Lake St. Clair

Snakes. Tasmania has three snakes: the Tiger snake, which is

long and black; the White-lipped snake, also known as a whip snake, which is

mid-sized, compact, moves in a vigorous manner and is a dusky green; and the

copperhead. On my walk from the end of Lake St. Clair, Narcissus, back to the

Visitor’s Center, 16.2 kilometers I encountered two human beings, two tiger snakes

and two whip snakes. Which means that by the end of the hike I feel more like a

snake than a person, more a part of the land than of civilization, more fond of

dirt than the internet, more silent, fast and sleek than ever before. 

Lake St. Clair is the end of the famous Cradle Mountain

hike, which begins 65 kilometers to the north. Fifty hikers a day start their

journey there and end up six days later at Lake St. Clair. You would think

given this volume that the trail might be crowded with humans. It is not.

The campground is nicely divided: vans on one side, tents on

the other. In the tent area, most people look like serious hikers with good

packs and firm calf muscles. There are few children and more young couples,

girls giggling in the tents, and a couple of young Asian women dabbing cream

onto their faces in the bathroom. I woke to the sound of wind in the trees.

Imagining bad weather, I parted my tent door to blue sky and am transformed. Weather-wise

luck was with me on this trip. I

was lucky in other ways as well.

I headed out for a magnificent day. I boarded a small motor

boat for a quick ride to the end of the lake. I would hike back from there. The boat stops first at Echo Point where

the other four people on the boat get off. From Echo Point it is a three hour

return hike. As we dock, I spied a

bird on a rock just offshore. A Welcome Sparrow, which has a vivid rust-orange

bib. It feels like a good omen for the day.

Alone with the captain, I continue on to Narcissus. I ask

him the names of the mountains—the Acropolis, the Parthenon. Indeed they have a

similar blocky structure. Finally I had asked too many questions and he admits

he does not know, has only worked this boat for ten days. He and his wife had

been traveling for six months, looking for what life might toss them. And here

they now are, living in Derwent Bridge, he the captain of a small boat on Lake

St. Clair. This is a familiar story to Australians, I imagine, the six month

drive about a tale I heard many times from people I met. Pack up and go, see

what you can see, begin life anew. It’s an appealing story. And every version I

heard ended happily.

At Narcissus, a dozen people were waiting, having just

finished the Cradle Mountain Trail. Rather than hike the final day, they have

opted for a ride. It looks like a boy scout group, with two leaders.

Once the boat pulled away silence descended. I marveled at

the color of the stream leading into the lake, a blue-black but clear. Again, I

had one of those wonderful Tasmanian boardwalk trails as I head off for what

should have been a five and a half hour walk, but which in fact takes me seven.

Perhaps I walked slowly. I know I stopped a long time for lunch. I took dozens

of photos. I dodged snakes, tried to spy birds calling, taunting me from the

green forest. I did not have a single thought that extended beyond the horizon. In other words, I had finally been gone

from the world long enough, been alone long enough (had not had a conversation

beyond “hello” for four days), been hiking long enough that my mind had leveled

into a meditative state. The simple way of saying this is I was happy.

The sky was azure blue. I could see far into the distance—the

lake is cradled by low lying mountains, some rising abruptly (Mt. Ida) others

table-topped. I was feeling pretty pleased with everything: the weather, my

mood, the scenery. The stretch of trail from Narcissus to Echo is glorious,

with lots of sandy scallop beaches just off the trail. Myrtle trees with their

feathery leaves dominate the trail side. I stopped and sat in the sand, contemplated

swimming but decided the effort would not be worth it. I ate lunch under a high

sun and cooled by a glorious wind.

It was just before lunch that I spied my first snake. A long

black Tiger snake. It wandered off in elongated confidence, knowing it owned

the trail, the woods. Its appearance, so sudden, put me on edge. In fact, I

stopped for lunch early in the hopes that a break and some food would calm me

down so that I did not walk in anticipation of the next snake. Ten minutes

after lunch my first whip snake dashed into the undercover, its taught greenish

body moving in a tight S.

At Echo Point the boat was pulling out after making an

afternoon drop off. A young couple sat rolling a cigarette. We shared hellos. I

told them about the snakes. We walked a bit together. She worked in an outdoor

store, he is a firefighter. They were on their Australian six-month drive

around. They had started in Darwin and headed straight south, through Alice Springs.

“Lots of desert,” she reported.

I toodled ahead of them and there right in the middle of the

trail, moving toward me was another tiger snake. I assumed he would veer off

but he did not as I backed up and he kept on his merry way. I backed up a few

yards, then some more, then some more. The snake was cheerfully oblivious that

I was losing ground. When the couple caught up to me I was standing in the

trail, hoping the snake had left.

“There was a snake,” I reported, feelinga bit foolish.

The man and I walked forward and peered over the log where

he was last seen. Mr. snake was right there, taking a break. As I screamed and

backed up, the man took a stick and encouraged it into the brush. I slipped by.

The trail after Echo is not as nice as the stretch from

Narcissus.The lovely myrtle changed

to the enormous sweet gum, which so shelters the forest floor that the only

thing that survives are ferns. Before there was some real diversity—silver

wattle, for instance. And several bushes in bloom, white, light pink.

I returned to my tent, stretched out for a bit until an

echidna mooched its way through the camp ground. It waddled along, then shoved

its long snoot into the ground, looking for grubs and ants. Though the echidna

looks like an anteater or a hedgehog they are not related; the similarities are

due to convergent evolution (that is, similar characteristics that develop in

different lineages). In Greek Echidna means “she viper,” and in ancient

mythology the Echidna was the mother of all monsters. Hard to believe, given

the almost square creature I followed with my video while two little girls

decided it must be someone’s pet and their father tells them it is waddling off

to its bed.

I walked back to the visitor center hoping for a lamb chop

dinner. When I arrived, the place had folded up, the chef and workers at a

table finishing off their own dinners.

“I thought you were open until 8,” I said.

“No one came to eat tonight, so we closed early,” the young

man explained.

I stepped back, the disappointment obvious on my face. I

tried to imagine what I might pull together to call dinner. I was hungry beyond

the peanut butter, stale bread, and cup of soup that I had. I tried to convince myself I’d be fine.

The chef called to me as I left. “Listen,” he said, “go to

the hotel in Derwent Bridge.”

“Will they still be serving?”

“I’ll call and confirm,” he said. “I got a young woman here who needs a meal,” he said into the

phone, “she’s wearing a Penn State t-shirt.” Pause. “I won’t tell her you asked

that.”

He hung up. “He wanted to know if you are wearing a bra.”

Over dinner I read more of In Tasmania. The passage was apt for my day. An early

settler, Travers, was bit by a Tiger Snake. His foot swelled up and he was

bleeding from the ears. Then his foot turned black. At this point, his

companions, Greenhill and Pearce, (Greenhill and Travers were, according to

this narrative, lovers) ate him. Cheerful. Cackling over this tale it was now

clear what would happen to me if one of those snakes got me.

At five the next morning I was awake with my own excitement.

I knew that if I walked out to the platypus viewing area, I’d see one. So I

did. And I did. It swam out in the lake, dove, resurfaced, dove. And I watched

the sun rise and knew I was set for another perfect day.

Mount Field

Mount Field

My tent at the entrance to Mt. Field National Park sat next

to a small stream and a patch of tall ferns. That is where a band of children

were playing a vigorous game of hide and seek. Maybe I would be taking delight

in their squeals of pleasure if they were children I knew. Instead, I had my

earplugs in. So much for the peace of the great outdoors.

Sleep did not last long enough. At five in the morning,

noise of a different sort began. I crawled out of my tent—it was brisker out than

I imagined—to find who could make such a racket. The Tasmanian Native Hen

needs a tune up. When they get going it is something like a rusted engine

trying to turn over, the scraping clatter supernatural. The hen teamed up with

the yellow-crested white cockatoo flying high overhead screeching to ensure

that sleeping in was not an option. Fine. I had a long hike ahead of me.

When I arrived at Mt. Field the day before I walked the

mellow trails at the base of the mountain through enormous tree ferns and the

tallest trees I have seen except those in the Muir Woods in California. These

swamp gums measure up to 300 feet, and are so wide at the base it would take

three or four people holding hands to offer a decent hug.

I mosied past what most tourists come to Mt. Field

to see: Russell Falls, cascading down over forty feet, the water dropping in

layers. Framing the falls was the lushness of a rainforest. Then I traipsed on

to the Lady Baron Falls. The dense forest allowed for little light, and

sheltered by Mt. Field, the trail stilled, all the walkers gone for the day.

This solitary walk surprised me and at the same time, I felt grateful to have

the place to myself.

I walked these tracks to console myself. I had, with great

difficulty, left Sonia and her family the day before. The girls had gotten up

at the un-teenage hour of 8:15 to say goodbye. Nina, still shaggy and warm from

sleep, flopped into my arms. Sonia repeated, “What are we going to do without

Susie?” More to the point: what was I going to do without them?

The minute I pulled into Mount Field, I felt the shock of

solitude. On the one hand, I liked the unpopulated, isolated aspect of

Tasmania—there are only 500,000 inhabitants and most seemed to cluster in a few places like Hobart and Launceston. And here in one of the oldest and most popular parks I saw no one on the

wide, smooth trails that told me that at some points these trails saw a lot of traffic. Most often, I appreciate when the inner and outer worlds align, but in

this case, I needed the busyness

of people in my heart to counteract the emptiness of the land. Without them, it

all felt too empty.

Movement is the surest cure for just about everything: broken

hearts, loneliness, grief, general malaise, indigestion, bad thoughts,

crankiness. I drove the 16 km to Lake Dobson on a very narrow, very steep, ery

precarious dirt road. My early departure had the advantage that I did not have

to figure out what to do if a car came from the other direction (really, there

was no room for two).

In an empty lodge, I signed into the trail book. One person,

heading out to do the Tarn Shelf & Lake Webster loop. 13.4 km. US citizen. I

scanned the names of the other walkers. No one else on the trail yet that day.

Most other walkers simply stroll around the lake. I wondered if my plan was

nuts. No one knew where I was or what I was doing. It was cold out—I was

wearing every layer I had with me: fleece, sweatshirt, jacket, wind parka. I

knew that by the end of the day I would be carrying all of these layers, but I

wanted them with me, an odd security blanket in this vast empty land.

Before I could overwhelm myself with self-pity, I became

overwhelmed by the trail. The Tasmanians have this wonderful trail building

habit: wooden walkways. They make walking super easy—nice level surface, no

roots to trip over, no ankles to twist on protruding rocks, no feet to get wet

in marshy or wet bits. And, all of the debris—the shreds of eucalyptus bark,

stray sticks that so imitate snakes are absent. In other words, on these

walkways, I could walk without having bursts of snake-panic. If a snake lurked

it would be pretty visible. Small lizards darted between the boards, but

otherwise the trail was mine. This allowed me to take in the extraordinary

flora of the area. Above all, there was the Dr. Suess-invented Pandani, a tree

that looks tropical, like a large pineapple top. The lower leaves sagged brown

while at the top there was a burst of bright green wide leaves, and a red rocket-shaped flower. They grow to

about twenty feet tall, but most are shorter; they clustered in by the trail, like spectators cheering me along.

Other trees that delighted me were the Silver Banksia, with prominent feathered

cone flowers and the Mountain pinkberry. The female of the species produces a

vibrant pink berry.

After a steep climb on a dirt road--not the nicest part of the trail--I was above treeline, a dense underbrush surrounding

me and Alpine heath myrtle in bloom as well as the extravagant Tree Waratah,

the thin red spindles of the flower stick to the end of a long stalk, as if

exploding into the air. The trail was well marked with cairns and posts with

orange triangles pointing the way. I was looking down into the valley, at

lakes, and dense forest, but above and around me was blue sky, scrub, and soon

enough delicious tarns nestled in the side of the mountain.

The light on this day—actually almost every day I was in Tasmania—was

exquisite. The air is clear, so colors taken on a depth and vibrancy I had

never seen except in Antarctica, and there the color palate is fairly limited.

Here, the range of greens and blues can not—I am sorry—be described.

Despite the well marked trail, I still managed to lose it. I

back tracked, returning to the trail, but the error made me edgy. I was counting

on visibility and good weather since I was traveling without a compass or a

good topographical map. And then not a half hour later, I lost the trail a

second time. For twenty minutes, I tromped through the sedge, following animal

trails. I aimed for the end of a tarn, which I knew the trail skirted (I did

have a very good guidebook, written by the Chapmans, Day Walks Tasmania).

Soon enough I was on the trail, and tromping toward the Twilight cabin. I

wasn’t really lost-lost, just off track, but the isolation of the trail,

combined with this moment forced me to focus more on the markers and cairns.

Stupid mistakes are just that, until your luck runs out.

There are times when I am oppressed by my aloneness. I could

feel that creeping in on me and so I forced myself out, to look at the

landscape, the waratahs along with the white mountain rocket exploding in front of me, those tarns shimmering in the

high southern sun. I settled into the beauty of the place. I stopped for

lunch and to explore the Twilight cabin.

For lunch, I sat outside of the Twilight Cabin. After cheese and bread, an apple and lots of water, I explored the inside of the hut. In the dim light and fire-musty air rested skis,

boots, pots and pans from hikers and skiers from the past. I expected someone

from the 40s or 50s to come walking through the door.

The descent toward Lake Dobson unfolded easily, two baby

tiger snakes slithering away from my footsteps. As a group of four approached, I cringed at the sound of

their voices. They passed, first two women who carried hefty packs and smelled

of clean laundry. They nodded hello and I nodded back. I realized I had not yet

spoken to anyone all day. I had traveled

with the weight and at times fear of being alone and now wanted to hang onto

the isolation and silence I had walked through. I could not speak. They were

followed by a young man with a dingy over stuffed pack. The last guy had a big

pack and was sporting flip flops.

I couldn’t help myself. “Nice shoes,” I said, thinking of

those snakes.

“Hey, it’s summertime,” he said cheerfully.

The walk had worked its cure. “Right,” I said, echoing his

cheerfulness.

Tasman Peninsula

Tasmania was settled by convicts. In 1824 there were 12,556

Europeans in Tasmania of whom 6,261 were convicts. Living on the island was to

be punishment enough, but convicts who re-offended were sent out to the Tasman

Peninsula, a jut of land south and east of Hobart, which is the state capital

and the island’s largest city. At Port Arthur, the penitentiary still stands,

though with no roof, and tourists wander the beautiful British styled gardens,

or at night tour the sight to feel the ghosts that haunt these hills. To be

imprisoned in such a beautiful place would be a particular agony.

I was not sent to Tasmania as a convict. I was on holiday.

There were lots of reasons I chose Tasmania, some of which I knew and some I

had yet to discover. The main reason was that my childhood friend, Sonia, had

written inviting me to join her family for the holidays in a house they had

rented outside of Port Arthur. It did not take me long to say yes. In the

months that led up to my departure, it occurred to me that I was embarking on a

long trip to visit someone I did not really know. That is, the most time Sonia

and I had spent together was between the ages of five and ten when we roamed

the hills and valleys of Central Pennsylvania under the care and enthusiasm of

her mother.In 1971 her family

moved to Australia. Since then we had seen each other twice, the last time in

1983. A lot had happened in the intervening years. On her side she had married

and had two children, Nina, 14 and Frankie, 12. On my side—well, too much to

tell on my side.

When I walked through the door of the house in Hobart, Sonia

rushed toward me for a hug. She looked just like I remember her mother: an open

face, a quick smile, short dark hair with a bit of a wave. Like her mother, she

is physically strong, and with that her intellectual confidence has a wonderful

grounding. As we hugged hello I knew right away that my young self had been

right: there was and still is something enchanted about being in Sonia’s

presence.

I followed

Sonia and Nina out from Hobart in my rental car. The idea of following them was

that I just had to focus on their car, not on the counter-intuitive fact of driving

on the left. This makes it sound simple, and to an extent it was, but every

time I needed to turn I flipped on the windshield wipers and whenever I had to

shift, I reached down with my right, not left, hand.Plus, I had a poor sense of where the left edge of the car

was, so I kept slipping off the roads that had no shoulder. And—there was no

gawking at the landscape as I drove. So they turned into a pull out to give me

my first view of the Peninsula.

The water of the Tasman Sea morphs from a deep blue to

turquoise near the scallop white beaches. I saw from the start that to write

about this land clearly—and the land itself is clear, the air swept clean by

winds from the Antarctic—was going to take some doing and that everyone was

going to have to forgive me both some clichés and a lot of excess. It was a

stunning view.

I could have dawdled there but they were eager to get home

to the wide roofed house looking out onto the sea, and in the distance Tasman

Island. This stretch of coast was near where Abel Tasman landed while sailing

for the Dutch East India Company in 1642. (The name, Tasmania was not put in

place until 1856; for a long time it was Van Diemen’s Land).

That first evening set the tone for the trip: lobster on the

grill, and as we settled in to eat, Nina called, “Susie, the pademelons are

here.” And they were, hopping out of the bush onto the wide-open lawn, a bit

shy but not frightened as I circled, trying to photograph their quirky beauty.

A pademelon (pronounced paddy-melon) is the smallest in the

Kangaroo-Wallaby chain of hopping marsupials. It has a long fine nose that

comes to a definite tip, dark like a child paints the nose of an animal. The

eyes are black drops, no white anywhere, set against its dusky brown fur. I

admit, those eyes that look like buttons sewn on do not make it look bright. It

often sits on its haunches, little front paws curled over, which brings it to

about three feet high. It hopped slowly, then stooped to nibble grass.

The next morning I woke to a vibrant sunrise over Tasman

Island, and to the calls of the strangest sounding birds I had ever heard.

Everything in Australia is larger including their raven-like black birds known

as currawongs. They make even more noise than your average crow—there’s a

grating noise that seems to come from the back of their throats. Their calls

sound like a complaint. In short, it was impossible to sleep much past dawn for

the ruckus. That sent me out with binoculars to find the brush bronzewing, its

om-om-om from the bush comforting and then the superb fairy wrens, their blue

collars astonishing. (And, who could not love a bird with such a name? Superb

indeed.)

The next call from Nina came late in the morning. “Look, a

snake,” she hollered from the upstairs. Across the green lawn, the same lawn

that had been dotted with pademelons the night before, was a long black thing,

perhaps six feet long and as thick as my wrist. I rushed out with my camera.

“Don’t get too close,” Sonia called leaning from the upstairs window, “some

snakes will chase you if they feel threatened.” Great. There are three snakes

in Tasmania: the Tiger (that big black snake), the white-lipped whip snake, and

the copperhead. All are poisonous. I saw all three while there, and perhaps a

dozen of the Tiger. I am a fan of snakes, try hard to love them. This doesn’t

mean that every sighting—some unnervingly close to the trails I walked—wasn’t

accompanied by a rush of adrenalin.

And so my introduction to Tasmania began. Puzzling

creatures, colorful birds, dozens of eucalyptus trees, green, blue. Over a

third of the island, which is the size of Ireland, is protected, parks or

wilderness land. This leaves a lot for creatures to thrive, though the

Tasmanian tiger is extinct and the Tasmanian devil, which has developed a

facial cancer, is endangered.

The physical joy of Tasmania is that water is never far

away, but mountains are also close by. We undertook lots of glorious hikes. At Fortescue

Bay we trekked out to Canoe Bay and on to Bivouac Bay, listening to the rich

call of a Golden Whistler, then of a Grey Shrike-thrush. Fairy penguins, those

pint-sized birds, nest in burrows trailside and we spied their sleepy heads as

they sat on their eggs. We hiked the top of the cliffs at Eaglehawk Neck,

looking down steep dolerite cliffs to gin-clear water or into blow holes that spewed

foam as the waves crashed in. After our hike we ate delicious calamari with

chips and wandered Doo-town where all of the homes sport Doo-names (Doo-Mee,

Doo-Write, Doo Drop Inn). One afternoon I took a solo hike out to the long

plateau that is Cape Raoul to look down onto organ pipe cliffs and crashing

ocean. (I missed the trail that would have led me to view seals on the rocks

below.)

All of this was glorious. The sun shone without hesitation

and the temperatures remained exquisitely in the 70s. All of the rain I had

been promised came in small fits in the night. In between these long hikes were

hours of reading (I can recommend Nicholas Shakespeare’s In Tasmania, which

gives a sense of the ruckus, often horrendous past of this lush place), card

games, and good meals. I got to watch Sonia in action as the efficient

marvelous cook, the loving mother pulling together a picnic, swinging another

load of laundry, cuddling her daughters. And I got to learn of her intense work

as an immigration lawyer in Brisbane. For both of us with no phone, and no

internet connection work felt—work was—very blissfully far away.

Nestled in there was one, perfect day. It started with a

boat tour with Tasman Island Cruises (an "eco" tour). The guides were both charming and funny,

and the day crisp and calm so we were able to nudge into caves and to edge in

close to the cliffs, to see the Totem Pole where climbers were heading up a

route, and the Pillar, a thousand feet of rock.We circled Tasman Island admiring the now obsolete lighthouse,

the enormous Australian Fur Seals galumphing on the rocks and swimming

acrobatically in the water. Then they took us out to that geographic point

where the Tasman Sea ends and the Antarctic Ocean begins. Thousands of miles

off rested the continent of Antarctica. A shy albatross sailed by in the

distance, pointing us south.

Dolphins bounded by the boat, Black faced cormorants sunned

on a rock, a mass of shearwater or mutton-birds skimmed the water and air. I

returned as if baptized by the air, the sun, the water, the creatures.

Back “home,” Sonia had a hike planned for all of us. Now,

I’m not going to name the location of this hike because it was so perfect, so

isolated. That was the pleasure: to hike through low-lying scrub on a high sandy

plateau, with views of the ocean all around. From time to time we passed over

emerald green moss, or trod on dolerite flecked with orange lichen. After about

two and a half hours of walking, we dipped down onto a pure white, purely empty

beach. (Sonia says that if you come and find her, and are nice to her, she will

take you to this beach.) It was ours for the few hours we lingered to play and

discover, rock hopping to find our own private blowhole.

Paralleling my pleasure in the excess of natural beauty was

my enchantment with Nina and Frankie. They came alive in this world, and their

excitement became my own. I saw through their eyes as we rock hopped and they

pulled up starfish calling, “Look, Susie, look, it’s beautiful.” There were

colorful shells and anemones and grotesquely large gelatinous jellyfish in

shades of orange or pink, and creatures we could not name that looked like

large shelled slugs. They ran up enormous sand dunes and raced back down,

plunging into the water as if they might swim to Antarctica.That seemed possible. Anything seemed

possible. We all body surfed in the cold water until a wave folded me in two.

When I stood on shore and squinted, I could see past the Tasman Sea to the

Antarctic Ocean, and there to the end of the world. When I turned to watch Nina

and Frankie run down the sand dunes I could squint past the present and into

the past.

Watching Nina and Frankie reminded me of E.B. White’s rich

essay, Once More to the Lake, where watching his son in the water of the lake

of his youth he loses the line between self and son. Watching Nina and Frankie

was seeing my sister and me at the Indiana Dunes, or Sonia and me hiking up

Shingleton Gap, brushing past rhododendron in bloom, and finding stones that

shimmered like hope.

 *

On the flight to Tasmania I met a woman in the airport. “You

live in Tasmania?” I asked. She nodded with a smile. I figured I would not meet

many people who lived there, but rather tourists galore (I did, but I met only

two Americans the whole trip). “Was raised in England. Had five brothers who

spoiled me. My husband took over right where they left off. Been mollycoddled

my whole life,” she explained, still grinning. I wanted to ask more questions,

but she turned to her magazine. This was the end of her story, sweet and

simple: from one happy set up to the next, and Tasmania was perfect.

We all boarded the plane—a much more relaxed affair than

traveling in the States, I have to add. Sitting next to me was a woman with a

similarly direct story. “I got married and moved to England. Then things went

bad. Well, they went bad when my son was born. I came home to Australia, met my

husband and we moved to Tasmania.” She didn’t even need to finish the story.

Happy ending for all. Music swells, everyone smiles, green and lush and birds

flapping in the breeze.

These people hadn’t just reduced their lives to a good short

story, they were haikus.

I have a good life.

I live in Tasmania.

Please do envy me.

And I did envy them, the good life, but also that they could

tell their stories with such conciseness. Whenever I launch into a story I have

to give the pre-story, which leads to a few small anecdotes, which leads to

more pre-story until I get to the story story, which always has too many

details. Perhaps like this blog post.

There’s no simple story here. There are superb fairy wrens

and shy albatross, convict’s ghosts lurking in the cliffs, picnics and card

games. There is the past swimming into the present, and the present energized

by the past. Here is what I want to say: Old friends, those you make when you

are a child, have a purity to them that friendships later in life can not

duplicate. As a kid the desire for a friend is strong and uncalculated. Sonia

was that friend. She is the friend who knows the bones of my past, as I know

hers. There’s no other way to say it: this is friendship that is like family.

It has endured 27 years of absence and yet was still there with the strength of

acceptance and affection I only expect from family. We had lots of details

about our lives to catch up on, which we did in a meandering way, on rides to

the trails, while hiking, late at night when everyone was asleep. But catching

up is not really about the details, it’s about recapturing the immediacy of

life that we had shared, of running down the sand dunes and plunging into the cold

sea, headed for Antarctica.