"HOW HAPPY ARE YOU THIS YEAR, on a scale of zero to ten, if ten is very happy and zero is…no more hay to eat?"

It was three in the afternoon on Wednesday, December 17, in the far southeast of Iceland. A group of Icelandic ponies were standing mute in a pasture wedged between the man-made harbor of Höfn and the sprawling, mist-shrouded Vatnajökull glacier. The vibrant white of their hides stood out against swirling, milky-white clouds.

For the past three days, I hadn't been lounging in hot springs or tramping on glaciers. I'd been hitchhiking. Full-time. All four hours a day. Starting outside Reykjavík, I'd been thumbing counterclockwise on Highway 1, hoping to cruise the full 830 miles of the coast's island-circling Ring Road in a week. Along the way, I was asking everyone I met the same question about happiness. The happiest person so far was Joey, a sheep farmer, at 9. The least happy, at 6.5, was an unemployed plumber named Gylfi.

Initially, rides came as sweet and regular as the notes in a Gershwin tune, but here, 200 miles from Reyky, only the occasional dump truck was going my way.

"I'll take your silence to mean happy," I said to the ponies. "A 10. So happy you're speechless."

Just then, a microscopic 4x4 pulled to the side of the two-lane road, stopping beside my bags. Out popped Fatty and Skinny.

"Gódan daginn," I yelled.

Fatty was Peter and Skinny was Krispin. Both were Capuchin monks on their way back from a session of "spiritual renewal" in the capital.

Without waiting, I lobbed the happiness query. "Ten," said Krispin. "Life is beautiful."

Magically, Krispin produced three Cuban cigars. Windows rolled up, we hotboxed it north for four hours, past free-roaming reindeer herds and the devastatingly grand scenery of the eastern fjords.