Blue Mountain New Year

December 31, 2011

Blue Mountain New Year

For years I was taught in English classes that water symbolizes baptism, rebirth, renewal. It is the silent hero that relieves beloved characters of sins, nightmares, unnecessary baggage and the filth of life, but also replenishes, reinvigorates and re-nourishes the weary. How fitting then that I should find myself perched upon a grassy riverbank and amongst the white barked gum trees, twitter-pated birds, and head bobbing lizards that are hidden from civilization by miles of steep cliffs watching sentinel over this valley. Rivulets twirl around surfacing stones like dancers satin skirts and the pattering sing-song of the creek traversing towards an unknown sea lure me towards serenity. Sunshine glitters through the trees to land on the water’s surface. It causes the creek to wink at me like a sultry and patient seductress, confidently aware of how inviting her depths appear. She knows it is only a matter of time before my where-withal leaves me and my desire guides me into her embrace. Before I immerse myself and let her strip away the year gone by in preparation for the next, I feel the need to acknowledge the moments past for those to come.

Life changing. These two words are so readily used to describe events and happenings in people’s lives that they expect changed the course of their futures. These words are usually associated with one’s life’s work, their profession, their passion, or their relationships. I am guilty of using it under any of these pretenses, but with the waning year, I have slowly but surely come to realize that every moment is life changing. Every moment comes after and precedes the next. Every moment of plunging, diving, spraying and even settling of the creek at my feet were essential for carving these spectacular rock vaults around me that reach into the clouds. In the last days of this year, I am reaching a richer understanding of how, just like this creek, every instant of my life is necessary for me to get to the bottom of things, to always be traversing the natural wonders of this world on my way to my end in which I can discover all that I love along the way.

This year I left home. I left comfort. I left understanding. I left love. I was frightened, terrified in fact, but also invigorated and brazened by excitement. I learned that I love the unexpected, meeting strangers and making friends who’d I’d met along my banks or who would join my course and split from me later in time. I learned I love the rush, the leaping and plunging of the waterfalls in all their exhilaratingly dangerous glory.

I learned I love Africa. I had always been fascinated by it, like a child being proffered a tame snake for the first time. It’s a beautiful silky thing but the child has heard stories and therefore is fearful. Bravery takes hold and after that much coaxing is required to relieve the snake from the child’s grasp. After that, the child’s parents can’t keep her form easing snakes from their garden for an hours’ amusements. It’s the same for me. I heard of Africa, heard of its wonders but also its horrors. I’ve experienced it and now all I want is to nestle it in my palms and appreciate it.

After leaving Africa, I took my first true hot shower in months. My heart sank into my stomach and tears caught in my throat as I watched the last bits of African soils that had been embedded in my skin and scalp like love letters hidden in pockets stream off my body and disappear into a coarse concrete drain. How long until more important details I hold of Africa leave me? Already I look beyond the creek’s surface and see my collected memories scattered amongst one another and never in continuum, their true shapes distorted by the passing of time just like the colorful mosaic of stones lining the river bed. My memories are the moments, snapshots, visions and feelings of what seems to be someone else’s story. Time is not kind to me. It takes these favorite moments of mine and distorts them. Unfortunately, it’s a beast that needs feeding and I have the pleasure to continue my memory-making journey.

But now I have made it to Australia and it’s been a mix of what I hoped and what I hate. It’s the holiday season and Sydney is full of selfish, single-minded and all-consuming foreigners. I desperately miss the simple pace of Africa, the smiling children, bleating sheep, hand made jewelry, the languages and the bodies hardened with honest work and draped in colorful patterns. I missed sleeping. I hadn’t gotten more than five hours of uninterrupted sleep in the same number of days. The thought that I had malaria fleeted in and out of my mind. Being ever the optimists, Connor and I spoke to one another under hypothetical circumstances. “Seeing as I don’t have malaria, if this headache and fatigue persists, if I hypothetically start puking, hypothetically I’d need to go to the hospital.”

“But since you don’t have malaria, I’ll hypothetically take note of that.”

I don’t have malaria. Hypothetically or otherwise. At least not yet (incubation can take up to six months.) Rather, I was feeling ill because I was completely and utterly exhausted. After 48 hours of travel, 42 hours of running errands and switching hostels, descending a sheer cliff of over 1,000meters with 40lb packs (aka a small child), we pitched our tent next to a fern and moss covered creek for the evening. At 4pm we settled in for a nap and didn’t wake until the next morning. What is it about Sydney that kept me from rest? I slept like a baby within east African cities. I am grateful, however, that I can not resist the comfort found in the calming bosom of a forest floor and the sweet lullaby of nature.

And this is where I open my palm to let the cool breeze carry off my warm wishes, my enveloping embraces, my “I miss you’s” and “I love you’s” to the people I’ve left behind. I sit next to this creek and marvel in wonder at the luck I’ve been dealt in life, the beautiful places I’ve seen and the fascinating, compassionate, inspiring, and oh so welcoming people I’ve met along the way. Rather than clean me of these memories, I hope the waters will nourish my soul and newly discovered passions to flood me with healthy vigor for living a life in every moment.