Maybe happiness is this: not feeling like you should be elsewhere, doing something else, being someone else.
Isaac Azimov
Moments before the Christmas break was due to kick off and “life as normal” seemed within reach, the clouds rolled in (literally and figuratively) and a new Covid cluster emerged in Sydney. Suddenly I was having Vancouver flashbacks.
But as usual for Sydney the clouds eventually moved on, and while Covid still lingers, it at least feels under control for now. Yes, I missed out on a lot of things I’d been looking forward to, but I did achieve one thing in my week off – I got some wheels!
(I also wore my thumb completely numb smashing through Ori and the Will of the Wisps in a week. That fucking spider boss can fuck right off.)
One of my goals for the next chapter of life now that I’m back home is to do more road trips around Australia, including off-roading and camping. I also wanted to visit some of the areas hit by the bushfires a year ago. The Blue Mountains seemed the most obvious place to start, so I gunned it out to Blackheath early on a Sunday morning and did two tracks. Each took around 2-3 hours with lots of stairs (my calf muscles were rooted on Monday and Tuesday).
I’ve seen these mountains countless times but never like this. Charred-black tree trunks still stood on the landscape like gravestones twelve months on. From within them, luminous-green branches pushed their way outward like a zombie hand bursting out of the dirt. Around the trees, flowing waters and full waterfalls gave life to the greenest grass I’d seen in those parts.
The clouds and rain which had caused annoyance the week prior were now providing me waterfalls to admire and watering holes in which I could cool off.
Yin and yang.
