notes from an expedition

Journal excerpts. (Some disorganized rambling.)

Milford Sound, NZ

Sitting in a cafe (the only establishment in "town") in Milford Sound with Eric and Amy. Milford Sound might be the most amazing thing I've ever seen. It's like Cape Breton, except instead of the forested headlands, it's towering snow-capped mountains with rainforests clinging to their lower halves and clouds ringing their summits. And then, of course, there's the sea. It's dead calm. There are fjords like I've always wanted to go to in Norway. There are waterfalls coming off of every cliff face, everywhere. Moss grows on everything. Everything, everywhere, is wet and green and bursting with life from every crevice.

We took a boat trip around the fjord, and it was completely spectacular. The boat took us right up to waterfalls so that we could look up at their height and be sprayed by their mist. The coolness on my face was a blessing. One fall had rainbows reflecting through it and off the seawater, and we were surrounded by glowing, rainbow-coloured mist. Dense rainforests grew miraculously out of cliffs with no topsoil, just moss. We saw huge swaths of bare cliffs where "tree avalanches" had scraped the rockface clean.

And then there were penguins. Yellow-crested penguins, hopping about on the rocks. They were surprisingly small. There were fur seals, too, warming up on the rocks. They looked smaller and more refined than seals I've seen in Canada. One was sleeping curled in a circle like my dog does when she's especially exhausted. He must have had a hard swim.

Our world is such a wonder. It is so full of so many spectacular things. It's up to us to just enjoy them. To meet people, be changed by them, share experiences with them, love them and let them love us back.

I wish I could make my brain remember everything.

Wanaka, NZ

After much discussion and drama, I've sent Amy and Eric off to do a gruelling 18km, 1300m elevation gain hike. I didn't really want to go. I'm so stiff from our foggy march up to Key Summit near Milford Sound the other day. I just couldn't imagine forcing my limbs up a mountainside today. It's eighteen kilometres one way.

So now I'm sitting on a park bench at the beach, looking out at Lake Wanaka and the snow-capped mountains beyond. After I finish my coffee, I'm going to wander around town for a while. There's something easy and relaxing about wandering aimlessly with no one waiting for you or wishing they could be doing something else. There's something gratifying about pleasing no one. Worrying about no one.

But only for a time, because happiness only really works properly when it's shared. It might be the main reason we're all still here, on earth, slogging it out side-by-side. Who cares if you have an amazing experience if you can never share it with another soul?

One last thing before I wander: a mother duck just wam by with a row of tiny ducklings. They look like they just hatched yesterday. She keeps turning around and quacking instructions to them, gathering up her tiny, chirping hatchlings and keeping them close by. It is so lovely to be in a place where it's springtime. Just last week, fall was giving way to winter, once and for all, and I wasn't ready to release the fairer seasons yet. I'm never ready for the long settling-in of our coldest, bleakest months. And now I've been blessed enough to skip straight ahead to spring, just for a little while.

By the lakeside, I said a prayer of thanks to God for this precious gift.

ostrich

In exactly one week, I'm going to fly as far around the world as I can get without starting to come back.

I do not have time to be posting this: the work is overwhelming. How can I be going away for a month right before so many deadlines?

But it's in my nature to put my head in the sand when things feel this way. Are ostriches living very stressful lives? I don't know.

thanksgiving day

Several months ago, I put some Autumn Gold pumpkin seeds into tiny pods of dirt and waited on tenterhooks for them to germinate. Seeing those first green sprouts push their way upwards from darkness is one of my favourite things. To go to bed one night with a tray full of dormant dirt pods, and to wake up the next morning to see something like life.

Last weekend, my sister made pumpkin pies out of the two darlingest pumpkins I've ever seen. It's kind of wonderful, knowing some part of the harvest meal we eat every year at Thanksgiving was actually harvested from something I nurtured months ago in the sunny living room window of a house I don't even live in anymore.

This weekend saw our ranch home jam-packed with family. With kids playing outside with ponies and with my sisters, parents and in-laws warming up indoors with wine and apple cider. A holiday like Thanksgiving was just made to be celebrated out in the country. Where there are leaf-strewn lanes and horse pastures and so much space to just let your heart expand with so much gratitude for the gifts we've been given.

And it's not enough just to know that these wonderful things -- the horses, the space, the beauty -- are mine to enjoy. You can only really ever feel the worth of something lovely when you share it with others.

back pasture

Last night I bolted awake from a dream that one of our horses in pasture was colicking and dying in front of me and I couldn't help him or get him to stand up. On top of that, he had a nasty gash on his hindquarter, one that would need stitches and was bleeding heavily. In my dream I was panicking, imagining the sound of the gunshot that would be sure to ring out in that back pasture if I didn't get the horse up and walking; if I couldn't bandage the wound and find someone to help me.

After I woke up, I sat in my bed in the dark and thought about the herd back there, hastily growing winter coats, eating what's left of the grass, huddling together at night while coyote cries sound all around them.

All night I lay awake, worrying that they might not have enough grass to last them, fearing one of them might have broken a leg, imagining the horse I'd dreamt about and trying to picture him just fine, sleeping peacefully with the rest of the herd there to protect him. My mind turned over this way until three o'clock in the morning.

Today, when I drove out to check on them, I saw that the horse was fine. He stood grazing, looking perfectly normal. I hugged him and stroked the side of his face. It was not a premonition or a vision -- it was just a dream. Two other horses were lying down, snoozing in the sun. I'm not new to horses; I know that they like to lie down sometimes on sunny days, but I still made them both get up, and I put my ear to their bellies to listen to their gut sounds, just so I could be sure they were fine. I made Eric help me bring extra hay out to them, just in case the October grass wasn't enough.

I am spooked. I have an anxious feeling inside of my chest when I picture the herd I'm supposed to be caring for, out there all alone. But it's not a new place for them -- they go out there at least a dozen times a year to run free and eat grass and be horses. 

I don't know what I'm so afraid of.

This is just one thing like everything else.