First off, let me just say that landing in LAX, especially after experiencing a stunning trip outside of America, is akin to having someone come up to you and hit you in the face with a shovel.
BAM!
Just like that. We have all been there, that smash of “shit,” and “ugh,” and “lost” that follows any vacation, especially if its one of those vacations where you allow yourself to think briefly, “Maybe I could move here and do this for a living!?”
The other amazing thing that happened to me upon arrival from New Zealand was that I raced through customs, through baggage claim, to the United Airlines front desk to check in for my flight to Denver only to find that the flight was rescheduled to leave 30 minutes EARLY. Has that ever happened to any of you? Of course I started to cry and the extraordinary thing about that was, for once, crying got me nowhere. Looking around me I noticed at least two other women crying as well. All of us confused, all of us passed along to another airline employee that held that gaze in his eyes, “Great. Another one.”
Eventually I was fine, I boarded the next available plane and landed in lovely Colorado no more than two hours late. But you know the greatest thing I think we all can do? Mind our P’s and Q’s. LAX is such a poor example of America (and keep in mind sometimes all a visitor sees), and its important to remember how far a please or a thank you will go.
The whole experience actually reminded me of the LAST TIME I have ever been to Walmart. In my defense, I was in the usual hurry and needed supplies for an oil change as well as a few groceries – yes, Walmart is the devil but it also has both! So, as I was negotiating my cart in and out of the aisles I was rammed repeatedly by over zealous mothers—the ones carting around huge heavy loads of everything along with two or three children. I kept saying, “Ah, sorry,” as if it were my fault. It took me awhile to notice that not a one said, “Its okay, no worries, excuse me.”
My horror escalated. In the grocery aisle I was moving slow and a regular Walmart shopper came careening around the corner, not looking, and smacked into the back of my heels! Holy mother! I managed to keep my composure…for one more minute…
On my way out of that hellacious aisle, limping, I was rounding the corner at the same time as an older man…in a motorized wheelchair—one of those yellow ones with the basket in front. He sat there, motionless, like a scared rabbit. Meanwhile the frustration and annoyance and unjustness of WALMART was seething and boiling in my very bones…and then…I burst.
“What are you going to do man!” I nearly screamed. “Are you going to just sit there!?”
I left minutes later, my groceries still stuck in aisle eleven. Perhaps the man stayed there too. I was so horrified by my actions that I left immediately, and vowed never to return. Walmart is a true energy thief—the place steals the good we try and suck up and absorb on the outside, and deposits it into the useless shit that lines the well stocked walls.
My experience at LAX was eerily similar. I will, of course, hope to return to LAX, if only for a brief respite before flying off to somewhere else.
Hope everyone is having a lovely Monday!
Laura
Monday, September 25, 2006
Monday, September 18, 2006
The things we crave.
Christchurch, NZ Sunday 9-11-06
Report from the South Island. Groggy and sore, these hostel beds creak in all the wrong places, the pillows not more than a case wrapped around a few fluffs of flat cotton. I woke today and realized, at last, that I am ready to go home.
Two days ago I left Kaikoura. Forgive me if I am not able to properly convey how that place, its people, the great mother whale and her baby, the mountains, affected me. But I think it’s because I don’t know how the experience has changed me, not yet, only knowing that it has.
Experiences. Change. These are things that I have come to accept as part of my desirous nature; things I crave in such abundance that traveling is one of the only ways to appease the hunger. I am excited to be back in Colorado, for all of the adventures awaiting this fall and winter and spring, but I am also excited to leave again…
Sitting outside, in the hostel spa on Friday night with Suzanne and another girl from London, we could feel the ache and pulse of the full moon even through the dense cloud cover; we could feel the presence of the mountains. I was thinking if I could take that moment, that simple moment of sitting in a hot tub on the east coast of New Zealand, with a few independently traveling women, women with dreams and aspirations and ambition, and share that with my own mother, father, brothers, my sister-in-law, my best friends. How I wished I could have transported you all there with me, for one moment. Maybe you would’ve felt what I did—that you would look back on that moment and think, always, “Yes,” but you would never have the words to describe it.
Every moment, of every day is like a “once in a lifetime” experience, probably because it is—these people, these places, these ideas, these memories…once in a lifetime. I realize the nature of my calling—teaching, writing—and how both of these endeavors put me more outside of myself than in. I spend a lot of my time functioning as a stranger to others, at least initially. But there is a reason it works for me, even if it becomes challenging and exhausting at times to interact with new people—those new people also bring new energy, and ideas, and hope.
I’m going to tell you one final story, I think, at least until I get back stateside and change the blog to reflect more daily adventures and ideas.
Friday morning I ran down to the beach to see, of course, if the whales were there. I took a loop through the small town that let me out onto the beach about 4km from the hostel. It was a beautifully, slightly cool morning, the waters flat as glass. An older man, with a bucket and fishing pole, was making his way up the rocky shore and I asked him if he had seen the whales. This became a common occurrence, people asking others, “Have you seen them?” He told me they were there, drifting in the bay, north. I stretched my gaze as far as I could see in that direction and sure enough I saw the baby breach once, twice. It was a fair bit of a walk to them and I thought I’d continue my run and then come back down later with a lunch and sit in the stones, watching, waiting.
John and I talked for a while. He was recently widowed and feared being alone. He moved to Kaikoura only a few months ago because he discovered that his good friend, Shirley, who he hadn’t seen or had contact with in 35 years, lived there. When he made contact with her he discovered that she was a widow as well. That sealed it. They are the best of friends, never lonely, and have one another to look after. His eyes sparkled when he talked about her. It was a very touching and thoughtful story and I appreciated John immensely for sharing it. We talked for ages about this and that. About how having friends to share tea and coffee with, and good conversation, are really the simplest most sought after things in life. I gazed out at the ocean. Just that morning Suzanne and I had had a few epiphanies about our own private lives over good conversation and good coffee (anything that isn’t instant has become like gold to me).
“I was just about to have some coffee,” John said. “You want one? Do you have to go?”
Did I have to go. I thought about this for a full minute. I actually had nowhere to go, nowhere to be, nothing to do, I didn’t even bother to look at my watch but simply said, “I’d love to join you.” I couldn’t remember the last time I felt so liberated by the usual constraints of time. The only place I wanted to be was right where I was, sharing the morning and the experience with this man.
That was something that the whales did rather well: bring extraordinarily different people together. John had one of those cool camper vans (oh, how I want one!) that came rigged with a burner and sink and all the fixings needed to brew up a pot of boiling water. We leaned up against the camper, sipping coffee and munching on luscious bakery rolls (how glorious to have something other than noodles and soups!)
Others came down, asked us “Have you seen em today?” and before too long, a small groggy early morning crowd had assembled. We were mostly quiet, thinking our own thoughts, following the mist across the mountains, scanning the flat surface of the water looking for a strip of blackness. And then, suddenly, she was there. As if on cue. A Right Whale no more than one hundred feet away. I felt the shudder ripple through all of us.
I felt then that I was ready to leave New Zealand, that I could say good bye, that I could wrap myself around that morning as best I could so that I could remember how pure and easy it had come to me. Like the wind, or the moon, or the sunrise. If you wait, and listen, the subtly sweet hand of nature will show you something.
The whales fulfilled an ache in all of us, a void, and I wonder what that is. The first time I saw the whales I felt afraid—not since Alaska and a pod of frisky killer whales five years earlier, had I been that close to something so massive, a living, breathing animal. It became more than a mother and her babies playing, it was the most striking occurrence, and rare, that finally gave us all an excuse to say, “This is big, I can let everything else fall away, because this may never happen again. It’s important.” We were all given a temporary gift of timelessness.
And you all have given me a gift by sharing in this journey. I’m in the Christchurch airport as I write this, waiting for a flight up to Auckland. Tomorrow I head to LA and home and to friends and family, a cat, a job, and even a renewed faith in our country. I have met some good as gold Americans on my travels. I have also met a plethora of others that are trying to understand what goes on over there in America, I have gained a new perspective, and appreciation, for how the world sees us, and vice versa. When you strip away everything else—the colors of our flags, the resources in our soils, the intonations and accents, the various degrees of global warming in our cities and countries—we all want the same thing: to find happiness, to create it.
Stay tuned,
laura
Report from the South Island. Groggy and sore, these hostel beds creak in all the wrong places, the pillows not more than a case wrapped around a few fluffs of flat cotton. I woke today and realized, at last, that I am ready to go home.
Two days ago I left Kaikoura. Forgive me if I am not able to properly convey how that place, its people, the great mother whale and her baby, the mountains, affected me. But I think it’s because I don’t know how the experience has changed me, not yet, only knowing that it has.
Experiences. Change. These are things that I have come to accept as part of my desirous nature; things I crave in such abundance that traveling is one of the only ways to appease the hunger. I am excited to be back in Colorado, for all of the adventures awaiting this fall and winter and spring, but I am also excited to leave again…
Sitting outside, in the hostel spa on Friday night with Suzanne and another girl from London, we could feel the ache and pulse of the full moon even through the dense cloud cover; we could feel the presence of the mountains. I was thinking if I could take that moment, that simple moment of sitting in a hot tub on the east coast of New Zealand, with a few independently traveling women, women with dreams and aspirations and ambition, and share that with my own mother, father, brothers, my sister-in-law, my best friends. How I wished I could have transported you all there with me, for one moment. Maybe you would’ve felt what I did—that you would look back on that moment and think, always, “Yes,” but you would never have the words to describe it.
Every moment, of every day is like a “once in a lifetime” experience, probably because it is—these people, these places, these ideas, these memories…once in a lifetime. I realize the nature of my calling—teaching, writing—and how both of these endeavors put me more outside of myself than in. I spend a lot of my time functioning as a stranger to others, at least initially. But there is a reason it works for me, even if it becomes challenging and exhausting at times to interact with new people—those new people also bring new energy, and ideas, and hope.
I’m going to tell you one final story, I think, at least until I get back stateside and change the blog to reflect more daily adventures and ideas.
Friday morning I ran down to the beach to see, of course, if the whales were there. I took a loop through the small town that let me out onto the beach about 4km from the hostel. It was a beautifully, slightly cool morning, the waters flat as glass. An older man, with a bucket and fishing pole, was making his way up the rocky shore and I asked him if he had seen the whales. This became a common occurrence, people asking others, “Have you seen them?” He told me they were there, drifting in the bay, north. I stretched my gaze as far as I could see in that direction and sure enough I saw the baby breach once, twice. It was a fair bit of a walk to them and I thought I’d continue my run and then come back down later with a lunch and sit in the stones, watching, waiting.
John and I talked for a while. He was recently widowed and feared being alone. He moved to Kaikoura only a few months ago because he discovered that his good friend, Shirley, who he hadn’t seen or had contact with in 35 years, lived there. When he made contact with her he discovered that she was a widow as well. That sealed it. They are the best of friends, never lonely, and have one another to look after. His eyes sparkled when he talked about her. It was a very touching and thoughtful story and I appreciated John immensely for sharing it. We talked for ages about this and that. About how having friends to share tea and coffee with, and good conversation, are really the simplest most sought after things in life. I gazed out at the ocean. Just that morning Suzanne and I had had a few epiphanies about our own private lives over good conversation and good coffee (anything that isn’t instant has become like gold to me).
“I was just about to have some coffee,” John said. “You want one? Do you have to go?”
Did I have to go. I thought about this for a full minute. I actually had nowhere to go, nowhere to be, nothing to do, I didn’t even bother to look at my watch but simply said, “I’d love to join you.” I couldn’t remember the last time I felt so liberated by the usual constraints of time. The only place I wanted to be was right where I was, sharing the morning and the experience with this man.
That was something that the whales did rather well: bring extraordinarily different people together. John had one of those cool camper vans (oh, how I want one!) that came rigged with a burner and sink and all the fixings needed to brew up a pot of boiling water. We leaned up against the camper, sipping coffee and munching on luscious bakery rolls (how glorious to have something other than noodles and soups!)
Others came down, asked us “Have you seen em today?” and before too long, a small groggy early morning crowd had assembled. We were mostly quiet, thinking our own thoughts, following the mist across the mountains, scanning the flat surface of the water looking for a strip of blackness. And then, suddenly, she was there. As if on cue. A Right Whale no more than one hundred feet away. I felt the shudder ripple through all of us.
I felt then that I was ready to leave New Zealand, that I could say good bye, that I could wrap myself around that morning as best I could so that I could remember how pure and easy it had come to me. Like the wind, or the moon, or the sunrise. If you wait, and listen, the subtly sweet hand of nature will show you something.
The whales fulfilled an ache in all of us, a void, and I wonder what that is. The first time I saw the whales I felt afraid—not since Alaska and a pod of frisky killer whales five years earlier, had I been that close to something so massive, a living, breathing animal. It became more than a mother and her babies playing, it was the most striking occurrence, and rare, that finally gave us all an excuse to say, “This is big, I can let everything else fall away, because this may never happen again. It’s important.” We were all given a temporary gift of timelessness.
And you all have given me a gift by sharing in this journey. I’m in the Christchurch airport as I write this, waiting for a flight up to Auckland. Tomorrow I head to LA and home and to friends and family, a cat, a job, and even a renewed faith in our country. I have met some good as gold Americans on my travels. I have also met a plethora of others that are trying to understand what goes on over there in America, I have gained a new perspective, and appreciation, for how the world sees us, and vice versa. When you strip away everything else—the colors of our flags, the resources in our soils, the intonations and accents, the various degrees of global warming in our cities and countries—we all want the same thing: to find happiness, to create it.
Stay tuned,
laura
Saturday, September 09, 2006
Died and gone to Kaikoura
Sometime yesterday—Tuesday, the 6th of September, 2006—on my way by bus from Nelson to Kaikoura, I think, but I can’t be sure, that I must have died.
After 3 hours in the 12-seat minibus, I became so car sick that I half-puked in my mouth (I’m sorry, but it’s the truth!) The experience made me think of what I used to say when my brother and I would throw parties: “It’s not a real party until someone throws up.” According to those standards, I was halfway to a party on that long and severely snaking road.
The roads had whirled straight out of Nelson, we raged up one pass, down another, until we were finally spat out onto the east coast and to the horizon I haven’t seen in almost two weeks. Only two weeks, I have to remind myself, and how LITTLE of this country I have seen. Back on the coast, I prayed for a straight highway, and some reprieve from the awful waves of nausea.
Wrong.
I kept my eyes closed the last 120 km to Kaikoura, this helped, ah, but then I couldn’t resist. There are mountains, you see, close cousins of the massive southern alps and they were right there! I have been told by my sorely missed traveling mate, Alice, that I would love Kaikoura. But I didn’t think I would die on the way there….
The reason I keep saying this, cliché intended and all, is because I found something akin to magic, yes, I mean paradise, yes! Heaven! at Kaikoura—where upon arriving I was treated with a conglomeration of uplifting, once in a lifetime (if ever) occurrences. Especially for a land locked American girl.
I arrived at my hostel, the Dolphin Lodge, to find the note: “Watching whale and her babies off the beach. Make yourself at home!” Whales? Tired and sore and still queasy from the horribly sickening drive, I gingerly placed my backpack in a side room, grabbed my camera, valuables, and took off for the beach, about 5 minutes by foot.
Maybe twenty people dotted the lip of sand as it descended down into the pebbly wavelets. I followed their gaze out to the ocean until I finally saw what they saw, a smooth blackness, resting peacefully on the surface of the water, and fading to just below.
A whale. A very large whale, no more than fifty feet away. A very very large whale that looked more like a massive floating log than anything else. Flanked on either side by a baby.
Well, that was pretty much the end of everything else I wanted to do that day as I followed those damn whales 3km down the beach. And I wasn’t alone. Half of the town, including the town’s children who had been let out of school for the occasion, and pretty much every tourist to drive through, tromped along the rough beach, exchanging disbelieving glances, pulled toward this uncommon experience of witnessing nature this close to our own tame existence.
My first thought was that one of them must be terribly sick. They are going to die, I thought, they are going to beach themselves. And then I watched as they floated closer and closer to the shoreline. Massive whales, the mother was 50 feet long, I found out later. I didn’t want to see this horrible, inevitable thing happen. I sat abruptly in the charcoal gray rocks and sand and began to write a heartbreaking poem about it, so heartbreaking in fact that I began to cry before I finished. I looked up, at everyone else taking pictures of the spectacle as the whales drifted, closer, closer. I said out loud, “I can’t take pictures of this.” And then a man, a local in his 40’s, asked me why.
There weren’t dying, he told me.
They were playing—a mother Southern Right Whale, her calf, and another calf that she had adopted. They had been playing in the bay for the last week. Right whales love to ‘surf’ and also ride the tidal currents. And I watched them, with new reverance, with new awe, as they floated in the water, less than 30ft from shore at times; their massive black fins pushing through the surface. More people came, planes and helicopters circled overhead. Kaikoura is one of the world’s hotspots for whale watching and there were plenty of people excited that day! I stayed down there as long as I could until my hunger
set in.
After a few more visits to the beach, Suzanne, an Aussie and the caretaker, let me into her flat above the hostel, where I could see as far as the eye could see. We talked, drank tea and played with the binoculars, looking at the whales so far down below, quite content, until we saw the baby jump.
Breaching it is called. When the whale propels itself through the water horizontally, at high speeds, before finally using all of that momentum for an upward thrust! Their massive and valiant bodies erupt and push through the surface, they twirl with their flippers out and then they land on their backs in a shower of sea spray. We saw this happen once and with not a moment to spare, we were off. I grabbed my boots from the back porch, where the hostel cat, Socks, had tangled herself in the laces, grabbed my camera, journal, and a Kit Kat. We tore out of the graveled lot in Suzanne’s ride, a blue car aptly named Carlito, down to the beach, toward the spectacle of observers who, by now, numbered nearly fifty and were cheering. There! Lobtailing! When the whale pushes its tail above the water and then slaps it down hard, this sound can be heard for miles in the open sea. This happened a few times and then the baby decided to breach all the way up the beach! The mother moved graciously toward it (so protective of both calves, and rightfully so, the killer whale also moves in these waters) and just as she neared, the baby would take off again and breach all the way back! The mother patiently following the little one. Please remember, when I say “baby”, that he/she is still a good 20feet long and with mass the size of a small bus.
This was rare the locals told me. Southern Rights often came into shore, but never this close and rarely to play in the surf and drift contentedly. It was something you could bet on never seeing again. A side note: the Right Whale (there are both northern and southern) was, at one point, nearly hunted to extinction. They were called the ‘right whales’ because they were the right ones to kill. They were sitting targets really, seeing as they came into shore to mate and give birth.
And then I couldn’t stop wondering at everything else that happened after. The sun began to set in that brilliant hour surrounding twilight, the glorious pink and purple madness splashed across the white peaks behind us, then a small rainbow peaked out from behind a few clouds, and then, by golly, the almost-full moon erupted over the ocean with its luminous white face! Suzanne and I, along with most of the town, sat on the beach until night fell and we were freezing. The whales still moving, though quieter now, play time dwindling, and many of the other onlookers making their way back to cars and bikes and home.
There are too many massive emotions surrounding the experience, too many metaphors and on and on, so I’ll spare you all of that mushy dribble! I will say, however, that it happened again the next day, and sealed my profound love affair with Kaikoura. This place has affected me perhaps more than anywhere else I have been in the last few months.
Until soon, all
laura
After 3 hours in the 12-seat minibus, I became so car sick that I half-puked in my mouth (I’m sorry, but it’s the truth!) The experience made me think of what I used to say when my brother and I would throw parties: “It’s not a real party until someone throws up.” According to those standards, I was halfway to a party on that long and severely snaking road.
The roads had whirled straight out of Nelson, we raged up one pass, down another, until we were finally spat out onto the east coast and to the horizon I haven’t seen in almost two weeks. Only two weeks, I have to remind myself, and how LITTLE of this country I have seen. Back on the coast, I prayed for a straight highway, and some reprieve from the awful waves of nausea.
Wrong.
I kept my eyes closed the last 120 km to Kaikoura, this helped, ah, but then I couldn’t resist. There are mountains, you see, close cousins of the massive southern alps and they were right there! I have been told by my sorely missed traveling mate, Alice, that I would love Kaikoura. But I didn’t think I would die on the way there….
The reason I keep saying this, cliché intended and all, is because I found something akin to magic, yes, I mean paradise, yes! Heaven! at Kaikoura—where upon arriving I was treated with a conglomeration of uplifting, once in a lifetime (if ever) occurrences. Especially for a land locked American girl.
I arrived at my hostel, the Dolphin Lodge, to find the note: “Watching whale and her babies off the beach. Make yourself at home!” Whales? Tired and sore and still queasy from the horribly sickening drive, I gingerly placed my backpack in a side room, grabbed my camera, valuables, and took off for the beach, about 5 minutes by foot.
Maybe twenty people dotted the lip of sand as it descended down into the pebbly wavelets. I followed their gaze out to the ocean until I finally saw what they saw, a smooth blackness, resting peacefully on the surface of the water, and fading to just below.
A whale. A very large whale, no more than fifty feet away. A very very large whale that looked more like a massive floating log than anything else. Flanked on either side by a baby.
Well, that was pretty much the end of everything else I wanted to do that day as I followed those damn whales 3km down the beach. And I wasn’t alone. Half of the town, including the town’s children who had been let out of school for the occasion, and pretty much every tourist to drive through, tromped along the rough beach, exchanging disbelieving glances, pulled toward this uncommon experience of witnessing nature this close to our own tame existence.
My first thought was that one of them must be terribly sick. They are going to die, I thought, they are going to beach themselves. And then I watched as they floated closer and closer to the shoreline. Massive whales, the mother was 50 feet long, I found out later. I didn’t want to see this horrible, inevitable thing happen. I sat abruptly in the charcoal gray rocks and sand and began to write a heartbreaking poem about it, so heartbreaking in fact that I began to cry before I finished. I looked up, at everyone else taking pictures of the spectacle as the whales drifted, closer, closer. I said out loud, “I can’t take pictures of this.” And then a man, a local in his 40’s, asked me why.
There weren’t dying, he told me.
They were playing—a mother Southern Right Whale, her calf, and another calf that she had adopted. They had been playing in the bay for the last week. Right whales love to ‘surf’ and also ride the tidal currents. And I watched them, with new reverance, with new awe, as they floated in the water, less than 30ft from shore at times; their massive black fins pushing through the surface. More people came, planes and helicopters circled overhead. Kaikoura is one of the world’s hotspots for whale watching and there were plenty of people excited that day! I stayed down there as long as I could until my hunger
set in.
After a few more visits to the beach, Suzanne, an Aussie and the caretaker, let me into her flat above the hostel, where I could see as far as the eye could see. We talked, drank tea and played with the binoculars, looking at the whales so far down below, quite content, until we saw the baby jump.
Breaching it is called. When the whale propels itself through the water horizontally, at high speeds, before finally using all of that momentum for an upward thrust! Their massive and valiant bodies erupt and push through the surface, they twirl with their flippers out and then they land on their backs in a shower of sea spray. We saw this happen once and with not a moment to spare, we were off. I grabbed my boots from the back porch, where the hostel cat, Socks, had tangled herself in the laces, grabbed my camera, journal, and a Kit Kat. We tore out of the graveled lot in Suzanne’s ride, a blue car aptly named Carlito, down to the beach, toward the spectacle of observers who, by now, numbered nearly fifty and were cheering. There! Lobtailing! When the whale pushes its tail above the water and then slaps it down hard, this sound can be heard for miles in the open sea. This happened a few times and then the baby decided to breach all the way up the beach! The mother moved graciously toward it (so protective of both calves, and rightfully so, the killer whale also moves in these waters) and just as she neared, the baby would take off again and breach all the way back! The mother patiently following the little one. Please remember, when I say “baby”, that he/she is still a good 20feet long and with mass the size of a small bus.
This was rare the locals told me. Southern Rights often came into shore, but never this close and rarely to play in the surf and drift contentedly. It was something you could bet on never seeing again. A side note: the Right Whale (there are both northern and southern) was, at one point, nearly hunted to extinction. They were called the ‘right whales’ because they were the right ones to kill. They were sitting targets really, seeing as they came into shore to mate and give birth.
And then I couldn’t stop wondering at everything else that happened after. The sun began to set in that brilliant hour surrounding twilight, the glorious pink and purple madness splashed across the white peaks behind us, then a small rainbow peaked out from behind a few clouds, and then, by golly, the almost-full moon erupted over the ocean with its luminous white face! Suzanne and I, along with most of the town, sat on the beach until night fell and we were freezing. The whales still moving, though quieter now, play time dwindling, and many of the other onlookers making their way back to cars and bikes and home.
There are too many massive emotions surrounding the experience, too many metaphors and on and on, so I’ll spare you all of that mushy dribble! I will say, however, that it happened again the next day, and sealed my profound love affair with Kaikoura. This place has affected me perhaps more than anywhere else I have been in the last few months.
Until soon, all
laura
Monday, September 04, 2006
An Imagination Stronger than Reality
Another more than magical experience driving up, from Queenstown, over Haast Pass and to the West Coast. It is only Alice and I now. Erin departed almost 4 days ago, caught a flight out of Queenstown. I talked Alice into keeping the car with me for a few more days so we could bomb over to the west coast and do a big loop around the northern part of the island.
I have to say, the most natural expression that falls from my lips these days is, simply, “Fuck Off.”
I must have told the scenery, the majestic snow-capped peaks and huge translucent and viciously windy lakes, off more than a handful of times on our way up and over Haast Pass. We would drive Gem up and over a hill and there would be some crazy spectacular horizon of scenery like I have never seen before (though parts of
Colorado certainly do come close) and then before I could even comprehend the visual beast before me I would utter, Fuck off. Not in a bad way, but more as “Come on! How much more outrageous could this place get!” NZ really is quite fitting as a postcard country. I highly recommend anyone coming to NZ to drive over this pass. You are just to the south of Mt Cook and some other monster peaks and the road is a winding, stunning, mess that makes you want to vomit (I am so unfortunately prone to road sickness*) and at the same time it makes you want to cry in gratitude that its there at all! (*Note on road sickness: the roads are so windy that I even feel extremely sick while driving!)
Ah, sigh, just the memory of it all makes me want to swoon over my pictures from that day…
On the other side of the pass was another story. Lets play a game! Ready? What falls from the sky in huge pea sized drops, sometimes falls sideways, hits you in the face, falls in a flood down the windshield, gets your ass all wet even with waterproof pants on, and really does its best to muck up your good, sunny mood?
Okay, the answer is obviously rain. Rain my friends. Rain for 2 days straight, all the way up the rugged and tremendous west coast. But, we did have small reprieves. Like when we bumbled around on the Franz Joseph Glacier (I hear the Franz and the Fox glaciers are actually growing? Two of the only glaciers in the world unaffected by global warming. Lets have a big cheer for crazy ancient ice and Mother Nature!)
We also had a splendid reprieve from the rain when we reached Hokitika, a small town famous for its NZ Greenstone, and with the most kick ass beach I have run around on since arriving in the southern hemi. The beach might have been even more kick ass because I was the only one on it as the sun went down. I didn’t have a camera and gladly, because I took great joy in sitting on a rough piece of driftwood and watching the sun fall down below the horizon. No picture, only the little imprint of that on my memory. Nice.
Now we are in Nelson, on the top end of South Island. It is beautiful here, warmer than anywhere else I’ve been in NZ, and sunny with a real nice beach that I plan on sitting on all day tomorrow. The mountains are sparse but the warmth is welcome. I’m tipping over the top of the island in a few days and heading back south to Kaikoura (where whales and seals abound!) for a few days of relaxation and writing and hiking and then, finally, to Christchurch to prepare for my big flight up to Aukland and then to LA.
It’s hard to comprehend the beauty of this country or its people in 3 short weeks, but I’m so grateful to have had such lovely traveling mates (Alice even cramped into the tiny car with me last night to save some cash.) It certainly makes things more entertaining, and less lonely, when there are familiar faces around.
One note on Alice before I forget. First, I have to say it is so wonderfully entertaining to be completely surrounded by people my age from other countries. And now I have a friend in Italy! To sum her up I’ll tell you about the day we passed the sign that read, “penguin crossing.”
Okay, I have never seen a damn penguin in the wild so while I was negotiating the outrageously windy road, in full gusty rain, I begged Alice to keep a close eye on the beach and let me know if she saw a wobbly penguin emerge from the water. Less than a few minutes later she shrieked! Grabbed hold of my arm (as if, for on absurd and terrifying moment, she forgot I was driving) and said, “Oh! Slow! I think I see penguin!”
But I had seen what she saw just a split second earlier: a floppy animal running on the beach, with a stick in its mouth. Damn dog!
I told her this, she laughed, then shook her head, wanting to believe in the penguin sighting: “My imagination is stronger than reality, if I want to see penguin, I see penguin!”
I liked her immensely after that. We used our intense imaginations in the days that followed to convert our meager pasta and cheese dinners into a glorious feast akin to a thanksgiving meal! She is a funny and supportive companion and listens to me ramble on about life and love and everything else that is important to me. Thank you Alice! After more than a week together, tomorrow we both head away from here so that means tonight we drink lots of local beer!
All right! Off to another rice and beans dinner! (In my head I imagine a huge stir fry!) I have simplified myself even more down here. Wear the same thing every day (I have discarded many of my nasty working clothes) and eating pretty meager rations. But I feel FULL, more full, the fullest maybe ever. Does that make sense?
Peace,
laura
I have to say, the most natural expression that falls from my lips these days is, simply, “Fuck Off.”
I must have told the scenery, the majestic snow-capped peaks and huge translucent and viciously windy lakes, off more than a handful of times on our way up and over Haast Pass. We would drive Gem up and over a hill and there would be some crazy spectacular horizon of scenery like I have never seen before (though parts of
Colorado certainly do come close) and then before I could even comprehend the visual beast before me I would utter, Fuck off. Not in a bad way, but more as “Come on! How much more outrageous could this place get!” NZ really is quite fitting as a postcard country. I highly recommend anyone coming to NZ to drive over this pass. You are just to the south of Mt Cook and some other monster peaks and the road is a winding, stunning, mess that makes you want to vomit (I am so unfortunately prone to road sickness*) and at the same time it makes you want to cry in gratitude that its there at all! (*Note on road sickness: the roads are so windy that I even feel extremely sick while driving!)
Ah, sigh, just the memory of it all makes me want to swoon over my pictures from that day…
On the other side of the pass was another story. Lets play a game! Ready? What falls from the sky in huge pea sized drops, sometimes falls sideways, hits you in the face, falls in a flood down the windshield, gets your ass all wet even with waterproof pants on, and really does its best to muck up your good, sunny mood?
Okay, the answer is obviously rain. Rain my friends. Rain for 2 days straight, all the way up the rugged and tremendous west coast. But, we did have small reprieves. Like when we bumbled around on the Franz Joseph Glacier (I hear the Franz and the Fox glaciers are actually growing? Two of the only glaciers in the world unaffected by global warming. Lets have a big cheer for crazy ancient ice and Mother Nature!)
We also had a splendid reprieve from the rain when we reached Hokitika, a small town famous for its NZ Greenstone, and with the most kick ass beach I have run around on since arriving in the southern hemi. The beach might have been even more kick ass because I was the only one on it as the sun went down. I didn’t have a camera and gladly, because I took great joy in sitting on a rough piece of driftwood and watching the sun fall down below the horizon. No picture, only the little imprint of that on my memory. Nice.
Now we are in Nelson, on the top end of South Island. It is beautiful here, warmer than anywhere else I’ve been in NZ, and sunny with a real nice beach that I plan on sitting on all day tomorrow. The mountains are sparse but the warmth is welcome. I’m tipping over the top of the island in a few days and heading back south to Kaikoura (where whales and seals abound!) for a few days of relaxation and writing and hiking and then, finally, to Christchurch to prepare for my big flight up to Aukland and then to LA.
It’s hard to comprehend the beauty of this country or its people in 3 short weeks, but I’m so grateful to have had such lovely traveling mates (Alice even cramped into the tiny car with me last night to save some cash.) It certainly makes things more entertaining, and less lonely, when there are familiar faces around.
One note on Alice before I forget. First, I have to say it is so wonderfully entertaining to be completely surrounded by people my age from other countries. And now I have a friend in Italy! To sum her up I’ll tell you about the day we passed the sign that read, “penguin crossing.”
Okay, I have never seen a damn penguin in the wild so while I was negotiating the outrageously windy road, in full gusty rain, I begged Alice to keep a close eye on the beach and let me know if she saw a wobbly penguin emerge from the water. Less than a few minutes later she shrieked! Grabbed hold of my arm (as if, for on absurd and terrifying moment, she forgot I was driving) and said, “Oh! Slow! I think I see penguin!”
But I had seen what she saw just a split second earlier: a floppy animal running on the beach, with a stick in its mouth. Damn dog!
I told her this, she laughed, then shook her head, wanting to believe in the penguin sighting: “My imagination is stronger than reality, if I want to see penguin, I see penguin!”
I liked her immensely after that. We used our intense imaginations in the days that followed to convert our meager pasta and cheese dinners into a glorious feast akin to a thanksgiving meal! She is a funny and supportive companion and listens to me ramble on about life and love and everything else that is important to me. Thank you Alice! After more than a week together, tomorrow we both head away from here so that means tonight we drink lots of local beer!
All right! Off to another rice and beans dinner! (In my head I imagine a huge stir fry!) I have simplified myself even more down here. Wear the same thing every day (I have discarded many of my nasty working clothes) and eating pretty meager rations. But I feel FULL, more full, the fullest maybe ever. Does that make sense?
Peace,
laura
New Zealand
How does one really explain what it’s like to experience New Zealand? I’m not even sure I want to try at this point.
To sum up: eight days ago I arrived in a fluster from Australia. Thinking I would be late to catch my connecting flight from Aukland (on the N. Island) to Christchurch (on the S. Island, where I was meeting my pal, Erin) I ran in a full, and ridiculous (mind you I was trucking along with a large backpack, smaller backpack, camera, and an unwieldy bag full of odds and ends) sprint through the international terminal, through customs, the front doors, down the road (who could be bothered waiting two minutes for the bus?!), and arrived at the domestic terminal in a sweaty mess only to be greeted by the first true Maori (indigenous people of NZ) I have ever met. He took one look at my passport, one look at my red and silent face (well, except for the gasping breaths) and said, “An American, ey? You are the quietest American I have ever met.”
My quiet didn’t last long. As soon as I made it up to the gate (a full hour EARLY) I was able to relax and begin my much anticipated crooning over finally having made it to New Zealand.
Of course, I’ve wanted to visit the legendary land for several years now. The first time I fell in love with mountains and started looking for pictures of them I discovered New Zealand – a place so far away from America that it almost seems imaginary. Mt. Cook. Mt. Tasman. Milford Sound. Franz Joseph Glacier. I knew of these places long before Lord of the Rings swept up the rest of the globe in the same jaw-dropping NZ scenery depicted in the films.
I met up with Erin, a pal with ISV, in Christchurch. After much talking, much excitement, and much beer (on my part anyway) we decided to hitchhike the next day, south 200km, to Dunedin.
I have only hitched a handful of other times, in Colorado and in Alaska. Thus, the hitching virgin that I was, I had an extremely paranoid, exciting, and at times, terrifying, day. The 6 or so rides and drivers we snagged were all, for the most part, harmless. There was only that one questionable character, the last ride of the day, Terry.
Only AFTER we got in the car, did we notice that Terry had 2 black eyes and a huge gash across his forehead. Don’t ask me how we didn’t see this earlier. I immediately began scouring the back seat for ‘signs’ of the kind of person that potentially had been in a nasty fight the night before – with another hitchhiker!? And to further fuel my growing unease, go ahead, ask me- what did I see? A pair of gloves, several disposable cameras, and a trash bag!!! I kid you not!
Later, after my paranoia abated a bit, Terry decided to pull off of the highway and ‘stop to see if his cousin was home’. There are two main rules in hitching. Always know where you are on a map. And if the driver leaves the main road, get out.
Okay, Mom and Dad, don’t freak out. If there is anywhere safe in the world to hitchhike, it is surely here! I did write this entire day into a pretty entertaining 2000 word essay but for now let me just say that Terry’s ‘cousin’ was actually a woman, in her mid 40’s, who offered Erin and I coffee and tea and enough interesting convo that I could have lived there for awhile! In the end, I never quite figured Terry out but he was a good guy, just a bit dodgy on the surface…
So, Dunedin. We stayed the night with one of my former students, Kai. And from there, we met up with an Italian, Alice (pronounced A lee chay) and rented a small kiwi-colored car and drove it clear around the bottom of the South Island until we ended up at Te Anua- the gateway to Milford Sound.
One word to describe Milford Sound, perhaps one of the most extraordinary places ever?
Moody. Want another?
I don’t have one. Trying to describe what it is like to stand in the lush haven that is Milford Sound is like trying to describe how it feels to fall in love for the first time. You can’t properly touch the experience (I tried, dipping my hands into frigid waters, water falls, rain soaked vegetation and trees), or hear it (how to describe the thunderous quiet of a place that remote? That calm?), or even smell it (again, how does mysticism and rolling fog and overhanging branches fat with green and wet travel through the air to your nose?) I took pictures, yes, but they will mean very little to anyone looking at them. You really need to stand there and take in the place. Take it into your being, experience it, let it roll around awhile inside, marinade yourself in it, maybe then you can grasp what a true spiritual and visual experience Milford is. See, it is like love. You can explain neither, but you know how they feel...
Ah, then to Queenstown! The adrenaline capital of NZ and maybe the world! anything outrageous and crazy and death defying you would ever want to do, you could do here. Instead of a wild night however, me and the girls drank wine and had an early night. At that point I had been sleeping in the car for a few days anyway, to save cash, and was all kinds of groggy once the sun set. Aside from that, lots of driving through stunning country can really tucker a girl out! I fondly named the car Gem (the other name I was fond of was puke, pronounced poookay, in Maori, this means hill). Sleeping in the car for 5 nights was not the most comfortable (the car was about the size of 2 fridges) but I somehow felt closer to nature. I do regret not having camping gear but I guess that just means ill have to come back.
Hear that Paul? Holly? Anybody?
Until soon all,
laura
To sum up: eight days ago I arrived in a fluster from Australia. Thinking I would be late to catch my connecting flight from Aukland (on the N. Island) to Christchurch (on the S. Island, where I was meeting my pal, Erin) I ran in a full, and ridiculous (mind you I was trucking along with a large backpack, smaller backpack, camera, and an unwieldy bag full of odds and ends) sprint through the international terminal, through customs, the front doors, down the road (who could be bothered waiting two minutes for the bus?!), and arrived at the domestic terminal in a sweaty mess only to be greeted by the first true Maori (indigenous people of NZ) I have ever met. He took one look at my passport, one look at my red and silent face (well, except for the gasping breaths) and said, “An American, ey? You are the quietest American I have ever met.”
My quiet didn’t last long. As soon as I made it up to the gate (a full hour EARLY) I was able to relax and begin my much anticipated crooning over finally having made it to New Zealand.
Of course, I’ve wanted to visit the legendary land for several years now. The first time I fell in love with mountains and started looking for pictures of them I discovered New Zealand – a place so far away from America that it almost seems imaginary. Mt. Cook. Mt. Tasman. Milford Sound. Franz Joseph Glacier. I knew of these places long before Lord of the Rings swept up the rest of the globe in the same jaw-dropping NZ scenery depicted in the films.
I met up with Erin, a pal with ISV, in Christchurch. After much talking, much excitement, and much beer (on my part anyway) we decided to hitchhike the next day, south 200km, to Dunedin.
I have only hitched a handful of other times, in Colorado and in Alaska. Thus, the hitching virgin that I was, I had an extremely paranoid, exciting, and at times, terrifying, day. The 6 or so rides and drivers we snagged were all, for the most part, harmless. There was only that one questionable character, the last ride of the day, Terry.
Only AFTER we got in the car, did we notice that Terry had 2 black eyes and a huge gash across his forehead. Don’t ask me how we didn’t see this earlier. I immediately began scouring the back seat for ‘signs’ of the kind of person that potentially had been in a nasty fight the night before – with another hitchhiker!? And to further fuel my growing unease, go ahead, ask me- what did I see? A pair of gloves, several disposable cameras, and a trash bag!!! I kid you not!
Later, after my paranoia abated a bit, Terry decided to pull off of the highway and ‘stop to see if his cousin was home’. There are two main rules in hitching. Always know where you are on a map. And if the driver leaves the main road, get out.
Okay, Mom and Dad, don’t freak out. If there is anywhere safe in the world to hitchhike, it is surely here! I did write this entire day into a pretty entertaining 2000 word essay but for now let me just say that Terry’s ‘cousin’ was actually a woman, in her mid 40’s, who offered Erin and I coffee and tea and enough interesting convo that I could have lived there for awhile! In the end, I never quite figured Terry out but he was a good guy, just a bit dodgy on the surface…
So, Dunedin. We stayed the night with one of my former students, Kai. And from there, we met up with an Italian, Alice (pronounced A lee chay) and rented a small kiwi-colored car and drove it clear around the bottom of the South Island until we ended up at Te Anua- the gateway to Milford Sound.
One word to describe Milford Sound, perhaps one of the most extraordinary places ever?
Moody. Want another?
I don’t have one. Trying to describe what it is like to stand in the lush haven that is Milford Sound is like trying to describe how it feels to fall in love for the first time. You can’t properly touch the experience (I tried, dipping my hands into frigid waters, water falls, rain soaked vegetation and trees), or hear it (how to describe the thunderous quiet of a place that remote? That calm?), or even smell it (again, how does mysticism and rolling fog and overhanging branches fat with green and wet travel through the air to your nose?) I took pictures, yes, but they will mean very little to anyone looking at them. You really need to stand there and take in the place. Take it into your being, experience it, let it roll around awhile inside, marinade yourself in it, maybe then you can grasp what a true spiritual and visual experience Milford is. See, it is like love. You can explain neither, but you know how they feel...
Ah, then to Queenstown! The adrenaline capital of NZ and maybe the world! anything outrageous and crazy and death defying you would ever want to do, you could do here. Instead of a wild night however, me and the girls drank wine and had an early night. At that point I had been sleeping in the car for a few days anyway, to save cash, and was all kinds of groggy once the sun set. Aside from that, lots of driving through stunning country can really tucker a girl out! I fondly named the car Gem (the other name I was fond of was puke, pronounced poookay, in Maori, this means hill). Sleeping in the car for 5 nights was not the most comfortable (the car was about the size of 2 fridges) but I somehow felt closer to nature. I do regret not having camping gear but I guess that just means ill have to come back.
Hear that Paul? Holly? Anybody?
Until soon all,
laura
Friday, August 25, 2006
New Zealand Awaits
Today is one of those days you wish you could have all to yourself. The rain started to fall halfway through the night. I’m an hour north of Sydney now, working with the lovely field officers and rangers at Dharug National Park. After my third project, in Victoria, I landed in Sydney and shuffled north for work with my last student group. Everyday for the past two weeks has been gloriously sunny, but all that sun means no rain, and less rain means less drinking water for livestock and for rural folk in the high time of summer heat. So, today, our last work day as a group and my last day with ISV this season, the rain falls.
Growing up in the Midwest I have a certain taste for rainy days and living out in Colorado, to be honest, I never get enough of them anymore. Today, if I could, I’d light a few candles and soak up the view from the front porch and write poems and ramble aimlessly about life and water and how everything is related after all.
I’ve been so busy with work I haven’t had proper time to fully feel what has taken place these past two months. But here is something I wrote last night, as an attempted summary of my present state of mind. I read it to the students last night:
Down here, in the hot hole of the sun, where the
earth cracks with the disastrous memory of a
convict building a great road north, my skin feels
singed most days—an upset balance of protection and
ozone and other ingredients for catastrophe, like
the two billion cars that hover across the streets even now.
My primitive cave drawing would show only mountains, for
strength; oceans, for peace; and a woman: the symbol of the
human race that encompasses the most beautiful benefits
of consciousness: compassion, affection, and love.
Down here isn’t much different than up there, only here my
mailbox drops small commercialized bombs on me from 11,000 miles
away and my phone number is at the bottom of the ocean and
each day I wake up in a slightly unfamiliar memory of the
day before. There are still crows—yes—crying like wounded
cats from the trees, and there are kookaburras laughing out their
territorial boundaries; there is a soft awareness of time—unlike
other instances of time—for here moments are easily descended into
out of sheer curiosity, or boredom, and there is always enough time to
make the acquaintance of a stranger because those are the only people
to meet.
There is alone but there is no lonely, and I wonder about the two.
I wonder how laughter and a smile shared between two humans with
different backgrounds/religions/politics/fears can push them closer together.
In the aboriginal language there is not a single world that means
“exist” and I wonder if that’s because each individual
journey has been dictated by the others that came before it
and each of us is connected—at least in a spiritual sense—
to everything we come in contact with: the earth, the rivers,
the plants and seeds, the rough and welcome hands of one
another. Without these simplest of connections, and our memories,
what would be become? What kind of animals would we evolve into?
I was once told, the day I left home to travel for the first time,
that once you leave, you can never
go back, not entirely. Down here my vision has changed, my taste for
things, and home has become a memory I carry around on the inside.
A warm place with poetry, a cat, a candle, a lover.
Home has also become a semi-dodgy caravan park I share with ten
near-strangers. But see—that laughter—just then, and smiles and
before any of us realize it we are all moving, evolving in the same
direction, to another home, another path, another journey, another, another…
----
I also had the unfortunate news yesterday of learning that Sue Fear—the first Aussie woman to climb Mt Everest (in 2000), and someone who I had the good fortune to sit next to on a plane from Tasmania to Sydney last season—is believed to have died a few weeks ago while climbing another big mountain. All I know is that she fell into a crevasse. Her wish was that no one would ever risk their own life to bring her body off of a mountain or to try and save her against insurmountable odds. So she is out there, somewhere, beyond death now, surely the way she would have wanted it—at the hands of Mother Nature. But, I was surprised at how sad I felt at the news. Not only was Sue a remarkable mountaineer who really was at the forefront of woman climbers, but she was the most humble and inspirational woman I may ever hope to meet. I had kept in touch with her since last year and was hopeful to meet up with her while in Sydney. An amazing woman and cheers to having so much passion it drives you to attempt unimaginable feats of human endurance and spirit!
I think that’s it for me for a bit. My last project was pretty near perfect—remarkable scenery, staff, and all ten of my students genuinely got on well with one another. Plans now consist of leaving for New Zealand tomorrow morning at 7am. If all goes well then I should be in Christchurch by 5pm, just in time for a cold one with my ISV (another project leader) pal, Erin.
I have to say I haven’t read or heard a speck of news in the last 2 weeks, since all of that madness with the UK/USA and liquids on the planes, and its nice, really, to be this ignorant! Checking email once a week for a few minutes has also been a really welcome reprieve from my daily dose of 2+ hours of internet time! Other than those things, everything is wonderful down here, but I have to say that I really look forward to seeing many of you soon. I think 3 months is about my limit to leave home…or is it? hahahahahaha
hahahaha
Peace to all,
laura
Growing up in the Midwest I have a certain taste for rainy days and living out in Colorado, to be honest, I never get enough of them anymore. Today, if I could, I’d light a few candles and soak up the view from the front porch and write poems and ramble aimlessly about life and water and how everything is related after all.
I’ve been so busy with work I haven’t had proper time to fully feel what has taken place these past two months. But here is something I wrote last night, as an attempted summary of my present state of mind. I read it to the students last night:
Down here, in the hot hole of the sun, where the
earth cracks with the disastrous memory of a
convict building a great road north, my skin feels
singed most days—an upset balance of protection and
ozone and other ingredients for catastrophe, like
the two billion cars that hover across the streets even now.
My primitive cave drawing would show only mountains, for
strength; oceans, for peace; and a woman: the symbol of the
human race that encompasses the most beautiful benefits
of consciousness: compassion, affection, and love.
Down here isn’t much different than up there, only here my
mailbox drops small commercialized bombs on me from 11,000 miles
away and my phone number is at the bottom of the ocean and
each day I wake up in a slightly unfamiliar memory of the
day before. There are still crows—yes—crying like wounded
cats from the trees, and there are kookaburras laughing out their
territorial boundaries; there is a soft awareness of time—unlike
other instances of time—for here moments are easily descended into
out of sheer curiosity, or boredom, and there is always enough time to
make the acquaintance of a stranger because those are the only people
to meet.
There is alone but there is no lonely, and I wonder about the two.
I wonder how laughter and a smile shared between two humans with
different backgrounds/religions/politics/fears can push them closer together.
In the aboriginal language there is not a single world that means
“exist” and I wonder if that’s because each individual
journey has been dictated by the others that came before it
and each of us is connected—at least in a spiritual sense—
to everything we come in contact with: the earth, the rivers,
the plants and seeds, the rough and welcome hands of one
another. Without these simplest of connections, and our memories,
what would be become? What kind of animals would we evolve into?
I was once told, the day I left home to travel for the first time,
that once you leave, you can never
go back, not entirely. Down here my vision has changed, my taste for
things, and home has become a memory I carry around on the inside.
A warm place with poetry, a cat, a candle, a lover.
Home has also become a semi-dodgy caravan park I share with ten
near-strangers. But see—that laughter—just then, and smiles and
before any of us realize it we are all moving, evolving in the same
direction, to another home, another path, another journey, another, another…
----
I also had the unfortunate news yesterday of learning that Sue Fear—the first Aussie woman to climb Mt Everest (in 2000), and someone who I had the good fortune to sit next to on a plane from Tasmania to Sydney last season—is believed to have died a few weeks ago while climbing another big mountain. All I know is that she fell into a crevasse. Her wish was that no one would ever risk their own life to bring her body off of a mountain or to try and save her against insurmountable odds. So she is out there, somewhere, beyond death now, surely the way she would have wanted it—at the hands of Mother Nature. But, I was surprised at how sad I felt at the news. Not only was Sue a remarkable mountaineer who really was at the forefront of woman climbers, but she was the most humble and inspirational woman I may ever hope to meet. I had kept in touch with her since last year and was hopeful to meet up with her while in Sydney. An amazing woman and cheers to having so much passion it drives you to attempt unimaginable feats of human endurance and spirit!
I think that’s it for me for a bit. My last project was pretty near perfect—remarkable scenery, staff, and all ten of my students genuinely got on well with one another. Plans now consist of leaving for New Zealand tomorrow morning at 7am. If all goes well then I should be in Christchurch by 5pm, just in time for a cold one with my ISV (another project leader) pal, Erin.
I have to say I haven’t read or heard a speck of news in the last 2 weeks, since all of that madness with the UK/USA and liquids on the planes, and its nice, really, to be this ignorant! Checking email once a week for a few minutes has also been a really welcome reprieve from my daily dose of 2+ hours of internet time! Other than those things, everything is wonderful down here, but I have to say that I really look forward to seeing many of you soon. I think 3 months is about my limit to leave home…or is it? hahahahahaha
hahahaha
Peace to all,
laura
Wombats! Again! New South Wales, Project 4
Wombat Caravan Park and all is well.
I wish that some of you could have seen me behind the wheel yesterday. Driving ten American students through downtown Sydney in a roaring diesel minibus with a monstrous attached trailer. Mike, the only Canadian, was brave enough to act as navigator man (and suffer me silently cursing him every ten minutes). Even though mishaps were eminent, imagine the horror of trying to find a place to turn that rig around!
Perhaps our best mishap was missing the turnoff to the Sydney harbor tunnel because you know what that means—we were driving over the bridge! Before I really knew what the hell was happening, I came around a mass of skyscrapers to meet the bridge view, full on. Really, it’s the most extraordinary, and massive thing. I was immediately nervous with excitement. How does one drive over such a behemoth and NOT look around! I knew the Pacific Ocean was there, and the opera house, and the intricate and extraordinary harbor itself. Well, we made, it, then made a few more wrong turns, and then finally, 2.5 hours after leaving Sydney international airport, we arrived at Wombat Park—a meager 45 kilometers away.
Please stay tuned, my hands are still shaking from the memory…
I wish that some of you could have seen me behind the wheel yesterday. Driving ten American students through downtown Sydney in a roaring diesel minibus with a monstrous attached trailer. Mike, the only Canadian, was brave enough to act as navigator man (and suffer me silently cursing him every ten minutes). Even though mishaps were eminent, imagine the horror of trying to find a place to turn that rig around!
Perhaps our best mishap was missing the turnoff to the Sydney harbor tunnel because you know what that means—we were driving over the bridge! Before I really knew what the hell was happening, I came around a mass of skyscrapers to meet the bridge view, full on. Really, it’s the most extraordinary, and massive thing. I was immediately nervous with excitement. How does one drive over such a behemoth and NOT look around! I knew the Pacific Ocean was there, and the opera house, and the intricate and extraordinary harbor itself. Well, we made, it, then made a few more wrong turns, and then finally, 2.5 hours after leaving Sydney international airport, we arrived at Wombat Park—a meager 45 kilometers away.
Please stay tuned, my hands are still shaking from the memory…
The body as fuel?
(This was written about August 8th or so...I havent had regular access to email--which has actually been quite nice--so these are just a few weeks outdated...cheers!)
One of my students from England, Chris, tells me that fat people burn better. That is, if people were ever to spontaneously combust on the street (have stranger things ever happened?), the fat ones would go first. This conversation erupted after a discussion we had on FIRE. What is fire? What are the benefits of fire as it relates to an ecosystem? See, most of us have grown up with Smokey and ‘fires are bad’ but most of the trees, and many of the plants, in Oz don’t drop seed without the aid of fire, or in some cases, the smoke.
Back to the body. See, fat is the fuel, and the body is the wick. If there is a buildup of methane (watch them beans!) anywhere in the body then the methane catches fire, and burns the fuel. I’m not sure how accurate this is but it sounded good enough to me, especially after a few Victoria Bitters. I actually think fat would burn longer, so the skinny folks would go first, but they wouldn’t burn completely (not enough fuel.) Chris also tells me he watches Body Shock (some warped bizarre medical show, in England) and relayed to us the other night another horrifying detail about a man that was able to perform head transplants with monkeys.
Apparently, we have all gone mad in Australia.
And I would suspect more is on the way. I am a bit more than halfway done with my time down south. I’m anxious about that—anxious to go home, anxious to stay longer. For now I'm seriously enjoying the fishing-village scenery and small port town life. This past weekend the students and I headed east along the Great Ocean Road, one of the most scenic drives in Australia, with outstanding rock formations and epic ocean views such as those of the famous Twelve Apostles. The drive is a real killer, and I do mean killer. Last year 265 car accidents, and 65 deaths, along the winding road, most of those from head-on collisions with other vehicles. The greatest cause of the head-on collision?
Foreigners.
That’s right. All of us tourons traveling from overseas and crossing the line either because we forget we are supposed to stay left, or be cause we are trying to sneak a peak at the view out the window. Pretty scary actually and I admit I was a bit nervous, and extra cautious, all day.
The last week of my previous project, in Portland, Vic was perhaps one of the best weeks I have ever had in Australia (at this point, I have almost 6 months of experience here). That was in most part due to our work with the Winda-Marrah Aboriginal Co-op.
Ever since coming to Australia I’ve craved an understanding of the connection between aboriginal people and the land. After working with the Winda-Marrah, and meeting several aboriginal people and talking with them about their experiences and their present day fight with the Australia Government, I came to a new appreciation for people, and passion, and family and history. For instance I know that the aboriginal people are thought to have come to Australia forty to sixty THOUSAND years ago. But ask me how long the Native Americans have been in America? I got nothing. So I found out: 11,000 years. I never gave a hoot about history in school until I began working with ISV and had to know a fair bit so that I could share it with the students. But I have made some acquaintances and have had a few experiences down here that make me realize how far away I am from ever understanding their lives. I am reminded of how privileged I am—to have the education and the time and the confidence to do a job like this; to have a recognized culture, and identity, and family history; to be respected for who I am, not who I could or should become. Every country in the world has a native population, it seems, that at one time was largely ignored. What can be done about that, now?
One of my students from England, Chris, tells me that fat people burn better. That is, if people were ever to spontaneously combust on the street (have stranger things ever happened?), the fat ones would go first. This conversation erupted after a discussion we had on FIRE. What is fire? What are the benefits of fire as it relates to an ecosystem? See, most of us have grown up with Smokey and ‘fires are bad’ but most of the trees, and many of the plants, in Oz don’t drop seed without the aid of fire, or in some cases, the smoke.
Back to the body. See, fat is the fuel, and the body is the wick. If there is a buildup of methane (watch them beans!) anywhere in the body then the methane catches fire, and burns the fuel. I’m not sure how accurate this is but it sounded good enough to me, especially after a few Victoria Bitters. I actually think fat would burn longer, so the skinny folks would go first, but they wouldn’t burn completely (not enough fuel.) Chris also tells me he watches Body Shock (some warped bizarre medical show, in England) and relayed to us the other night another horrifying detail about a man that was able to perform head transplants with monkeys.
Apparently, we have all gone mad in Australia.
And I would suspect more is on the way. I am a bit more than halfway done with my time down south. I’m anxious about that—anxious to go home, anxious to stay longer. For now I'm seriously enjoying the fishing-village scenery and small port town life. This past weekend the students and I headed east along the Great Ocean Road, one of the most scenic drives in Australia, with outstanding rock formations and epic ocean views such as those of the famous Twelve Apostles. The drive is a real killer, and I do mean killer. Last year 265 car accidents, and 65 deaths, along the winding road, most of those from head-on collisions with other vehicles. The greatest cause of the head-on collision?
Foreigners.
That’s right. All of us tourons traveling from overseas and crossing the line either because we forget we are supposed to stay left, or be cause we are trying to sneak a peak at the view out the window. Pretty scary actually and I admit I was a bit nervous, and extra cautious, all day.
The last week of my previous project, in Portland, Vic was perhaps one of the best weeks I have ever had in Australia (at this point, I have almost 6 months of experience here). That was in most part due to our work with the Winda-Marrah Aboriginal Co-op.
Ever since coming to Australia I’ve craved an understanding of the connection between aboriginal people and the land. After working with the Winda-Marrah, and meeting several aboriginal people and talking with them about their experiences and their present day fight with the Australia Government, I came to a new appreciation for people, and passion, and family and history. For instance I know that the aboriginal people are thought to have come to Australia forty to sixty THOUSAND years ago. But ask me how long the Native Americans have been in America? I got nothing. So I found out: 11,000 years. I never gave a hoot about history in school until I began working with ISV and had to know a fair bit so that I could share it with the students. But I have made some acquaintances and have had a few experiences down here that make me realize how far away I am from ever understanding their lives. I am reminded of how privileged I am—to have the education and the time and the confidence to do a job like this; to have a recognized culture, and identity, and family history; to be respected for who I am, not who I could or should become. Every country in the world has a native population, it seems, that at one time was largely ignored. What can be done about that, now?
Thursday, August 03, 2006
Project 3: Portland, Victoria
“Make sure to tell the guys to roll their socks up,” Andrew said, a project coordinator with DSE, Department of Sustainability and Environment. “There’s leeches at Mt. Richmond.”
If the students aren’t annoyed enough by my sense of humor and knack for taking pictures of just about everything, then they are really going to have their hands full with both me, and Andrew! Andrew has that smart-ass humor that I, naturally, love, and he’s also a fine photographer with enough lenses and photo equipment and know-how to keep me following him around like a puppy.
At Mt. Richmond we gathered for our mandatory project orientation and weren’t really looking for leeches, not exactly; okay, I lie, I was looking. I was flipping over leaves, checking the underside of thick grass blades. Where would they be? I wondered. And what would they look like? Then, without warning, someone screeched, “You have one on you!” Only they weren’t screeching at me, they were screeching at the one English fellow, Chris. And then, just as suddenly, the ground seemed to shift, movement everywhere.
Leeches.
On our boots, pants, socks, and coming quick. Funny too, because instead of going somewhere else, maybe a safe place like sand or a road, we stood there like foreign fools, scraping leeches off one boot only to find another grabbing onto the other. We did this for maybe ten minutes before someone had the bright idea to MOVE! Talk about PARANOID. All day checking our pants, in fact, we kept our pants in our socks for the next eight hours, through three or four other tourist sites and even when we stopped for tea down along the coast. Though, the paranoia might also have come from what happened to my other Brit, Theo. After lunch (where we had bbq’d roo meat…yum) she lifted up her shirt a bit because she felt something “sticky”. She asked another student if she had a leech on her. What?? Of course we all looked. And there, my friends, on her white English belly, I beheld the grandest daddy of them all, engorged with Theo’s blood and looking for more. Whoa! Again, what kind of leader am I? First thing I did was run off to grab my camera! Andrew, quite thankfully, burned the bugger off of her. Do you know why you have to burn them? Because if you pull them off (oh, the temptation!) their little jaws will stick inside you and cause serious infection. Another fact: they inject a bit of anti-coagulant in, right before they start sucking, and poor Theo was still bleeding that night before she went to bed (on to nightmares about small sucking objects…)
What with it winter and all down here, I regret to never have any snake stories, only tales of bugs and other small creepy crawlies. And it is one such creepy crawly (at least I’m guessing) that I think snuck into my sleeping bag whilst I was staying at a seedy motel on Friday night in Melbourne. Bites my friends, at least 30 or so small ones, some as big as dimes and that look like hives/mosquito bites. Oh, and they itch! I have them across my neck, belly and both arms—which makes me think bugs because my legs and upper torso are fine. I feel fine physically but then just last night one of my girls said I had a funny shaped thing on the back of my neck. Great, I thought, here goes the beginning of my tale of woe and how I was bit by a red-back somewhere along the way. Not cool being ‘bitten’ by something and not knowing what the hell it is, especially in Oz. But, good news—Andrew said the ‘bite’ on my neck might just be an ingrown pimple. Hmm. How attractive am I now? Bites! Pimples!
Even if I’m a temporary freak show, at least the view is stunning. Victoria is the state smack on the southeast tip of Australia, directly over Tassie, with gorgeous dramatic coastlines and a healthy Koala population. I hate to brag but I had one of the coolest moments of my life on our first day in Victoria. At a place called Tower Hill Reserve, protected area akin to a national park, we took turns petting a real live, “wild” koala. The land was originally cleared and used for agriculture. Not a pretty site. 20 years ago or so the entire area was revegetated with native gums and wattles (trees) and now 180 Koalas live there. We were fortunate enough to find a slumbery fellow to poke and prod and photo not three meters off of the ground.
Victoria also boasts greener than green vistas. Its always a shocker to see this side of Australia. More than 70% of this continent is dry as bone and nearly inhabitable to those that don’t understand the land (i.e. most white folks). But the coasts, and in particular, Victoria, are quite green. It’s misleading though, traveling through all that lush veg, and in full view of the ocean, because its hard to imagine a water problem over this way. Much less everywhere else in the world.
Ah so much. We are working with the rare and endangered Mellblom’s Spider Orchid this first week. A truly phenomenal flowering plant that works symbiotically with a fungus in order to grow. If the fungus isn’t there to break down nutrients in the soil for the orchid, the orchid doesn’t grow. Its crazy and inspiring to watch a fully-grown man, like Andrew, chase these things down and treating them like (better than) children. A rare plant indeed that is getting lots of attention over this way.
I also think of early settlers often. What it must have been like to sail an awkward wooden vessel through the “Roaring Forties”, the name given to the winds that move across the Bass Straight. These winds are phenomenally consistent in their strength, coming off of the southern tip of Africa and the South Ocean. It’s no wonder that dozens of famous shipwreck stories pepper the southern coast of Australia. It’s been so windy most days (and I'm talking almost blow you over wind) that I hate to imagine trying to negotiate a safe landing against the shallow rocks and jagged stone cliffs that meet the sea.
But that wind is good for a few things. In particular, wind farms. Portland, my home for the next two weeks, is destined to become one of the premier wind farms in Australia. When all is said and done, the wind farms will provide electricity to more than 17,000 homes in Victoria.
All right, my head is spinning, once again. I’m also horribly out of touch (very little email access) and have been writing these notes on my computer and saving them on disk. I hope everyone is well. I can read emails but not send any (at least not many) until I’m back in the big city of Sydney.
Lastly, HAPPY (late) BIRTHDAY TO MY DAD!!!! I’ll bring you something back sweet! Thanks for all your love and support, you are the greatest and most generous person I know.
Much love to all,
laura
If the students aren’t annoyed enough by my sense of humor and knack for taking pictures of just about everything, then they are really going to have their hands full with both me, and Andrew! Andrew has that smart-ass humor that I, naturally, love, and he’s also a fine photographer with enough lenses and photo equipment and know-how to keep me following him around like a puppy.
At Mt. Richmond we gathered for our mandatory project orientation and weren’t really looking for leeches, not exactly; okay, I lie, I was looking. I was flipping over leaves, checking the underside of thick grass blades. Where would they be? I wondered. And what would they look like? Then, without warning, someone screeched, “You have one on you!” Only they weren’t screeching at me, they were screeching at the one English fellow, Chris. And then, just as suddenly, the ground seemed to shift, movement everywhere.
Leeches.
On our boots, pants, socks, and coming quick. Funny too, because instead of going somewhere else, maybe a safe place like sand or a road, we stood there like foreign fools, scraping leeches off one boot only to find another grabbing onto the other. We did this for maybe ten minutes before someone had the bright idea to MOVE! Talk about PARANOID. All day checking our pants, in fact, we kept our pants in our socks for the next eight hours, through three or four other tourist sites and even when we stopped for tea down along the coast. Though, the paranoia might also have come from what happened to my other Brit, Theo. After lunch (where we had bbq’d roo meat…yum) she lifted up her shirt a bit because she felt something “sticky”. She asked another student if she had a leech on her. What?? Of course we all looked. And there, my friends, on her white English belly, I beheld the grandest daddy of them all, engorged with Theo’s blood and looking for more. Whoa! Again, what kind of leader am I? First thing I did was run off to grab my camera! Andrew, quite thankfully, burned the bugger off of her. Do you know why you have to burn them? Because if you pull them off (oh, the temptation!) their little jaws will stick inside you and cause serious infection. Another fact: they inject a bit of anti-coagulant in, right before they start sucking, and poor Theo was still bleeding that night before she went to bed (on to nightmares about small sucking objects…)
What with it winter and all down here, I regret to never have any snake stories, only tales of bugs and other small creepy crawlies. And it is one such creepy crawly (at least I’m guessing) that I think snuck into my sleeping bag whilst I was staying at a seedy motel on Friday night in Melbourne. Bites my friends, at least 30 or so small ones, some as big as dimes and that look like hives/mosquito bites. Oh, and they itch! I have them across my neck, belly and both arms—which makes me think bugs because my legs and upper torso are fine. I feel fine physically but then just last night one of my girls said I had a funny shaped thing on the back of my neck. Great, I thought, here goes the beginning of my tale of woe and how I was bit by a red-back somewhere along the way. Not cool being ‘bitten’ by something and not knowing what the hell it is, especially in Oz. But, good news—Andrew said the ‘bite’ on my neck might just be an ingrown pimple. Hmm. How attractive am I now? Bites! Pimples!
Even if I’m a temporary freak show, at least the view is stunning. Victoria is the state smack on the southeast tip of Australia, directly over Tassie, with gorgeous dramatic coastlines and a healthy Koala population. I hate to brag but I had one of the coolest moments of my life on our first day in Victoria. At a place called Tower Hill Reserve, protected area akin to a national park, we took turns petting a real live, “wild” koala. The land was originally cleared and used for agriculture. Not a pretty site. 20 years ago or so the entire area was revegetated with native gums and wattles (trees) and now 180 Koalas live there. We were fortunate enough to find a slumbery fellow to poke and prod and photo not three meters off of the ground.
Victoria also boasts greener than green vistas. Its always a shocker to see this side of Australia. More than 70% of this continent is dry as bone and nearly inhabitable to those that don’t understand the land (i.e. most white folks). But the coasts, and in particular, Victoria, are quite green. It’s misleading though, traveling through all that lush veg, and in full view of the ocean, because its hard to imagine a water problem over this way. Much less everywhere else in the world.
Ah so much. We are working with the rare and endangered Mellblom’s Spider Orchid this first week. A truly phenomenal flowering plant that works symbiotically with a fungus in order to grow. If the fungus isn’t there to break down nutrients in the soil for the orchid, the orchid doesn’t grow. Its crazy and inspiring to watch a fully-grown man, like Andrew, chase these things down and treating them like (better than) children. A rare plant indeed that is getting lots of attention over this way.
I also think of early settlers often. What it must have been like to sail an awkward wooden vessel through the “Roaring Forties”, the name given to the winds that move across the Bass Straight. These winds are phenomenally consistent in their strength, coming off of the southern tip of Africa and the South Ocean. It’s no wonder that dozens of famous shipwreck stories pepper the southern coast of Australia. It’s been so windy most days (and I'm talking almost blow you over wind) that I hate to imagine trying to negotiate a safe landing against the shallow rocks and jagged stone cliffs that meet the sea.
But that wind is good for a few things. In particular, wind farms. Portland, my home for the next two weeks, is destined to become one of the premier wind farms in Australia. When all is said and done, the wind farms will provide electricity to more than 17,000 homes in Victoria.
All right, my head is spinning, once again. I’m also horribly out of touch (very little email access) and have been writing these notes on my computer and saving them on disk. I hope everyone is well. I can read emails but not send any (at least not many) until I’m back in the big city of Sydney.
Lastly, HAPPY (late) BIRTHDAY TO MY DAD!!!! I’ll bring you something back sweet! Thanks for all your love and support, you are the greatest and most generous person I know.
Much love to all,
laura
Prison Tours and Ghosts
The amazing and wonderful women that we have been working under for the last two weeks, Polly and Renae, thanked us for a job well done (31,000 trees in the ground, here’s to hoping that most of them have a good fighting chance!) by taking us into Fremantle for the night. There we were finally faced with the monstrous Indian Ocean (and ran amuck in it for half an hour), took a tour of the Fremantle Prison (the oldest prison structure in the country built by convicts), and then hit a sweet brewery for dinner, Little Creatures.
No ghosts sighted on the prison tour. I was pretty sure there was major energy floating around the place though, through my fingers, around our curious eyes, the walls were seeping with it but I noticed only Polly and I touched the walls, searching. Polly sees ghosts. She has seen several. I myself may have seen several (how do you know if someone is a ghost, or is real?) and have definitely had ‘encounters’ but the only real time I was slightly disturbed on the tour was when the guide cornered Polly and I, along with 30 others, into the dead end of the Solitary Confinement building. Polly freaked out and then when she did, I did. We bolted for the door and stood where we could see the night sky. The energy in the building was thick with misery. You could feel it brush its soft tongue on your skin. The aboriginal people believed that all of their experiences—joy, pain, elation, birth, death—all of the emotions were tied directly to the land. Their spirits were one with those memories and emotions. That is why it has been so devastating for them to have their land seized by government. To live somewhere else means that they must leave their spirit, their energy, their memory and past and future behind. So think of all the energy retained in those prison walls.
90 days some men were confined, in total darkness, with only the three B’s – bible, bed, bucket. Some had a bit of light in the cell but with others the windows were blanketed over. So, 90 days in total darkness, with half an hour each day out into the sun. See, psychological torture is the kind of torture that scares me the most. Alone with your mind for that long, especially if you have a very active imagination (like me) would surely drive a person completely insane. Its no wonder that a lunatic asylum had to be built on the ground to handle all of the madness that emerged from those solitary cells.
Today we have off as we pack and pick up our belongings that we have scattered all along the place. But I do have some things I’ve been thinking about. Laughter in particular, and aloneness.
Something that a friend wrote recently has me pondering. She speculated that I am never actually “alone” on these work journeys; I am surrounded by students, and work, and others.
Friendships happen much faster when you travel without a solid branch of close compadres. In many ways I feel more ‘complete’ when traveling because there is no expectation placed on one another save for the telling of a good story, a few shared beers, and an easy good luck and adios for now. I find the parts of myself that I share with these near-strangers are often the most raw, the most hidden, even the most difficult. Then, if given a few days, I watch the friendship create itself. I have met people that surely are my soul mates, or were in a past life, or will be in a future one, but that, for now, I only have the glorious opportunity to experience for a short period of time.
Then, I been thinking about love, and do you notice how you can never describe the actual moment you fall in love? You can describe all of the exhilarating moments leading up to it, and everything afterward, but that moment, that second, that look, touch, glance, when you fall in love, is indescribable.
I realized how much I actually loved this group a few nights ago. We were sitting around the table having dinner, and laughing…about alpaca underwear and did they sell thongs? And many other tasteless jokes. Not enough can be said about the fabulous gel of a table full of laughter. I can’t remember when I laughed for so long, so hard. Its rare, laughter like that. Can you think of it now? The last time?
Then, back to aloneness. This aching realization that dwells just under the surface. Knowing that we say goodbye tomorrow, for good. Even though I have a strong feeling I will see a handful of these students again I could never say when, I could never say where. My younger brother is a teacher. I think this is the hardest part about teaching, saying goodbye, letting go. Starting over. Every day, it seems, challenges me to question, further, exactly who I am, where I want to be, I reflect on the synergy of human bonding, and also ways I can become a better person—friend, lover, sister, mother (of a cat). Right now I don’t have these answers but I am asking them all of the time and feel that, on some level, I am learning what I need to know.
I know this blog is mostly for myself, but also for my family and those few interested friends. Thanks to all of you for reading. I’m halfway through my work projects and tomorrow fly to Melbourne in time for my third project, down along the coast in a town by the name of Portland.
Laura
No ghosts sighted on the prison tour. I was pretty sure there was major energy floating around the place though, through my fingers, around our curious eyes, the walls were seeping with it but I noticed only Polly and I touched the walls, searching. Polly sees ghosts. She has seen several. I myself may have seen several (how do you know if someone is a ghost, or is real?) and have definitely had ‘encounters’ but the only real time I was slightly disturbed on the tour was when the guide cornered Polly and I, along with 30 others, into the dead end of the Solitary Confinement building. Polly freaked out and then when she did, I did. We bolted for the door and stood where we could see the night sky. The energy in the building was thick with misery. You could feel it brush its soft tongue on your skin. The aboriginal people believed that all of their experiences—joy, pain, elation, birth, death—all of the emotions were tied directly to the land. Their spirits were one with those memories and emotions. That is why it has been so devastating for them to have their land seized by government. To live somewhere else means that they must leave their spirit, their energy, their memory and past and future behind. So think of all the energy retained in those prison walls.
90 days some men were confined, in total darkness, with only the three B’s – bible, bed, bucket. Some had a bit of light in the cell but with others the windows were blanketed over. So, 90 days in total darkness, with half an hour each day out into the sun. See, psychological torture is the kind of torture that scares me the most. Alone with your mind for that long, especially if you have a very active imagination (like me) would surely drive a person completely insane. Its no wonder that a lunatic asylum had to be built on the ground to handle all of the madness that emerged from those solitary cells.
Today we have off as we pack and pick up our belongings that we have scattered all along the place. But I do have some things I’ve been thinking about. Laughter in particular, and aloneness.
Something that a friend wrote recently has me pondering. She speculated that I am never actually “alone” on these work journeys; I am surrounded by students, and work, and others.
Friendships happen much faster when you travel without a solid branch of close compadres. In many ways I feel more ‘complete’ when traveling because there is no expectation placed on one another save for the telling of a good story, a few shared beers, and an easy good luck and adios for now. I find the parts of myself that I share with these near-strangers are often the most raw, the most hidden, even the most difficult. Then, if given a few days, I watch the friendship create itself. I have met people that surely are my soul mates, or were in a past life, or will be in a future one, but that, for now, I only have the glorious opportunity to experience for a short period of time.
Then, I been thinking about love, and do you notice how you can never describe the actual moment you fall in love? You can describe all of the exhilarating moments leading up to it, and everything afterward, but that moment, that second, that look, touch, glance, when you fall in love, is indescribable.
I realized how much I actually loved this group a few nights ago. We were sitting around the table having dinner, and laughing…about alpaca underwear and did they sell thongs? And many other tasteless jokes. Not enough can be said about the fabulous gel of a table full of laughter. I can’t remember when I laughed for so long, so hard. Its rare, laughter like that. Can you think of it now? The last time?
Then, back to aloneness. This aching realization that dwells just under the surface. Knowing that we say goodbye tomorrow, for good. Even though I have a strong feeling I will see a handful of these students again I could never say when, I could never say where. My younger brother is a teacher. I think this is the hardest part about teaching, saying goodbye, letting go. Starting over. Every day, it seems, challenges me to question, further, exactly who I am, where I want to be, I reflect on the synergy of human bonding, and also ways I can become a better person—friend, lover, sister, mother (of a cat). Right now I don’t have these answers but I am asking them all of the time and feel that, on some level, I am learning what I need to know.
I know this blog is mostly for myself, but also for my family and those few interested friends. Thanks to all of you for reading. I’m halfway through my work projects and tomorrow fly to Melbourne in time for my third project, down along the coast in a town by the name of Portland.
Laura
Contemplations on Donkeys, and Road Trains
Sweet serene leaf floating
at the very top of the emerald tree,
already you fight
the long (lost) fight
with gravity.
How do you know when to
begin?
To divide one cell, two, four
eight thousand times more—
creating enough surface to
catch light, create
energy, add entropy, and force the birth
of others exactly like
you.
More surface = more sunlight = more fuel.
How do you know when to kill yourself in one last gleeful (and disappointing?)
swoop down?
On the earth is where the real killing begins anyway.
Once the rain
and the critters move tunnels of you through
yourself, and the
freeze and thaw cycle churns its own season of
decomposition;
then whatever golden cells were yours release
that same manic, leaf-making
energy
back into the next root to strike its
valiant heart
home; into
the aching remnants of your
green back.
At the very top of that next emerald, that gem,
do you begin again?
Is all of life simply death, waiting
to fuel another life?
--
Today I’m struck wondering how the hell a donkey ever evolved to make the sound that it does. I’m wondering because there is a donkey on the farm that brays when he’s: Excited? Hungry? Afraid? It’s hard to know because it’s the only sound he makes. I wasn’t more than five meters from him today when he let loose. The bray is first like a great roar, so awkward and off-kilter that for a moment you think something is wrong with the beast. After a few seconds he sucked in so much wind that I thought he’d surely asphyxiate himself, but then he unleashed a series of gasping, whistling, ridiculous guffaws. Afterwards, he seemed quite proud of himself. It was all so quick and loud and unnerving that I was shocked and began to laugh, nervously. Then I felt strangely like trying it myself.
And the roosters. They make their own signature sound, surely. But not just at dawn, the damn things cock a doodle doo an hour before sun-up, and even now, at twilight. There are even several of the chickens that hoist themselves into a tree, about three meters off of the ground. They are all in the same family, seven of them, and they hop up the branches one by one, using each other as temporary branches if need be, until they are all snug up above. Then they begin to nod off. Why? Well, to avoid the foxes, of course!
Animals are freaky little things aren’t they? The way they have evolved, and continue to do so, and devise their own little ways to adapt to our hellishly foolish and destructive asses. The cockroaches will outlast us all. There is no doubt about that. They will run amuck in the markets of New York City while the last bits of human civilization smolder somewhere in the streets…
Happy thoughts!
A note on the dolls. Tonight on my second tour of the doll trailer Kay told us about the “Companion Dolls.” These dolls were made in the early 1900’s specifically for spinsters—women without children. The dolls are very lifelike, and bigger, like real children. They were kept in parlors and the women dressed them, brushed their hair, and talked to them, as if they were real children. Very creepy, but also very sad.
Alas, no matter how scary I try to make the doll experience over here, it just hasn’t happened. I honestly feel like I’m walking around on the set of a campy horror movie—where you can easily envision all kinds of nightmare-fuel and epically creepy shit happening. But I find when I walk through the doll trailer that I’m just not afraid. So many of them actually look sweet and I’m curious as to their histories. And besides, Kay is so lovely (and treats all of the farm animals as children, which really puts a warm ember in my heart) that you feel bad making jokes about something she has obviously put a lot of energy, passion, and time into. She’s been collecting the dolls for 26 years and has over 1,800 of the beady-eyed little things. I asked her why she started collecting them and she said simply, “I had four boys.” And it’s not a half bad hobby money wise: She reckons the value of the dolls in the trailer is near 100,000 AU (about 75,000 US).
So that’s that with the doll house, but I do have a pretty amazing setting for other possible scenarios (i.e. stories) that could evolve out of the whole thing, AND, there is something in the woods out this way. We don’t see what it is but we hear it moving about in the darkness when we go to and from the toilet. I’m not saying the dolls AREN’T alive. I’m not saying that at all. They very well could be running in the woods, laughing at us, and plotting midnight attacks. What I’m saying is simply that I don’t have any proof of doll activity.
Yet.
Lastly, the road trains. Do you want to know the best way to have a truly unique and intimate experience with a road train? Well, try running 12 km along the side of the highway for starters. Road trains are quite extraordinarily imposing. These consist of three or four huge trailers barreling down the highway towed by a high-powered truck. They are akin to semi’s back home but longer, and they seem more menacing because the highways are much more narrow in Australia. I wasn’t so much afraid of the road train whilst running, but more so of things flying off of the crazy cargo that many of them hauled and hitting me in the face!
Peace for now,
laura
at the very top of the emerald tree,
already you fight
the long (lost) fight
with gravity.
How do you know when to
begin?
To divide one cell, two, four
eight thousand times more—
creating enough surface to
catch light, create
energy, add entropy, and force the birth
of others exactly like
you.
More surface = more sunlight = more fuel.
How do you know when to kill yourself in one last gleeful (and disappointing?)
swoop down?
On the earth is where the real killing begins anyway.
Once the rain
and the critters move tunnels of you through
yourself, and the
freeze and thaw cycle churns its own season of
decomposition;
then whatever golden cells were yours release
that same manic, leaf-making
energy
back into the next root to strike its
valiant heart
home; into
the aching remnants of your
green back.
At the very top of that next emerald, that gem,
do you begin again?
Is all of life simply death, waiting
to fuel another life?
--
Today I’m struck wondering how the hell a donkey ever evolved to make the sound that it does. I’m wondering because there is a donkey on the farm that brays when he’s: Excited? Hungry? Afraid? It’s hard to know because it’s the only sound he makes. I wasn’t more than five meters from him today when he let loose. The bray is first like a great roar, so awkward and off-kilter that for a moment you think something is wrong with the beast. After a few seconds he sucked in so much wind that I thought he’d surely asphyxiate himself, but then he unleashed a series of gasping, whistling, ridiculous guffaws. Afterwards, he seemed quite proud of himself. It was all so quick and loud and unnerving that I was shocked and began to laugh, nervously. Then I felt strangely like trying it myself.
And the roosters. They make their own signature sound, surely. But not just at dawn, the damn things cock a doodle doo an hour before sun-up, and even now, at twilight. There are even several of the chickens that hoist themselves into a tree, about three meters off of the ground. They are all in the same family, seven of them, and they hop up the branches one by one, using each other as temporary branches if need be, until they are all snug up above. Then they begin to nod off. Why? Well, to avoid the foxes, of course!
Animals are freaky little things aren’t they? The way they have evolved, and continue to do so, and devise their own little ways to adapt to our hellishly foolish and destructive asses. The cockroaches will outlast us all. There is no doubt about that. They will run amuck in the markets of New York City while the last bits of human civilization smolder somewhere in the streets…
Happy thoughts!
A note on the dolls. Tonight on my second tour of the doll trailer Kay told us about the “Companion Dolls.” These dolls were made in the early 1900’s specifically for spinsters—women without children. The dolls are very lifelike, and bigger, like real children. They were kept in parlors and the women dressed them, brushed their hair, and talked to them, as if they were real children. Very creepy, but also very sad.
Alas, no matter how scary I try to make the doll experience over here, it just hasn’t happened. I honestly feel like I’m walking around on the set of a campy horror movie—where you can easily envision all kinds of nightmare-fuel and epically creepy shit happening. But I find when I walk through the doll trailer that I’m just not afraid. So many of them actually look sweet and I’m curious as to their histories. And besides, Kay is so lovely (and treats all of the farm animals as children, which really puts a warm ember in my heart) that you feel bad making jokes about something she has obviously put a lot of energy, passion, and time into. She’s been collecting the dolls for 26 years and has over 1,800 of the beady-eyed little things. I asked her why she started collecting them and she said simply, “I had four boys.” And it’s not a half bad hobby money wise: She reckons the value of the dolls in the trailer is near 100,000 AU (about 75,000 US).
So that’s that with the doll house, but I do have a pretty amazing setting for other possible scenarios (i.e. stories) that could evolve out of the whole thing, AND, there is something in the woods out this way. We don’t see what it is but we hear it moving about in the darkness when we go to and from the toilet. I’m not saying the dolls AREN’T alive. I’m not saying that at all. They very well could be running in the woods, laughing at us, and plotting midnight attacks. What I’m saying is simply that I don’t have any proof of doll activity.
Yet.
Lastly, the road trains. Do you want to know the best way to have a truly unique and intimate experience with a road train? Well, try running 12 km along the side of the highway for starters. Road trains are quite extraordinarily imposing. These consist of three or four huge trailers barreling down the highway towed by a high-powered truck. They are akin to semi’s back home but longer, and they seem more menacing because the highways are much more narrow in Australia. I wasn’t so much afraid of the road train whilst running, but more so of things flying off of the crazy cargo that many of them hauled and hitting me in the face!
Peace for now,
laura
Friday, July 21, 2006
Wetting my pants...in the rain
The rain is coming down in one constant sheet right now. It sounds solid on the aluminum roofs of our trailers. I can vaguely make out the girls chatter in the next room, the kitchen, but everything else is smothered by the gray buzz of rain. It hasn’t rained in over 30 days and I think, gauging by this huge wash of water, it might be no less than a miracle for the plants and the animals of central Western Australia.
I am not a farmer; I have never been hugely dependent on the rain. It’s nice in the midst of a hot day to cool the skin and the air, but I don’t know what it’s like to have your land and your animals—your future—riding on the next storm. After planting native Aussie trees the last week, and talking with farmers and land owners, I unknowingly received a dose of worry, real worry, about the nature of water. And so, when the rain finally did come, first as a teasing sprinkle and then, suddenly, as a white flood from the skies, this time it all came to me different.
The afternoon picked up in wind as the air temperature dropped swiftly. The strikingly intense southern sun disappeared behind a wall of ominous clouds. That first drop hit like an ice cold pin prick. And then I noticed the smell. The smell of something so wonderful, after you have prayed, and waited, and prayed some more for its arrival. Waiting minutes, hours, days for it. Waiting while you calculate losses and lives for it. The rain smelled like upturned, healthy soil and mud and green and all of that, but it also smelled like something rich, and rare; something that comes to you a few times in your life and smacks you with nostalgia and beauty, like a favored childhood memory; something vivid and tangible and necessary; something that cannot be described adequately, ever.
The rain made today even more brilliant. Earlier, we had witnessed the birth of a baby goat. When we arrived 5 days ago, two little ones had just been born and we have been waiting for this other mom to give birth. We named the new baby Charlie Gumnuts and now run and check on him every chance we can. We also visited an out of the way farmhouse on the way back to our accommodation. As we walked up and patted the requisite dog we were surprised to see a horse standing on the front porch of the house, staring in the windows. When he saw us he came down off the porch, as if to greet us. Never seen that before! Only in Oz. Out back they had 5 or 6 black-tailed wallabies in a pen. They were babies whose mums had been hit by cars and the owner of the house was caring for them until they were old enough to go free. (We didn’t tell the girls the wallabies weren’t kangaroos and none of them much cared as they got down on all fours and socialized with these amazing marsupials).
Tomorrow is the last work day of the week (unless we get rained out).
I have no internet or phone at the farm and am missing many of you (but not all! Hahah just kidding) terribly and sometimes really have to ask myself what the hell I am doing so far away. But these days are all like small gifts and they pass so quickly and in the end I try, and often fail, to fully articulate all that I have experienced in the breadth of 24 hours. The words never come quite how I would like them to and never do the experience justice anyhow, but I feel different—I feel myself growing, and gaining, and changing, for the better. After this last spell down under I’m thinking I might actually be ready to start looking at a final round of graduate school. Scary, but how fun to have everyone call me Dr. Katers, or “the Doctor”…haha. Anyway you look at it, each moment adds up to one big lesson. Do we find all of the answers in those few and final minutes? Are we enlightened then with how simple life really can be? Will we be able to predict the rain any better then? Will the earth be bone dry?
Back to the wondrous hum of rain falling all around, drowning out even the voices now, and the animals (they tell us goannas may be the ones sliding their bodies along above us), and the obnoxious call of the black crow. Besides, the girls are making ‘breakfast for dinner’ tonight and I hear my pancakes calling from the kitchen!
Peace to all,
laura
I am not a farmer; I have never been hugely dependent on the rain. It’s nice in the midst of a hot day to cool the skin and the air, but I don’t know what it’s like to have your land and your animals—your future—riding on the next storm. After planting native Aussie trees the last week, and talking with farmers and land owners, I unknowingly received a dose of worry, real worry, about the nature of water. And so, when the rain finally did come, first as a teasing sprinkle and then, suddenly, as a white flood from the skies, this time it all came to me different.
The afternoon picked up in wind as the air temperature dropped swiftly. The strikingly intense southern sun disappeared behind a wall of ominous clouds. That first drop hit like an ice cold pin prick. And then I noticed the smell. The smell of something so wonderful, after you have prayed, and waited, and prayed some more for its arrival. Waiting minutes, hours, days for it. Waiting while you calculate losses and lives for it. The rain smelled like upturned, healthy soil and mud and green and all of that, but it also smelled like something rich, and rare; something that comes to you a few times in your life and smacks you with nostalgia and beauty, like a favored childhood memory; something vivid and tangible and necessary; something that cannot be described adequately, ever.
The rain made today even more brilliant. Earlier, we had witnessed the birth of a baby goat. When we arrived 5 days ago, two little ones had just been born and we have been waiting for this other mom to give birth. We named the new baby Charlie Gumnuts and now run and check on him every chance we can. We also visited an out of the way farmhouse on the way back to our accommodation. As we walked up and patted the requisite dog we were surprised to see a horse standing on the front porch of the house, staring in the windows. When he saw us he came down off the porch, as if to greet us. Never seen that before! Only in Oz. Out back they had 5 or 6 black-tailed wallabies in a pen. They were babies whose mums had been hit by cars and the owner of the house was caring for them until they were old enough to go free. (We didn’t tell the girls the wallabies weren’t kangaroos and none of them much cared as they got down on all fours and socialized with these amazing marsupials).
Tomorrow is the last work day of the week (unless we get rained out).
I have no internet or phone at the farm and am missing many of you (but not all! Hahah just kidding) terribly and sometimes really have to ask myself what the hell I am doing so far away. But these days are all like small gifts and they pass so quickly and in the end I try, and often fail, to fully articulate all that I have experienced in the breadth of 24 hours. The words never come quite how I would like them to and never do the experience justice anyhow, but I feel different—I feel myself growing, and gaining, and changing, for the better. After this last spell down under I’m thinking I might actually be ready to start looking at a final round of graduate school. Scary, but how fun to have everyone call me Dr. Katers, or “the Doctor”…haha. Anyway you look at it, each moment adds up to one big lesson. Do we find all of the answers in those few and final minutes? Are we enlightened then with how simple life really can be? Will we be able to predict the rain any better then? Will the earth be bone dry?
Back to the wondrous hum of rain falling all around, drowning out even the voices now, and the animals (they tell us goannas may be the ones sliding their bodies along above us), and the obnoxious call of the black crow. Besides, the girls are making ‘breakfast for dinner’ tonight and I hear my pancakes calling from the kitchen!
Peace to all,
laura
The Murdering Doll
It’s so dry right now that Bill tells me the land is farting. At first I thought he said, “fighting”, but after I had him repeat it I realized that yes, the land is farting. “Farting out dust.”
At this point, nearly a week in, I’ve heard from more than one West Australian that this might be the hottest and driest July, ever. July is smack dab in the middle of winter down under and usually the wettest month. No rain so far and its already half over. Little water means even less rainwater that the folks out this way use for showering, gardening, and pretty much everything aside from drinking. Less water means less feed and less feed means animals will have to be put down (shot) when the current feed runs out (sometime in October).
See, whether you want to believe in global warming or not, its hot. It’s hot here; it’s hot back home, in Colorado. And the weather and the water and the animals and plants and even all of us all are going to suffer a bit more this year than the last because of it.
Well, with that depressingly surreal thought, I stoically welcome you to the bug show! We have huntsman (it WAS a huntsman the first night! Jesus, do you think the same bastard follows me around this damn continent? Only a different version, and bigger, scarier, hairier, than I’m used to?). We also now have Red Backs! In the showers no less! And not just anyone’s shower, but mine. The Red Back spider closely resembles the black widow and is one of the most poisonous spiders in all of Oz, and the world. Was real nice to finally meet one in the buff! And, just now, a scorpion (two inches long?) was found precariously hanging from the outside of the bathroom door. At this point we all scream at the new bugs, tell anyone not present, and then grab our cameras! We’ve been warned that the snakes might come out soon enough. The ‘wet’ usually keeps them down but since it’s been so hot and so dry…
Wait, the girls are screaming bloody hell….
(At this point my heart doesn’t even skip a beat, far from it. I hear a scream and I make my way slowly knowing full well some epic kind of new ‘horror’ awaits…they tell me it sounds like something ‘bigger than a rat, like a small dog’ is running across the ceiling above them. In their room is the ‘screamer’, this girl even went out of her way to tuck and fold her entire bed and move it one foot from the wall so no creepy crawlies could get in…at this point I can tell what the ‘bug/strange noise screams’ sound like and realize there is no need to panic, at least not straightaway…)
West Australia so far, is perfect. What I’ve got right now is six girls from England, a girl from Banff and two Yanks. Our discussions have been amazing and non-stop, with tangents being blown through like the wind. The Sunday of our arrival we hit an olive grove, admired wildflowers (including the gorgeous Kangaroo Paw), sampled olives, oils, breads and spreads to our hearts content. Then we arrived at the Berrier Estates for a healthy sampling of eighteen wines. Our gracious hostess asked if we’d like reds or whites and a few of the girls cried valiantly, “We’ll try the lot!” At the vineyards, they give you a bucket and tell you to spit out what you don’t like but I never thought many people did that. So I was surprised to see one of the Americans, of all nationalities, doing this! I sampled all of mine fully, with the wines all tasting familiarly blurred towards the end. Merlot was the easy favorite (I think). The land is rich with vineyards but I do wonder where they get all that water and if a farmer and a vineyard have fair and equal water rights. What do you reckon the government would support first? Crops or wine? Which would bring in more tourists? More money….
The people and the landscape are gorgeous, full and generous. Every day has been very surreal as we travel to and from our work sites. We are full out in the ‘bush’ here. An hour from Perth and at least 15 minutes by car from any town. Already, after only a few days, I can pick up the different personalities of the alpacas, the goats, and even the little lambs. I feel at times that I would have done well to grow up on a farm, or to have simply had more interactions with a diversity of animals at a young age. Non-human creatures are so therapeutic. Kay had major surgery 5 years ago and Bill bought her the first alpacas then. They reckon that is what turned her around. Such beautiful animals. You can never get too close to the alpacas for a good squeeze, which is really too bad because they have the most beautiful and cuddly fur, but you can get close enough. I saw little Colorado “play humping" another little alpaca the other day and that kind of turned me off of him – he’s only two weeks old! What the hell do they teach their young?
Me and a few of the girls finally visited the Doll Museum, which consists of a display inside this old, but quite nice, tea room, and extends into a trailer--a portable unit that can be moved about. I think the more expensive and sentimentally precious dolls are kept in the trailer, as it’s locked (to keep us out? To keep the dolls IN? hmmm). There are clown dolls and all sorts of freakish and even some surprisingly nice looking ones. But in that trailer we found the ‘murdering doll’—she was made of wood (very old) and had these mischievous little painted eyes that just look evil. I’m not sure of the fascination with dolls or why Kay brought them but I'll probably ask her one of these days…unless that doll gets to me first.
(The other night the girls were all chatting in our very tiny kitchen--really only a bit bigger than a large table—and on my way back from the bathroom I stood outside the kitchen door and knocked real softly, about 8 inches up from the ground, then giggled high pitched, like I guessed a doll would, then ran in place like the sound of little shoes running. Everyone laughed inside but I think I actually scared myself imagining that happening, for real.)
What about puppets? Anyone ever see that movie, “The Puppeteer”? I found a Puppet Theater in Fremantle, a town about an hour south of Perth. I may check it this weekend but at this point I’m not sure if it’s a good idea for my psyche.
Cheerio to all! I think I might visit England in the winter as I now have at least 6 students I can mooch off of once I get there! How fun does a London Pub Crawl sound?
laura
At this point, nearly a week in, I’ve heard from more than one West Australian that this might be the hottest and driest July, ever. July is smack dab in the middle of winter down under and usually the wettest month. No rain so far and its already half over. Little water means even less rainwater that the folks out this way use for showering, gardening, and pretty much everything aside from drinking. Less water means less feed and less feed means animals will have to be put down (shot) when the current feed runs out (sometime in October).
See, whether you want to believe in global warming or not, its hot. It’s hot here; it’s hot back home, in Colorado. And the weather and the water and the animals and plants and even all of us all are going to suffer a bit more this year than the last because of it.
Well, with that depressingly surreal thought, I stoically welcome you to the bug show! We have huntsman (it WAS a huntsman the first night! Jesus, do you think the same bastard follows me around this damn continent? Only a different version, and bigger, scarier, hairier, than I’m used to?). We also now have Red Backs! In the showers no less! And not just anyone’s shower, but mine. The Red Back spider closely resembles the black widow and is one of the most poisonous spiders in all of Oz, and the world. Was real nice to finally meet one in the buff! And, just now, a scorpion (two inches long?) was found precariously hanging from the outside of the bathroom door. At this point we all scream at the new bugs, tell anyone not present, and then grab our cameras! We’ve been warned that the snakes might come out soon enough. The ‘wet’ usually keeps them down but since it’s been so hot and so dry…
Wait, the girls are screaming bloody hell….
(At this point my heart doesn’t even skip a beat, far from it. I hear a scream and I make my way slowly knowing full well some epic kind of new ‘horror’ awaits…they tell me it sounds like something ‘bigger than a rat, like a small dog’ is running across the ceiling above them. In their room is the ‘screamer’, this girl even went out of her way to tuck and fold her entire bed and move it one foot from the wall so no creepy crawlies could get in…at this point I can tell what the ‘bug/strange noise screams’ sound like and realize there is no need to panic, at least not straightaway…)
West Australia so far, is perfect. What I’ve got right now is six girls from England, a girl from Banff and two Yanks. Our discussions have been amazing and non-stop, with tangents being blown through like the wind. The Sunday of our arrival we hit an olive grove, admired wildflowers (including the gorgeous Kangaroo Paw), sampled olives, oils, breads and spreads to our hearts content. Then we arrived at the Berrier Estates for a healthy sampling of eighteen wines. Our gracious hostess asked if we’d like reds or whites and a few of the girls cried valiantly, “We’ll try the lot!” At the vineyards, they give you a bucket and tell you to spit out what you don’t like but I never thought many people did that. So I was surprised to see one of the Americans, of all nationalities, doing this! I sampled all of mine fully, with the wines all tasting familiarly blurred towards the end. Merlot was the easy favorite (I think). The land is rich with vineyards but I do wonder where they get all that water and if a farmer and a vineyard have fair and equal water rights. What do you reckon the government would support first? Crops or wine? Which would bring in more tourists? More money….
The people and the landscape are gorgeous, full and generous. Every day has been very surreal as we travel to and from our work sites. We are full out in the ‘bush’ here. An hour from Perth and at least 15 minutes by car from any town. Already, after only a few days, I can pick up the different personalities of the alpacas, the goats, and even the little lambs. I feel at times that I would have done well to grow up on a farm, or to have simply had more interactions with a diversity of animals at a young age. Non-human creatures are so therapeutic. Kay had major surgery 5 years ago and Bill bought her the first alpacas then. They reckon that is what turned her around. Such beautiful animals. You can never get too close to the alpacas for a good squeeze, which is really too bad because they have the most beautiful and cuddly fur, but you can get close enough. I saw little Colorado “play humping" another little alpaca the other day and that kind of turned me off of him – he’s only two weeks old! What the hell do they teach their young?
Me and a few of the girls finally visited the Doll Museum, which consists of a display inside this old, but quite nice, tea room, and extends into a trailer--a portable unit that can be moved about. I think the more expensive and sentimentally precious dolls are kept in the trailer, as it’s locked (to keep us out? To keep the dolls IN? hmmm). There are clown dolls and all sorts of freakish and even some surprisingly nice looking ones. But in that trailer we found the ‘murdering doll’—she was made of wood (very old) and had these mischievous little painted eyes that just look evil. I’m not sure of the fascination with dolls or why Kay brought them but I'll probably ask her one of these days…unless that doll gets to me first.
(The other night the girls were all chatting in our very tiny kitchen--really only a bit bigger than a large table—and on my way back from the bathroom I stood outside the kitchen door and knocked real softly, about 8 inches up from the ground, then giggled high pitched, like I guessed a doll would, then ran in place like the sound of little shoes running. Everyone laughed inside but I think I actually scared myself imagining that happening, for real.)
What about puppets? Anyone ever see that movie, “The Puppeteer”? I found a Puppet Theater in Fremantle, a town about an hour south of Perth. I may check it this weekend but at this point I’m not sure if it’s a good idea for my psyche.
Cheerio to all! I think I might visit England in the winter as I now have at least 6 students I can mooch off of once I get there! How fun does a London Pub Crawl sound?
laura
Project 2. West Australia: Welcome to the Doll House!
“This is your next town. Your last town.”
Bill, the owner of the Rocky Creek Tourist Park, was sitting up front, behind the wheel of the transport bus. I was sitting in back with my second group—six girls from the UK, and three North Americans. He hadn’t said much since the Perth Airport. We were headed north, along the winding Swan River, and the only other detail he had pointed out was the Bandyup Women’s Prison. “You girls will end up there, if you don’t behave.”
On the way to the park I witnessed the most extraordinary and picturesque sunset to date, bursting with pinks and purples and every shade in between. The huge silhouetted eucalyptus trees added a nice touch and just when I thought it wouldn’t get better, a few ridiculously perfect grazing kangaroos appeared in the foreground. Ah. Pinch me!
The tourist park is our accommodation for the next two weeks while we work with the Chittering Landcare group planting trees. I can’t tell you much as I've only been here a little under three hours but I can tell you that I’ve never been anywhere quite like Rocky Creek Tourist Park.
Kay, Bill’s wife, met us as we rumbled along the short dirt track and up to our cabin-style accommodations. I was delighted (well, at first) to have my own room yet again! Wow.
One of the main features of the park is a petting zoo. On our quick ten minute tour of the facilities we must have met 20 alpacas--one that was only two weeks old and THE CUTEST THING I HAVE EVER SEEN and also aptly named “Colorado”--chooks (chickens), sheep, geese, donkeys, horses, dogs, and a herd of goats-- including two baby goats that weren’t more than 4 hours old. They don’t eat these animals (we asked), but they do keep them as pets. The only thing that “gits em” is, once again, that little bastard, the fox.
Kay is quick, and all business. A woman of about 55ish, give or take a few years--it’s hard to tell age sometimes with Aussies as the weather, and sun, treats some better than others. Her and Bill moved here 3.5 years ago (I hope to get the rest of the story later). Bill, who I was warned about by one of our host organizers, Polly (who subsequently met us at the airport dressed like a hard core rocker and promised to give me her old guitar as she just bought a new one!) told me Bill is a talker but we haven’t heard much from him, yet. Just the usual: keep our bedroom doors closed otherwise rats, snakes and goannas (large lizards) will just wander in. Oh, and biting ants. So far so good in Western Australia! But it doesn’t stop there.
Kay is pleasant enough but you can tell she is a working woman, used to working hard. I suppose on a farm with some 30 odd living things waiting for feed daily, you’d have to work hard. But the animals weren’t always here. “We brought them,” Kay told me as the sun dipped below the horizon for good. “Along with the dolls.”
Oh, yeah, that’s the other thing. The tourist park is a petting zoo, AND a Doll Museum. Hear that, Dad? A Doll Museum! Way the hell out in the middle of nowhere! Hahahaha
Muhahahahahha
Anyway else afraid of dolls?
We’ve had enough good jokes (though, yes, many in poor taste) passed around about the dolls already. Tomorrow, I am told, we get to see the museum. I am both excited and nervous for this first, of what I'm sure will be many, encounters.
Last news of the day. After a voracious attack by all on the food stocking the kitchen to the gills we adjourned to our rooms. The girls are in groups of three in three different rooms. Less than fifteen minutes after I closed my door on the outside world, I heard a bloodcurdling scream! Seconds later, a frenzied knock on my door. I opened it up and three girls stumbled in sputtering something about, “do something” and “oh my god!” and “spider!”
My moment of truth? Time to make up for that one huntsman the students did away with back at Yookamurra? I can do this, I told myself, no problem.
(Ten seconds later)
NO FUCKING WAY was I going near that thing! Not once I saw the actual size and “thickness” of it. It wasn’t a huntsman, I had already asked about those. But this monster was similar, only it didn’t move sideways like the huntsman, but was a big round hairy beast about the size of the palm of my hand.
You want to hear ten females scream bloody hell at 9pm in complete and utter quiet! I was waiting for Bill to come down with his shotgun and see what was up. Everyone looking to me and all I could do was grab my camera and wince! Finally, two brave UK girls stepped up and it was a scream/laugh fest for the next 30 minutes as the spider wreaked havoc all over the walls, fell behind the bed, crawled across the bed sheet, became momentarily “lost”, then found, then finally trapped under a very large Tupperware bowl—the entire time all of us jumping up and down screaming “Ewwwwwwww!!!!” I honest to god felt like I was at some nightmarish summer camp! Moments later the bowl was tossed into the night. Talk about a way to start the trip! Now we all sit in our rooms (I alone in mine, maybe a roommate or two wouldn’t be so bad?) cringing and gazing about the walls. I really don’t know if I could handle the spiders and such down here, and its not even summer. That kills me. I haven’t even been here in snake season.
This group so far is AWESOME though, very fun and they all genuinely seem like they might get along—always a worry with more than a few girls. Also my first all-girl group which I thought would be great, then realizing how nice it would have been to have a DUDE attack that spider. Even if a guy were afraid, with 9 scared girls, he would have stepped it up. And now the truth is out: I can assign chores and pump up the students for work and lead conservation-based discussions with the best of them, but spiders? Give this wuss a can of potent bug spray any day.
(Note: I found out a few days later that those big spiders, that I guess are EVERYWHERE in the houses down here, can jump! And many jump right at YOU!)
Stay tuned for the Doll House….
laura
Bill, the owner of the Rocky Creek Tourist Park, was sitting up front, behind the wheel of the transport bus. I was sitting in back with my second group—six girls from the UK, and three North Americans. He hadn’t said much since the Perth Airport. We were headed north, along the winding Swan River, and the only other detail he had pointed out was the Bandyup Women’s Prison. “You girls will end up there, if you don’t behave.”
On the way to the park I witnessed the most extraordinary and picturesque sunset to date, bursting with pinks and purples and every shade in between. The huge silhouetted eucalyptus trees added a nice touch and just when I thought it wouldn’t get better, a few ridiculously perfect grazing kangaroos appeared in the foreground. Ah. Pinch me!
The tourist park is our accommodation for the next two weeks while we work with the Chittering Landcare group planting trees. I can’t tell you much as I've only been here a little under three hours but I can tell you that I’ve never been anywhere quite like Rocky Creek Tourist Park.
Kay, Bill’s wife, met us as we rumbled along the short dirt track and up to our cabin-style accommodations. I was delighted (well, at first) to have my own room yet again! Wow.
One of the main features of the park is a petting zoo. On our quick ten minute tour of the facilities we must have met 20 alpacas--one that was only two weeks old and THE CUTEST THING I HAVE EVER SEEN and also aptly named “Colorado”--chooks (chickens), sheep, geese, donkeys, horses, dogs, and a herd of goats-- including two baby goats that weren’t more than 4 hours old. They don’t eat these animals (we asked), but they do keep them as pets. The only thing that “gits em” is, once again, that little bastard, the fox.
Kay is quick, and all business. A woman of about 55ish, give or take a few years--it’s hard to tell age sometimes with Aussies as the weather, and sun, treats some better than others. Her and Bill moved here 3.5 years ago (I hope to get the rest of the story later). Bill, who I was warned about by one of our host organizers, Polly (who subsequently met us at the airport dressed like a hard core rocker and promised to give me her old guitar as she just bought a new one!) told me Bill is a talker but we haven’t heard much from him, yet. Just the usual: keep our bedroom doors closed otherwise rats, snakes and goannas (large lizards) will just wander in. Oh, and biting ants. So far so good in Western Australia! But it doesn’t stop there.
Kay is pleasant enough but you can tell she is a working woman, used to working hard. I suppose on a farm with some 30 odd living things waiting for feed daily, you’d have to work hard. But the animals weren’t always here. “We brought them,” Kay told me as the sun dipped below the horizon for good. “Along with the dolls.”
Oh, yeah, that’s the other thing. The tourist park is a petting zoo, AND a Doll Museum. Hear that, Dad? A Doll Museum! Way the hell out in the middle of nowhere! Hahahaha
Muhahahahahha
Anyway else afraid of dolls?
We’ve had enough good jokes (though, yes, many in poor taste) passed around about the dolls already. Tomorrow, I am told, we get to see the museum. I am both excited and nervous for this first, of what I'm sure will be many, encounters.
Last news of the day. After a voracious attack by all on the food stocking the kitchen to the gills we adjourned to our rooms. The girls are in groups of three in three different rooms. Less than fifteen minutes after I closed my door on the outside world, I heard a bloodcurdling scream! Seconds later, a frenzied knock on my door. I opened it up and three girls stumbled in sputtering something about, “do something” and “oh my god!” and “spider!”
My moment of truth? Time to make up for that one huntsman the students did away with back at Yookamurra? I can do this, I told myself, no problem.
(Ten seconds later)
NO FUCKING WAY was I going near that thing! Not once I saw the actual size and “thickness” of it. It wasn’t a huntsman, I had already asked about those. But this monster was similar, only it didn’t move sideways like the huntsman, but was a big round hairy beast about the size of the palm of my hand.
You want to hear ten females scream bloody hell at 9pm in complete and utter quiet! I was waiting for Bill to come down with his shotgun and see what was up. Everyone looking to me and all I could do was grab my camera and wince! Finally, two brave UK girls stepped up and it was a scream/laugh fest for the next 30 minutes as the spider wreaked havoc all over the walls, fell behind the bed, crawled across the bed sheet, became momentarily “lost”, then found, then finally trapped under a very large Tupperware bowl—the entire time all of us jumping up and down screaming “Ewwwwwwww!!!!” I honest to god felt like I was at some nightmarish summer camp! Moments later the bowl was tossed into the night. Talk about a way to start the trip! Now we all sit in our rooms (I alone in mine, maybe a roommate or two wouldn’t be so bad?) cringing and gazing about the walls. I really don’t know if I could handle the spiders and such down here, and its not even summer. That kills me. I haven’t even been here in snake season.
This group so far is AWESOME though, very fun and they all genuinely seem like they might get along—always a worry with more than a few girls. Also my first all-girl group which I thought would be great, then realizing how nice it would have been to have a DUDE attack that spider. Even if a guy were afraid, with 9 scared girls, he would have stepped it up. And now the truth is out: I can assign chores and pump up the students for work and lead conservation-based discussions with the best of them, but spiders? Give this wuss a can of potent bug spray any day.
(Note: I found out a few days later that those big spiders, that I guess are EVERYWHERE in the houses down here, can jump! And many jump right at YOU!)
Stay tuned for the Doll House….
laura
Wednesday, July 12, 2006
Hunting for Wombats
I don’t know exactly when or where I first heard the word "wombat" but in the last two years, or, since I have been spending the better part of my summers in Australia, this word, and this creature, have weighed on my mind. The largest, and gruffest, of the lot resides right here, just outside the fence of Yookamurra. The Southern Hairy Nosed Wombat is out there right now! Lurking.
Ah, who cares, you might ask?
Wombats aren’t just awkwardly robust nocturnal mammals. No. They are built like the thickest part of an oak. Nearly 60 pounds. They have pig faces. They bolster their way about, shrugging their shoulders and grunting. They brake through fences. They are considered a “pest” in Oz because of their boisterous behaviour, can subsequently be shot, by anyone, and they are now endangered because of this. To see one, in the wild, is quite rare.
Phil, the caretaker and sanctuary manager, told me he used to climb down into wombat holes, "for fun". These are huge underground lairs and from the surface they are simply holes--about one square foot and the perfect size for a little boy to crawl into. Ah, but can you guess what the wombats primary defense mechanism is? When he senses someone, or something (dog or fox, or child) enter his hole, he backtracks, pushes past the intruder until he's back on the OUTSIDE OF THE LAIR, and then uses his body to push the intruder INTO his burrow, all the way to the end, until the intruder gets mashed up a good number of times, and then dies. Nice job escaping childhood death, Phil.
I am writing because, of all the beasties I have seen in Oz so far (koalas, platypus, roos, wallabies, bilbys, potaroos, burrowing betongs, huntsman, golden globes, brown snake, red bellied black spider....) I have yet to see a wombat. And tonight, in just a few short hours, in fact, we will go out hunting for them.
Later.
Dammit! Of course the wombat was so fast I only saw his fat and furry ass as it bound over the stick and dry bush infested earth, back into the dark pit of his burrow! We were out, past bedtime, in the vast and empty fields of S. Australia, exploring the rest of the 11,000 hectares that Yookamurra owns (we reside on 1100 of them). There was a barbed wire fence, a small collection of cars decorating the one small swatch of land that ‘couldn’t be sold’ from some stubborn old coot who had since disappeared, and the Southern Cross. All ten of us were snug on the back of the ute (utility vehicle, like a small flatbed truck) directing huge spot lights out into the darkness, while Phil sat up front, navigating his way around trees, huge wombat dugouts, fences, and the occasional dead fox (these we had to get out and take pictures of, most are poisoned with a compound called 1080. It’s derived from an Australian plant so native animals are immune to it, sorry little foxes…). The moon was FULL and fat and the night crisp. I thought—as we trundled along, gazing out across the flat plains, the never changing horizon—how horrifying it would be to break down, or worse yet, get dropped off, out there, alone or with others, it didn’t matter. I wouldn’t know in which direction to begin stumbling.
This continent is so vast, so monstrous the closer one gets to the outback (jesus, I can't even fathom the magnitude of the infamous outback), with little by way of landmarks, with everything so eerily similar, as if the track you are on is simply turning back on itself, over and over again. I had already nearly gotten lost in the sanctuary several times. On one recent occasion, I simply wandered off to take a piss. Simple as that. But when I stood up I began unwittingly walking off, in the wrong direction. Ten minutes later I realized my mistake, which put me twenty walking minutes back to the fence. Ah, but which way? I miraculously made it back a little less than an hour later, thirsty, a bit spooked, only to find my students lazing in the truck and in the shade, oblivious to the fact that they nearly lost their fearless leader (uh, that’s me). It is a wonder how bush folk get around in these parts.
Back to the hunting!
Only that one wombat ass was seen, but the night was still well worth it. Near midnight Phil took us to a wombat burrow big enough for a man to crawl into, and eight of my students as well. Inside the burrow (I’m not shitting you) we all fit, able to stand if we were so inclined and gazed about at fossils embedded in the kalkouri, sp?, (the chalky rock making up most of the land and deposited nearly 20 million years ago when the whole lot of it was under sea, an old abandoned farmhouse, complete with a dilapidated door, bat inside, and old well that you couldn’t see to the bottom of (and didn’t know if you wanted to anyway). The ground all around the farm and stretching away on all sides was rough, rock strewn, and thick with dry brush. I wondered what the hell the first settlers thought when they landed in Aus and tried to work the land.
“Who would buy this land?” I asked Mimi, Phil’s wife. You couldn’t grow crops, or graze animals.
“Oh, this is good land for drugs. They grow real well. And some people come out for a respite from the city, for some peace and quiet.” It was so quiet out there I could hear the wind, it seemed, from miles away.
My head spins every day I wake up here, there is so much to absorb. And I spent all last year taking notes and sucking in information like hard candies, and still, more and more and more.
In other news, I got into it with the students tonight for spending the majority of their nightly free time staring at a large screen. We don’t have a TV but we do have a DVD player that projects onto a 4x4 ft screen! During the dinner, it’s on, after dinner, on. Tonight I asked if we could cool it with the idiot box after I repeatedly asked everyone how they liked dinner and no one heard, but instead stared blankly at the screen (though, to their credit, Family Guy was playing and hey, its funny). I asked why it always has to be on and more than a few responded, “there is nothing else to do.”
I haven’t had a television for three years and I’m keeping it that way. Try it for a week, it really is amazing how much time one can spend there, especially if its “fang week” on the National Geographic Channel. Or Family Guy reruns…
Ah, this just in, a few of the students finagled me into checking out the ‘bilby’ enclosure. The bilby is a very significant marsupial. Small, white, with big ears (like a rabbit) and there has been a push to rid Oz of the Easter ‘bunny’ and replace it with the Easter ‘bilby’ – since rabbits are a pest of the country and in fact out compete the bilby for food.
Anyway…on our way back to the cabins I was chatting away to one of my favorite students when we hear this scrape, an eerie sound that made me think of a large body being pulled along the ground…my legs went numb, heart hit the ribs, hard, and I turned to see, crawling on all fours towards us in the harsh and bitter full moonlight..
Josephine!
Which was quite opportune because I had yet to have a pic taken with her. In the pic attached my heart is still sitting nicely in my throat.
I’m wrapping up at my first project in a day. I really cant believe one is down, three to go! Next I'm off to Perth but not before I binge and purge on what I learned from Yookamuura, what I’m taking with me, what I'm leaving. Stay tuned. Hope all is well in your parts of the world.
laura
Ah, who cares, you might ask?
Wombats aren’t just awkwardly robust nocturnal mammals. No. They are built like the thickest part of an oak. Nearly 60 pounds. They have pig faces. They bolster their way about, shrugging their shoulders and grunting. They brake through fences. They are considered a “pest” in Oz because of their boisterous behaviour, can subsequently be shot, by anyone, and they are now endangered because of this. To see one, in the wild, is quite rare.
Phil, the caretaker and sanctuary manager, told me he used to climb down into wombat holes, "for fun". These are huge underground lairs and from the surface they are simply holes--about one square foot and the perfect size for a little boy to crawl into. Ah, but can you guess what the wombats primary defense mechanism is? When he senses someone, or something (dog or fox, or child) enter his hole, he backtracks, pushes past the intruder until he's back on the OUTSIDE OF THE LAIR, and then uses his body to push the intruder INTO his burrow, all the way to the end, until the intruder gets mashed up a good number of times, and then dies. Nice job escaping childhood death, Phil.
I am writing because, of all the beasties I have seen in Oz so far (koalas, platypus, roos, wallabies, bilbys, potaroos, burrowing betongs, huntsman, golden globes, brown snake, red bellied black spider....) I have yet to see a wombat. And tonight, in just a few short hours, in fact, we will go out hunting for them.
Later.
Dammit! Of course the wombat was so fast I only saw his fat and furry ass as it bound over the stick and dry bush infested earth, back into the dark pit of his burrow! We were out, past bedtime, in the vast and empty fields of S. Australia, exploring the rest of the 11,000 hectares that Yookamurra owns (we reside on 1100 of them). There was a barbed wire fence, a small collection of cars decorating the one small swatch of land that ‘couldn’t be sold’ from some stubborn old coot who had since disappeared, and the Southern Cross. All ten of us were snug on the back of the ute (utility vehicle, like a small flatbed truck) directing huge spot lights out into the darkness, while Phil sat up front, navigating his way around trees, huge wombat dugouts, fences, and the occasional dead fox (these we had to get out and take pictures of, most are poisoned with a compound called 1080. It’s derived from an Australian plant so native animals are immune to it, sorry little foxes…). The moon was FULL and fat and the night crisp. I thought—as we trundled along, gazing out across the flat plains, the never changing horizon—how horrifying it would be to break down, or worse yet, get dropped off, out there, alone or with others, it didn’t matter. I wouldn’t know in which direction to begin stumbling.
This continent is so vast, so monstrous the closer one gets to the outback (jesus, I can't even fathom the magnitude of the infamous outback), with little by way of landmarks, with everything so eerily similar, as if the track you are on is simply turning back on itself, over and over again. I had already nearly gotten lost in the sanctuary several times. On one recent occasion, I simply wandered off to take a piss. Simple as that. But when I stood up I began unwittingly walking off, in the wrong direction. Ten minutes later I realized my mistake, which put me twenty walking minutes back to the fence. Ah, but which way? I miraculously made it back a little less than an hour later, thirsty, a bit spooked, only to find my students lazing in the truck and in the shade, oblivious to the fact that they nearly lost their fearless leader (uh, that’s me). It is a wonder how bush folk get around in these parts.
Back to the hunting!
Only that one wombat ass was seen, but the night was still well worth it. Near midnight Phil took us to a wombat burrow big enough for a man to crawl into, and eight of my students as well. Inside the burrow (I’m not shitting you) we all fit, able to stand if we were so inclined and gazed about at fossils embedded in the kalkouri, sp?, (the chalky rock making up most of the land and deposited nearly 20 million years ago when the whole lot of it was under sea, an old abandoned farmhouse, complete with a dilapidated door, bat inside, and old well that you couldn’t see to the bottom of (and didn’t know if you wanted to anyway). The ground all around the farm and stretching away on all sides was rough, rock strewn, and thick with dry brush. I wondered what the hell the first settlers thought when they landed in Aus and tried to work the land.
“Who would buy this land?” I asked Mimi, Phil’s wife. You couldn’t grow crops, or graze animals.
“Oh, this is good land for drugs. They grow real well. And some people come out for a respite from the city, for some peace and quiet.” It was so quiet out there I could hear the wind, it seemed, from miles away.
My head spins every day I wake up here, there is so much to absorb. And I spent all last year taking notes and sucking in information like hard candies, and still, more and more and more.
In other news, I got into it with the students tonight for spending the majority of their nightly free time staring at a large screen. We don’t have a TV but we do have a DVD player that projects onto a 4x4 ft screen! During the dinner, it’s on, after dinner, on. Tonight I asked if we could cool it with the idiot box after I repeatedly asked everyone how they liked dinner and no one heard, but instead stared blankly at the screen (though, to their credit, Family Guy was playing and hey, its funny). I asked why it always has to be on and more than a few responded, “there is nothing else to do.”
I haven’t had a television for three years and I’m keeping it that way. Try it for a week, it really is amazing how much time one can spend there, especially if its “fang week” on the National Geographic Channel. Or Family Guy reruns…
Ah, this just in, a few of the students finagled me into checking out the ‘bilby’ enclosure. The bilby is a very significant marsupial. Small, white, with big ears (like a rabbit) and there has been a push to rid Oz of the Easter ‘bunny’ and replace it with the Easter ‘bilby’ – since rabbits are a pest of the country and in fact out compete the bilby for food.
Anyway…on our way back to the cabins I was chatting away to one of my favorite students when we hear this scrape, an eerie sound that made me think of a large body being pulled along the ground…my legs went numb, heart hit the ribs, hard, and I turned to see, crawling on all fours towards us in the harsh and bitter full moonlight..
Josephine!
Which was quite opportune because I had yet to have a pic taken with her. In the pic attached my heart is still sitting nicely in my throat.
I’m wrapping up at my first project in a day. I really cant believe one is down, three to go! Next I'm off to Perth but not before I binge and purge on what I learned from Yookamuura, what I’m taking with me, what I'm leaving. Stay tuned. Hope all is well in your parts of the world.
laura
Saturday, July 08, 2006
Aussie Rules and...cracking the shits?
Before I begin, "cracking the shits" is an Aussie term that means getting angry, mad, irate. For example, "I cracked the shits last night after I hung up the phone on the insensitive moron!"
...
Hello! From the depths of a sleepy Sunday morning. Where I have an entire day off and am going to spend it greedily, by myself, wandering the grounds taking pictures, writing poems, and generally soaking up the cool and cloudless sky. And, to be honest, after a night like last night, I deserve it.
I took the guys into Adelaide—capital of South Australia and 2.5 hours away—for they wanted to go to an Australian Football Game, a league otherwise known as "Aussie Rules." Its rough and tumble folks, and these guys are HUGE. We left around noonish and headed south where, 200 km and 3 hours later, we were lost off our asses. So we hit Hungry Jacks (eerily similar to Burger King) where all the guys were more than happy (hungry?) to woof down greasy food while I sat in the van and contemplated our next move.
When most things begin to fail, in Australia, you have three options: fight, get drunk, or head to the beach. Knowing full well that the drinking (and hopefully NOT fighting) would come later, we hit the beach. The ocean down here is ENORMOUS, the South Ocean, the one that laps up against Australia and also Antarctica. Although we were only able to stare into the cold eye of the Gulf of St. Vincent, I could imagine the monstrous water just over the horizon, moving toward the bottom of the world, cold, deep...and full of great whites.
Jaws was filmed down in parts of South Australia. There are few shark attacks (I'm not sure of statistics, but perhaps one or two every few years) but if you were to get a good chomp done on ya, it might be in these waters. Jaws, by the way, thoroughly messed me up for life. Anyone out there ever go swimming with me in a lake (yes, freshwater) only to find me terrified out in the deep water, swearing profusely that “something” was nibbling at my toes!?? Though I could also blame my ridiculous fear of water on the movie, “Piranha”, where these biting frenzied and nasty fish make their way into the river where they happily begin to decimate the young and unsuspecting campers, right along with their rubber tubes! Whew. Memories…
We found the stadium, finally, but I decided not to go. I was really seeking that one thing that normally keeps me sane (or keeps me mad?) and that’s some solo time. Instead, I hit a quaint coffee shop right across from the stadium where I watched fireworks light up the sky (these people really like their “footy”), and already-rowdy Aussie boys and girls rolled their way across the parking lot. Later, as the game was echoing with cheers of madness, I made my way back to our 12-seat van (did I forget to tell anyone I been driving round this whole state? Barely avoiding injury by swerving to the “right” side of the road when I see an oncoming car, and don’t even get me started on avoiding roos at night…). Back at the van I was keen to read for the hour until I met up with the group. During this time I saw a man, along with his two children, walking up and down every aisle of cars, trying the doors, and breaking into a few.
Horrified that he might see me (and react and get pissed because I was a witness) I hid on the bottom of the van floor! Moments later the door handle shook, stopped, shook some more. I felt eyes peering into the large white van—with the words BUDGET RENTAL stenciled on the side (hm…would that be a good target I wonder?)—and so I thrust my face and arms under a sleeping bag. Sketch? After the man and his kids passed me over I leapt out of the van and alerted a policeman, on a horse. He galloped away and that was that. I suppose these sorts of things happen at every large gathering--people take advantage of people. Not the American or Aussie way, the worldly way?
Nonetheless, I survived and at 10:30pm I met up with my group (quite miraculously, actually, that 9 drunk and stumblers could coordinate anything). To make it very short, they were wasted. Not all, but most. Everyone wanted to hug me, tell me stories, tell jokes. I got them in the van in a manic rush, knowing the longer we waited, the more likely it was that I would be too tired to make the 2.5 hour journey north. I put the most sober of the lot in the front with me, then took off. Very pleasant ride, with techno beats thumping, kids laughing and yelling drunken obscenities at one another, until we made our way into the country side. There, the roos came out in full force and slowed the van to a mere 60km/hour (in a 110 km zone). There was no way I wanted to hit one--talk about a long suffering nightmare, not to mention guilt, for the rest of my life! Then, around a series of serious curves, one of the students in the back, yakked. Not a small, dry yak either. Wet slurping sounds slushed through hands, hit the floor and began to slide around on the rubber matting. My scarf was "down there", and my jacket. Eww.... And who could ever forget the smell of bile after a long night!
After a 20 minute pull off, some narrowly missed roos, and much heart pounding on my part, we made it back in one piece, I ate handfuls of chocolate, and passed out.
Now it is morning and I sit with many of the students in our common kitchen area, listening to them tell me all of the stories they told me last night and the puker, Mike, even asks,” I wonder who won the game?” If anyone hasn’t had enough of these drunken stories and stupors, why not sign up to be a project leader with ISV?!
Now, a poem. Hope you enjoy your days. Each one is a gift. It's interesting when we are depressed or just in a relative funk when we think, “Someday it will get better”, or we dream of some distant moment or occurrence when everything will "fall into place." We have all heard this before but its true: Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, today is a gift, because it is the present. Right now, this moment. This present. What will you do with it?
If you walk just far enough off the track,
through the mallee scrub, the sugarwood,
through all of the
severe branches, over the driest
of earths, crunching stone and scat
under foot, you will find
the bones
resting
under the smoldering eye of the sun.
Not small bones,
not fresh.
I sit close enough to see the whites
adorning the ground like jewelry, and wonder
how and why and
when the bones first fell.
Instinct tells me not to go
where the big predators go,
but here, in the southern desert heat, it is the cat, the
fox, the wedge-tail eagle, the man
that draws the most blood.
When so many years have passed and we are gone, not
only from this land but from this life,
and the feathers fall like cotton, blown
in the wind, and
the flesh of everything roots in the belly of
another,
only the bones will remain of some wiser and
more simple
existence.
In my own skin, the bones ache.
For the earth—for a
resting place, for the bleached skin of the
sun to strip away everything
expose me
from the inside out.
All of these bones that are mine.
I wonder where they will end up,
here,
on, or in American soil,
burned in a forest fire in 2052,
ground to a fine powder or thrown,
with a heavy bag of weighted words,
from the peak
of a chaotic mountain
top
laura
...
Hello! From the depths of a sleepy Sunday morning. Where I have an entire day off and am going to spend it greedily, by myself, wandering the grounds taking pictures, writing poems, and generally soaking up the cool and cloudless sky. And, to be honest, after a night like last night, I deserve it.
I took the guys into Adelaide—capital of South Australia and 2.5 hours away—for they wanted to go to an Australian Football Game, a league otherwise known as "Aussie Rules." Its rough and tumble folks, and these guys are HUGE. We left around noonish and headed south where, 200 km and 3 hours later, we were lost off our asses. So we hit Hungry Jacks (eerily similar to Burger King) where all the guys were more than happy (hungry?) to woof down greasy food while I sat in the van and contemplated our next move.
When most things begin to fail, in Australia, you have three options: fight, get drunk, or head to the beach. Knowing full well that the drinking (and hopefully NOT fighting) would come later, we hit the beach. The ocean down here is ENORMOUS, the South Ocean, the one that laps up against Australia and also Antarctica. Although we were only able to stare into the cold eye of the Gulf of St. Vincent, I could imagine the monstrous water just over the horizon, moving toward the bottom of the world, cold, deep...and full of great whites.
Jaws was filmed down in parts of South Australia. There are few shark attacks (I'm not sure of statistics, but perhaps one or two every few years) but if you were to get a good chomp done on ya, it might be in these waters. Jaws, by the way, thoroughly messed me up for life. Anyone out there ever go swimming with me in a lake (yes, freshwater) only to find me terrified out in the deep water, swearing profusely that “something” was nibbling at my toes!?? Though I could also blame my ridiculous fear of water on the movie, “Piranha”, where these biting frenzied and nasty fish make their way into the river where they happily begin to decimate the young and unsuspecting campers, right along with their rubber tubes! Whew. Memories…
We found the stadium, finally, but I decided not to go. I was really seeking that one thing that normally keeps me sane (or keeps me mad?) and that’s some solo time. Instead, I hit a quaint coffee shop right across from the stadium where I watched fireworks light up the sky (these people really like their “footy”), and already-rowdy Aussie boys and girls rolled their way across the parking lot. Later, as the game was echoing with cheers of madness, I made my way back to our 12-seat van (did I forget to tell anyone I been driving round this whole state? Barely avoiding injury by swerving to the “right” side of the road when I see an oncoming car, and don’t even get me started on avoiding roos at night…). Back at the van I was keen to read for the hour until I met up with the group. During this time I saw a man, along with his two children, walking up and down every aisle of cars, trying the doors, and breaking into a few.
Horrified that he might see me (and react and get pissed because I was a witness) I hid on the bottom of the van floor! Moments later the door handle shook, stopped, shook some more. I felt eyes peering into the large white van—with the words BUDGET RENTAL stenciled on the side (hm…would that be a good target I wonder?)—and so I thrust my face and arms under a sleeping bag. Sketch? After the man and his kids passed me over I leapt out of the van and alerted a policeman, on a horse. He galloped away and that was that. I suppose these sorts of things happen at every large gathering--people take advantage of people. Not the American or Aussie way, the worldly way?
Nonetheless, I survived and at 10:30pm I met up with my group (quite miraculously, actually, that 9 drunk and stumblers could coordinate anything). To make it very short, they were wasted. Not all, but most. Everyone wanted to hug me, tell me stories, tell jokes. I got them in the van in a manic rush, knowing the longer we waited, the more likely it was that I would be too tired to make the 2.5 hour journey north. I put the most sober of the lot in the front with me, then took off. Very pleasant ride, with techno beats thumping, kids laughing and yelling drunken obscenities at one another, until we made our way into the country side. There, the roos came out in full force and slowed the van to a mere 60km/hour (in a 110 km zone). There was no way I wanted to hit one--talk about a long suffering nightmare, not to mention guilt, for the rest of my life! Then, around a series of serious curves, one of the students in the back, yakked. Not a small, dry yak either. Wet slurping sounds slushed through hands, hit the floor and began to slide around on the rubber matting. My scarf was "down there", and my jacket. Eww.... And who could ever forget the smell of bile after a long night!
After a 20 minute pull off, some narrowly missed roos, and much heart pounding on my part, we made it back in one piece, I ate handfuls of chocolate, and passed out.
Now it is morning and I sit with many of the students in our common kitchen area, listening to them tell me all of the stories they told me last night and the puker, Mike, even asks,” I wonder who won the game?” If anyone hasn’t had enough of these drunken stories and stupors, why not sign up to be a project leader with ISV?!
Now, a poem. Hope you enjoy your days. Each one is a gift. It's interesting when we are depressed or just in a relative funk when we think, “Someday it will get better”, or we dream of some distant moment or occurrence when everything will "fall into place." We have all heard this before but its true: Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, today is a gift, because it is the present. Right now, this moment. This present. What will you do with it?
If you walk just far enough off the track,
through the mallee scrub, the sugarwood,
through all of the
severe branches, over the driest
of earths, crunching stone and scat
under foot, you will find
the bones
resting
under the smoldering eye of the sun.
Not small bones,
not fresh.
I sit close enough to see the whites
adorning the ground like jewelry, and wonder
how and why and
when the bones first fell.
Instinct tells me not to go
where the big predators go,
but here, in the southern desert heat, it is the cat, the
fox, the wedge-tail eagle, the man
that draws the most blood.
When so many years have passed and we are gone, not
only from this land but from this life,
and the feathers fall like cotton, blown
in the wind, and
the flesh of everything roots in the belly of
another,
only the bones will remain of some wiser and
more simple
existence.
In my own skin, the bones ache.
For the earth—for a
resting place, for the bleached skin of the
sun to strip away everything
expose me
from the inside out.
All of these bones that are mine.
I wonder where they will end up,
here,
on, or in American soil,
burned in a forest fire in 2052,
ground to a fine powder or thrown,
with a heavy bag of weighted words,
from the peak
of a chaotic mountain
top
laura
Sunday, July 02, 2006
One feral proof fence please.
One thing that has really been enforced in this girl, from working in Australia all last summer and also in California this last winter, is how downright shameful I feel sometimes to be of European descent. The plight of the indigenous peoples in both Oz and the States is quite similar. The land has forcefully been taken from them and their cultures/traditions were at one time abolished to such a degree that many are now "lost". What is the use of a "white man's" education if one has lost the ability to connect with one's ancestors and own culture?
The aboriginal lore and history was one facet of Australia that I was immensely interested in last summer. The history of the dreaming and the aboriginal knowledge of the inhospitable outback and use of plants and animals is tremendous. I had very few opportunities to meet indigenous people last year and I'm hoping for more this summer.
Maybe one of the other reasons I'm suddenly pissed at my ancestors is because we have spent the last four working days putting up a “feral proof fence.” I know that I wrote about this last year—when we were living on a sanctuary surrounded by such a fence and one night all of my students got wasted and then couldn’t figure out how to get back IN. haha, That was actually pretty funny. BUT, here at Yookamurra, the students and I have been hard at it, establishing a six foot high fence around the 2000 or so hectares. This fence keeps out foxes, cats, and rabbits--the three most lethal introduced species (save maybe for the cane toad that has yet to make a presence in the south of OZ). The foxes and rabbits were originally brought over for sport and populations easily skyrocketed because of the abundance of food here. Marsupials (mammals that give birth to live young that then mature in a pouch) are pretty slow, having evolved on a continent with few predators. So, the foxes and cats (brought by early Europeans as pets) have a field day with them. The fence will keep these guys out while aiding in the safety of native marsupials and placental mammals to propagate and exist on the inside. As all of these native critters are nocturnal so the only time you will see one is on the way to the bathroom at night, alone, or on the way to your cabin, again alone, and one either flies across the path, much to your astonishment and momentary unease, or hisses at you from a tree!
It was one of these nighttime moments that Josie finally made herself known. An eastern grey kangaroo, Josie is about three feet tall, and very very inquisitive. At first we thought she genuinely liked us, but it soon became obvious that she was only using that as a ploy to get close enough to possibly sneak into the kitchen door! It had happened before, with other groups and we've been told "you don't want to see what she can do."
It's been cold here. Really cold. And I wake up clutching my sleeping bag along with a ratty old comforter I found about my head. Though, I could also be doing that because of the memory of the HUNTSMAN SPIDER we found on Tuesday! They live! Crawling with legs spread wide, the dreaded huntsman was found on a students cabin wall! Perched right above his bed! Waiting? Anticipating? Before I had any say in the matter (for I try to enforce in the unwieldy Americans the fact that we didn't come down to OZ to KILL everything) the students had bug sprayed the poor guy to death. One advantage of this was that we were all able to gaze into its beady eyes up close. You ever notice, however, that when you talk about bugs, or worse yet, interact with them, you keep thinking of them and maybe even '"feel" them crawling around...hm...but, Ive instilled in the students no more killing. Now I await my big moment when I get to try and capture one for release back into the bush...
Stay tuned for more, I hope everything is bright and happy back up north and that everyone had a smashing 4th of July. We ended up at a semi-seedy pub in Swan Reach that night to celebrate our independence. Interesting town in that you have to cross the Murray River to get there. The Murray is the largest river in all of Australia (and subsequently has a heap of environmental issues) and at this particular spot, we didn't cross a bridge to get to the other side. Instead they have a ferry, running 24 hours a day, that shuttles you and your car the 200 or so yards across the water. Pretty surreal and all at once, very Australian.
Laura
The aboriginal lore and history was one facet of Australia that I was immensely interested in last summer. The history of the dreaming and the aboriginal knowledge of the inhospitable outback and use of plants and animals is tremendous. I had very few opportunities to meet indigenous people last year and I'm hoping for more this summer.
Maybe one of the other reasons I'm suddenly pissed at my ancestors is because we have spent the last four working days putting up a “feral proof fence.” I know that I wrote about this last year—when we were living on a sanctuary surrounded by such a fence and one night all of my students got wasted and then couldn’t figure out how to get back IN. haha, That was actually pretty funny. BUT, here at Yookamurra, the students and I have been hard at it, establishing a six foot high fence around the 2000 or so hectares. This fence keeps out foxes, cats, and rabbits--the three most lethal introduced species (save maybe for the cane toad that has yet to make a presence in the south of OZ). The foxes and rabbits were originally brought over for sport and populations easily skyrocketed because of the abundance of food here. Marsupials (mammals that give birth to live young that then mature in a pouch) are pretty slow, having evolved on a continent with few predators. So, the foxes and cats (brought by early Europeans as pets) have a field day with them. The fence will keep these guys out while aiding in the safety of native marsupials and placental mammals to propagate and exist on the inside. As all of these native critters are nocturnal so the only time you will see one is on the way to the bathroom at night, alone, or on the way to your cabin, again alone, and one either flies across the path, much to your astonishment and momentary unease, or hisses at you from a tree!
It was one of these nighttime moments that Josie finally made herself known. An eastern grey kangaroo, Josie is about three feet tall, and very very inquisitive. At first we thought she genuinely liked us, but it soon became obvious that she was only using that as a ploy to get close enough to possibly sneak into the kitchen door! It had happened before, with other groups and we've been told "you don't want to see what she can do."
It's been cold here. Really cold. And I wake up clutching my sleeping bag along with a ratty old comforter I found about my head. Though, I could also be doing that because of the memory of the HUNTSMAN SPIDER we found on Tuesday! They live! Crawling with legs spread wide, the dreaded huntsman was found on a students cabin wall! Perched right above his bed! Waiting? Anticipating? Before I had any say in the matter (for I try to enforce in the unwieldy Americans the fact that we didn't come down to OZ to KILL everything) the students had bug sprayed the poor guy to death. One advantage of this was that we were all able to gaze into its beady eyes up close. You ever notice, however, that when you talk about bugs, or worse yet, interact with them, you keep thinking of them and maybe even '"feel" them crawling around...hm...but, Ive instilled in the students no more killing. Now I await my big moment when I get to try and capture one for release back into the bush...
Stay tuned for more, I hope everything is bright and happy back up north and that everyone had a smashing 4th of July. We ended up at a semi-seedy pub in Swan Reach that night to celebrate our independence. Interesting town in that you have to cross the Murray River to get there. The Murray is the largest river in all of Australia (and subsequently has a heap of environmental issues) and at this particular spot, we didn't cross a bridge to get to the other side. Instead they have a ferry, running 24 hours a day, that shuttles you and your car the 200 or so yards across the water. Pretty surreal and all at once, very Australian.
Laura
Saturday, July 01, 2006
Where the kangaroos are boss...
"Have you seen Joshephine yet?" My boss asked me from her home in Sydney. My 1st group of students and I had arrived at the "Yooka" Sanctuary just an hour earlier, bleary eyed but ecstatic that we arrived at all! (I dont know why but it always seems like a miracle.)
"Who is Josephine?" I asked. So far I had an only met Phil and Mimi, the adorable Aussie couple that run the joint.
"She is the resident kangaroo. She is small, but can pack a punch."
And so I held "ït", it being my bladder, through the long cold night, and into the early hours of dawn, curious but also somewhat terrified to run into "Josie" on the way to the john...
The plane ride from LAX to Melbourne was pretty uneventful. There were the usual "swooping" dips and sways of the big plane as it negotiated with those high pacific winds, but then again, you become so delirious after fifteen hours of sardine-style (good luck finding leg room in economy) plane travel that it all becomes part of a surreal dream.
And it doesn't change once you land either. When you walk out into the rainy overcast Melbourne morning, and begin to swim, on the wrong side of the road, through traffic, with a large 12-person white van and nine students laughing at your every minor mistake (windshield wipers on left! blinker on right!) As you drive along the Stuart Highway north, away from the South Australian capital of Adelaide, toward the Barossa Valley and your home for the next two weeks. And just when you think you can finally yawn and take in all that has happened in the last 24 hours of your life, the sun begins to pass in streaks through the clouds and light up the huge gaping eucalypt branches until long pointed shadows are thrown on the ground. As you stare at the white skin of these giants, a kangaroo crossing sign passes by and then the highway, lit up on both sides now by fields of gold, suddenly seems to extend into forever. You realize that you arent tired anymore. You are on fire.
I love this country. I really do. And the Yookamurra Sanctuary is just one more slice of heaven I am getting the good fortune to see. Since when do I get my own cabin? Come on!
So far the trip has been as epic as I imagined. South Australia, as well as all of OZ, is in the midst of winter so its cool here (50's and 60's) and even downright cold at night. A very stark contrast to the 100 degree heat I escaped in Colorado.
It's Sunday morning now (Saturday night for most back in the States) and I just made a telephone call to my nephew, Joshua, who I'd like to give a shout out to and say HAPPY BIRTHDAY! He just turned six years old and told me about all of his favorite toys he received (of course, I have no idea of the cool toys anymore). My Dad also emailed to alert me of the fact their ARE poisonous snakes in these parts and I should watch it! Thanks Dad! Fortunately (or unfortunately, because it would be an experience to see a Brown Snake) they are pretty sedentary this time of year.
So, that's the update. We thankfully have a free day today so I'll send more news once we start working with the wildlife, or I have a confrontation with Josie, whichever comes first. And, speaking of roos, I'm about to head out into the warming early afternoon and attempt a 20k run around the fenced-in portion (more on this later) of the compound. If I see a male kangaroo rearing on his hind legs and coughing, Phil, one of the resident biologists tells me, I'm to get down on the ground and cough back. This will assure him he's still the boss.
G'day to you all!
laura
"Who is Josephine?" I asked. So far I had an only met Phil and Mimi, the adorable Aussie couple that run the joint.
"She is the resident kangaroo. She is small, but can pack a punch."
And so I held "ït", it being my bladder, through the long cold night, and into the early hours of dawn, curious but also somewhat terrified to run into "Josie" on the way to the john...
The plane ride from LAX to Melbourne was pretty uneventful. There were the usual "swooping" dips and sways of the big plane as it negotiated with those high pacific winds, but then again, you become so delirious after fifteen hours of sardine-style (good luck finding leg room in economy) plane travel that it all becomes part of a surreal dream.
And it doesn't change once you land either. When you walk out into the rainy overcast Melbourne morning, and begin to swim, on the wrong side of the road, through traffic, with a large 12-person white van and nine students laughing at your every minor mistake (windshield wipers on left! blinker on right!) As you drive along the Stuart Highway north, away from the South Australian capital of Adelaide, toward the Barossa Valley and your home for the next two weeks. And just when you think you can finally yawn and take in all that has happened in the last 24 hours of your life, the sun begins to pass in streaks through the clouds and light up the huge gaping eucalypt branches until long pointed shadows are thrown on the ground. As you stare at the white skin of these giants, a kangaroo crossing sign passes by and then the highway, lit up on both sides now by fields of gold, suddenly seems to extend into forever. You realize that you arent tired anymore. You are on fire.
I love this country. I really do. And the Yookamurra Sanctuary is just one more slice of heaven I am getting the good fortune to see. Since when do I get my own cabin? Come on!
So far the trip has been as epic as I imagined. South Australia, as well as all of OZ, is in the midst of winter so its cool here (50's and 60's) and even downright cold at night. A very stark contrast to the 100 degree heat I escaped in Colorado.
It's Sunday morning now (Saturday night for most back in the States) and I just made a telephone call to my nephew, Joshua, who I'd like to give a shout out to and say HAPPY BIRTHDAY! He just turned six years old and told me about all of his favorite toys he received (of course, I have no idea of the cool toys anymore). My Dad also emailed to alert me of the fact their ARE poisonous snakes in these parts and I should watch it! Thanks Dad! Fortunately (or unfortunately, because it would be an experience to see a Brown Snake) they are pretty sedentary this time of year.
So, that's the update. We thankfully have a free day today so I'll send more news once we start working with the wildlife, or I have a confrontation with Josie, whichever comes first. And, speaking of roos, I'm about to head out into the warming early afternoon and attempt a 20k run around the fenced-in portion (more on this later) of the compound. If I see a male kangaroo rearing on his hind legs and coughing, Phil, one of the resident biologists tells me, I'm to get down on the ground and cough back. This will assure him he's still the boss.
G'day to you all!
laura
Wednesday, June 28, 2006
Thats what I call a party...
My brother Paul, for those of you that don't know him, and his favorite house plant.
And...this is what I call a party! Even the babies get to have a beer!Thats my good pal, Alison (the responsible madre) and her little (drunk) pride and joy, Haven. Haven is only 6 months old but check out that grip!
No, really folks, we didnt let the children drink at our party, but that doesnt mean Atlas, my brother's dawg, didnt kick back a 40 with the rest of us. Good boy.
Im going crazy waiting for my plane to leave. I had some sort of emotional breakdown today but in the context of crying in the shower (it doesnt really seem like crying if you do it in the shower--wuss) I realized how good it felt to cry for no reason at all. It IS exhausing making all of the preparations to leave for a few months. I like my sis-in-law's advice and will heed it next time: "If I have too much to do, I just dont do it!" haha I tend to overdo things so it is important to remember simplicity is the key.
Back to a good bottle of shared wine and my last mellow evening for awhile. Hope everyone is doing phenomenally well this fine June eve.
PS! Leave a comment if you want! Read a comment! Follow the "comment" link! I love you!
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