Yesterday, when I was out walking with Sausage, she pointed out the snowfall on the mountain tops in the distance. And I couldn’t see it. I kept looking and looking and she kept pointing and pointing. Cracking up at me in that way that young people do at old people who just don’t get it. Like young people do at me, apparently. I could see the long white cloud slung low and seeming to stretch the full length of Ka Tiritiri o te Moana (the Southern Alps) but I couldn’t make out the range behind the range in front. And certainly couldn’t tell where mountains ended and sky began.
And then this morning I went out for a run. The air was crystal clear and although it is very definitely autumn, the sky was that beautiful summery blue. There’s an unusual clarity to the air in New Zealand and recently a friend used the word, pristine, to describe it. And it is. It’s pristine. Last night when Snoop was taking out the recycling he came back in to tell me to stick my head out of the door and smell the evening air. He was excited and wanted to share. He knows how good it is.
So, for my run, I took the same route that Sausage and I had walked the day before. I ran about a mile along the river and then made the steep turn up Dyer’s Pass Road. Dyer’s is also about a mile long but up hill all the way. I haven’t managed to run the whole thing yet but that wasn’t the point today. The point was that with no clouds in the sky, I could clearly see the dusting of snow on the mountain tops. And I could feel it in the air despite the 150km or more that separated us. I came across some other runners who had also stopped in their tracks to breathe it all in. Like we did when we saw dolphins in Byron. We smiled at each other and I was told that soon there would be more where that came from. It felt good.
It also made me think about sometimes only being able to see a thing once we know what we’re looking at. It’s not that the thing isn’t there or has disappeared. It’s just that until we know the shape of a thing, some things are just impossible to see. To make sense of. Like frogfish. And maybe this lock-down and Covid-19. I’m pretty sure that the eventual revelations of this time in our lives won’t be as immediately pleasing as snowy mountain tops and frogfish. But for now, I just have to accept that I don’t know what I’m looking at. And it’s hard to make sense of.
Yesterday, I received the official update about my Visa status. As expected, I’ve been granted an extra three months so I really am okay here until the end of August. I don’t necessarily plan on staying here that long. But neither do I plan on not staying here that long. I can’t see that far away. But I’m glad to have been given some edges.
Comentários