One Pair of Shoes

Hello folks, Mike here.

I put some pictures of a shoe together, it's pretty sweet. Don't mind the backgrounds.

Walkabout

Well that is it, I'm flying home tomorrow.
Frisbee - done,
Colombia - done,
Italy - done,
Wedding - done.
Montana, Denver, Florida - done,
New York, Detroit, California - done,
Canyons, canyons, Vegas - done,
Trip - done, almost.

I'm flying to Brisbane and then Canberra tomorrow. Make a few connections, play a little frisbee, make some reconnections then head on home.

I was thinking a day ago, as I was completing a great hike in Bryce Canyon, that walking has been a significant part of this trip. I've walked in some incredible physical places and i've walked in some significant emotional states as well.

I walked in Rome, I walked in solitude and in company.
I walked in Florence, I walked in loneliness and in connection.
I walked in Glacier National park, I walked in jubilation and in distress.
I walked in the ocean, I walked in relief and in freedom.
I walked in New York City, I walked in pain and in optimism.
I walked in Zion National park, I walked in positivity and in hope.
I walked in Bryce Canyon, I walked in reflection and in remembrance.

I walked in these, and other emotional states through these and other physical places. I looked at sights and I felt things. My physical location changed and my emotional experience followed. I haven't been on a walk this trip that didn't involve some kind of emotional shift or journey. Some changing slightly, others dramatically. Forwards and backwards, sometimes combining laps of emotions with laps of a city.

I've had some really positive and joyful emotions out here on this adventure and I've felt some exquisite distress. When I look back I can recall various emotional experiences in a similar way to remembering physical destinations. Just like each stop on this fairly long trip has been different, unique and valuable as a part of the whole, so too i think each changing emotional condition has contributed to my overall current optimistic sensation.  

Walking though the world both internally and externally have been excellent aspects of this large and complicated adventure. Some of my treasured moments have involved me, some thoughts and some distance to cover.

The walkabout is over for now as i'm coming home. I have no doubt though that the journey will continue, and i'm very hopeful that I'll take all those great walks along with me as I go.              

Thanks to Shannon and Maggie for some great walking photos.

A big view

What is it about a massive vista that makes the viewer feel so strongly?

The size, the age, the beauty. It's like when you look out onto a landscape that is vast and majestic, almost to the point that it becomes difficult to comprehend, something happens. Something happens within, a change surrounding emotion and perspective.

Perhaps when you realise that a physical space is so large and beautiful that your mind can't really grasp or understand it, peace is found in the knowledge that other incomprehensible issues might be beautiful too. Why do bad things.....? What does it mean when......? How can suffering be so.....? What is the reason for....? Who would deserve......?

The answer to many of these kinds of questions are "I don't know", or something vague enough to actually mean I don't know: "there is a plan", "luck I guess", "everything happens for a reason", "when a door closes a window opens", "I don't know".

It seems to me that some things in life are well beyond our ability to explain, understand, categorise and even really sense effectively. What is love? Why am I here? Where will I go when I die? When will I understand life?

I think there is value in becoming comfortable with not knowing. Accepting that understanding life and the world isn't what it is all about. This is easy in times of happiness and peace. How lovely to say that right now I feel excellent and I don't really even know why. In times of strife however we seem to frantically search for a grasp on the why. This may not actually be helpful.

When I look at an epic view that includes shapes, structures, light and movement I feel a peaceful acceptance that the space before me is too significant, too magnificent for me to ever truly understand. I give up attempting to evaluate and categorise, label and know. Simply the task is just to look and feel wonder, smile and breath in the calm sensation of acceptance.

The lesson is directly before us, parts of the world and my life are clearly beyond my understanding. How beautiful to be able shift all that energy and effort towards appreciation and finding value.

The world is wonderful and terrible, knowing why does not change that.

Impressions, exchanges, travel - Zion

Today was a pumping day with a hike up the virgin river to The Narrows. It is cold and slippery and awesome. As the sand, water and dirt accumulate in overwhelmed shoes, so too the feeling of peace and joy accumulate in the heart. To enter a pure, and in actuality as well as name, virgin place it is difficult not to be internally affected.


Walking directly up the river has the powerful affect of creating a feeling of connection with the environment, possibly even a feeling of change. Each visitor is not simply strolling by, or walking over a track or mountain. To enter the Virgin river is to enter into a mutual interaction with the country. Water rushes into shoes and over shorts, rocks press and roll beneath searching feet. The walls close around heavily occupied vision and the river pulls at invigorated skin.

Striding up the canyon into the Narrows takes the traveller away from civilisation and into nature. The river claims the attention and the canyon walls surge forwards to earn it back. Small sandy banks and islands become as a forgotten home or a long lost friend. Sanctuaries from the relentless cold reach of the rushing water.

The river is at one moment an enemy to be avoided and escaped as soon as possible, then quickly transforms into a companion. A fellow traveller moving through the ancient rock kingdom. Briefly enjoying the mighty scale and inspiring shapes of the canyon walls, then hastily flowing on to new sights and furthur turmoil. It doesn't flow alone.

With every step a stone is turned or rolled, sand is kicked and scattered, water is splashed and shifted. The river and canyon are permanently altered by the awkward stumbling presence of human visitors. Each new passage slightly changes the pristine landscape.

It is however highly likely that the affect is repaid in full with the river leaving its cold, sandy and magnificent impression firmly on its fast moving and temporary canyon companions.  




I was a willing and joyful companion yesterday. The word spectacular describes more than Utah's Zion National Park, today it reaches to describe my buoyant spirit and fast flowing sense of optimism.

Beyond me, but maybe not Walt

I'm nearing the end of a week in New York City. It has been a wonderful time as I revisit and rediscover this city that at times feels familiar and for the majority seems beyond my comprehension and recollection.

I suspect my remaining five days will continue to delight and propagate development.

It truly is an amazing city and I'm thankful for the opportunity to visit here with exellent contacts and friends, both old and new. This man seems to have a fair handle on describing an almost undescribable city;

"It avails not, neither time or place—distance avails not;	20
I am with you, you men and women of a generation, or ever so many generations hence;
I project myself—also I return—I am with you, and know how it is.
Just as you feel when you look on the river and sky, so I felt;
Just as any of you is one of a living crowd, I was one of a crowd;
Just as you are refresh’d by the gladness of the river and the bright flow, I was refresh’d;	25
Just as you stand and lean on the rail, yet hurry with the swift current, I stood, yet was hurried;
Just as you look on the numberless masts of ships, and the thick-stem’d pipes of steamboats, I look’d." Walt Whitman

Mighty Montana

When I arrived in Montana I was ready for a rest, I didn't get one. After running around Colombia and Italy I was yearning for a home, a quiet place for a little while. What I got was a raucous wedding week.

Liz and Jeff's wedding was excellent and for me full of flower preparations, suit hunting, mountain climbing, memory sparking and wine drinking action. It really was a great time and i'm really glad I was able to spend some time with the bride and her attendants before the wedding. It was also an excellent college and high school reunion. I didn't attend the University of Norther Colorado, or Great Falls High however the people from both places feel like a home away from home to me, Go Bison!

After the wedding I found the nest I was craving by heading up to Great Falls to spend a couple of weeks with Dave and Debi and the rest of the GF community. It was a really good easy going time. I meet up with folks, organised my semi circumnavigation of the States, visited some memorable spots and explored some brand new corners of Montana.

I appreciate how familiar and comfortable my time in Great Falls was, I wanted a home and that is what I found over here.

I'm off now on the next section of the trip and leaving Great Falls feels like at step away from a home and the beginning of a journey home. I'll still be over here for five weeks, however it feels like i'm back on the road and that now i'll just follow my toes until I find myself back in Australia.

I remember when I booked this trip I wanted to make sure that it was long enough to begin to engender feelings of hope and enthusiasm at the idea of being back in Australia. I was afraid of being back home trying to live a life too early. I don't really know if that plan has been or will be effective however I know that i've had some great times and some sustained feelings of happiness over the last nine weeks.

I do feel optimistic about the future and about returning home in some ways. I think that internal journey can't help but be influenced by the external journey that i'm experiencing. I'm open to it taking me where it will, flowing smoothly, jolting aggressively, sharply changing direction or pushing against resistance. I don't have the fear and feeling of dislocation that I did in March and April anymore. I've never been short on positivity however I think that constant has been joined by an extremely comforting sense of optimism that is new and encouraging.

Travel on.


Here are some photos from my time in Montana. It was spectacular. Truly spectacular.

 

Lunch in the West

Every time the heavy glass door swung open and rattled closed again on its metal frame it was clear another person had entered the restaurant. Like a pair of timber saloon doors in an old hall in the Wild West, slamming or creaking open to mark the grand or meek entrance of the next customer. Upon entry every new patron is greeted by a slight hushing of the old western piano and a cessation of verbal violence across the saloon as games are held and evaluations are completed.

Most times life goes back to normal, most times.

So too at the Chinese restaurant in Great Falls Montana this afternoon. The Wild West is a bit of a stretch, although we are out in the west and at times it does get a little wild out here. The 'New Peaking Garden' is not a western saloon of the 1800s. The creaking floor boards, rowdy atmosphere and burnt black steaks have been replaced by industrial easy clean carpet, popular PG music mixed with family conversation and moderately over sauced vegetables and tofu. The plants are synthetic, the wontons are packed to bursting with cream cheese and the waitress used up all of her best material hours ago.

Dave, Debi and I came in after the lunch rush and were expecting a nice quiet meal in the near vacant restaurant. Only two other tables were occupied and the restaurant provided a gentle and cool respite from the baking and dusty summer day. We'd been riding all day, our horses were dry and our saddles were sore.

On most days and in most States a lunch at the local Chinese would climax with a full belly and questionable fortune, I'm still waiting for my "important email", I checked right away like it said. Not this day, not in this State. Immediately after a large plate of fried wontons crackled down on our table the familiar sound struck clearly. The front door opened firmly and blew back like the wind on the prairie.

Restaurant life stilled just slightly as a new man in town entered the New Peaking Garden and Wild West saloon. A lone man, a hard man, the kind of man you wouldn't want to rustled up a posse and have to ride out after. A man of few compromises, who knows what's right and that he is it, a man who doesn't wait in line, unless there is a sale on camoflague back packs.

Hard ridin', eye squintin', pink lemonade drinking. A baby faced bandit with a heart of gold. When he sits down to eat, he already knows what he wants, when he stands up to leave he just needs one hitch on his jeans. A legend in his own lifetime, thirty winters hard and thirty summers soft, a free man in a wild world.

As he strode through the entryway he was behind my back and not in my view. Dave game me the look, the head nod, and the sly grin. I knew I was in for a classic Montana sight. It could have been anything, a family all wearing overalls, a woman carrying two dogs, four punks, four hats, all backwards. My mind raced and I inclined my head in anticipation.

Blue jeans: fit - slightly baggy
Hat: baseball cap - camo
Shirt: T - slogan, "same shirt, different day"
Flip flops - oh you better believe it
Belt - Knife on one side
Pistol - Six barrel revolver

I've lived a fairly sheltered life with only a few dicey situations, perhaps I'm being naive. When I get to the point that I think I need to bring a Dirty Harry style revolver into a semi deserted Chinese restaurant at 2:30pm on a monday afternoon then perhaps things have gotten a little out of hand.

Dave and I asked ourselves if we were feeling lucky, and as it turns out we were so the pistol jokes flew through the air above our small cups of hot Chinese tea and the world seemed like a slightly crazy but also pretty fun place.

Lunchtime in Montana, the west is alive, classic.