"Iceland had a even stronger impact on me that way because it was so obvious that the land itself had recently (in geological terms) been created and can destro

"Iceland had a even stronger impact on me that way because it was so obvious that the land itself had recently (in geological terms) been created and can destroy whatever you do as a human or at least make it all insignificant." Yeah, I can envision that. America has something related, and related to your feeling about it that "you can truly change the world and accomplish anything you want". We're a land of natural disasters, but very very few of them are as severe and encompassing as the geological events in Iceland. So our disasters tend to invoke a response from the survivors to pick themselves up and rebuild. I had a "better" than front side seat to this starting in 2011: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Joplin_tornado https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Joplin_tornado