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Professor Michael Fenster: "Iceland has a dramatic landscape thanks to its geologic setting."
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6/12/12
Randolph-Macon College
Environmental Studies/Geology Professor Michael Fenster and 10 of his students are in Iceland in conjunction with The Geology of Iceland: A Seam on the Coat of the World. The course gives students the opportunity to examine, analyze and map individual volcanic and glacial features as well as landscape features produced by the interaction of fire, ice and the ocean.
“Iceland has a dramatic landscape thanks to its distinctive geologic setting on top of a tectonic ‘spreading center,’ where magma, seething at temperatures near 2000 °F about 1,800 miles below the Earth’s surface, rises to emerge through cracks in the Earth’s crust,” explains Fenster. “Occasionally, dramatic volcanic eruptions occur, like the most recent Eyjafjallajökull eruption in 2010 that resulted in the largest air-traffic shut-down since World War II. These volcanic features, in concert with its geographic position near the Arctic Circle and the large storms that hammer the island, are responsible for the picturesque landscape the students will see.” This will be Fenster’s second trip to Iceland with R-MC students.
“Students will investigate how humans have survived in this harsh geologic environment and will learn about the rich history and culture of this Nordic country,” says Fenster. “We will also look at the impact of humans on the environment by exploring contemporary environmental issues such as climate change land use, and renewable energy.” More than 80% of Iceland’s energy comes from geothermal and hydrologic sources.
Fenster joined the R-MC faculty in 1999. He earned his B.S. and M.S. at the University of Mississippi and his Ph.D. at Boston University, and he conducted post-doctoral research at the University of Virginia. He currently serves as director of R-MC’s environmental studies program.
Fenster is sending blog entries—virtual “diaries”—back to the college describing the group’s travel experiences and the history and landscape of Iceland. Visit our Web site often for updates about this unique travel course.
June 21, 2012:
We had a heat wave in Iceland today! 52 degrees and light wind. Our guide said that it hasn’t been this warm with light winds in a long time. We had an absolutely fantastic first day of learning a new currency, learning a new language, and seeing all kinds of new and exotic sites. We spent the day on the Reykanes Peninsula (actually that’s redundant because “neys” in Icelandic means “peninsula” so people here just say “reykanes," pronounced “wreck-ya-nase”) where we crossed a bridge over a large crack in the Earth’s crust that connects two tectonic plates that move in opposite directions – the North American Plate and the Eurasian Plate. Good thing for us the plates move at about the same pace as our fingernails grow.
We visited several sites that all attest to the powerful forces of nature – bubbling sulfur and boiling mud in “mud pots,” cinder cones made of molten blobs of magma, great cracks in the Earth’s crust, huge boulder beaches, geothermal energy sites and more. It was hard to disagree with many of my students [who said that] that the best stop of the day was the Blue Lagoon – a spa with healing waters – the #1 destination in Iceland for people from all over the world! We soaked in geothermal waters at 98-100 degrees with silica mud for healing all kinds of skin diseases (one of my students threatened never to come out of the water). I can also assure you that none of us will come home with psoriasis! We had a very late dinner and when we left the restaurant at 11 p.m., the sun was shining brightly! Stay tuned for more. June 22, 2012:
Did you know that Iceland has one of the highest rates of energy consumption per person in the world, but supplies it at one of the lowest costs in the world because 54% of the energy comes from their abundant geothermal energy? You can drive around this country and literally see steam coming out of the ground in many places (mainly from boreholes today). In fact, the largest city here, Reykjavik, literally means “smoky bay” because the original settlers in the 9th century were impressed by the columns of steam that rose naturally from the hot springs in the area.
We started our day today with a private tour of the Hellisheiði geothermal power plant (the two “ll’s” together sound like “k” and the interesting letter ð sounds like “th”). The plant is located about 20 km (12 miles) east of Reykjavik and in one of the high-temperature geothermal fields in the tectonic spreading centers of Iceland. We had interactive information sessions – including a realistic demo on earthquakes! - and we got to see the inner workings of the actual plant. The students now understand why those high-temperature geothermal energy fields are where they are and how they can produce clean energy and hot water.
We ate lunch at The Pearl, a beautiful geodetic dome located on a high (and old) lava field outside of Reykjavik that just so happens to hold the hot water supply in tanks for Reykjavik, but also has two restaurants, a museum and a beautiful 360° observation deck. The visibility was so good that we could see the stream rising from the Hellisheiði plant from The Pearl.
On the way back to Reykjavik from the power plant, we stopped for a short trek onto a pseudo-crater field in the the Rauðhólar region outside of Reykjavik. Pseudo craters form when very, very hot lava (about 1000° C or about 1800° F) flows over shallow water and giant steam explosions create craters from the buildup of heat and pressure from below the flowing lava. They’re called “pseudo” because they’re not actual volcanic craters with central vents that bring lava to the surface, but instead are sometimes called “rootless cones.”
On the way to The Pearl, we crossed a fairly large perennial stream just on the outside of Reykjavik where our guide Træsti (pronounced, “Troy-stē) told us that salmon run through this stream. It may be one of the only streams that flows through a capital city and possibly the reason why the mayor has to catch the first fish from the stream when the salmon season opens on June 1.
After visiting The Pearl, Træsti gave us a driving tour around Reykjavik where we saw many sites including the old British embassy overlooking Reykjavik Bay and where Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan signed the now-famous agreement that led to the beginning of the end of the Cold War. In case you were wondering, about 2/3 of Iceland’s total population of 300,000 people live in Reykjavik - about the size of Richmond, Fayetteville, North Carolina and Shreveport, Louisiana.
After a very nice dinner outside the Parliament building, we watched a hilarious street comedy. Ask Nate about the show… he was one of the stars. Ask in particular about Wally.
Tomorrow, hop on the ferry with us and go the Westmann Islands for some relaxing volcano climbing!
June 23, 2012: Lost in Heimaey…
A 2 hour minibus drive (19 passenger) early this morning, driving out of Reykjavik and through the southern lowlands of Iceland – once covered by more than 100 meters of ocean water and, as a result, now one of the most fertile regions of Iceland – and past the volcanoes Hekla and (the now famous) Eyjafjallajökull, we arrived at the port of Landeyjahöfn to ride the ferry to Heimaey (pronounced Hay-ā-may)– an absolutely glamorous island in the Vestmannaeyjar (pronounced Vest-man-ay-year) or Westman Islands. Heimaey is located about 12 kilometers (about 7.5 miles) south of Iceland and it took us only 30 minutes to get there by ferry.
Right off the ferry, we hopped onto another boat driven by an old friend, Simmi, for a special tour. The boat ride around Heimaey is indescribable. I often ask my students to tell me what they’re seeing as if describing it to a blind person, but I don’t know that I could do the same about this island myself. It is raw, pure, clean, dramatic, beautiful… surely the way creation was meant to be. During our 1 ½-hour cruise around the island on an absolutely beautiful day on crystal blue water, we saw whales, seals, puffins and five other species of birds – some from inside sea caves that were sculpted and painted by the forces of nature and with color palettes not available to mortals. The southern part of Heimaey is one of three spots on Earth where 100-foot waves and 110 mile an hour winds can beat up old and young volcanoes and lava fields, and carve the lava into shapes barely believable – including an exact depiction of an African elephant. Although much, much smaller, this island, like Iceland itself, owes its existence to volcanoes. In fact, a volcanic eruption in 1973 added more than a quarter of the land mass/area to Heimaey. Today we climbed to the peak of that volcano, Elgfell.
Elgfell is notorious… when it erupted in 1973 it swallowed parts of the town and the people became very concerned that it would clog and close the harbor – death to a fishing village that supplies 18% of Iceland’s total export of fish although they only have 2% of the population. How the people saved Heimaey is the topic of a story written by John McPhee in the book, “The Control of Nature.” Get it. Read it. It’s fascinating and you’ll learn about what we’re seeing. In fact, part of the town that was covered by lava has been getting excavated to create a modern Pompeii. We walked through the village that had been covered by more than 50 feet of ash and cinders to see the uncovering of rooftops and chimneys. Eerie and awe inspiring.
Tonight, we had a fabulous meal in an upscale restaurant in the Hotel Vestmannaeyjar. We ate monk fish as an appetizer with a garlic cream sauce on barley, filet of lamb in wine sauce, and potato cake for dinner and chocolate/coconut sorbet, crushed oatmeal, and red currant with caramel sauce for dessert.
The highlight of many of my student’s day… as it always seems to turn out… was when they got to pet the pet puffin of our guesthouse owner. She’s raised the puffin from birth to two years old. Again it’s almost midnight and it’s perfectly light outside. Two of our students went for a run at 9:30 in total daylight. That’s all for now…. Bless (as they say goodbye here).
June 24, 2012:“We’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto!”
An early morning ferry brought us back to the new harbor, Landeyjahöfn, early this morning where we sadly said goodbye to Traesti, our “trusty” guide. There we met our two new guides – Edward and his sister Stephania – and their two “superjeeps.” The students who came to Iceland two years ago remember Edward and his superjeep well – a converted Ford Econoline 350 van poised to venture off any road, climb any volcano and ford any stream. Armed with Edward’s vehicle and guiding skills, we did.
[Note: Our guide, Eddi, was the location manager for the new film Prometheus. Parts of Prometheus (the scenes near the cones) – were filmed just north of Hekla – a volcano we plan to climb next week. Much of the scenery for this film was shot here in Iceland. In fact, Edward’s team supervised many of the explosions that took place in the scenes on the distant planet. If you watch the film, be sure to watch the credits for Eddi Williamsson! Did you know the movie makers spent $7 million over a three-week period for eight minutes of actual film? Most of the film came from animation processes.]
[Second Note: Tom Cruise is on Iceland now making a movie. He’s been here a few weeks now with his family and rented a house in the northern fjord country.]
After getting lunch food at a nearby village (to have for a special picnic lunch), we began our day letting some air out the tires of our superjeep. You outdoor enthusiasts know what’s coming… OFF ROAD TREKING! We drove along a braided stream channel, crossed several streams in our vehicle, and endured the gravel road for several kilometers to our destination – Gigjökull, just below the now famous Eyjafjallajökull volcano (… a compound word like many Icelandic words – Eyja = island, fjalla = mountain, jökull = ice). Indeed, there we were… at a glacial tongue of the Eyjafjallajökull glacier that overlies the volcano that erupted two years ago and shut down air traffic for more than two weeks. Here, the intense melting of the glacier during the eruption caused the catastrophic draining of a glacial lagoon and deep carving by the floodwaters into solid rock lava. If you’re lucky, one of is bringing back *real* Eyjafjallajökull ash for you.
We drove back down the road to a famous waterfall – Seljalandsfoss – that you can walk behind. During our picnic lunch there, one student decided this would be her permanent home. Asking her how she would support herself, she replied of course, “By selling tickets to come here!” Just about everyone drank the water right from the stream. No worries, mom and dad – the stream water is the most pure, natural water on this planet, straight from thousands of year olds melting glacier water with no impurities. Heaven on earth.
Some students nervously anticipated our next stop – a hike on a real glacier. We went to the southern part of the Mrydalsjökull (remember, jökull means glacier?) and met a guide named Catherine to hike up the Sólheimajökull tongue of the Mrydalsjökull. Catherine fit us with our crampons, gave us our ice picks and, after a lesson on how to put on our crampons, away we went. When you walk with crampons on ice you have to lift your foot high off the ground and stomp hard when bringing it down to avoid hitting your toe first. You also have to walk with your legs apart so you don’t crampon yourself. Many brave souls walked straight up the glacier to see the magnificence of Mother Nature in all her splendor – crevasses, moulons, lateral morraines, disappearing meltwater streams, all the while getting higher and higher up on and farther and farther into the glacier. The melting of this glacier has accelerated greatly over the past decade – no joking. One of our astute students asked our guide, “Why have you not mentioned anything about global warming in your discussions? Are you avoiding the topic on purpose?” Hearing students ask these questions is one of the reasons I love liberal arts education. She replied, “I’ve learned not to discuss it because our discussions on the glacier can get very heated.” Good idea, I thought… heat and ice don’t mix. Just ask the Eyjafjallajökull.
We’re back in our Hotel Edda Skógar now. We had an absolutely fantastic buffet-style meal with choices that include everyone’s favorite – only available certain times of the year and one of the traditional foods – sheep intestines. Also on the buffet: mink whale in a special teriyaki sauce, fresh smoked salmon (as mentioned earlier, the season began June 1), fresh herring, cod balls with tomato sauce, seafood couscous with clams and mussels, beet roots, pineapple and cucumber salad, and so much more. Oh, and, of course, skyr as one of the desserts.
Tonight some of us watched Italy play England in soccer (Italy won!), some walked to the large waterfall down the road, others walked to a local cultural museum, and the rest rested. Sounds like a plan… breakfast at 07:30 tomorrow and off we go at 08:30. I’m letting them sleep in a little. They’ve earned it!
June 25, 2012 I apologize for the delay in blogging these past couple of days. We have unlimited daylight here and have taken advantage of every ounce (or I should say grams) of it, so I often start the blogging after 11 p.m. It’s the same reason I have to ask my English Department colleagues back home to give me a pass on the grammar. Incidentally, one of the students today said to me while hiking up to the top of a 700 m high volcanic mountain, “Have you noticed that since we’ve been here, we’ve done everything in metric?” How easy we learn when we experience it. Speed limits are kilometers per hour, distances are kilometers and meters, temperature is Celsius, drinks are liters, bulk candy (I prefer the licorice) is grams… and we haven’t even missed the English system.
So, by the time we returned to our guest house at Gerði last night, we unloaded our bags into our new, but quaint rooms and trekked off to another delicious dinner. Our accommodations on the east coast were stunning. We’re staying at about 3:30 on the clock. Large mountains behind us, great blue Atlantic Ocean in front of us, and in the shadow of the largest glacier in Iceland – the Vatnajökull. But, I’m getting ahead of myself.
We started Day 5 at a beautiful waterfall about 100 m high and which was only about a 5-minute walk from our accommodations. How many times in one’s life can you start your day at a beautiful waterfall? We then ventured back to the ring road. The ring road is now paved (it hasn’t always been that way) and (importantly) connected (it wasn’t always that way either – especially after jokulaups occur - more on those later). The ring road offers tourists and natives alike the opportunity to travel around (literally) Iceland as the ring road more or less follows the coast. If you think of Iceland as a clock, Reykjavik is at 9:00. We are going counterclockwise and are now at 5:30.
We had an adventurous day today with multiple stops:
Dyrhöralaey: We learned about sea stacks, sea arches, sea caves, and erosional coasts. Mother Nature’s way of getting to equilibrium. It’s one of the great lessons I’ve learned about nature and how the world works during the 30+ years I’ve been at this science thing (and even before that when I first remember getting curious about the world at age 7 while digging up 250,000,000 year old crinoid stems and brachiopods on Fossil Hill in my St. Louis, Missouri neighborhood… how could St. Louis possibly have been under an ocean, I wondered?). Anyway, Mother Nature doesn’t like to be out of equilibrium, and in a geological sense that means she doesn’t like curvy shorelines and mountains and valleys. She wants flat and straight. That’s why the 150 m high cliffs at Dyrhöralaey (a meter is about a yard, so you can multiply meters by 3 and figure out feet) are eroding and straightening themselves out. This huge, solid land mass made out of lava that erupted beneath a glacier thousands of years ago just happens to stick out into the water and, as a result, wave energy is focused on it. The result is erosion and the formation of sea stacks, sea arches and sea caves. This is an unusual type of coast for south Iceland – most of the coast is made of sedimentary deposits.
Reynishfjara: Beautiful and huge columns of basalt lava – yes, literally columns. Hexagonal (really, polygonal) shaped, long, side-by-side, black columns that form the cliffs that face the blue, blue ocean. They form as hot lava – about 1000 degrees Celsius (ten times hotter than boiling water at 100 degrees Celsius) –cools and shrinks to form vertical cracks through the lava as it hardens. The columns combine to make beautiful shapes like roses and elephants – just like the ones we saw on our boat ride around Heimaey. Here, there are two caves into the columnar basalt so you can see the lava in 3D – bottom, top and sides. Very cool, at least now (that’s a bad joke/pun).
Fjaorargljufur: (Don’t worry, we can’t say this one either): A striking canyon with a waterfall at the head… an adventurous way down, but we didn’t lose anyone. Sore bottoms, wet feet and one for the ages that could have been enjoyed from the top even more. Please don’t ask. These things happen every now and then. I had to buy everyone ice cream to redeem myself. No one complained.
All in all, another great and memorable day. And, they keep getting better.
June 26, 2012: We started out today by driving out to and onto a gravel barrier island. A spectacular black gravel island (made of lava rock rounded and pounded by waves too tall and energetic to comprehend, which would have to be the case given the size of the small boulders that make up the beach and the shape of the beach). The beach had no less than 4 berms – those flat areas next to the dunes that you like to spread your towel onto – but, here, there were no dunes. Not enough sand – only boulders – and too-strong waves. So, while yesterday we learned about erosional coasts, this morning we learned about depositional coasts that formed in and have been modified by conditions very much unlike those found in the U.S.
Next stop: Boat ride around the icebergs in the Jökulsárlón (jökull means glacier, sárlón means lagoon).
What can I say, after another traditional and delicious breakfast of bread, butter, different meats and cheeses, cucumbers, tomatoes, waffles, cereal, skyr, fruit, juices etc. (I put this list in here because I overheard one of my students say to his parents while Skyping one night that all they had here was cereal for breakfast when he meant to say all he ate
here was cereal… don’t worry moms and dads… everyone is eating well!), we loaded up into the duck boats, zipped up our life jackets and drove down the road. Of course, then we drove right into the water past the local seal. As the tongue of this glacier melts, huge chunks of ice break off and float into this lagoon. Carefully navigating around the icebergs (recall from the Titanic movie that only 10% of the iceberg floats above the water), we shot about 500 photos on our cameras. Crystal-blue ice – in all shapes and sizes – floating all around us, seals popping up to watch us, and the Vatnajökull within spitting distance (with a strong backwind).
You may find it interesting to know that a scene from a James Bond movie – Die Another Day – was shot in this glacial lagoon. I haven’t seen the movie, but apparently, they needed to have a frozen lake for the scene filmed there and they had a problem. Because the lagoon is connected to the sea, and the sea brings in saltwater, the freezing point of the water is much lower. In other words, it takes much colder temperatures to freeze the lake. Enter heavy construction equipment to carry enough sediment to dam the outlet to the sea. After a while, the salt in the lagoon settled to the bottom and the cold temperatures froze the fresh water on top. Only 007 could do that, right?
A few movies have been shot in Iceland – Prometheus, Tomb Raider, Batman Begins, two James Bond films, Flags of Our Fathers, Journey to the Center of the Earth. As I said Tom Cruise is here now filming a movie. The Icelandic government is giving a large tax break to woo film directors here to make films.
From the glacial lagoon we headed back to the east to Ingolshovði (pronounced ē –gols –showvth – ē) – a rock headland at the very southwest tip of Iceland, about 5:00 on the clock. Thankfully for us it was low tide, so we could drive across the wide sandur (a broad, very flat, sheet of black volcanic sand deposited by meltwater streams flowing from a glacier). Again the superjeep was put to the test, driving through a wetland, a soggy (to put it mildly) road and a few streams (some with swans!) to get to the sandur to get to Ingolshovði. We did arrive to the southwest tip of Iceland – the site where the first settler to Iceland arrived from Norway. Here, in the year 874, Ingols Arnarson threw two pillars from his minor chieftain palace from whence he came into the ocean. He decided that, where they landed ashore, he would make his first home. Four years later, a servant found the pillars on the other side of the island in a smoky bay with steam billowing from geothermal vents – Reykur (smokey) and Vik (bay) = Reykjavik.
At Ingolshovði, we hiked up about a 50-meter-high loose black sand cliff. The black sand came from the intense winds that blow from the southeast during the storm season. The winds are so powerful that they blow the sand up onto the rocky headland 50 meters up and carve rock into curious shapes (called ventifacts) and semi-polished surfaces from wind blasting. We took an hour-and-a-half hike around the top of the headland seeing all kinds of interesting things and staying together as a group to prevent attacks from angry Artic Skua bird mothers guarding their nests with eggs on the ground. Of course, we had to brave the bird attacks to see the puffins and other sea birds on the cliffs, flying around, and swimming in the ocean. Little did we know that we would have another treat – minky whales swimming in the ocean below us. The day was beautiful, the scenery gorgeous, and a good and educational time was had by all.
After trekking back across the sandur and wetlands with our superjeeps, we made a brief stop at Kvíár jökull to look at the evidence of glacial retreat. There’s no denying that the glaciers are shrinking here very quickly. Everyone here knows it. The front of the glacier can move back toward the North Pole at rates that can approach 3-4 meters (9-12 feet) per day according to our guide. Google “extreme ice survey” on Vimeo and check out the time-lapse videos.
We ended the day at Skaftafell National Park near the southern edge of the Vatnajökull glacier and east of the sandurs deposited by the dangerous jökulhlaups (huge floods that occur when a volcano erupts beneath an ice sheet). The Eyjafjalkajokull, for example, took out a steel bridge along the ring road like the James River would move a small plastic toy. At the state park, we saw a movie about the eruption of the volcano, Grimsvötn, beneath the Vatnajökull for a few days in 1998. This eruption led to the catstrophic jökulhlaups that now make up a large percentage of the south coast of Iceland’s landscape.
I have to tell you something that happened that made me realize what an amazing experience we are having here. While driving along, our guide, Eðwarð (his sister Stephania is driving the other superjeep), received a call from one of the companies that he works for – True North (Google it). Apparently, Tom Cruise is celebrating his 50th birthday in Iceland (he has his family here while he’s shooting the film) and needed a guide to take him around Iceland by helicopter to celebrate his birthday. So… they called Eðwarð to be his personal guide. He refused saying that he was already committed (to us!). You take it from there.
Hotel Laki greeted us with a fantastic and enormous dinner buffet, cozy cottages and friendly people. A good night’s sleep did us all good. Oh yea, if you’re interested in golfing here… there is a 9-hole golf course adjacent to Hotel Laki but, instead of trees as obstacles (there are very few trees here because they were almost all cut down for fire wood by the early settlers), there are pseudocraters. I’d like to see how Tiger Woods would navigate around those obstacles!
June 27, 2012:
We nourished ourselves with a nice breakfast, drove to a nearby grocery store for lunch food, mailed our postcards, drained our bank cards at the ATM, and started off on our next adventure. First stop: into the central highlands at Eldgjá (pronounced Eld gee ow) – a new addition to the Vatnajökull National Park – a huge fissure or crack in the Earth, through which angry magma in 934 A.D. spewed for almost four years to create a valley with a very large and beautiful waterfall. This was the most powerful eruption that has taken place in Iceland during the last 1,000 years. We hiked about two hours with a stop at the waterfall and made it back to the superjeep just as the rain began to fall. Impeccable timing.
It would be an entire day before we saw a paved road again as we then drove out of the Vatnajökull National Park west (back toward Reykjavik), in the central highlands, and into the Frídlandadfjallabaki (I’m not going to even try) Nature Reserve along one lane gravel roads. We had nearly 250 kilometers of incredible scenery to cover. When we arrived at Landmannalaugar the rain stopped, and we had the option to relax in a hot-spring river, take a casual hike in the lava field valley or climb a steep 700 meter (2,100 feet) mountain. We all chose different things and, as luck would have it, it started raining again when we finished. Who doesn’t believe in angels???
One of the highlights of the trip occurred next… a trip to the valley near Valafell where Eðwarð, our guide and the location manager for True North, helped to create the scene in the movie Prometheus. You know, the one with the temple in the black sand valley, and that had all the good explosions at the end? Eðwarð showed us where the scene was made and how it was made.
While we’re on the subject: As we drove to our final destination of the day – the most famous volcano of them all in Iceland,Hekla – we passed a couple of craters along the same active volcano zone as Hekla. Believe it or not, the Playstation Company used these craters for a Guitar Hero advertisement (check it out on YouTube!). You’ll see Hekla in the background, and then hundreds of guitars being pushed out of the Soil Conservation Survey’s DC-3 aircraft (the old one with propellers) into Hekla (they actually dropped them into smaller craters). Eðwarð helped with that advertisement and spent two days with his team collecting the guitars from the crater after the shooting of the ad. His son is happy to have two of them with only minor scratches (according to Eðwarð).
After a delicious dinner of fish soup, fresh salmon, potatoes, salad and French chocolate cake, we moved to our hotel Arnes – an international youth hostel. After our evening summary of the day and briefing of tomorrow, we cleaned up and turned in somewhat early. Tomorrow will be another exciting day as we make our way back to Reykjavik across the central highlands.