Weathered

I've been taking a lot of pictures of houses and buildings these days. I think I've been a little too busy to explore smaller details, rushing as I do from location to location (the university, my practice teaching school, Valentina's gymnastics gym, the grocery store, etc etc) in the station wagon. I end up seeing big, obvious things like buidings on my travels and squeeze in the time to snap off a couple of pix before heading out again.

I have a special affinity for houses or buildings that have survived demolition during modern development sprees. I like the way they often sit at angles to new roads, giving reference to some much older concept of correct lot placement. As I've written before, Iceland doesn't have very many very old buildings, but the winds, rain and snow (I've heard rumors that it used to snow here!) make sure even century-old structures look ancient.

This old timber number with its ready-looking rowboat sits on a rise right next to the parking lot of the elementary school I'm practice teaching at up in Breiðholt. I have no idea how old it really is...like I said, it could be only a couple of decades old but with an extremely tired paint job. I think its the boat that I really like, sitting so far as it does from the sea. When I first saw it I had an image of a far away time when the coastline lay just before it, with an intrepid hearty fisherman putting it out each dawn to wrastle the day's catch. But that's not possible, even with receeding sea levels: this house and boat are far up on a hill miles from the ocean. Were they part of a movie set, perhaps? Who knows. I just like the fact that its a variation on the common modern architecture that stubble Reykjavik's suburbs in blandness.