last thursday robin and i went with our wwoof host, we'll call her ms. nutty, to a gravel shop of sorts. the gravel shop was probably my favorite thing about our week at ms. nutty's because it was a football sized parking lot filled with 30 bus sized mounds of differnet kinds of gravel. pebble gravel, sandy gravel, huge gravel, small gravel. it was all nice. i love the sound of wakling on gravel so my ears got a chance to dance to the music!

why was gravel the best part about a week at our last host's house? because she was a bit mean and a bit crazy. good riddance. on thursday afternoon, after completing a whole day of work for her on her soon to be commune, she suggested that robin and i go ahead and leave to go camping. although we wanted to leave SO BADLY we stood our ground and stayed the night because whoa, lady, we earned a place to sleep.

we did learn a few things from our time at her house, though. things like it's important to wake up at 6am and stir ground up crystal powder into the water for your plants and then throw it up into the air so that the morning rising sun will catch the crystals and help your plants grow. you know, useful things like that. if you want a good laugh, read about biodynamic and cosmological farming. it's a hoot.

what was interesting about staying at ms. nutty's house was that she clearly didn't like us or want us there and although she was as organic as one can be in her farming, she wasn't a good hostess. it was an enlightening experience and one that taught me that just because someone is good to this planet doesn't necessarily mean that he or she is good to other people.

but friday was a glorious day for many reasons! 1. it was our escape. 2. we went to abel tasman national park to camp for the night where we spent the afternoon on what turned out to be our private beach and private campsite. and then! as some message from god signaling that all was safe and well now that we had left Whackoline's house, we saw a double rainbow (prouduced magically from no rain!) from start to finish over our campsite as we drank our evening tea. what glory.

sunday we arrived back into the safe harbour of caryolyn's house! what a wonderful feeling it is to be arriving at a place you know you love and one that is fun and welcoming. we and the family sat around like old friends on sunday night eating fish and chips take out laughing and making fun of each other. it felt just like a home. that is one part about wwoofing that i so enjoy: we really become parts of these people's lives. the near saintly nature and incredible generosity of most of our hosts is lovely to witness and encourages me to welcome people as they do in my future life. today for example, we are going to run errands as carolyn is out for the day and pick up her son from his exam.

two nights ago when i woke up to use the restroom i was once again astounded by the brightness of the moon here. the tiny sliver that remained was so bright that i again couldn't look directly at it and so bright that it had washed out the millions of stars that robin and i camped under the night prior. that's the wonderful thing about the night sky. when there is no light pollution, i show up expecting to only enjoy the star show, but then am always blown away by the encore presentation of the moon. that nature, always wowing me. we see so many breath-taking vistas on even the most mundane walks or drives that i have developed a pavlovian response to every visual in NZ. nature provides something beautiful and i, as a trained appreciator, reply with the appropriate "oh my god," "look!," or "whoa." i am learning to embrace the silence i must learn to answer nature, as language always fails me in such stunning settings. for the sake of robin and for this year and to not belittle every mountain or ocean, i will learn to measure my applause through silence.

last night on our walk (read: vertical hike) to our cottage after dinner, robin and i were stopped in our path by an angry mother cow. after realizing she was angry only to protect her newborn calf, we thought we could outsmart/outrun her by hiking straight up the mountain and then backing over the hill down to our cottage. the cow won big time. once robin and i cleared through a bit of forest we met her gaze again as she had predicted our route and was still blocking the path to our cottage. at one point of extreme frustration after we had fallen to our bottoms amidst the prickly gorse i shouted out to the cow, to god, to anyone who would listen, "mama, we don't want your baby!" she didn't hear my plea and we had to back track down the mountain hanging our heads in shame to carolyn's and thomas' laughter. the good news was that carolyn, feeling our legitimate fright and frustration, drove us up to our cottage. what a successful mother, that cow. well done.

thomas' hunting dogs just let out all the chickens. i can hear robin trying to catch them. i have to go help. it's pathetic.

just went to help. we couldn't get the last two. i just chased them around trying to catch them in a towel or undulay, undulay (sp?) them into their house. we are two universtiy educated women. what is this life?

cows and chickens and hunting dogs, oh my!

love,
maggie