Tag Archives: Travel

Walden Pond

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WALDEN POND

I had the happy surprise of going to Walden Pond on a 2 day trip to Boston to visit a friend from high school. I had never been there, although I have read Thoreau off and on, and I was really thrilled to go there – a mini-pilgrimage of sorts.

WALDEN POND

The first time I seriously read Thoreau was after university when I bought a bus ticket from Chicago to Seattle and went backpacking in the Olympic National Park. The bus trip was 50 hours long (each way), so I had plenty of time to read and to meet people from all over the world. There is a strange sort of community that happens when people are thrown together for a medium length of time. There was a rhythm of driving, stopping for a break and some food, and driving some more.  I don’t know if I would have read as much of the Portable Thoreau as I did on that trip if I weren’t in that somewhat Zen-like rhythm of always moving and being stuck in the same place.

WALDEN POND

I have a painting I made years ago, it is a sort of forest scene with a little cabin by a pond and then I painted quotes from Thoreau over the whole thing. Here are a couple of the quotes:

WALDEN POND

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.

I came into this world, not chiefly to make this a good place to live in, but live in it, be it good or bad. A man has not everything to do, but something; and because he cannot do everything, it is not necessary that he should do something wrong.

I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. It seemed to me that I had several more lives to live. It is remarkable how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular route, and make a beaten track for ourselves. I learned this, at least, by my experiment, that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavours to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. In proportion as he simplifies his life the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor will poverty be poverty, nor weakness weakness.

WALDEN POND

Bruny Island

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Bruny Island
Bruny Island was an interesting place, but I think we both felt a little disappointed after the rest of Tasmania.  It is very, very quiet on Bruny.  It is a beautiful place, but by the time we got there, we had seen so much beauty.  Personally, I think we would have both spent a little more time around Freycinet and at Kabuki by the Sea.  We also were both getting sick with a cold in Bruny, so that probably colored our views, too.  I had wanted to take the wildlife cruise, but one day it was raining and the next day I just didn’t feel up for it.  Above is a sculpture that some locals made after a whale was beached at Adventure Bay.  If you look closely, you can see two whales inside the globe.

Bruny Island

I went out two nights trying to spot the Fairy Penguins, the smallest penguins.  These have holes that they dig in the ground.  The first night, I didn’t see anything, but I didn’t know how long to stay out in the night.  The second night I was better prepared and had red cellophane to put over a flashlight.  Right off the bat I saw a wallaby and could hear it munching away as I watched the surf.  Eventually, I could see some penguins!  They clustered around by the water’s edge (the left side of the photo below was where the blind for watching them was located).  Then a small group of them decided it was time to make the trip and the shuffled along, right alongside of the blind I was behind, so I could see them quite close up.  I had experimented trying to take red light photos of the wallaby, without much luck, so I knew there was no point in trying to photograph the penguins, so I just enjoyed watching them shuffle along and listened to all their calls from their burrows.

Bruny Island
Of course, there were more birds to photograph, here are some that were flying around where we were staying at Alonnah.  I think the bird bottom left is a Sea Eagle and of course the ubiquitous Green Rosella, foraging in the backyard and a flock in flight.

Bruny Island

Bruny Island

Bruny Island

Freycinet National Park & Swansea

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We spent part of a day at Freycinet National Park on the East coast and saw some beautiful scenery and watched birds on the beach for a while. We walked around Sleepy Bay and could have just stayed there for a really long time, but we also wanted to drive up to Launceston that day and the recommendation is to stay off the roads as much as possible after dark because the wildlife is so plentiful.

Freycinet National Park & Swansea

Freycinet National Park & Swansea

Freycinet National Park & Swansea

Freycinet National Park & Swansea
Freycinet National Park & Swansea
 We stayed at Kabuki by the Sea, near Swansea – a beautiful set of cottages looking out over the cliffs and surf. There was also a Japanese restaurant there.  The food, company, and views were so fabulous that we came back and spent another night there on the way back South.

Freycinet National Park & Swansea

Freycinet National Park & Swansea

Australia!

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AUSTRALIA!
AUSTRALIA!

About two weeks ago, I went to Australia for the first time. The trip was for the World Congress for Psychotherapy. I was in Sydney the whole time and I really enjoyed seeing another major city in this region. It was a 3.5 hour flight from Auckland and is the closest city larger than Auckland. Sydney has a population of about 4.5 million (which is around the population for the whole country of New Zealand) and it is in the Australian state of New South Wales. The whole population of Australia is around 22.5 million (roughly equal to the populations of the four US states of Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Nebraska).

AUSTRALIA!

It is hard to draw too many conclusions from one week in the largest city of a country. Sydney was very ethnically diverse. It definitely had a larger city feel than Auckland as well as having a different culture. Again, these are just first impressions, but Sydney felt more relaxed (in the sense of not seeming to have as many social rules about colour and loudness of voice), people were louder and more open, but not as friendly. Businesses were more business-like, but with the down-side of being less friendly, more rushed. The food was good, but the quality of the food didn’t seem as spectacular as in New Zealand. 
AUSTRALIA!
I went to the Chinese Friendship Garden and walked around Darling Harbour, where the convention centre was located. Mary Pat and I took a water taxi (which was a great idea) from Darling Harbour to the Opera House and walked around in the Botanical Gardens, which had a huge number of Flying Foxes in the trees. It was definitely a great trip and we’ll go back for a little longer look at some point.
AUSTRALIA!
AUSTRALIA!
The conference was wonderful and had daily themes on indigenous culture, spirituality, and also ethics & philosophy. I met some great people and learned and experienced a lot. The overall theme of the conference was World Dreaming, based on the Australian Aboriginal practice of studying dreams and Dream Time. I did have a lot of dreams at the conference and made it to two of the morning dream sharing sessions that were really interesting group processes stemming from the dreams that people brought in. One of my favourite lectures was by Helen Milroy who presented on Aboriginal experience from pre-colonial era, through colonization and genocide, and then a kind of trauma and healing model. What was really amazing is that she had paintings she had made that illustrated each step along the presentation and the paintings seemed to embody the complexity of the step in a non-verbal way, plus they were amazing paintings! Here is a link to a newsletter I found that has an image of one of her paintings: 
AUSTRALIA!
AUSTRALIA!

NEW ZEALAND!!!

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First photo...just landed!

First photo…just landed!

We have arrived in New Zealand after a series of delays while we were waiting for our passports and visas to arrive. We had to mail our passports to Immigration New Zealand in London to get our visa stamps. We had to delay by a week. Then our passports were supposed to be mailed back to us and we had to delay again another 4 days because our passports where apparently in limbo. We could use mail tracking from both the Royal Mail Special Delivery site as well as the United Postal Service. The Royal Mail site said that the package was passed over to the overseas division and the USPS tracking said that the country of origin was still preparing to mail. That was the message for 4-5 days, without any change. Royal Mail said that this meant that US customs had them in NY, but hadn’t released them yet. When we called customs, they used the USPS tracking and said that the “country of origin was preparing to ship. A week and a half doesn’t sound like a lot of time to delay a trip of this magnitude, but it was a daily waiting game and we were worried that our passports could have been lost since both sides of the Atlantic were pointing at the other. Apparently US customs can hold items for up to a week and they don’t have to admit they have the mail in question. It wouldn’t have been a big deal if we knew what was going on, but it was a nerve-wracking wait!

The trip began at 5 PM at O’Hare in Chicago, we had 45 minutes in San Francisco to catch our flight to Auckland. We left San Francisco at 11 PM CST, 12-13 hours later, we arrived in Auckland at 5 AM their time. We were in the night the entire trip from San Francisco. It was quite strange to fly across the entire Pacific Ocean and not even see it! The flight on Air New Zealand was long, but the service was impressive – two nice meals, very good service and food.

…

We have been in Auckland for a week now, and it has been very eventful! We have rented an apartment, gotten cell phones (“mobiles”), and opened a bank account. I had a tour of my new place of work, Manaaki House and met a slew of people there. Our days have been filled with various necessities (obtaining IRD #s, kind of like a social security number, it seems), exploring, wandering around, having great meals, doing pre-employment issues taken care of (they test for immunity for childhood diseases by checking blood titers, they don’t take for granted immunization records.

I find it hard to capture in words how amazing and transformative each and every day has been here. This morning I went for a very hilly jog from our hotel into the Auckland Domain, a large park in town. Yesterday I saw a wild parrot. We went on a whale and dolphin cruise the day after we got here that was truly amazing!!! We saw orcas and about 1000 dolphins. I will start a “New Zealand” section of this blog and I’ll post some photos from that day. Even though it is winter (40-60 degrees F), it has been sunny every day, clear, low humidity, pleasant (assuming the right clothing). While we have heard many New Zealanders comment on the “cold” weather, shop doors are open, side walk cafes are everywhere and people are using them. In fact, I am sitting outside right now. It is chilly, my hands are cold, but I am wearing several layers of clothes. Many places don’t have central heat or air, but some cafes have outdoor heaters.

Our apartment is beautiful and overlooks the harbour and an island. It has floor to ceiling windows in the living room, but doesn’t have any central heat, so we’ll be buying some space heaters. Our belongings are not slated to arrive until September, so we’ll be living a zen-like, spartan life for a while. The sun has come out from behind a building here at the corner of Quay and Queens street in downtown Auckland. The docks are right here. I just saw a “Maersk” container go by, same name we see in the States. There are stacks of containers by the dock.

People don’t seem as rushed here. We have noticed a big difference in shop clerks here, compared to the States, people actually talk with you and don’t seem to rush or push a purchase. All in all it has been a pleasant and positive experience for week 1!