NZ Mountaintops ~ South Island, NZ ~ November 11-26, 2012

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Last year when I flew out of New Zealand after three months of family-wedding-rugby love and some painting-wwoofing-hiking, I looked down out of my airplane window and saw the peak of Aoraki/Mt. Cook, the boss of the Southern Alps, coming up ferociously through the clouds.  My eyes grew enormous with the sight of what I’ve since learned the Maori called “Cloud-Piercer” and I said to myself, “I want to go THERE!”  I haven’t been able to shake the bug.  Again and again when I see the snowy peaks, my jaw drops and I breathe, “I want to GO UP THERE!”  This year I got the chance.

Thanks to Dr. Caroline’s addictive mountain medicine administered regularly since we were in college, I have a lot of hiking miles under my boots, good experience gained from trails and peaks all over the world, and good gear – I’m an experienced and capable hiker and climber, and I love a good long remote challenging hike like nothing else.  But I had never spent a lot of time on snowy peaks doing snow and ice climbing.  Yet. 

This year, the opportunity presented itself for two weeks of heavenly solo climbing on the unbeaten paths and peaks of New Zealand’s Southern Alps.  (Hooray!)  “Tramping”(kiwi)/”hiking”(yankee) in four different national parks in central South Island fed my wild streak and only wet my appetite for more high-alpine adventure (…European Alps, watch out…).  I stayed mostly in alpine huts -- on a few occasions I was the only person there -- and occasionally in beautiful friendly backpacker hostels, made friends along the way but mostly enjoyed my own company.  Chekhov and Tolstoy were my trail buddies who provided constant food for thought and amazing insights into human nature, plus amazingly good humor -- I'm smitten.  

My body loves being out for very long days climbing: the mountain-goat legs and mind take over with a sense of good balance, intentional movement, and momentum; my breath is strong and clear; mind & spirit really really free and open.  The adventure of navigating challenging trails and ridges – across boulder fields, rivers, avalanche fields, sheer rocky faces, and knife-edge ridges – is purely exciting and fun for me.  Trail living doesn’t really make sense from a civilized viewpoint (how can dehydrated peas and gummy worms taste so good at the end of the day?  why don’t I mind not showering in 5 days of 4-6+ hours a day of sweaty climbing?  if you like people, then why is it so wonderful to not see anyone for a while?  why did toilets ever seem necessary?) but always makes space for greater sense of life.  The intensity that I love in life comes out in a new dimension on long climbing treks, and it makes me glow.

The land in New Zealand is other-worldly.  So lightly trodden by humans, it doesn't seem to know about human cares.  In tiny NZ’s enormous Southern Alps, two continental plates fight daily and push up new mountain loft by 5-7mm/year, the same rate at which our fingernails grow (!).  Though much shorter in total height than their Northern European counterparts, the Southern Alps appear more dramatic to all (Europeans are the first to say) as they rise straight up from sea level and include the longest continuous ridgelines in the world.  The terrain, though widely varied, sings a chorus of jagged peaks which may be short and running wearing shorn green grass (thank you sheep), or massively crinkly in bald brown and burnt scrubby brush, or naked to black volcanic sand clinging to powerful giants coming up through the earth.  There are few patches of anything growing above hip-level, so sheep and humans on the slopes can SEE everything almost all the time!  In the Mount Cook national park, there’s a different event going on.  In this range, the most enormous god-spirit mountains confound pesky gravity and seasonality, seeming to take a new breath as they rise up through the clouds into a different world.  At their white-tie party in the sky, everyone flexes robustly into their icy white suits (and winks at redheads down below, apparently).  There are many glaciers crawling about, which look at first like big versions of what’s on our front yards at the end of a New England winter but when you walk out on them you can see how deep and blue inside and living they are in a way different from solid earth.  One mountaineer pointed out to me, talking about avalanches and glaciers moving all around us: “you can see how dynamic the landscape is”.  No kidding.

During some of the most exciting days of the trip, I rented crampons and an ice ax (woah!) and put them to very good use in the peaks adjacent to Aoraki/Mt. Cook.  A couple of weathered kiwi mountaineers, one a guide for a group on a long trek and had climbed Mt. Cook 15 times, and the other the caretaker of the red alpine hut that was our base, quickly sized that I was excited capable and ready to learn, and took me under their modest kiwi wings.  They went ahead & behind me on a long wonderful day hike out on the snowy untouched (frequently very steep and slick) ridge and showed me how to use the ice climbing equipment in different ways and trust myself to get where I want to go.  My whole self was beaming!

Drawing Melbourne ~ Melbourne, AU ~ August - November 2012

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I’m swimming in the art life here in Melbourne, drawing and painting every day usually for 5-8 hours of flow.  Penny Farthing, my local favorite coffeeshop/art-office, always has light & friendly chatter floating around, big windows, kind staff.  It’s a good life in the art space, where eye and hand get to be best mates and the world falls away to focus on lines colors shapes.  Concentration takes me inside the living shapes I’m drawing to feel their dimension in my body, more than just under my fingers on the page.  Scowls haven’t found me yet – working for hours on a single line or the lightest shading or Where’s Waldo-esque detail, only to erase it  when a new relationship on the page takes precedence, leave only peaceful happy feeling that the more I draw, the better I know how the world and all its little details work, from the inside.  Kind of like reading a book, painting seems to extend my sense of humanity, and enthrall me the same way.  This doesn’t get boring!  All I really want to do is more and more and more of just what I’m doing.  When I’m drawing, I only regretting that I have to stop to go home for dinner (though dinner is always fun at our house) when it’s dark out.  The simple focus of life here helps me live this meditation clearly. 

But only part of art life here for me is about the depth & awakening that happens in my own quiet process; the other part is all about people.  Friends & passersby at the coffeeshops and art markets where I’ve been selling prints (highly unprofitably thus far, I must add) are keen with their feedback.  They help me realize that art is a way I can share my view of the world with others who see what I mean.  I’ve loved language through my entire life, now I’m expanding my lexicon of communication to include line & color.  Australians have pointed out that my paintings show a fresh lens on my local subjects, and seem to see my paintings as distinctively, appealingly American – one fellow last weekend described them as “cinematic” and said, “that looks like a place I want to go, and it’s right around the corner.”

The art life is definitely not lucrative work – Melbourne readily supports the arts by hosting lots of art markets that spread good vibes, but the appetite for buying art seems even smaller – or more saturated – than at home.  This makes it easy for me to keep focused on my real motivation: the process which I love, the product of individual pieces which communicate with others, and the long term Open Road book project which is a more developed narrative for an even wider audience.  Now I see that the Open Road for me really is about lifestyles of both organic growing and art – that’s what’s on my road!

Melbourne is a city that makes it easy to enjoy an artist’s life.  There are festivals and dance parties and quirky creative events popping up all over, sharehouse culture to keep life friendly (and cheap), lots of opportunities to get the art out, and general good will that keeps chins up.  Good quality of life.

Coming home to a busy sharehouse of friends (Prue, Julia, Mark), who bring more good folk home for lively dinners and local romps, has made it a warm winter.  Our hearth has been marshmallowy – on my honor, I swear that Prue can rival ANY Eagle Scout in her marshmallow-roasting skills.  And Julia really knows how to put on the dancing shoes.  Now that summer is dawning, we’re testing our ping-pong skills in the spacious shed/deck/rompus-room out back.  Bumps come up, but that’s life and we’re in it together, in a friendly way.

Nozomi, Eriko, and a new friend Midori have all agreed that I’m part Japanese, which thrills me.  Those girls are SO filled with a sense of inner strength, fun, wisdom, brave adventure – they’re a blessing to have in my life and our journeys together are just beginning.  We all love to eat (although I’m the biggest one in the lot), and we have weekly dinner dates, sampling great food around Melbourne.  Thank you dumplings!

We’ve also had some adventurous excursions out to the “bush” for roadtrips, camping, and even a bush-dance.  Koalas (those trees in the pics are filled with koalas!), zip-lines, dosey-doeing, life music, dancing happy and free, exploring Victoria beyond the big city.

My favorite urban garden is still just a short cycle right down the street from my house at graceful CERES.  Life is always beautiful at the Community Environment Park that includes farm, organic café, market, community bike shed, heaps and heaps of educational programs for school groups and adults, festival and lovely grounds for romping.  We harvest glee for worms, papermaking, understanding our eco-footprints, etc. among rambunctious kids & lovely staff.  I feel lucky to be part of that family as a teacher, and also participating in the weekly markets and seasonal festivals with my stall selling art prints…including a print of CERES herself (some have suggested they’d nominate me as a Where’s Waldo illustrator after seeing the CERES painting… ;)).

While I’m 100% glad to be right where I am doing what I’m doing now and looking forward to further pieces of travel, I also find myself thinking sweetly of home more often, and aware that Beantown is a place that sustains me like no other place I’ve found.  Being away for this stretch, I realize how much I especially love the diversity, curiosity, and life of the mind that exist without trying back in our fair city.  Real cookies, Red Sox, cheap pints, and crisp autumns are also signature New England yankee novelties dear to my heart – who knew how rare?!  Recently I wrote a list of favorite things to do in Boston/Cambridge for a Melbourne friend who set off for three months on the Cape – the list turned into an 8-page Word document!  She said it read like a love letter to the city.   

BeanTown Summer ~ Cambridge, MA, USA ~ July 2012

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Thanks for a wonderful visit home to all my friends & family -- you gave me a great gift of your good spirit and love.  Hot hot days were taken care of with sundresses, flip flops, patio furniture, ice cream, slow strolls, long evenings, and s'mores. We jumped right into good discussion and fun times, just as always. You guys make me smile! I feel so lucky.

Veggie Days, City Nights in Melbourne, AU ~ April 12, 2012 - Present

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Melbourne is awesome. In fact, Melbourne wins the “Genuinely Hip City” prize in the LQJ book of Travel-To-Date (even, I sheepishly add, compared to Our Fair City of Cambridge). Live music for free at creative venues in every neighborhood every night. Beautiful graffiti mural art everywhere, encouraged and appreciated by the city. Great public transit. Weekly markets all over the city, each with their own niche: gorgeous specialty foods, local organic produce, and art/crafts/vintage fun. People from all over the world, bringing personality and culture and delicious (and cheap!) food from Lebanon, Turkey, Africa, Italy, Greece, Korea, Vietnam, China, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Japan. Amazing cafes that seem creative and inviting with a laid-back mix of coffee, wine, foodie food, indie art, music, and performance; there's always fun to be had out here. Distinctive architecture with single-story houses in rows and rows, shallow A-frame peaks and curling wrought-iron on the front lip of the roof in bright colors… always a little yard in front and enough space in the back for some happy veggies. Heaps of “opp shops” (“opportunity shops”, Aussie for “thrift store”) made for the community with vintage finds to be had. Bicycle culture and carbon-free wheels on the road. Backyard veggie gardens in abundance and a widespread healthy attitude of do-it-yourself living and responsible resource conservation. Hipsters and hippies and eco-activists in their fair share but outweighed by a general population who are just genuinely cool, down-to-earth, mindfully people with a sense of fun and a sense of conscience. Good citizens.

I didn’t expect that I’d come to the big city and learn as much as ever about farming and growing, but that has been the case. My time in Melbourne started with an amazing intensive urban wwoofing experience. Through my wonderful Tasie blueberry friends, I got connected with a friend in Melbourne, Kat, who runs an amazing permaculture property/sharehouse in one of Melbourne’s neighbourhoods called Northcote. Kat and her partner Nik welcomed me to wwoof with them for the first three weeks I was in Melbourne getting settled. They were extremely knowledgeable and driven in their vision about permaculture design (in a tiny little backyard they fit about 100 ingenious design elements, all positioned for multi-functionality, all made with renewable and/or salvaged resources, all inspiring and eye-opening), earthbuilding (we worked constantly on re-constructing their back shed into a gorgeous little clay straw house, a project they had been working on for nearly a year – the “studio” is their baby!), fermentation (virtually everything in the kitchen was soaking – nuts, oats, sprouts, kombucha, ginger beer, kefir, beets, sauerkraut…), composting (they have an impressive compost toilet in the city! no smell at all, and it produces beautiful non-toxic soil), and preserving (their pantry is just about as big as their kitchen, and though I never actually saw them enjoy a whole piece of fresh fruit, they had preserved literally hundreds and hundreds of jars of locally harvested fruit). “Wow” doesn’t begin to cover it! They are intense! I admire their vision of creating a life that is both ecologically sustainable and is a demonstration site for others who are newer to these projects. I attacked their enormous bookshelf of literature on all the above topics, and read voraciously. I learned heaps from living with Kat and Nik, and feel really lucky to have found yet more folks who so warmly included me in their home and circle of fun and dedicated friends.

In the last couple of weeks I’ve delightfully achieved something new in my journeys: my own space and schedule! I found a friendly sharehouse just down the street from Kat & Nik’s place – I can now call 201 Separation St. in Northcote home! New housemates are relaxed, fun, friendly, responsible folks in their mid-30s, and the house has some nifty 1950’s vintage charm. We cook delicious dinners from the garden, enjoy music or coffee in the city, and are happy to have each other around. At the moment I’m sitting in front of the woodstove warming my toes; last night I made roasted veggies and gingerbread cookies. My room is mint green, white, brown, and red; it feels nice and I sleep well there.

I’ve found work at an amazing, famous place called CERES – it’s an environmental park that has a beautiful patchwork of projects going simultaneously: huge community gardens; countless programs for visiting school groups (on organic growing, water and waste management, energy impacts, Aboriginal culture, and local environment, etc.); a community bike shed where staff teach you how to make and fix your own bike 7 days a week; a beautiful café serving organic food grown in CERES own gardens; a nursery with loads of plants and books and tools for growing your own feast and recycling your waste back into the growing cycle; and a market and organic food shop that have beautiful produce and crafts on Saturdays! Everything happens at CERES; it’s a hub of the community. Lots of Melbourne natives first visit as little kids on school fieldtrips, which are the programs I’m teaching. Fun to be working with kids, teaching a range of interesting and important curriculum, and doing it all outside in a lovely peaceful atmosphere. I’m also volunteering doing some policy work at Cultivating Community, an interesting local nonprofit that works for good food specifically for urban low-income folks –that’s soooooooo interesting and important to me, so I’m happy to be involved. My income is still too miniscule to let me properly enjoy the city, but I think I’m on the right path to cover my living expenses eventually… it’s definitely not worth being in a city if you can’t feel comfortable buying a cup of tea (or a glass of wine) when you want it.

Some days I’ve even been drawing! That beautiful architecture is just asking for some pen and ink…

And I’ve been catching up with some of my wonderful wwoofing friends. Last weekend I danced to Eriko’s ska band at a popular Melbourne venue. Last night I cooked dinner with Nozomi after a gorgeous day at CERES together. Good times, good people.

Discover Tasie! - Tasmania, AU ~ March 10 - April 12, 2012

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After three months of blueberry love in Petchey’s Bay with Kris & Jilly, I was ready to “discover Tasmania”, as my wwoofing friends said. So, I spent March and early April on a variety of snipits wwoofing and roadtriping. Good thing I did – so much to discover!

Off the farm and into the big city of Hobart, a languid capital city for an easy-going state, I spent one week wwoofing in a hilly neighborhood overlooking the city and bay. From the front door of Annie March’s sunny little house, buried in a maze of vines and winding apple trees, another colorful wwoofer (a sparkly daydreaming Londoner) and I helped build a path from salvaged bricks and pottery. In the morning we worked and shared scones and a teapot with clips of fresh herbs from the garden among the backyard leaves with Annie; in the sunny late summer afternoons we explored the neighborhood and ran or walked along the harbor; and at night I stayed up late with my headtorch and book under my patchwork quilt, falling in love with the books on Annie’s bookshelf by stunning Australian novelist Kate Grenville. Annie herself is an autumn leaf with a delicate constitution but sparks of vivid passion; she is an ardent environmentalist, a radical feminist, and a devoted mother to her grown children and all the woofers she shepherds through her home. We passed a peaceful week together, this collection of ladies.

Next came ten full days of roadtrip around Tasie with Elisa, a German friend from the blueberry farm. On the road we found a constantly changing reel of gorgeous forest, dreamy coast, verdant farm, and desolate mineral mining vistas. Tasie is known as the Australian state with the most diverse terrain, and our little blue rental car made it all the way. We did lots of short walks every day (and my roster filled with more famous long hikes I can’t wait to do when I return to Tasie in the future), cooked spicy dinners on our camp stove, spotted wild wildlife (tiny penguins, enormous seals, lizards, adorable wombats, and the usual amazing Aussie birds, snakes, spiders in close-up high fidelity), camped (my little orange tent had been my home for the last 3 months and was a good friend on the roadtrip), and found friendly people in every corner of the state. By the end I discovered for myself that Tasmania is indeed filled with some of the most beautiful and varied sights in Australia, but Petchey’s Bay, my home-away-from-home on the blueberry farm, is in fact the single most beautiful place I experienced in the state. I can’t think about Jilly & Kris’s place without a breath of beauty running through my eyes.

More wwoofing was in store for me. I buzzed into a honeybee farm for a few days, which was long enough to confirm that I definitely want to learn more about bees. Bees are complex and intuitively smart, and beekeeping seems a delightful mix of fascinating in terms of understanding the bees, manageable in terms of logistics and workload for yield, and amazingly rewarding given the massive amounts of delicious honey that come off of each hive…Amazing! I helped Natalie Wright, who runs a successful Tasmanian honey business (Tasiliquidgold – the name doesn’t lie!) with her father and manages hundreds of hives all over the state collecting ten different varieties of honey from different types of native flowers. There was a 10 gallon tub of honey on the kitchen counter for the honey-bees-at-heart flying by, like me… I put my own little dent in that tub while I was there, for sure.

Finally, I shared ten more days with Kris’s Mom, Nell, at her beautiful property in Mountain River, Tasmania. Little river flowing, rocky mountains overlooking, lush eucalypts everywhere, and Nell’s sturdy cheerful energy for the planting, digging, chopping, clearing, harvesting, and enjoyment her land deserves. She has a good sense of fun and is a hard worker; we got on well. We also had the novelty of going on a camping trip over Easter weekend to a mountain ski hut, where we got snowed in with several inches of heavy snow – instead of going home as planned we went for a long hike in the mountains in the snow, at the end of the Australian summer!

Tasmania has been a beautiful place for me where I felt welcomed and at home with new friends and kin. One of the first things I noticed about all the Tasmanians I met was their clear open eyes, with a clear true warm spirit coming through. I think some of that goodness has rubbed off on me during my time here; I feel truer and lighter for my time here. And I will look forward to coming back through the future of my life.

Shining River Glowing Hills in Cygnet, Tasmania, AU ~ December 5-25, 2011 & January 17- March 10, 2012

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I’ve taken up residence on a cloud here in Cygnet, Tasmania, where the main road is dirt and crests through eucalyptus trees lining the wide river, bright under rolling green and yellow and blue hills of forest and farmland, through a little hippy-frontier-artist-alternative-intellectual town with the best cafes and bookstore and clear-eyed, genuinely welcoming folk I’ve truly ever encountered. My cloud floated down the sparkling Huon River that runs down the center of Tasmania and lodged in Petcheys Bay, the gleaming bay in our front yard, with five other cheerful sailboats twinkling nearby, taking our breath away at every time of day. The Huon Choice organic blueberry farm is owned by a lovely, lovely young couple, Jilly and Kris Middleton, who are now well and truly friends, and have just welcomed their first child, Georgia, into the world in late January. Another lucky kid! (hey Jett, she’s going to be a charmer…).

Jilly grew up on the farm here, and her father John Middleton, the original blueberry-farmer-and-town-pastor, still lives on the back of the property in a little red-roofed shed-house and has also become a good friend, as have the wider circle of family and friends surrounding this beautiful couple. Here I have a new sense of family and community: Jilly and Kris’s parents and siblings and childhood friends and neighbors are around every single day, rolling up their sleeves with big smiles to help with picking berries, retrieving lost goats, running markets stalls, cleaning sheds, delivering babies, driving to town, and keeping wwoofers contented and connected, all with good humor and honest love.

Jilly and Kris have lived in share houses and co-ops all their lives, so they get a kick out of having people around and are experts at creating a sense of sharing, welcome, and respectful communal living just by their own positive attitudes and example. Although you all know that I enjoy filling my own space, this year I’ve lived so happily in hostels and farm sharehouses, and with Jilly and Kris this piece of my own personal journey has come to my consciousness; I love this sharing and unpretentious lifestyle. I just like being around Jilly and Kris, and being part of their way of life, which is all about living in the community of extended family, leading by the example of mutual kindness in communion of daily rituals like making dinner, working in the fields, sharing bathroom time and the last bites of cake. They scooped me right up with love on my first visit to the farm, and welcomed me to return and stay for as long as I want, which is exactly what I’ve done.

The blueberry farm is in Cygnet, an extraordinary township that reminds me of a tiny version of the best of Brattleboro, though the locals you see in the coffee shop and scrumptious café are also the farmers who grow apples and veggies and cheese and meat and wool that everyone in the town enjoys. Plus, everyone in Cygnet knows one another and has a good spirit about it. On several occasions folks have stopped to give me lifts to and from town, and it always turns out that they’re in some way friends of Jilly and Kris’s or locals who I run into many times later with warm greetings and news. I’ve gotten to know many of our farmer neighbors, since they’re all friends and ask for help here and there. All the local storeowners and employees are friends of Jilly and Kris’s who are so warm to me too. Now when I walk into most of the shops in town, folks say, “Hi Laura!”

Back in December when I first arrived on the blueberry farm, I had planned only three weeks in Tasmania before I went to Cambodia; I ended up spending all of that time on this farm, feeling amazed and making friends, and then made plans to return here for January, February, and March. I’m so glad I did. The powerful silver eucalyptus trees, bark peeling and leaves jangling down, sweep me up in a hug over the mountains and bright bay in sloping golden light; blueberries are ever-more delicious to me; I continue to make new friends and feel integrated into this mindful and cheerful community; and I’m learning and growing in myself every day.

The goat cheese farm up the hill (this is a BIIIIIIIIIG hill) is famous in the area for it’s extraordinary cheese and loving attitude toward its goats, and I’ve recently had the treat of helping them out three days a week. Hans and Esther, the gentle Swiss cheesemaking couple (Esther learned cheesemaking by spending summers up at a hut in the Swiss Alps, tending cows and learning from a master cheeseemaker), work with me feeding and milking the goats in the early morning, enjoy tea and cookies around 9, then make cheese (I can make cheese!) in the cheeserie before a light lunch, which involves at least 5 kinds of cheese! The goats melt my heart every day with their curious eager eyes, nibbling lips that kiss my hands as I feed them nice-smelling hay and grass, and sweetly mischievous ways. Today I had to run after 6 kids who all ran in different directions when I was moving them from one spot to another; I felt like I was back in school!

Working with Hans and Ester and the goats on the top of the glowing hill, and learning new things about animals and cheese and running a successful small business has been refreshing for my brain after six weeks of berry picking… Blueberries remain a joy to eat by the bucketful, and with all their anti-oxidants and healthful effects on the brain I’m sure I’m as sharp a tack as I’ll ever be, but I was beginning to struggle with the monotony of the tasks of picking and packing. Also, Jilly and Kris have rightly been increasingly tied up with enjoying quiet family time with their new-born, and I’ve seen very little of them in the last month. So goats are a great diversion for me! And I’m looking forward to a roadtrip around Tasie with a wwoofing friend, and to enjoying a couple more wwoofing locations before I leave Tasmania in early April, including a honey bee farm! Blueberries, cheese, and honey – are you convinced it’s heaven yet? Have I mentioned that Tasie is also famous for its seafood, oysters especially, and red wine?? And some of the most amazing hiking in the world???? You all have to get to Tasmania some day.

Lovely Ladies, Fun Cities ~ Melbourne with Eriko, December 2011 & Canberra with Bronwyn, January 2012

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Wonderful people have been my weathervane as I’ve travelled. New friends, old friends, treasures! Eriko and Bronwyn have been stars among these, both showing me new things about myself and my feelings about traveling, both introducing me to wonderful Aussie cities, both super-charging me with love and laughter and heartfelt mindful sharing. Thank you, lovely ladies!

Eriko is a special friend for me. We shared such simple honest funny good times as roomates on the sweet potato farm in the far north, with sax music and chocolate and farm jokes and cookies and weeding and girls’ cooking nights and long roommate conversations. New friends like her have introduced themselves at every turn, international travelers marked by the willing openness for sharing and learning new kinds of work, lifestyle habits, and stories; I’m glad to belong to this bunch. I’m amazed how new friends can become so close and open in such a short happy time, again and again and again... I think it may have something to do with the state we’re in when we travel, open and flexible and ready to give and receive. And I know that my travels have stepped down a good path when I’ve met up with the same new friends several times already in my journeys – friends I’ve made in one part of AU or NZ have connected again in another part. I think this means we’re really really friends! Eriko was the first friend I re-connected with, for the second time in Melbourne. I arrived in Melbourne in early December, dropped my bags from the airport, and we zipped off on the tram to a gig she had at a House-Of-Bluesey-type place with her ska band; she was bopping on the stage with her sax and 10 guys; wonderful! We were both transformed from our “farm selves” (work clothes, dirt on the hands, messy hair and no makeup, cobwebs hanging above our beds) to our “city selves” (see pics), and our fun and sharing became even more vivid and varied now too.

Melbourne is a city that left me salivating. Art everywhere, murals on city walls, musicians on the street, live music in clubs and venues everywhere, heaps of cafes, galleries big and small, art markets, and the most amazing public library I’ve EVER been in! Eriko knew exactly what I’d love, and she took me on a glorious tour of the city every day; we hopped on an off the tram, chatting away and giggling, in Melbourne’s spring sun. When we returned home in the evening, Eriko led us in creating hilarious and delicious sushi feasts; beer helped the chefs! Just four days, but a mountain of fun. I left feeling eager to return to Melbourne to live and work for a few months in the near future, and looking forward to seeing my lovely friend again soon.

Bronwyn continues to be a unique angel in my life over the last two years; she’s an angel with a compass. I feel like she is a mirror for my dreams, showing my conscious mind what my dreaming self has been craving. Last year she suggested that I visit Mom in Japan…then she suggested that AU could be a fun place for me to travel, and that “farm holidays” (which is a general term for wwoofing) might be along the lines of what I was looking for…this year she recommended Cambodia for me and Katie…and now she affirmed my plan to spend time in Melbourne. She an intuitive, open listener who brings an analytical mind and a simple direct and fun style of communication to our conversations, which feel like a shared open two-way street of dialogue. On the way back from Cambodia, I had the pleasure of stopping in Canberra, Bronwyn’s hometown and AU’s pristine capital city, for 4 wonderful days. Bronwyn took me for picnics in the park and walks around her neighborhood, lovely dinners in the city and cheerful tasty lunches with her family at home, for tours around her old university and hikes up the mountain on the edge of the city. We shared in detail our ideas about work, research, writing, friends, family, travels, love, religion, literature, habitat, and future plans and dreams; it was a great pleasure for me to share so openly and deeply in an exchange with a good friend from home.

I can’t wait to see both of these girls again soon, in AU or Boston or Tokyo or who-knows-where!

Bronwyn and Eriko are unique and beautiful women, and they are also representatives of so many other folks – new friends and old, in AU or NZ or the USA – who have been the real treasures of my journey. Thank you to all of you.

Same Same But Different in Cambodia and Vietnam ~ December 25, 2011 - January 12, 2012

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An awe-inspiring holiday gift opened up for me with the spicy warm dusty tropical sights, people, and deep history of Cambodia and Vietnam, which I enjoyed for three weeks in late December and early January. I spent most of the trip with Katie, who I have to thank for motivating and organizing so much of the trip so smoothly. 2012 kicked off for me auspiciously indeed in Siem Reap, Cambodia, in the festive local market by the river, surrounded by happily laughing local families celebrating the excuse to take a break from the daily work of what is in general a very hard life there in order to crink necks up to fireworks, cheers and aaahhhh!!!!!s with every sprinkle of sparkle. This was a joyfully savored fireworks festivity with a humorous and beautiful difference: there were only about 10 fireworks in total the whole night (!!) spread over about 2 hours (!!), but the crowd’s positive energy and excitement quadrupled anything the Charles has seen on the 4th. I was the only white person in the place, and no one around me was speaking English, but grins are universal and were constant all around that night, glowing upward and delighted eyes made all our faces bright. Our lovely Cambodian travel agent explained to me that in Cambodia people can choose any time during the first week of January to “welcome the new year” with feasts and prayers and family gatherings; celebration isn’t just for New Year’s Eve but it also never reaches overboard into crazyland. I’ve heard that the way you ring in the new year is an omen for the year to come; if so I’m going to have 12 wonderful months of soul-widening new experience with simple joyful shared human connections, new friends around the world and the love of home close in my back pocket. Our journeys in Cambodia and Vietnam launched this flow… Here are some other most memorable ingredients:

A hundred varieties of little sweet rice and coconut and peanut and bun and veggie and noodle treats for sale by women vending from chrome street carts… we tried (nearly) everything! mmmmmmmmmmMMMMMMMMMMM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Bike culture: bicycles and motorbikes that should never hold just one person. We saw families of four riding a single motorbike and bicycles that threw silouhettes larger than SUVs with two enormous basket saddlebags towering with good. We rode bicycle taxis where we clung to one another for dear life crossing triple lanes of traffic. And we reclined in our favorite vehicle, the incomparable tuk tuk. To refresh your memory, a tuk tuk is a carriage with canopy top and scroll sides, usually metal shiny bright red black or greem, carted by a motorbike, always driven by a persistently friendly and street-savy young man who smiles you on your way, appreciates your dollar fares, and likely sleeps in his vehicle at night. We had several loyal tuk tuk drivers.

Boats, airy and open with huge eyes painted on the front in blue red white black for safe passage home, for every purpose and moment of life in Vietnam – house, school, church, fishing, market – and many times a day as our taxis from one sight to the next.

Three piece polyester pantsuits for the ladies in Vietnam, in bright 70s patterns, tailor made for the lean bodies that wore them with unconscious style. Next time I’m having one made.

Kids waving, from passing boats, from the side of the road, from motorbikes zipping by, everywhere we went with huge smiles and confident English “HI!!!!”

‘Hammock restaurants’, the colonies of floating hammocks under thatched roofs lining the rice patties and fishing rivers, dusty roads and bare feet and corrugated iron shacks and packed bikes and peaceful modest folks going about their lives with a rest for food and a cool swing in a hammock on the weekends.

Mango, pineapple, dragonfruit, passionfruit for breakfast on a shaded verandah in a city corner clouded in morning hazy coral dust, with orange monks stepping down the street under parasols and cycles rolling past, enjoying the cool before the heat of the day.

Temples with stories written in stone – stories of daily lives including children and workers and midwives and scolars and pets and soldiers, and of beloved kings who were patrons of the people and seemed to live a compassionate religious philosophy. Temples with a thousand faces, a thousand dancers that all look same same same same at first glance, but on closer inspection are each unique in detail.

Local tourguides who charmed our hearts with their passion for history and learning and representing their culture with pride to the visitors they shared with and learned from. Many were former teachers and they seemed to be a kind of elite in their societies, well educated and well paid. All shared with dignified honesty and humor some stories of their personal lives, opinions on politics and observations of culture, policy, religion, society. We found kindred spirits there.

Small production – tiny factories making soy sauce and peanut candy and rice paper, ladies making sugar palm candy by the side of the road, girls selling pineapple on sticks, old ladies in the market selling fruit and fish and undies, tuk tuk guys calling for fares, sidewalk cafes, kids hawking bracelets and books – everyone had something to exchange on the local market, not just to tourists but to locals in the absence of any large scale business.

Markets: at the center of town, low dark roofs, elbow to elbow ladies selling noodles and buns, sweet and savory treats delivered in miniature plastic bags with a side of coconut milk and chopped peanuts and sweet sauce, meticulous pyramids of vegetables and fruit, whole chickens and live fish, every single part of a pig or cow, bras, t-shirts, 100 varieties of flip flops, on and on and on.

Same same, but different! Our favorite tourguide explained that, at first all people look the same, same, same, same, but look closer and we’re all different. In the market every mango looks the same, same, same, but look closely and you’ll find the one that’s different and best for you. This concept resonated with me, because I saw so much repetition – so many tuk tuks, so many ladies in a row by the dusty road selling the same candies, so many temples and boats and bicycles… but each had its own unique personality.

Angry Birds. Every person under three feet tall seemed to be wearing an Angry Birds t-shirt. I started a photoalbum.

Thank you Cambodia and Vietnam for your warm welcome! I can’t wait to go back.