myself
what Susan might feel.
I thought about fidelity. I wondered if,