I think that something is changing.
Those internal shifts that occur are sometimes barely perceptible, easy to miss. Then one day you turn around and nothing looks quite the same as it used to.
My last entry on my last website was all about the online world that I’ve inhabited. Irony rules it seems, because this one appears to be all about how It’s time for me to eschew the extensive communication I’ve engaged in online in favour of something a lot more simple and real. Living my life in my beautiful town. A town that embraces me; mind, body and heart. My Wanaka town and its people.
I’m going to write more too. Record more that happens out there an allow that to tell the story of what’s happening inside. Let the stories tell themselves. Like this one:
At school we have a new team, they’re a group of six wonderful 16 year olds who have taken on the enormous challenge of becoming the school’s first multisport team and I, with a couple of my intrepid colleagues, have taken it upon ourselves to coach and manage the group. This is what I’m talking about when I talk about loving teaching.
On Saturday they entered their first event. The Mountain to Mountain race that takes the individuals and teams from the top of Treble Cone to the top of Snow Farm, taking a downhill MTB, kayaking the Matukituki, running the scrub between West Wanaka and Glendhu Bay, road cycling from there, up the Cardrona River Valley, to the base of the Snow Farm road, only then to bike up this access road – 14 km, 1000 vertical metres in itself. Wonderful.
The moment that will always be with me (apart from the general sense of pride that I have in these beings that I get to share some time with) has to be the transition where Harriet and Roland not only had to exchange the race bib, but of course also the iPod. Inevitably, they got tangled, the iPod needed to be restarted, the playlist selected… all the while the spectators were cheering and the other competitors were speeding by with their rehearsed 23 second transitions.
I loved it. That moment said everything.