Cook Island Adventure

I had really got used to having a constant companion, so it felt strange sitting next to people on the plane who did not want to talk much. I was not much for talking either as these notes written soon after arriving show:-

Feeling a little like Jack Torrence in the Shining – the Stephen King film, in which a writer struggling with his alcoholic past seeks isolation overwintering a grand old hotel to complete his novel. Disastrous consequences for his young family and himself result when the spirits of the place are upset. The outside shots were filmed at the Timberline Hotel near Mount Hood in Oregon in the Pacific North West.

I had camped in the same National park two winters ago. The heavy snows of the weeks before had frozen to a hard packed crust. The low sun had melted the slight impressions our boots had made, but a heavy fall was forecast. The window afforded a beautiful soundless vista, the dark native conifers had a strangely computer generated feel. One of the early difficulties of creating believable virtual images of the natural world was giving distant objects a far away feel. Simulated mists or clouds would be added to the scene to give depth. Out here, the high air pressure clean air made the landscape seem almost too real to be real.

In the South Wales Valleys, the monotonous straight rows of forestry commission are as offensive to my eye as opencast, blotting out the light below, impoverishing the soil and burning fast with a spiting flame to acrid smoke.

In their native setting of dwarfing peaks and volcanic lakes, hanging heavily with old mans beard, these trees had the ethereal air of a painting by Thomas Kincaid. Unlike the paintings of that American master of light, I sensed a darkness there. In times of strife I have found great comfort in lowland British woodlands, surrounded by life one feels more alive, more at home here than a house, the plants like familiar faces. Out here in the boonies, nature felt harder, indifferent to our concerns, it just is.

Our typical explorers meal of hot smoked steelhead and grits was washed down with hot coffee and icy Laphroig whisky. The greasy plates wiped with more old mans beard and tossed into the frozen creek bed fire – for a few moments animating strange shapes deep in forest. The pair of us slept in our well used hammocks amongst the native conifers, just inside the forest, a little distance from where we had hung our food from bears, fifty miles from the nearest building which at that time of year would have been empty.

Like most of Stephen King's novels and films the Shining uses a supernatural mysterious force, the wendigo or a soured burial ground to draw the characters dark side towards expression. The terrifying aspects of denied subconscious forces, that may unwind their own narrative beneath the surface.

Socially unacceptable, personally undesirable leftover aspects of the personality that surface when the guard is let down, like the friendly old bachelor who becomes bitter and lecherous in drink, an argument with a loved one that cuts deeper than a stranger's ever could.


.........

Funny how after getting ill, one often feels better than one did before. I had a very nasty throat infection, possibly from the shared coconut cup. More likely I felt, that after truly relaxing the bugs took their chance to catch me. After four days where every swallow hurt, and my lips swelled up I finally admitted defeat and bought some amoxycillin, vit C and echinacia which licked it in a few days. Tea tree can only do so much!

The place I am writing from now could not be more different. I am looking upon banana palms barely moving, framing a postcard scene of a turquoise sea meeting a powder blue early morning sky. A few long thin strips of cloud, perfectly parallel the ship less horizon. Six or seven puffs of cloud have hugged the same quarter of the sky since my last cup of coffee.

Rarotonga is at the same latitude as two places I have still have a yearning to visit, Madagascar, the Chilean dessert and the Great Barrier Reef. The Islands occupy a sea area of over 2 million square kilometers, though Cook never set foot here on this largest of the Archipelago. Unlike other places on this global wander the island is as hassle free as one could imagine a tropical New Zealand dependent in the South Pacific could be. There are no poisonous snakes, sharks, or dangerous mammals, the people friendly and laid back. The dogs that roam around the island bark half heartedly a menace only to to moped drivers.

The hillstation where I was to spend the two weeks was like the rest of t island in this current crisis almost totally empty. In a place which could easily accomodate thirty five, there were three of us. The big kitchen still had plenty of food left over from other guests, just as well, as the prices in the shops were pretty high. I had wrongly put the remains of my NZ Manuka honey in the amnesty box at the airport grrr.

The other guests were an Irish chap and an older guy from Middlesborough. He had visited the Islands two years before, and had helped the maid escape from a landlord who was expecting her to clean and cook for him besides paying rent.



She invided the older guy and myself to drink kava with them at the house she was now living in. Kava is a bre native to Fiji. It is the ground root of the plant piper methsycum, which is drunk from coconut shells in rounds. I was unexpectedly given the speak of honour, next to the server, who stirred the fine powder through a cloth in a large bowl to made the muddy tasting liquid.

It is drunk in one go, otherwise the tongue goes numb and very slowly, very gently produces a pleasant lucid, relaxing state. In no way intoxicating, though we drank it steadily through the evening the effect was similar in effect to camomile tea. The gentle and friendly manner of these Fijian emigrees touched us greatly. We were encouraged to drink a beer at the end to wash the kava away. Though we had brought several cans with us, they gave us beer and a delicious chicken, taro and cocoanut curry to take away. They did warn us however, that the next day we would be more than lazy.

Fourteen hours sleep lazy infact – I awoke, aware I had been dreaming a lot, but felt very well rested. I eased myself into a gentle yoga practice. This spot seemed the perfect place to rest, write and plan the next stage of the trip.

I took this time to get back into yoga practice, it is a lot easier to do when somewhere warm. Yoga on the deck beside the pool is always preferable to a cramped hotel room, glad of the extra warmth of the possum hair blanket I picked up in NZ.

Over the two weeks I met a couple from the UK, Ant and Pavela who regularly visted Threecliffs having relations in Linkside, and enjoyed singalongs with the guitar. Ant was another ex-IT person, taking time out, and a great musician, composing a song about the beef curry I was making with the few ingrediants we could find left by previous guests!

I could not resist wandering into the university, and after mentioning my intrest in improvisation, and local ingenuity I was introduced to the director who showed a keen interest, and helpfuly pointed me in the direction of some appropriate literature.

Too soon, Ant and Pavela were to leave, we went out for a few drinks and met Ralph, at 6'7” the smallest of seven brothers. His sister at 6'5” holds the current olympic gold for shot put. Though he claimed to be getting drunk for the second time that day, he gave me a fascinating account of the migration routes, and navigation methods of his forebears. He described a coconut shell, filled with oil, and having very acurrately bored holes to get a transit line from the southern cross.

The hillstation was now home to three of us, two younger lads on their first big trip. So nice to meet people of that age who are not getting drunk every night on their parents money. The food available in the supermarkets was not great, but we shared making some great meals from the abundant coconuts, star fruit, bananas growing nearby and canned tuna. My little axe was a great help getting through the tough fibrous shells of the coconuts, and the juice delicious. The guys were amateur boxers and really took to yoga, joining me for sessions every day, I am looking forward to hearing how they find home, when they make it back in a few short weeks.

I decided to look up the titles I had been recommended by Ralph and the director of the university. I fell into conversation with the owner of the bookshop who recommended one title. He thought it was totally appropriate to my endevour to live the principles of improvisation I had been exploring. He doubted I would find a copy though, as it was long out of print, and not well known.

The title was “Confessions of a Supertramp by W.H. Davies”, published in 1908 describing six years intermittently working, and begging across America and Canada by a poetic soul yearning for peace and struggling for self-expression. He was from Pill Newport, South Wales.

I had that very title in my backpack! My lovely writing friend had bought me a copy in a booksale in a one horse town back in New Zealand! It was right next to the biography of Margaret Meads I had bought for her.