Color has power and impact. When I think about color, I realize how almost every movement, action or interaction involves color in some way. It is a topic that feels too huge to tackle and to write about – where to begin? Color effects mood and the environment, it invokes emotion and feelings, it acts on the body and the mind, it is cultural, symbolic and has universal, national and personal associations. It can be a warning that something is wrong – or that everything is fine. It is everywhere – in everything. Color is light and light is energy. Colour Lovers, at a web site devoted to people who love color, share color palettes and talk about color. The sidebar highlights top colors and new colors and people submit colors and color palettes. And people add all kinds of comments to the color submissions, some absurdly unrelated, such as “My friend sent me a postcard. It was a satellite picture of the entire world. On the back it said, “Wish you were here'” and “Curiosity killed the cat. But for a while I was a suspect.” This site would be a place to find inspiration when designing web colors, colors for jewelry or for knitting projects. Or for putting together clothes or designing a garden. The most loved color right now, according to this site, is BLACK, followed by a slate blue color. In the top ten four are green-lime greenish, and the rest are shades of blue. The most used colors are white, followed by black, then various shades of grey, slate, then some shades of red, blue and yellow.

And then there’s John Mayer’s comment on color as it relates to people: “Life is like a box of crayons. Most people are the 8-color boxes, but what you’re really looking for are the 64-color boxes with the sharpeners on the back. I fancy myself to be a 64-color box, though I’ve got a few missing. It’s ok though, because I’ve got some more vibrant colors like periwinkle at my disposal. I have a bit of a problem though in that I can only meet the 8-color boxes. Does anyone else have that problem? I mean there are so many different colors of life, of feeling, of articulation.. so when I meet someone who’s an 8-color type.. I’m like, “Hey girl, magenta!” and she’s like, “Oh, you mean purple!” and she goes off on her purple thing, and I’m like, “No – I want magenta?”

There are now 120 colors in the biggest box of Crayola Crayons. See Crayola Crayons for a history of crayons and names of colors – kind of interesting, especially if you remember the excitement of getting a brand new box of crayons as a kid! If it is hard to find a 64-color box type person, imagine finding a 120-color box type! I am fortunate to have several of those rare 120-color box type people in my life – others who color my life with shades of love, adding layers of brilliantly hued meaning to my existence. I thank the spirit of the world’s colors daily for these wonderful beings.

To see my colorful spring bracelets, visit my my Etsy shop here. 

I am bit behind on my chronicles. Here I am tonight at Hop Lake, a tidal lagoon where I’ve ended up today. A bit behind on my journey, due to cold, snow and some lack of motivation. I am so not motivated – I hope to kick it up a notch or two and add something of interest and/or original content here soon. In the meantime….

The frost tightened it’s grip as evening fell, whipped up from the chill Arctic wind in from the sea and south over the desolate winter landscape. It plunged down from Mount Skardsheidi, past Mount Esja and ravaged it’s way over the lowlands, where settlement spread out , a glittering winter city, on the northernmost shores of the world.

Arctic Chill: An Inspector Erlendur Novel
By Arnaldur Indridason

Made it to Mount Skardsheidi, 42.1 miles into my journey. I did get a real ride in today, including some singletrack riding in at Paris Mountain in South Carolina. See the photo of the very cool rock building at the park. My real ride was at 41 degrees, a sunny Sunday; my virtual ride at 17 degrees.
I like this description above that includes a mention of Mount Skardsheidi, and gives an imdication of what it can feel like there in winter. The  mountain is part of an extinguished volcano known as Skardsheidi is about 4 million years old.

Here I am tonight, as I continue my Ring Road journey across Iceland. Maybe I should buy some aluminum. This is an industrial area – looks like some computer chip sort of businesses and aluminum. Not that interested, and so tired after all the stressful insurrectional and terroristic attacks in Washington yesterday. Gonna hole up at an air bnb and move on…..oooooh, maybe not tomorrow, as we are under a snow warming. Maybe won’t get too far tomorrow.

I did find this place to stay. If I hole up here for a day or two, I have a gorgeous view.

My real activity today was a visit with my daughter-in-law and my two precious grandkids, as we walked some trails and visited goats, horses and donkeys at the Biltmore village today. We mostly meandered, ut I walked some trails after they left for a total of 4.5 miles of walking.

Hvalfjörður (Whale Fjord), is a quiet fjord, with shores lined by canyons and waterfalls. Glymur, the highest waterfall of Iceland (198 m) is in Hvalfjordur.

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Until the late 1990s, travel necessitated a detour of 62 km around the fjord in order to get from the city of Reykjavik to the town of Borgarnes. As of 1998, the tunnel Hvalfjardargongin, which shortens the trip considerably, was opened to public traffic. The tunnel is approximately 5,762 m in length, and cuts travel by car around the fjord by about an hour. The tunnel runs to a depth of 165 m below sea level.

At the innermost part of Hvalfjordur lie two valleys – Brynjudalur valley and Botnsdalur valley. High above Botnsdalur valley rises the mountain Hvalfell (852 m over sea level) and behind it lies the mountain lake Hvalvatn which is the fourth deepest in Iceland.

The area has a history of whaling. This movie, Whale Valley is set in Hvalfjordur.