C'est la vie

Well, that's the last time I post an anticipated trip, 'cos it just doesn't seem to happen. A myriad of little things popped up, from work to weather to weariness. And it never hurts to bring the house and section up to scratch for FliesWithKiwiBird and the wee one's return this evening. That's probably more of a work out than paddling.

I got out Sunday on the lake, and it was beautiful. Hot though, with temperatures hovering over 34 celsius (90F). With the water even lower than before, and Durham finally on mandatory water restrictions (I hear via the media that we have 46 days of water left, thus I wonder why we weren't mandatory like every other county some time ago...), I'm finding the remnants of lost forests in this man-made lake never exposed before.

Some of the stump's shapes are glorious. As a child, everything in the botanic world slightly weird and potentially terrifying was a "triffid", from John Wyndham's 1951 novel, The Day of the Triffids. And here were lots of them, to bring a rush of childhood reading memories.

The Godwits Fly

A bar-tailed godwit, or just godwit to most Kiwis, has been found to have flown 11,500 kilometers (7,145 miles) nonstop from Alaska to New Zealand - without taking a break for food or drink - in nine days. Apparently it's the longest nonstop bird migration ever measured.

The godwit's a bit of an icon in NZ, first immortalized in Robin Hyde's NZ classic of 1938, The Godwits Fly, and required reading for any NZ lit course. In those early days, New Zealanders (we weren't really 'Kiwis' then) pretty much saw Britain as the "Mother Country", and anyone who was anybody, particularly within the arts, believed they had to escape to the Mother Country to find themselves and thus some identity. Katherine Mansfield was a prime example.

Thus the godwit was the embodiment of the flight north - the big escape to a not so parochial land. In The Godwits Fly, Hyde speaks of a childhood lesson on the migrant godwits, “They fly north, they fly north…. Most of us here are human godwits; our north is mostly England. Our youth, our best, our intelligent, brave and beautiful, must make the long migration, under a compulsion they hardly understand”.

In some respects this "compulsion" still exists (there's me, for one...). Kiwis now believe in the "Big OE" (overseas experience), but they're typically happier to return these days. (Mind you, it's believed we have around a million ex-pats living somewhere overseas, and with a resident population of only 4 million, that's a fair few Kiwis floating around.)

What was exciting in NZ literature in these early years is that you can slowly observe the process of change by which writers resolved these tensions and “became New Zealand” … “whole people, not exiles or minds divided”.

Kiwis.

Back home...

We had a lovely ten days in Beaufort, a couple of weeks ago... Time scoots.

Amazingly, the kayak never left the roof of the 4-Runner, thus an extremely handsome appendage as we explored the neighbouring countryside, visiting the occasional antique (aka junk) store. I finished my packed three books in three days, thus scarpered quite happily along with FliesWithKiwiBird to all the local second-hand stores (what we call "op shops" in NZ) to find more.

I'm a Ken Follett fan, having met him a few times in the UK, and then brought him out to NYC for a UCL alumni function I organized - so happily downed another of his. I'm also a dead keen fan of Dick Francis, who used to be the late Queen Mum's jockey, and writes a mean mystery based around the British horse racing industry. I've also recently discovered Carl Hiassen, and I get a huge kick out of reading his Florida Everglades-based novels, as invariably they'll be some mention of a place I passed during this year's Everglades Challenge. I also enjoy his not-so-tongue-in-cheek way of exposing the criminal treatment of the Everglades by big business and politicians alike. As I'm a big fan of anything icy and Antarctica in particular, I found a copy of Kelly Tyler-Lewis' The Lost Men. Shackleton's 1914 expedition is an amazing saga, and I've pretty much read everything on his endeavour. In his own book, South, he devotes a chapter to his Ross Sea party, who were to lay the depots for the second half of his traverse. For the first time, Tyler-Lewis' book covers the full story. A good read. Another story that's fascinated me since childhood is the shipwreck of the Medusa. I had the good fortune to see Théodore Géricault's magnificently stupendous and gruesome painting in the Louvre, "Le Radeau de la Méduse", a few years back. I've always wanted to learn the tale behind the story, and found a copy of Alexander McKee's Death Raft. What a tale. I was also lucky to find a copy of The Kite Runner, the first novel by Khaled Hosseini. Another P.D. James sneaked its way in as well. But to cap it all off, I found an old, well-worn copy of Herman Wouk's The Caine Mutiny - one of those books I've always meant to read but hadn't quite got around to. What a classic. I rang my dad when we got home and we ran through the books - we're big "what are you reading now" talkers - when we got to The Caine Mutiny, he remembered reading it soon after it was published in 1951, and he immediately said, "that was the chap with the marbles". A good memory.

Of course the highlight of the trip was dipping the wee one's toes in the Atlantic Ocean for the very first time! And his very first trip to West Marine, for a bit of hardware for a scheme I have to re-rig my Pacific Action Sail...