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…

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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