Somewhere during our Abel Tasman trip, though, things went back to normal. At least it seemed that way. That’s when the dream got nightmarish again. If anything, they seemed closer, more affectionate.
By day I was sharing a double kayak with Amber and slowly paddling through pale turquoise waters occasionally peppered with dolphins and, yes, little blue penguins. The sun was hot and heavy and we were navigating ourselves through the shallow coves of what looked like a tropical paradise.
By night, we were hauling our kayaks up onto soft, golden sand beaches and camping out between the sea and the forest. Gemma and Nick had picked up an extra tent in the eclectic city of Nelson, a place I wouldn’t have minded spending a few days in, which meant I had to share with Amber.
At first this wasn’t a problem. But by the third night, Nick and Gemma were back to their horrifically loud fucking, and Amber started to get ideas of her own.
Naturally, being a hot-blooded male, I didn’t quite have the energy to fend her off. Not that she was doing anything more than snuggling against me as we fell asleep, but I started to fear that if she did start getting horny, I would be powerless to stop her. Powerless, as in, I was getting pretty fucking horny, too, but not for the reasons she’d want.
After our tramping and kayaking trip was over, we gladly piled back into Mr. Orange, filling him with sand and the smell of salt water. We made our way to a place called Nelson Lakes for a few nights, a place of sublime alpine scenery and a lake so still you’d swear it was holding its breath. It reminded me of back home a lot, particularly the area around Lake Okanagan, and for the first time I felt a twinge of homesickness. I sketched and painted my way out of it.
Next we hit the Wild West Coast, which was this prehistoric mashup of ferns and native palm trees and rivers flowing down lush green mountains, and walked along dark beaches strewn with driftwood, beaten by the raging azure sea, a blue so brilliant it hurt my eyes. There’s not much to do there but take in the sights, so we looked at strange rock formations called the “pancake rocks,” ate something called whitebait (it tastes better than it sounds), and watched as a dumpy weka bird waddled up to Amber and stole her sandwich.
The highlight, though, was yesterday when we went glacier hiking. I had to put up with all the snarky questions, like, “But you’re from Canada, don’t you have to glacier-hike to get to work?” to which I said it rarely snows where I live. (Hello, don’t you remember the Vancouver Olympics when we had to truck in snow for our mountains?) But aside from that, it was a fucking trip.
We had to get up at the ass-crack of dawn and make our way to the glacial center in the middle of the small but touristy village of Franz Josef. Nick really wanted to do the helicopter tour version but none of us could really spare the expense, so he went off and did that on his own while we did the cheaper version. I could tell Gemma was pretty pissed off about that.
The tour was pretty straightforward. Walk for what seemed like forever across the alluvial plain, crisscrossed with streams of melting glacial water (hey, geography was my best subject in high school after art), the imposing face of Franz Josef glacier slowly getting closer and closer. On either side, waterfalls spilled down in thin ribbons from forested cliffs and the clouds clung to the edges, obscuring the peaks in mist.
Finally we were up close to the giant wall of blue and gray ice towering above us, and the only way through was up. You have to climb up steps your guide carves out of the snow, everyone in single file, with only metal-spiked hiking poles for stability.
I brought up the rear of the group, with Gemma in front of me, and I had this incredible view of everyone walking along the ice like a row of ants. We walked across planks over aqua-tinged crevices that seemed to cut straight into the earth, made our way through caves and holes cut right through the ice, and moved up and down passageways that were so high on either side that the glacier was the only thing we could see. It was pretty unbelievable, and at one point I had to stop and take it all in with my eyes. I knew my photos wouldn’t even do it justice.
“What are you doing?” Gemma asked. I guess I did look strange, standing there, pole in hand, staring wildly at everything around me. In the distance the group was getting farther and farther away, heading back down the glacier now.
“I’m trying to remember this,” I told her. “I’m afraid my photos will lie and I’ll forget.”
I could feel her eyes searching mine for a moment and I turned to take her in. She looked so fresh, so beautiful, her eyes and hair so dark against all the white, the tan of her skin glowing. There was something else, too, something in her expression that made me want to stare at her longer. What was it? Longing? Yearning?