Sharing

We are alive and well.  We have been camping for the past month so connecting to the wired world was difficult and, refreshingly, not a priority.  What we didn’t realize was that our somewhat erratic posts serve as a way to let everyone know we are okay and still alive out in the big world.  So, sorry for the that… and yes, we are fine.  We just arrived in Sydney, Australia where we will spend a week taking advantage of all the amenities a big city has to offer.  We had a wonderful time in New Zealand and hope to post a whole pile of backlogged posts about our time.  Here is the first one, inspired by a night lying awake in the tent while the other four slept around me.

This time together has been a lot about sharing.  Sharing space in a small tent and in a car for many hours; sharing food, sometimes willingly, sometimes not; sharing mom’s attention; sharing the camera, the good pillow in the tent, the prime spot at the table, the hot shower that requires a $2 coin when we are down to the last one.  You name it and it is likely something either tangible or ephemeral that must be shared.  From this has sparked many quibbles and squabbles.  On a day when I was feeling weary of being a peace broker and probably a bit tired myself of sharing my space, my time, my energy, I started to think about this phenomenon of sharing virtually everything.  I realized that ultimately this is what we signed up for when we embarked on our grand adventure, and it is only through sharing time and space that we have shared experiences, and from the shared experiences create shared memories.  And so, I am thankful for the intense sharing as we have had some amazing shared experiences and I have no doubt that we are creating some rich and robust shared memories that will link our little family of five together as life takes everyone out on their own adventures in life.  Some of my favorite memories from the last 4 weeks on the South Island of New Zealand are:

Waking up at Kidds Bush Reserve DOC campsite on lake Hawea after a stormy night of battering rain and wind to this majestic rainbow:

At the same site, a few nights earlier, Luna, Vios and I lying on the grass, well past when we “should” be asleep, gazing at the incredible display of bright crisp stars in the Milky Way and marveling at how different it looks in the Southern Hemisphere skies compared to our skies on the hill top at home.  This is a memory without a photo, but the skies that night were awash in brilliant pinpoints of light, and the sweet sounds of the children's whispering is in my memory.

Seeing how competent and confident my kids are camping.  Solaz and Luna prepared singlehandedly a delicious camp stove chili for us.  Vios can set up our tent, all on his own. Everyone pitches in to varying degrees on different days, depending on mood, energy and other distractions.  But with over 45 nights of camping under our collective belt, they all had lots of opportunities to practice the practicalities of setting up and taking down camp.

Hiking and walking in the mountains and forests of New Zealand and pushing ourselves to tackle some harder hikes.  Despite the grumbles and complaints, everyone always turns around their attitude and tramps on, so that we end up with incredible views, like on the awesome Rob Roy’s Glacier hike.

Watching a movie in an old cinema in Wanaka where you sit in comfy chairs and have an intermission for freshly baked cookies.  It was such a change from our usual pace and really enjoyable. I didn't take any pictures in the cinema to document our time, but it was a highlight of the Wanaka area.

Stopping at Pancake Rocks on the west coast.  My favorite memory of that stop was not so much the rocks and scenery, but a funny episode courtesy of Solaz.  It took an inordinate amount of time for all of us to get out of the car and ready to do the (short) walk.  Solaz was the first one ready and had been sitting on a bench by the entrance waiting for the rest of us to join him.  Just as we were about to leave someone ran back to the car for a jacket and Solaz was out of his mind watching a big tour bus unload a gaggle of tourists onto the path we were about to walk.  Moments later we were ready but then we were behind a seemingly impenetrable wall of slow-moving camera toting tourists.  It was funny to see how annoyed Solaz was, in a lighthearted way, and how we had become so accustomed to having wide open spaces to ourselves.  As an aside, the rocks were pretty cool.  They are layered horizontally in an appearance similar to pancakes.

Enjoying our rental car on the South Island.  We were upgraded to a nicer category and it felt like a real treat.  The Volkswagon Tiguan was comfortable, brand new and handled the road well.  We all freaked out over the features like “lane assist” and “parking assist”.  The kids inform Leo and I that most new cars have these features, it is just that our cars back home are all too old. We all appreciated that the car could absorb our gear and was a real workhorse for the 4 weeks we drove around the South Island:

New Zealand playgrounds.  They have awesome zip-lines, spinners, swings and teeter totters.  Highlights are the playground in Te Anau with the zip-line, and in Wanaka with every spinner you can imagine.  It is refreshing to see a playground built for kids that is not totally hamstrung by fears of liability and risk aversion.

Watching the kids take pictures and see what they see through their eyes.  They all have taken the camera at different times, on various walks, or around the camp,  to take some pictures, and it is always fun to see what they focus on, like this:

Laughing uproariously at the alpine parrots, the Kea, that attacked our car while waiting outside the Homer Tunnel in Milford Sound. (It is a 1200m tunnel, by the way).  These Keas are incredibly curious, intelligent and fearless.  On our way back to the campsite in the evening after our Milford sound cruise we saw the Kea hanging around the tunnel.  We pulled over to look at them and within seconds they were on our car, hopping around, squawking and pecking.  We ended up spending almost an hour watching their antics, and our own as we tried to keep them from doing damage to our car.  Other visitors seemed less worried and parked their car then walked away.  Vios and Solaz tried to intervene when the Keas swarmed the parked car and pecked away the plastic liner around their windows and even took off the windshield wiper!

Wandering through a cemetery next to our campground in Murchison, sent on a hunt for a grave marker with “Ha Ha Ha  Ho Ho Ho” written on it.  We spent an hour or more in the cemetery, reading the headstones and sharing interesting conversations sparked by the observations of what was written on many old, and not so old headstones (for example, “accidental death” seemed to be a common cause in the late 1800s and early 1900s, as well as drownings, there were many infants and young children, and even one grave that marked the deaths of a family who died in “the great upheaval” which was an earthquake in 1929 whose epicenter was near where we were, when the earth moved upwards by 4.5 meters at the fault line in just a few seconds.)  After wandering, looking, conversing and looking some more,we finally found the gravestone and solved the riddle – the person commemorated by the headstone had been born on April Fool’s and died on Christmas Day.  

As if the treasure hunt wasn’t fun enough, the kids were rewarded with a bag of candy at the campground.  And watching everyone’s eyes go huge when they watched the host fill a paper bag with gummies and candies, pass it to Vios, AND THEN PROCEED TO FILL ANOTHER, and ANOTHER so they each got their OWN! (No sharing needed!).

The hours spent walking the rocky beaches, the icy rivers and creeks on the hunt for greenstone, or pounamu.

Reading in the tent together.  We picked up a book at a cool bookstore that was written by an Australian author and heralded as “the next Harry Potter.” The book, “Nevermoor, the Trials of Morrigan Crow” by Jessica Townsend was phenomenal.  All 5 of us were entranced and couldn’t wait for the next chapter to unfurl.  It is a rare book that captures the attention, imagination and hearts of a 6, 10, 13, 43 and 48 year olds!  We so loved it that we started the second book as soon as we finished the first, and are eagerly awaiting the release of the third.

Singing away in the car to favorite songs and seeing all our musical choices expand.  Some favorites at the moment are Michael Franti’s “Little Things”, Alice Merton’s “No Roots”, Hamilton soundtrack’s “My shot”, many parts of the Sing soundtrack and Drake, mostly so I (definitely "mom" in this role) can do my Drake imitation, and many popular ear candy top 40s tunes.

Meeting up with friends from home and spending time together.  It was a treat for all of us to have friends to hang out with as, to quote Vios in the days leading up to the visit, "I am getting a little tired of you guys".  More to come on what we did together...

Looking for trout, not all of us casting for trout, but everyone excited to see the beautiful fish in the clear rivers of New Zealand.  I think what I most enjoy is the memory of how enthusiastic and supportive Vios and Luna were of Solaz and Leo as we spent time gazing into rivers and trying to spot fish and how keen and persistent Solaz was in his fishing endeavors.

An overarching memory is of time being expansive and fluid.  We could read until late and sleep until late.  We could take our time and be leisurely with getting out of camp.  We could do that extra walk or make a U-turn (usually amidst groans from the backseat) to go back to a missed lookout.  One of the things that I have loved is that, because we have chosen to take a slower pace and pack less into a day or even a week, we can take our time when something catches our interest.  What we have discovered is that a lot interests us.  This little group of five can spend hours wandering in a museum, or in a graveyard, or at a trout observatory or looking for rocks and shells.  This was something I was starting to notice, but it was brought into focus when we went to a small, sparse bird sanctuary  in Te Anau, that most reviews say 30 minutes will be plenty, but we spent a full 90 minutes wandering around looking at the birds.   I love that about us.  I love that there is both individual and collective curiosity and an openness so that we can find something of interest in the most unlikely places.  It does mean we have to leave extra time for most things...

Looking at some birds

A memory, and I hope a life skill, is the ability to make fun wherever we go.  It is not always smiles and giggles, but there have been some good ones.  One of my favorites is when it was pouring rain, we had retreated to a Holiday park, and the kids spent hours racing around on go-kart type bikes, laughing their heads off.

Most of all my favorite memories cannot be captured in a photo.  They are the moments of silliness.  The kids deciding that "mom has changed, she's funny now" (is it them or is it me, or maybe a bit of both...).  The silly faces and expressions.  The quiet apologies that are uttered without prompting minutes or even hours after an outburst or poor behaviour (there are not always apologies, but I believe an unprompted apology is genuine and worth its weight in gold).  Speaking of gold, the memory of the kids being ever optimistic that they will find gold in the rivers or rocks.  It is the feeling I have that this time is an incredible gift as I watch my kids grow up and see in them the ever present change that is life, and appreciate that indeed, as corny as it sounds, it is a reminder to live in the moment as the next moment is unknowable.