It was my last morning in Iceland. The ferry was waiting in the harbor, its engines low and steady, a reminder that departure was no longer an idea but a few hours away. Overnight, snow had fallen — soft, fine, endless — muting every sound in the valley. The road down to Seyðisfjörður curved through fog, and for a long time I could see nothing but white air, a world without edges.

Then, as I reached the fjord, the landscape opened — quiet, weightless, suspended. The water was so still that the sky and sea became one, and on that mirrored surface rested a single red fishing boat. Its reflection was perfect, untouched even by the faintest ripple. For a moment, it seemed as if time had stopped — or perhaps had simply chosen not to move.

I stood by the pier, camera cold in my hands, listening to the small sounds that remained: a distant gull, the creak of a rope, the faint hum of the ferry beyond the fog. The air smelled of salt and snow and something older — the kind of scent that belongs only to places shaped by water and wind.

Seven months I had lived here — through long winters, shifting light, and the rhythm of tides that defined each day. I had learned that Iceland doesn’t shout its beauty; it reveals it slowly, when you’ve waited long enough to notice. That morning felt like its final lesson.

When I pressed the shutter, it wasn’t to capture the boat — it was to hold onto the quiet before goodbye.

Driving toward the ferry later that morning, I kept looking in the mirror, watching the fjord disappear behind me. The snow had begun again, thin flakes drifting sideways across the windshield. I thought about how water shapes everything in Iceland — not only the land, but the way you see, the way you listen, the way you leave.

Distant Hush — Seyðisfjörður became my memory of that morning: the stillness before motion, the reflection that holds its breath just long enough to be remembered.

Part of my series Traces of Water, this artwork is a quiet meditation on endings — how stillness can hold more emotion than motion ever could. In that hush, I learned that departure can be another form of return.