The weak January sun was melting into a golden glow as we landed on Keflavik airport. As the gold turned into a deep blue we were whisked away to a lava moon landscape, ushered inside, handed robes and towels, and herded back outside under the new night sky wearing nothing but swimsuits. The cold crept under our skins in the split-second it took us to dive into the eerily white, hot, sulphur-scented water.

How difficult it is to recognize colleagues when all one sees is a head bobbing above the dimly lit water. How hopeless to recognize an office neighbor’s face covered in mud. What an odd cocktail party, with three hundred wet-haired heads bobbing next to blue drinks floating on the surface of a blue lagoon.

(Blue Lagoon geothermal spa, Iceland; January 2014)