A PLOT WAS TAKING SHAPE AGAINST my brother, a scheme to keep him breakfastless and miserable. Dad and I were the obvious conspirators, but the nation of Iceland, where rocks and sheep had so far outnumbered breakfast buffets by about a million to zero, was not to be trusted, either. Oppressed by forces beyond his control, Dan borrowed a page from the playbooks of Gandhi and M.L. King Jr. and began a program of passive resistance in hopes of scuttling group morale beyond all reckoning.

For our first 24 hours in-country, he hung out in the car.

The protest officially got under way about an hour into the trip, shortly after Dan announced that he had to take a leak.

"That's cool—I don't need your help," he said when I offered to pull over. I looked at him in the rearview. He appeared to be eating a plastic water bottle. He chewed the bottle in half and knelt on the seat. Then, rather than set foot on Iceland's treacherous terra firma, he peed into his makeshift pissoir and pitched the contents out the window.

We soon passed a waterfall, the Seljalandsfoss, a platinum horse tail gushing from the top of a black-and-billiard-table-green parapet. We could see tiny figures in hikers' motley moving behind the cataract.

"Man, you can walk behind the falls!" Dad exclaimed.

I stood on the brakes.

"Come on, kiddo, let's go," my father said to Dan, who was sprawled in the back, ostensibly engrossed in the guidebook.

"Nah, I'll stay here," he said.

"Oh, come on, man," said Dad.

"No, thanks."

Dad and I made for the trail. The falls blew over us in a thick mist, the water electrically cold and sweet on our lips.

Walking back to the car, Dad lapsed into a coughing fit, a sound like someone blasting a blackboard with rock salt. He'd been suffering these periodic lung quakes since his last bout with chemo. It was worrisome, but he'd had his fill of doctors.

"You OK, Pops?" I asked.

"Just clearing the chest." He took a few deep breaths and gazed back at the falling water. "God, it's good to still have a pair of functional legs. God, it's good to be alive."

We trudged back to the car, where Dan was still stretched out with the guide. "What are you discovering there?" Dad asked him as I pulled back onto the road.

"Fifty-three percent of the people here believe in elves," Dan said, adding provincial occultism to the country's crimes, just behind lawnlessness. Then he mumbled a synopsis of a legend about a union boss who "had relations" with an elf.

"What was that?" I asked.

"You can screw an elf."