The Most Isolated Country in the World – NZ Part 4

Posted on June 11, 2017 by JeanEB

“Bullshit!” I said aloud, almost spluttering my Diet Root Beer onto the pages of the guide book.

Here’s the very first line of this glossy, picture filled book on New Zealand. I’m naming names – looking at you Eyewitness Travel New Zealand.

“New Zealand is one of the most isolated countries in the world” it states with confidence.

WTF?

Isolated? Let’s talk about Fiordland, in the far south of the country, with its challenging geography of mountains and valleys and fiords and coastline, lightly populated. Here’s how to get there. Go to the airport, in my case Vancouver, get on a plane to Auckland, 12 hours later get off the plane, transfer to another plane for an hour-ish flight to Queenstown, rent a car and go. The roads are paved, there’s internet, the locals even speak English and most of the time you can understand what they are saying.

Far from isolated, it is very accessible. And there lies the other side of the coin.

I went to New Zealand last fall to be far away – eager to be away from the raucous political noise of the northern hemisphere. I wanted to explore more of a country I had so thoroughly enjoyed on my first visit. I looked forward to a change of scenery, and I wanted it to be breathtaking.

I found all that and more. But guess what? I’m not the only one, and I had the definite feeling that far from being in exploring mode, and not in the slightest bit feeling “isolated” instead I was following a very well-beaten tourist track.

New Zealand is one of the easiest countries I’ve traveled to. Once in Fiordland, you can drive around, take a boat ride on the fiords, hike for days through the well maintained system of tramping tracks, rent a helicopter or plane for a tour above all this gorgeousness or even, if all of that is too much, visit the movie theater in Te Anau where during the day, every hour on the hour they screen a beautiful movie made of the awesome Fiordland scenery, filmed mostly from helicopter.

Check out this 4 minute trailer for a taste of what this beautiful landscape looks like…

A Real Most Isolated Place on Earth

I’m reading a book right now about a place called Pemako, in eastern Tibet and a man’s quest over a number of years and 8 separate expeditions to reach its most innermost gorges and legendary waterfalls that no Western explorer had yet to find – a place of tales and rumours that inspired the story of Shanghri La.

Previous explorers – English military officers on geographical surveys to map the far reaches of the British empire, plant hunters and curious adventure seekers as well as Tibetan lamas on pilgrimage had been turned back in their quests to reach this innermost gorge. The seekers climbed up and down mountain cliffs, hacked through thick, tangled vegetation, faced torrential rains, hail, lightning, river rapids, landslides, poisonous snakes, gnats, and coped with masses of leeches. One of the travelers woke up one night to find a leech in his mouth, firmly attached and sucking blood.

In addition to these considerable obstacles, there are human problems as well. 19th/early 20th century explorers had to contend with tribes who took great exception to their desire to cross this land, sometimes attacking and murdering those who passed through. Porters sometimes abandoned them mid-journey and nowadays there was the Chinese military presence to deal with, or avoid. Not only is this Tibet, occupied by China, it is also in the place of the disputed border lands between India and China.

Through his expeditions to this area Ian Baker, studies the accounts of the earlier attempts as well as the Tibetan Buddhist mythology surrounding this landscape that is considered a sacred place. No one was able to tell him precisely how to get where he wanted to be and those Tibetan early accounts of pilgrimage to this region were often deliberately vague in directions while at the same time framing the geographical landmarks in mystical meaning. The author, who lives in Kathmandu, is a scholar of Buddhism and speaks Tibetan, was ultimately able to connect the dots between the geographic and spiritual accounts of earlier voyages to guide him to find what he seeks. Each trip to the region lasted many weeks and in addition to all the geographical challenges making their way through the terrain they also faced illness on the trail, dwindling food supplies and accidental falls. What settlements they came upon were very small, just a few dwellings and many days’ hike away from any kind of larger center. They were on their own.

This sounds more like “isolated” to me.

“They are nice falls aren’t they. I’ve always hoped someone would discover them.”

On the last trip the team was successful and were able to find the hidden falls in this deepest gorge on the planet, confirming that the tales of this sacred place so central to Tibetan Buddhism were true and it really did exist. The discovery was announced by National Geographic and heralded as a great achievement of geographical exploration. But in the end, our hero is ambivalent about it and questions the wisdom of the outside world knowing about this. At the time of that last excursion, they crossed paths with a very large Chinese expedition looking for the same thing. This Chinese group was unsuccessful but part of what they were there for was to scope out the feasibility of creating a huge hydroelectric dam that would be larger than Three Gorges, that would mean flooding and destroying this entire area so sacred to the Tibetan people to divert water and power elsewhere in China. Gotta fuel the machine. For now the goddesses and spirits that rule this place have kept them away. For now.

Postscript New Zealand

Would I go back to New Zealand? Absolutely I would. Will I? Stay tuned. I have a couple of other things on my very short list of foreign destinations.

But one thing I came back with, after overdosing on all that gorgeous scenery of Fiordland, was a very strong desire to further explore my own beautiful adopted province of British Columbia. So off to do just that this summer.

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My Father

Posted on March 5, 2017 by JeanEB

My father’s birthday was this past week (March 3rd) and while I always remember and think of him at this time, it’s a bit different in some ways now. Why? Because I realize that I am now about the same age he was when he passed away, and that thought just boggles my mind.

“So young!” I cry. He couldn’t have been ready, could he? (are we ever?). And for sure it meant we were all deprived of whatever relationship there could have been had he lived longer, including the chance for he and his grandsons to know each other. But at the time that he died, back in 1982, I found myself completely at peace with it. I did not shed a single tear. Not one. For I had experienced what could be described as a real out of body experience, that left me totally OK with saying goodbye as he left for that great tavern in the sky.

Here’s the story.

Dad was living in Toronto with his wife Ronnie, down in the Beaches area of town. I was off at graduate school in London (Ontario) a couple of hours drive away. He had been sick – liver disease – for awhile. He had survived earlier crises but now it was back and he was seriously ill and in hospital.

I drove down from my home in London to the hospital where Ronnie and some of her family, along with my brother Rob, were waiting outside the intensive care unit where he lay. I went into his room. I hadn’t seen him for awhile and was shocked at his appearance. His body was so much smaller than it was in health, and they had put some kind of a helmet on him, which was a surprise. A small, shrinking body in what looked like a big football helmet. The nurse told me why it was there, but I don’t remember, or didn’t understand the answer. He seemed sort of semi-conscious but he did wake up long enough to see me and I know he recognized me.

After awhile I left to drive back to London, where I had classes the next day. Back home, I had barely entered the house when the phone rang. It was Rob. “You had better come back”, he said. So I got in the car and headed back to Toronto to the hospital.

I was about an hour away from the hospital, driving along the 401, when all of a sudden my father was there with me. I saw him. Outside, through the windshield along the right side of the car, in the air beside me, there he was, larger than life. It was not the image of him I had left behind at the hospital earlier, instead, there he was, robust and healthy, with that very distinctive grin. Happy and looking great. As real as anything is or ever will be. My worry and heavy heart lifted, as I felt his joy and love – so vivid, that all these decades later, the feeling is as strong as ever.

He was there with me for several more miles and then eventually he faded and I was again alone on the highway. When I reached the hospital my brother was there by himself, waiting for me. Ronnie and her family had left. Rob told me Dad had died an hour earlier. At the very time that I saw him.

There really is nothing to fear.

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Take Away the Sadness

Posted on February 28, 2017 by JeanEB

Take Away the Sadness

Number Two Son Mike is long gone now, but his month-long stay here over Christmas and well into January was, to me, memorable. What a gift it was to hang out for all that time with my all grown up son who lives his life commuting from his home in Toronto to his other work home in the Arctic. I may not be so lucky again – I don’t expect it – but while it lasted it was grand.

After he left, I went back to The Bunkie to transform it back into my studio from its guest cottage role. It had been some time since I’d spent my days there and for awhile I had been feeling the urge to paint again.

It was January 20th and I was completely offline and for the next several days refused to go out where I might have to listen to someone make comment on that day’s event. I was not interested in engaging in that conversation; I had my own sense of depression to deal with, and words were not going to do it for me. As usual, without radio or TV news of any kind, all I had was music, a piece of watercolour paper taped to a board on the easel, a couple of pans of watercolours, some brushes and a bowl of water. It had been quite awhile since I had painted, and I didn’t really know where to begin. An ice breaker was in order, to loosen up and get going. When you don’t know how to begin, just begin.

So I put colour to paper, one stroke at a time, one colour at a time, mindless and mindful at the same time, and as I did, the hours passed and I found my body relax and my spirits lift. The music, the colour and the comfort of my space, eased my troubles, as did the forest when I went out to walk.

I stayed in for a few days, except for those solitary walks through the forest or along the beach, until the painting was finished and all the colours were down. No plan, no composition, no mixing – nothing but pure out of the tube colour. I looked at the finished result and I smiled, happy for the first time. I called it ‘Take Away the Sadness’, paraphrased from a favourite Van Morrison tune (Have I Told You Lately).

Since then the ice was broken – shattered – and I’ve been painting up a storm. Abstract bands of colour and texture and gold leaf and glitter – the sheer physical motion of pushing paint and gel and paste around to see what happens, and creating colour combinations that can’t help but make my spirits rise. Intuition without self-consciousness. Moving from darkness to light.

I’m very good, after years of on and off practice, at news blackout. But it’s different this time. It’s no longer enough to avoid the daily (hourly/minutely) news cycle. A collective angst is alive and out there and seeps into the posts of the writers of blogs and websites I follow – mostly normally apolitical visual art and science spaces. It’s interesting – usually the writers are apologetic for articulating their sadness – conscious of not wanting to spread negativity but not able to ignore their own needs to express their feelings. I get it. I’m doing the same thing right now.

It takes effort to turn away and actively seek out the happiness-makers. It’s a choice, which doesn’t mean it’s easy to get to. Here’s some of my happy finds lately…

Happiness-Making

Leonard Cohen: Live in London

In The Bunkie, as I’m pushing around colour and light, I like to watch concert videos sometimes and have accumulated quite a collection from the local used music store. This is not a new concert – recorded in 2008 – but was well worth revisiting, now in homage to a life lived. Leonard Cohen passed away in November, yes sad, but his art lives on. This is right up there with my favourite best concert videos ever.

When I was young, growing up in Montreal, hometown boy Leonard Cohen was the big crush of all the girls. A first glimpse of the power of the word – the power of the romance of it, and of course, to the impressionable teenage girls, the promise of sex. Leonard Cohen was 74 when he did this concert, and I’m here to tell you, he still had “it”.

Planet Earth II

For a visual mind blow, there is nothing better right now than Planet Earth II, the 6 part BBC series narrated (still) by David Attenborough. This has it all. Extreme cinematography, wildlife you may never have set eyes on before, story-telling, high drama and laugh-out-loud moments of visual humour. It’s been ten years since the last Planet Earth series and the changes in technology since then have enabled so many more gasp-worthy images. I love this show.

Shapes and Colours

No surprise there, but jigsaw puzzles are a favourite of mine since early days. Every year, after Christmas, I appropriate the dining room table, crack open another 1000 piecer and get to it. This year’s choice was particularly meaningful, after my autumn salmon-run stalking activities, and a beautiful painting as well. I CANNOT walk past a jigsaw puzzle without stopping.