I’m committed. I’ve just crossed over the Equator on my way from Auckland to California. There will be no going back to summer this year.The past week has been a bit of a whirlwind, both in the bubble in which I’d been living and in the world at large. I’m not yet sure if it will turn out to have been a blessing or a curse to have been isolated from the barrage of media surrounding the current international credit crisis, but I’m certain the ramifications of it will be immediately apparent and deep seeded at home upon my arrival. At present, however, I’m sitting in a more than half-empty, brand new Boeing 777-200ER, I’ve watched an episode of Top Gear where the hosts sped around Europe in three different “supercars” looking for the perfect driving road and spending fuel like there was no tomorrow, I’ve eaten what likely will have been my last lamb meal for a while, and I am half-way through this week’s Economist, trying to put everything in perspective. The number and size of the advertisements from banks now in financial distress provides some intensely ironic gallows humor.
To say the least, the places I’ve been over the past several days would have been distracting to even the most serious of people in even the most dire of circumstances. On Saturday, I drove for five hours from Wanaka in the heart of the Southern Alps, to Te Anau, a large town on the shores of Lake Te Anau surrounded by mountains, and then on to Milford at the head of Milford Sound, a fjord on the West Coast of the South Island. The road from Te Anau to Milford, paved only since 1996 and called, nicely, the Milford Road, is 100 kilometers long but takes at least two hours of driving, in part because it’s windy and mountainous and in part because it’s so beautiful that it hurts. My neck was sore when I arrived, literally. I spent Saturday night along the banks of the Cleddau River, explored the fjord by boat, making it out to the Tasman Sea and back, enjoyed lunch with good friends with no concern for the viability of the Western capitalist system, and then drove the five hours back home. Milford Sound was justifiably called one of the eight wonders of the natural world by Rudyard Kipling himself. Milford Sound and the Fjordland National Park generally are as remote and as beautiful as I could imagine and left me absolutely distracted, leading to some of those lucid moments that may or may not result in a better understanding of the world but which provide a welcome cleansing from the hustle and bustle of the mind.
What effect the current financial crisis in the world will have on the Vermont ski industry is uncertain, in both nature and extent. It won’t be good, regardless. Though I try at all times while working to focus on the positive, the many benefits of skiing and teaching skiing, at the end of the day it is my job and it is a business. It is also a luxury. The seals lolling about on the rock ledges surrounding Milford Sound may not care whether the Western democracies can stave off financial collapse, but as I head across the ocean to an uncertain future at home it is foremost on my mind. Regardless, Okemo will open in time for Thanksgiving and I will be there, ready to share, to teach and to enjoy with all that come my way. How many do so remains an open question.
The photos appearing here, all taken within the past week, are, from top to bottom: the Aspiring Range as seen from Glendhu Bay on the Western shores of Lake Wanaka (above the text); The Aspiring Range looking up along the Matukituki Valley; the Eglinton River Valley seen from the Miford Road; Mitre Peak at sunset, seen from the boat basin in Milford Sound; Milford Sound looking out towards the Tasman Sea from the deck of the Milford Wanderer; and one of the remakable rock formations in The Chasm along the Cleddau River near the Milford Road. Given the difficulty in choosing which photos to post here, I've made two photo albums posted on facebook available to anyone interested in viewing them. Many more photos are available, and worthwhile, at the following links:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=43641&l=bdc59&id=642938180
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=44023&l=699e0&id=642938180
1 comment:
Welcome back to the real world. Fascinating to read your blog and remember that life is so much bigger than what we see in our media. I think we are very much caught in a vicious circle at the moment: hysterical reporting, followed by blind panic, fuelling yet more sensationalist reporting. It's compulsive though. I'll be interested in your take on it once you've digested it all. Oh, and I wouldn't underestimate the necessity of the ski addiction. For many, it will have to be truly terrible before they give it up!
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