They sat sparkling on a powerline. Huddled together in the sun after a shower of rain had passed through. A fifth sat a little further off, like a barely tolerated younger sibling that could be oh-so annoying. Sitting above butter yellow gorse, against a green backdrop of fields that is so vivid we spent…
Stewart Island Journal November 11 . It’s a day in which to remember. To remember the fallen alright. Our glorious dead, though glorious only because of what they gave us. I wonder, if they ever are conscious of it, what their spirits make of that. A waste? A gift? Too much focus on glory and…
11 March It has been a long while since I have put pen to paper but travel, if anything is what will shake the muse loose. I usually observe something like this after a long break from writing and settling into an aircraft seat. This time I am pre-empting that moment. Sydney is oppressively humid…
Apparently the prospect, memory or concept of sex crosses the male mind every eight minutes on average. (Who measures these things? And how?) If ever there is a cure for the wandering mind it’s a four hour walk down a glacier in summertime, when crevasses are open, icy maws with white flecked palates and blue…
I woke at first light, snuck out in the icey slap your face cold to the latrine, then snuggled back into the sleeping bag only to be told ten minutes later it was time to get up. Arrgghh.
The ink does not want to flow, while my hands are barely able to grip the pen. It’s zero degrees in the hut at the moment and snow drift has been blasted in and sits on the sill. Water in pots inside is frozen. Vapour blows from mouth and nostrils as I eat a breakfast…
A storm smashes the hut an hour before our colleagues arrive back from the top of the Tasman Glacier where they have been doing crevasse and ice work. We are surprised that they were able to find their way in such a white out and had half expected them to make for the Tasman Saddle…
