For the last few
years, since leaving New Zealand I have lived in among the Rain
Forest and Sounds of the Pacific Northwest. Done my best to make a
life of it, worked the ski slopes, the waters as an instructor and
outfitted many who headed off on distant adventures. I tried to lay
down my wanderlust and find me a lass to settle down with. I worked
the Tree Farm of my professors, and even made peace with my mother.
But all along, something didn't seem right, something missing. Driving me more and more
towards a crazy edge. Locked in the civilized world of fear and
responsibility, I paced back and forth like a rat, tending my field
and working the familure trails.
Till
a voice, as bad as Conscience, rang interminable changes
On
one everlasting Whisper day and night repeated -- so:
"Something
hidden. Go and find it. Go and look behind the Ranges --
"Something
lost behind the Ranges. Lost and wating for you. Go!"
The
haunting words of Kippling that I once read over the kitchen at Camp
Parsons Lodge. The words that had always sat deeply seeded within.
Driving me through years of staff, following me along the Cascade
Crest, and then to distant shores of the South Island. Here as I
tried to make what all others seem to strive for work... The words
spoke again, reminding me what I had seen before...
I
remember lighting fires; I remember sitting by 'em;
I
remember seeing faces, hearing voices, through the smoke;
I
remember they were fancy -- for I threw a stone to try 'em.
"Something
lost behind the Ranges" was the only word they spoke.
As
time drew on, I became more and more distant. Unfullfilled by what
the grounds from the Cascades to the Puget Sound had to bring me.
Somehow I knew where this voice was leading me. Summers spent along
Coastal fiordlands and Yukon tundra. A vitality that one cannot
purely explain with words or picture, but can only be gained by
sitting before it and breathing it in. So with a snap decision, I
decide to make my way north, proded on by the weight of a heavy
heart.
But
at last the country altered -- White Man's country past disputing --
Rolling
grass and open timber, with a hint of hills behind --
There
I found me food and water, and I lay a week recruiting.
Got
my strength and lost my nightmares. Then I entered on my find.
Now
that transition begins, as days come closer and closer. Snow still
grips the Port that the next 6 months will be my home. I plan to
bike, paddle and scramble the lands that surround. Gather myself for
the coming journey and the cycle ride back down. But deep within, as
I say my goodbyes, and will be back again, somehow I know that I will
only then be passing by. For this life I have lived has not bore any
fruit that I have not turned cold and the trail calls my back again. And the road as I have
learned keeps going without end.
I
do not know where my feet lead me, or when my travels will end this
time. But I know that my life is best lived simple and in motion
driven my by own energy within. I know that when I come to rest once
again, I will find myself older and hopefully wiser, maybe even at
peace within... For now Alaska calls, a place that has always lured
me time and again...
Have
I named one single river? Have I claimed one single acre?
Have
I kept one single nugget -- (barring samples)? No, not I!
Because
my price was paid me ten times over by my Maker.
But
you wouldn't understand it. You go up and occupy.
--
Words from The Explorer by Rudyard Kippling (as written above Meany
Lodge, Camp Parsons)
