Up In The Air

One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.
– Henry Miller

Yes true, January slipped by without a post. But rather than make perky New Year’s resolutions in haste for 2015, I decided on a different course.

Suspended in time across oceans and continents, I log over 20,000 air miles on a flight to freedom. In search of fresh perspective I gaze at changing cloud formations as day merges into night with accelerated speed. During stretches of turbulence images sharpen and priorities reshuffle. Winter storms lose their bite and the heat of South Africa’s summer comes out to play.

Secluded deep in a sand forest I spend more nights than planned in a house made of glass. Monkeys who steal then taunt with their prize guard me. I encounter rangers and rifles, cheetahs and jackals, thunder and lightning and a tire that goes flat. Then poised on a cliff, I dwell in a hideout carved into the rock. Shadows dance through slits in a backlit black headboard and a slithering cobra heads straight for my path. I fall hard for yellow green fever trees steeped in legend and false lore. European settlers who camped under them contracted malaria and blamed the trees. They didn’t realize the swampy areas where they grow breed the mosquitoes that carry the disease. When the rain stops, I circle back to the woods. I can’t get enough of the branches and bark. That’s after the mysterious illness strikes – the one that takes me down.

Forced to bypass whole chunks of my onward journey to the sweeping dunes of Namibia, I eventually regain my strength. But I’m still on a quest to find new perspective. I continue to the Western Cape and the wine region where (running out of time) I sample six or so wines before breakfast. In Cape Town I absorb eclectic South African sounds, peruse the markets, and breathe the humid air before the final lap of my journey that will take me full circle. Back to a cherished time that launched me on a similar route to Africa, but sent me on a startling path.

Freezing temperatures and icy rain greet me as I wander the canals of Amsterdam. I’m there to gather the loving remains of a reunion in 2011 at an elegant Art Nouveau Hotel formerly the Shipping House. Conceived as the grand office for 6 shipping companies at the height of their power, owners of cargo and prospective passengers came there to book trips to the Dutch East Indies and Africa – land of the fever trees. Completed in 1916, it took 3 years to build with its intricate stone and ironwork, leaded windows with images of navigation and the Zodiac, teak carved in Indonesia, rich textiles and furnishings with motifs from shipping and the sea. Once called the house with the golden windows, it opened as a hotel in 2007 restored to its original glory by a collaboration of artists and architects with no 2 rooms alike. On my first stay I did not foresee all that would transpire over the next 4 years, or that I would stop here 3 times on my travels to Africa. Yesterday I finally came to collect his ashes. Tomorrow I will fly back across the Atlantic. Tonight, on what should have been another celebration of his birthday, I can only hold the memory of his passion and patience in my hands. As I stand once again beneath the glass cupola that spans the heart of the building and rises 106 meters high, its daunting perspective awes me.

It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.
– Henry David Thoreau

I didn’t go to all the destinations I planned on my voyage of discovery. What I thought would unfold never did. Instead I gained perspective from the unexpected. From the edge of a cliff I viewed the lushness of the valley, through glass walls I entered a rare and sandy forest, in the darkness I listened to the wild. I experienced the grandeur of light and space in the expanse of a man made cathedral to the globe. And with love I fulfilled a man’s last wish – to make a fresh beginning. 

Wandering re-establishes the original harmony which once existed between man and the universe.
– Anatole France

Perhaps like Lady Gaga, “I’m a wandering gypsy.”

How do you find perspective?