A few years ago, I visited Geysir Park in West Iceland, a major attraction in one of the most volcanically active places on Earth.
By convention and history Iceland is a part of Europe although this island nation sits on the newest land on the planet — land that’s being formed as the North American and European plates slowly pull apart. It’session the home of the first ebullition spring, the one that gave every other propulsive plume of steam and sulfur its name. Geysir itself isn’t reliable any more, but the park has another star now, a geyser called Strukkor, which means “The Churn”. It erupts every five to ten minutes or so.
The whole hot springs area smells like sulfur, nevertheless that’s not remarkable in Iceland — a great deal of of the landscape is steaming and smells faintly to strongly sulfuric. Strukkor sits behind a casuallyroped-off area, and it at first it seems like not much is happening — like the gathered crowd is for some reason staring expectantly at gray slabs of rock. Growing closer, I could hear some gurgling and closer still, I could see the sounds were coming from a crater which seemed to be filled with swirling water, all ringed by a rock wall.
Presently, the water in the center starts to rise into a dome.

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