A new beginning

9-28-09
I have put together a small list of suggested reading, in an effort to familiarize you all with those ideas that have helped to create whatever I have become. I will list only books and therefore you will never truly know, will never meet the people, or experience the struggles and triumphs, but you will have read the books, and will know more than if you did not. They are listed below; In no particular order, although some are more important than others.

Walden –Thoreau,

Sand County Almanac – Leopold,

Into the Wild – Krakauer, Endurance – Lansing,

The poetry of Robert Service,

Listening Point, and most of the works of Sigured F. Olsen,

White fang, and Call of the Wild – Jack London

… I have more but cannot think, I have left pieces of my conciseness in Kananaskis, and Missoula, and Minnesota, and Dallas, and Los Angeles, and Sydney, and now I don’t know how much I have left. It may take a while before I can pull it all back together.

My Journal will now start in Earnest.

40,000 feet somewhere above the Tasman Sea I finally realize where I am. What I am about to embark on. Until now this was just a long flight. No real destination. A simple amusement park ride. I could have been home for dinner.

I strain to see through the thick blanket of clouds obscuring whatever it is below me. Are we over New Zealand yet? Am I missing the Southern Alps. I didn’t even think about clouds. There were no clouds when I pictured this all summer. I know, we are still over the ocean, of course. The clouds will open before we get to land. Or no they will remain, and I will see towering pinnacles of rock and ice forcing their way up toward the plane. We will fly low, and see mountain climbers. Hillary maybe, standing proud atop Mt. Cook, a king surveying his flat kingdom of white, reaching to the horizons. Then the clouds are gone. And we are flying low through the valleys. Elk and Sheep scatter from the emerald hillsides. This is New Zealand.

Yesterday, or the day before, I haven’t been able to figure out exactly what day it is or how long I have been traveling. But at some point in the past, when I first met my group we talked about “Happy Camper School” about spending 2 nights out in the middle of Antarctica at -56 F. Three of our sextet has already been to school. They all talk about how cold it is. How much it hurts. How unbelievably and unrelentingly insane the whole thing is. I am excited. I am concerned with my excitement. Why do I feel like it will be no problem, like Its just another walk in the park. Does anyone else feel this way? I don’t ask. I am strange and it’s too soon for them to find out.

The PA system crackles to life for the first time since we left Sydney. We are 25 minutes from Christchurch. We should get ready for landing. I am upset that I missed all of New Zealand, slept through it. I sit up and look out my window; there are still clouds. But now I do see peaks, I do see those giant crystal pyramids standing high above this sea of white. And now I see the coast. We are 25 minutes from Christchurch, and have just gotten to the West coast. The captain must be mistaken, it will surely take longer to fly across the entire breadth of this island.

5, 6, 7 peaks jutting from who knows what below. Scattered below us. And then there is Cook, it has to be. A peak off to the south, it looks twice as high as any of the others, it is huge, with wide hulking shoulders, the last bit rising three or four-thousand feet above the clouds. The meager attempts at peaks I saw before, are now inadequate. Disciples in the presence of a god, proud and quiet. And now Christchurch. We are on the ground, with the sheep, next to the silt filled river. A glacier river, like the Bow, the Saskatchewan, we are in the Canadian Rockies, but with sheep, and hedge rows, perfectly parceled land, manicured in every way. Alberta meets Ireland, rain and all.

They have lost my bags, they dont know where but they are not here. I expected this and am not upset. I will be tommarow evening, I will threaten to ruin American Airlines, or Quantas, or the lady in Minneapolis who checked my bags. I will break down, and get left in Christchurch as the rest of the crew heads off to Antarctica without me. But tonight, and only for tongiht I will let it slide.