Hidden

Sorry to burst any bubbles out there in the big world, but as amazing a read as this article is, there haven't been any British anthropologists rescued after a 7-year disappearance into the elven realms. As you can see in the picture above, it is fairly easy to become one with the moss and lava if you're dressed right (can you find the human in the photo?) but there are very few modern reports of Hidden People interactions that we know of.

Unfortunately, it's just easy to permanently damage millennia-old groundcover, seriously twist an ankle, or even slip into a hidden crevice when out in Icelandic nature. I witnessed my former brother-in-law literally vanish while walking a lava field up at Mývatn. He had his baby in a front-facing backpack which made it all the scarier. We'd decided to stop for lunch and walk a few hundred yards from the road to a nice spot over there when poof! he was gone, having stepped on a layer of moss that looked solid enough but just wasn't. Thankfully the fissure was just about as deep as he was tall, and it was wide enough so little Helena didn't get scraped or banged up. We helped him out again, all very shaken and humbled by the experience.

So go gently through nature while you're here. Leave a rock on a cairn along your path to honor the local norn or spirit, pick up random trash you see along the way, and step softly and with care. Stop at some beautiful place and speak words of gratitude for our living island, and maybe, just maybe, the elven realms will open up for you, if only for a moment in time...