Chasing the Setting Sun

by Ellen Murray

I.            The Glacier. Wherein I fall.

II.          The Sun. Wherein the sun sets.

III.        The Hallway. Wherein we dream.

IV.         The Lights. Wherein I search for faith.

V.          The Myth. Wherein I disappear.

VI.        The Tapestry. Wherein this story closes.

* * *

I.  The Glacier. The sound of polyester scratched the air as I wobbled, cinching crampons onto my boots. Looking up, I searched the horizon, excitement thrumming through me. The sun was already tucked behind the mountains, but ahead, Sólheimajökull glacier glowed, lit by lingering daylight as afternoon collapsed into evening.

I turned back towards my group, ten strangers who had also booked this six-day tour to travel Iceland’s Ring Road in all its wintery glory. The guide stood in the middle of our loose circle, pointing to his hiking boots. “Keep your stance wide, hip-width,” he instructed. “Pick up your feet to stamp the ice; point your toes forward going downhill.” He grinned, “And remember to trust your crampons.”

We filed after him, winding along the glacier lagoon. Squinting through the dimming twilight, I marveled as the glacier’s scale emerged above us. I’d come to Iceland to write a great travel story. I’d brought pen and paper and an inclination for tragedy. As we neared the threshold where glistening ice replaced black sand, I hoped I'd found the beginnings of that story.

Ahead, the guide took his first steps onto the glacier, but I hesitated. A sheen of crisp glacier melt puddled on the ice, and I imagined the feeling of slipping, the boneless loss of control and the eventual crack of my body hitting the ground. A gust of wind keened, my hazy reflection shifting in the glassy puddle.

I took a deep breath and, slowly, pressed one foot onto the slick surface, erasing my silhouette. There was a satisfying crunch as my crampons gripped the ice, shards of frost coughing into the air, and I exhaled. With every step higher, I grew more confident, and soon, I hovered behind the guide, devouring each new sight as the landscape unfurled around us.

Awe anchored my feet as I scanned the horizon in every direction. The glacier stretched for miles, only disappearing where it met distant mountain peaks. Towering walls, valleys and cliffs—all made of dripping ice—surrounded me. Beneath my feet, the glacier rippled, traced by rivulets of melting ice. I bent down and trailed my fingers, watching the tips bloom red where they met the cold.

The group disappeared down a shallow canyon, and I hurried after them, the space condensing around me. Ice walls squeezed my shoulders. The space narrowed further, and I slid sideways, my whole body pressed by cold. It was damp and dark, forever and nothing. Terror surged, and the crevasse warped into a jaundiced hallway. Dusk shadows twisted and transformed. Is anyone there? Rushing paramedics. Help me. A spasming chest. He’s not breathing. Terrible silence.

The shadows stretched toward me, and I flinched away, the light of my headlamp reflecting against the wall. The ice sparkled, the hallway disappearing. Ahead, the group was already climbing back out onto the ice, unaware of the intrusion. I hurried again to catch up with them, chasing the weak eddy of light created by my headlamp as I scrambled back out onto the glacier.

The sun was even further down the horizon now, and the world was purple-blue. I mourned its warmth. Every breeze cut through the fibers of my clothing and carved into me. Straining to see through the dusk’s muted colors, I didn’t notice as my toe caught on one of the indents in the ice, and I fell forward. My knees hit the ice, then my hands. A puff of breath clouded the air in front of me, and my palms burned as I pushed back onto my feet.

“You ok?” Our guide asked.

“Yeah,” I exhaled.

“Trust the crampons,” he reminded.

I grimaced. Trust was earned. With each of my next stumbles, I drifted farther from my group, the glacier’s radiance dimming with my excitement. I’d thought I was closer than ever to my grand dramatic tale, but something in the shadows stalked me.

Nearing one of the glacier’s deeper crevasses, I peered down, the shades of blue growing darker and darker until the shadows consumed the color. My heart pushed against my chest, my breaths growing quicker. Each exhalation fogged the air. Beneath me, the ice quivered. I tried to pull back, but a cracking sound whipped through the air, the ice collapsing beneath me.

Time slowed as I fell through the blue vortex. For a moment, I could have been flying, the recipient of some incredible upward momentum, but the walls of ice burned my skin as I plunged further and further from sight and sound. Damp cold weighed down my layers. I searched above me for anyone, anything. Blue into black, the darkness enclosed me.

It was quiet.

Cold.

No.

No.

I warned you that I brought an inclination for tragedy. That was always the story I expected—life and death—but not the one I found, not this time.

We finished our hike as the final light bled away and boarded the tour bus in an awed, tired silence. A deep breath burned my lungs as I searched the horizon a final time. Darkness writhed at its margins, wriggling, jerking, contracting.

Maybe I did fall. Maybe the darkness drained away from me, my body carried skyward until sound and color returned. Maybe I just stood there and blinked and only fell into the dark space behind my eyelids.

At the horizon, the darkness spasmed, racing for me.

* * *

II.     The Sun. The sun was always setting in Iceland. Even when it was rising, it was setting. It hovered, golden and hollow along the horizon. Perpetually horizontal, its rays cut through yellowed, lifeless blades of grass, refracted off roaring waterfalls, and snaked through bubbly glacial ice.

But it was always disappearing. Weeks from the winter solstice, each day enjoyed barely four hours of daylight. I woke in the dark; I fell asleep in the dark. When it wasn’t dark, it was dusk, and the twilight conjured the feeling of things ending. I’d rest my head against the frigid glass of the tour bus and close my eyes.

In the shadows, I was small again, tucked into the backseat of my parents’ car. It was quiet, and the eternal motion of the vehicle was its own kind of stillness. The road was flat, and I could see forever. The sun slipped behind the horizon, and darkness rushed in from every direction, a little and then all at once.

Every car ride is like the one before. When I closed my eyes, the humming of the engine always had the possibility of transporting me to a different landscape: a different car, a different drive—the same steady thrum of wheels against pavement.

Before his cardiac arrest, my dad and I spent a day together in a rented Subaru, chasing the setting sun as it arced across Montana. For a week after, I sat in the same car to and from the hospital. I’d close my eyes. It wasn’t my mom or uncle driving. It was him; I could create him. With my eyes closed, I could feel him next to me. I held the ultimate narrative control.

But my spell never quite succeeded, and he never came home, so traveling felt like losing him again—the light cleaving through the airport atrium, the humming of the airplane engine, the rough carpet in hotel hallways, the scent of cheap shampoo.

But traveling also felt like finding myself again. I was trying to build a life worth living, worth writing about. I felt fresh and new, like a baby—bloody and soft and fundamentally reformed by the beauty and horror of being alive. I wanted Iceland to shape me. I wanted to shape Iceland.

But the setting sun—it felt like the end of a chapter, not the beginning.

III.     The Hallway. The sun was slumbering beneath the horizon when we reached our hotel that evening. The northern lights twined through the dark sky like a cat, the green reflecting against the ground like moonlight, but they disappeared as quickly as they came, leaving us in the dark.

I drifted through the lobby and down a hallway. My suitcase hummed against the carpet. Dull, yellow light, just shy of fluorescent, blended with the indiscriminate beige walls. It was all so mundane, and familiar tears traced my cheeks.

In my dreams, I ran down endless hotel hallways. They went on forever and ever, and the monotony always smothered my cries for help. At the threshold to room 104, I paused. I expected to find a portal—to a different room, a different trip, a different timeline—but I only saw two twin beds and an armoire.

The air vents thrummed as heat seeped through the room. I wanted the northern lights to reach down and carry me away with them. I wanted to tear through the fabric of space into a new reality, fingernails blunt and bleeding. Pulling off my top layers, I collapsed onto the bed. I tasted salt as tears crossed my lips, staining the perfect white of the pillowcases. I contemplated their narrative value.

* * *

I leave room 218. The hallway burns orange and beige as a wave of unreality rushes up to drown me. This isn’t happening. Denial thickens the air; my movements are heavy and slow. I pass 217, 216 in no time at all. My hand grips my phone. The screen reads 911, but the line is silent. Is anyone there? Panic thins the air. It’s an emergency. Above, the fluorescents flicker.

I lengthen my strides—215, 214. You have to help me. The comforting weight of the air is leaving me, but my mind cannot make meaning. He’s not breathing. The call still won’t connect. Please. I hover at the edge of understanding. 213, 212. Outside of me, time is racing away. I teeter until a single thought breaks through my woolly apathy: run.

The weight of the air collapses around me. Everything is thin and insubstantial now. I throw myself past the remaining doors, 206, 205. The hallway lengthens and warps around me; I’ve never been farther from the lobby—204. I’m screaming into the phone. Help me! 203 202 Someone help me! 201200 The fluorescents flash. Why is no one responding to me? Stop reading this and HELP ME.

I’m not writing this correctly. I’ve written, re-written, sold, and revised it, but I’ve never captured that moment. Prose is languid; poetry is abstraction. The hallway is forever, but the terror is quick, the breath between heartbeats.

If I could write this correctly, I’d reach through the page and drag you into the narrative. You’d see the hallway; you’d feel the crushing press of my heart against my sternum; you could help me.

I know you can’t feel the crush. Press your palm against your chest and tell me what you feel. Tell me you can feel the crush. Tell me you can help me.

Don’t lie to me.

I need too many words, and every expression takes us farther from the truth.

Stop.

Let’s start again.

The room next door is remarkably like room 218. They’re mirror images of each other, really. The guests in room 216 sleep peacefully. Maybe they’re another father and daughter. The darkness there is soft, uncorrupted. Their steady breaths stir the air. Muffled murmurs, then shouts, footfalls and gasping breaths slip beneath the door, slither across the walls, but father and daughter remain blissfully, simply asleep. Through the peephole, a great battle rages. Worlds collapse and reform. A hero battles death. But still, they sleep.

Stop.

This isn’t working.

The hallway bleeds phosphorescent white. I burn until the memory collapses. I’m leaving room 218 again. The call won’t connect. My finger slips before I can hit the right numbers. I jab them again and again into the screen. It’s so silly and strange. Why can’t I hit the right numbers? I’m clumsy and leaded, and I stand there until the hallway melts and reforms. My dad stands in front of me; I reach for him. He slips from me like smoke.

My hands are white where I grip my laptop; I’m trying to keep the story from escaping.

I wake up at home. Shadows bleed through my curtains and pool into the darkness of my room. On my bedside table, my nightlight emits a sallow ring of light. On all sides, the shadows encroach. Light has become my currency; the darkness obscured. In the darkness, I am alone. My heart only settles when light breaks on the horizon—when the birds begin to sing.

But it is still dark, and I cannot walk the halls of my dreams again. I go for a drive instead. Stoplights paint the asphalt in reds and greens. Shadows convulse on the margins of my headlights. They could twist and turn into anything. I’ve seen it; I’ve seen worlds collapse and reform. The shadows could engulf you. I could make them engulf you.

I am a narrative-making machine. When I sleep, my dreams seek a satisfying conclusion. When I wake, I write, and when I write, I dream. Where is the narrative tension? There was no great battle, only a dingy hallway. Death does not make a worthy antagonist. It comes and goes and takes with it all tension. My fingers seek the path of the miscarried hero’s journey.

Cat hair and dust cover my keyboard. I’ve rewritten death for two years, but I’ve never found an ending that I can bear.

IV.     The Lights. Let’s start from the beginning. We need to go to Iceland.

The passengers in front of my row murmured, pointing out their window as the plane crossed the Atlantic. I pressed my face against the glass, seeking the unknown in the black expanse. The red light on the plane wing flashed, and the untroubled dark ignited my desperation. I cupped my hands over my eyes and squinted harder. Seconds or minutes passed until a white glow emerged—the northern lights.

What I lacked was faith; I had to trust that the faint traces in the sky were really there—not some frantic conjuring of my imagination. Did it make a difference, if I broke the sky open not with my faith but my desperation? The next time I saw the lights, they twirled in undeniable veils of vivid green high above, and I breathed a sigh of relief.

The worst part was the hallway and the hope that clung to its walls, the commas, semicolons, and dashes that hovered where the period would finally make its claim. There was an intermediary stage, between the emergency room and ICU, where I could have returned home a hero. I went back to the hotel, back down the hallway. A heavy chair still propped the door open. Discarded plastic garnished the ground. Next to packets of pringles and soda cans, a CPR kit lay open on the table—its contents disturbed.

I hovered in the doorway, and my mouth opened like an ouroboros. “Oh,” I exhaled. Was it my job to clean this up, too? The air hummed against me; this space could no longer hold me. I began to pack a bag. My fingertips dusted each surface. I selected contacts, earbuds, clothes, a book—everything he might want or need when he woke up.

Sagging onto the plush white duvet, I stared at my phone. It had not yet begun ringing. In this pocket of time, I imagined my homecoming. If dying is an end to a story, I hoped I’d rewritten it. Deus ex machina, the paramedics arrive and subvert the narrative of death. It was the ultimate act of narrative control, of love. I indulged in the thought of our embrace when he woke up.

Soon, my phone would begin to ring and never stop. Between the chimes, I’d hear phrases like minutes without oxygen, cooling the body, hypoxic injury, Glasgow coma scale. Soon, my hope would hollow and collapse under its weight. But for those moments, I was a hero; I’d rewritten death.

V.     The Myth.  My torso lurched as the horse dipped on the uneven dirt, my heart surging away from me. Ahead, the riding guide Anna let out a pleased sigh. “It’s wonderful out here, isn’t it? Healing.”

“Uh, huh,” I gripped the reins tighter. We followed a small trail along a river. The striated sky blended blue to yellow, dusty pink into midnight indigo where it met the horizon—the colors reflecting and re-emerging on the still water.

Anna turned back towards me. “You came to Iceland alone?”

“Yes.”

“That’s very brave of you.”

“I guess.” I didn’t feel very brave, teetering atop the pony—the promise of adventure usurped by a terrifying loss of control. Beneath me, the horse strained.

“Wouldn’t you like to go faster?” Anna asked.

“No, no,” I insisted. “This is fine. A bit scary.” Across the river, the shadowed mountains loomed. I felt the press of cold glass, looking out an ambulance window at another set of veiled mountains. Clutching the reins, I tried to anchor myself to Iceland.

“Just once,” Anna promised. “Icelandic horses are famous for their fifth gait. It’s like floating. Nowhere else in the world can you find it.”

Above the mountains, the moon rose, burning silver-white against the darkening sky, all other colors subsumed. It lengthened the evening’s shadows—gave them dimension, depth, feeling. I wanted Iceland to shape me. I wanted to shape Iceland. What had I come here for, if not these singular experiences? “Ok,” I said quickly, before I could change my mind.

The horse began to speed up, and I clenched my thighs even tighter, my core contracting and my torso jerking. As the horse reached its desired pace, it glided, its hooves never seeming to touch the ground. For a moment, I found equilibrium. The night paused; I paused, stilling at the profound absence of feeling, euphoria washing over me.

The horse’s hooves found another uneven patch, and my torso jerked forward. I was aware of my heartbeat again—my fear lost and regained in the space of an eternal second. “That’s enough; that’s enough,” I exhaled. My body shook as we turned back towards the stables.

After dismounting and returning my gear, I waited at the end of the long driveway. I was kinetic from the combination of cold and anxiety. Again and again, I remembered that second of absolute equilibrium—and how desperately fleeting it was. Euphoria, like hope, was a hollow feeling.

Chimes of laughter drew my attention. Behind me, children pulled a Christmas tree out of a shed beside the stables, beginning to wrap it in multi-colored lights. I felt out of pace with the world, the frigid air curving away from me. Not a brave, adventurous heroine. Not a master and maker of stories. Just a lone silhouette blurring into a wall of shadows.

In Iceland, as at home, I flickered, my own lore consuming me. Past, present, dreams, memories, alternative histories and forgotten futures—my mythology surpassed me.

VI.     The Tapestry. She stands at the periphery. It is a beautiful tapestry, millions of imperceptible threads woven together—the blending of narrative infinities into a cohesive story.

She had not noticed the strands before—not until the first cut. Now, one after another is snipped, each cut thread a foreclosure. Now she understands. Now she sees the shears.

She watches.

She watches and feels the fraying of her own threads.

She watches as the whole tapestry collapses—story and color rendered into a mindless pile of yarn.

She rushes forward, motley threads staining her hands like blood. She tries to braid them back into the story she remembers. She does not succeed.

* * *

The police tried to shepherd me further and further away from the paramedics, cornering me each time I drifted closer. “Is there anyone you can call?” The policeman repeated.

A tearing sound, cloth cleaving. I looked at my phone. In every other reality but this one, he was still ok. Outside, schoolchildren shrieked. I watched a spider crawl across the carpet. No familiar rush of fear reached me; it only seemed very small and inconsequential. “Ma’am,” the policeman prompted.

“Later,” I murmured. “Not yet.”

* * *

This is not a story about Iceland. I’m sorry if you thought it was. I’m sorry if you wanted glaciers and waterfalls and moments of faith and hope and understanding. I wanted those things too. I wanted profound revelations and euphoria. I’m sorry I could not give them to us. I really tried, but the story escaped from me.

I did see glaciers and waterfalls; I did have moments where faith and hope and understanding flitted through me, but mostly, the desperate cavernous hole in my chest grew and grew, coaxed by the shadows of the long, dark nights.

These things were not antithetical, I began to suspect. I could not fill the gap within me with beautiful things nor stitch it closed with sentiment. I wanted to shape Iceland, but Iceland took the shape of my grief. It is beautiful and cold, like the glaciers. Depthless and brittle. I walk upon its contradictions every day and sometimes fall through.

* * *

I want to go somewhere else.

We sit in a cafe in Wellington, nested atop the city. The white light is soft and fresh. It threads through the plants and trees; the city’s in bloom. I snap a photo of my dad. His chin is tilted to the side, over his right shoulder. His eyes glance skyward. He looks serene.

I stare at the photo. Hindsight seizes me. But I will not corrupt this memory. He continues gazing upwards, eternal in the frame. Outside, bird calls speak of life. The days here are long; the sun is bright.

It’s not a story I can end. On the page, I can keep us alive in that moment; I can imagine the sun’s perpetual shine, but I can’t let it set; I can’t extend the scene into a satisfying conclusion. I can’t weave the cut threads back into the tapestry.

I could make him say something comforting or profound, but I don’t want to take away his agency. I could tell you what we actually said, but it was inconsequential, forgettable dialogue because I was twenty-one and still thought time was infinite. Anything we said only became impactful in the after—in the telling and shaping of the narrative.

So, there is no resolution. No ending—only the rising and falling of the sun.

There are only the same memories, twisting and turning dreams that I fall through each night.

There is only the soft white light in that cafe in Wellington. There is only the way the golden sun cut through our eyelashes on our last day together. There is only the afternoon haze that warms my fingers as I type this.

I feel it like a prayer.

There is only the story—and the story is nothing at all, only a dream given form.

BIO: Ellen is a writer and multidisciplinary artist whose writing has been published by Hidden Compass and recognized by the Solas Awards for Best Travel Writing. She is a PhD candidate studying magic(al) realism and trauma representation in performance. Her writing explores place-based and speculative narratives of trauma, grief, and loss. You can find her photography on @photos__by__ln on Instagram.