My primary dream in life is to be a senior citizen detective. At one point, it was also my dream to be a backup singer in a critically acclaimed 1950 soul group, but look towards the future, not to the past, so say the motivational manifest-prescribing self-help books. And so it is that I eagerly anticipate the day my complimentary AARP magazine will arrive in the mail–hopefully with a magnifying glass which I will use to both read the magazine, and gather clues. Everyone has their favorite silver haired gum shoe–Columbo, Jessica Fletcher, etc. but for my money, the gray suited, hot dog eating, sweet ukulele tune playing Georgia Peach, Matlock, is unparalleled. His investigator got caught in nearly every episode; he taught us all the best murder weapon is an icicle; an actress who in one episode played a prostitute was later cast as his daughter; and, as children, we learned more about personal injury litigation via the 1990s day-time commercials than most first year law school students understand. How we loved him for it all.
Thus, he is always in my heart and was also on my mind this past week when a mystery emerged on the farm. Over morning coffee, Saskia expressed intrigue that she had seen the beloved farm dog, Pilla, trotting happily by her window just five minutes earlier, coming from the potato fields and carrying something large, gray and fuzzy in her mouth. What could it be? There are in fact, limited wild mammalian options in Iceland, so we thought, maybe an arctic fox? It would be rare for Pilla to catch one, but perhaps it was injured? Already dead? Strange....
We went about our day’s work, and I took advantage of the nearly eight hours of remaining daylight afterwards to go for a jaunt up to the mountains, along the stunning Fnjóská River. There is a wide trail on the south side of the river–the path the sheep are pushed out along come summer, wide enough to accommodate the family’s trusted rusty old red Land Rover. There is also a trail of sorts leading up to the top of the mountain, unmarked on the ground, but indicated by a series of simple posts with yellow paint on the top that you follow one by one until you arrive at the summit. A unique element to hiking in Iceland is that, due to the extreme dearth of trees, you can really head in any direction that looks intriguing–seeking out a distant view point or curious how far you can trace a river, for example, and not get lost.
“How do you find your way out of an Icelandic forest?” Goes the old joke. “Stand up.” These conditions make deep and continued exploration of the area both endlessly fascinating and safe to do unaccompanied. By the time I got back to the farm, Saskia was standing at the base of the driveway, wide eyed.
“It wasn’t a fox,” she told me.
“What was it?!” I asked her.
“A lamb,” she said, grimacing.
“Oh no,” I said, and she led me to see it. The poor thing lay there, quite dead. Pilla was off in pursuit of Anna to brag.
“I’ve texted Anna,” she said. “I didn’t want to just leave before showing someone.”
Anna was a couple fields away, working in the tractor in preparation of potato planting, but came walking quickly over. “What is this?” she said. We all puzzled over the creature, curious where it could have come from. Anna had just recently been through the sheep house, and there were no lambs missing. “It could be sometimes in years before that one gets out, and then Pilla is confused, but no… there is nobody gone? Já (Icelandic for “yes,” pronounced “yow”), this is a surprise?”
“Happy Birthday!” I said, jokingly, as if this is what we’d gotten her. Though we’d had the family party the day before, this was Anna’s actual birthday.
She laughed with a wide smile, and feigned putting her hands over her heart in appreciation.
"Oh thank you so much!” she said.
The speculation continued over dinner as to where the lamb could have come from. Although there are, of course, other sheep farmers in the greater area, there are none in the immediate vicinity, and a lamb of that size that couldn’t have traversed a great distance from a far off neighbor. There were no leads, and the case was as cold as a plunge in an Icelandic fjord. Where was Matlock when we really needed him? And this, the land of such love for hotdogs!
The next day though, Rakel had a theory. “I think maybe it’s from the ghost of my great grandfather (who started the farm). Maybe as one gift to Pilla,” she said.
“Really?” I asked, unsure if we were joking or not.
“Maybe, little bit,” she said with a smile.
Well, if was from great grandpa, it was less a gift to Pilla than a prank, because Pilla obviously took the bait, unquestioningly and with gusto, and for her enthusiasm and trust of the spirits unseen, had to stay the next morning in her pen in the potato barn.
“I think for punish,” Rakel explained.
Pilla has just about the best life a dog could ever hope for, living, as she does, untethered, spending her days running throughout her Icelandic Eden of a grounds, feeling happy and useful as she keeps watchful eye on her many 4-legged charges. So she weathered her brief morning jail stay with bravery until Saskia sprung her, mid-day, for a long walk down to the ocean where Pilla found an enormous bird skeleton and delighted in nibbling on and rolling in it. Tuckered out come evening, she curled up in her favored sleeping position in the mud room, nestled between the dryer and the odiferous coveralls, scented in stories of the day’s work in the barn.
By the time it was dark, (10:30 ish) and I came in to brush my teeth in the sink, I saw her asleep, dozing peaceful with an Andy Griffith-esque grin of contented expression on her face. I imagined her communing with the ghost of great grandpa and dreaming, like Matlock, of hot dogs.
Case closed…
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