Ease and Freedom and Secret Hatred

The ease creeps up on you, the intoxicating air steals words from your lips.
Two days of filling a wooden cart with ice and drifts of beer bottles, of crackling outdoor fires and roasting vegetables and meat in wood ovens, getting shiny fingertips from grease and the sparkling night sky.
The Antarcticans are awed by the presence of night and the number of stars, but I am too. I can't remember the last time I saw so many, sprays of them, shards, multitudes. The San Francisco sky of milky purple citylight and fog has been all I've seen for quite a while. Everyone points out the Southern Cross, and wonders at the patch of sky below it in the Milky Way, which is eerily devoid of lights, a velvety black empty place in the firmament. To Mykle and I, it brings Madeline L'Engle to mind, and the Echthroi. We finish each other's thoughts and sentences. Snadwich remarks with glee on our particular descriptions of things, that come from growing up in the same town, and being such good friends for so many years.
Antarcticans keep stopping me and telling me 'I never saw Mykle smile ONCE on the ice, and now you're here and he looks so happy! I can tell what he was missing!'
Sandwich, who was a close friend of his down there, refutes this, but it is still nice to hear. Being surrounded by so many ice people is great but also frusterating. My secret pissed-off center that sometimes wants to scream "FUCK ANTARCTICA!" is much repressed. I've only been asked if I am going to be "on the ice next year" about 700 times. Right now I should be sending out my resume. Damn it.

We were ensconced for two days in a bucolic paradise; an organic farm/Bed &Breakfast/handmade hippie place, where there was a two day party. We all camped all over the place among the laden fruit trees, and ate fresh berries with whip cream and handmade pizza with mussels. They have the most wonderful invention here: alcoholic ginger beer, which is pretty much my favorite thing. I have been eating and eating an moving my theory that love makes you fat. I have made a point of remembering every name of every ice-person I have met. I am doing very well. Hooray!

Yesterday we climbed a mountain. We were above planes. The forest itself was very rocky, with bumps of moss and gnarled roots and very short and twisted trees. (Very LOTR, my dear brother) Above the tree line it was all vistas of majesty and rolling saddles between mountains in green and red and gold.

Today we are free for the second time since I've been here (no people with us, though that was awesome in itself), and it is very exciting with just the two of us, and the whole island spread out before us. Of course we have only vague ideas of what the hell we should do with our freedom from travelling companions and party-hopping. We will soon attempt the Abel Tasman track (look it up). We are thinking a three day trip, and have decided to bring only food and camping supplies. We never change our clothes. You just dive in the ocean and get wet and then let the wind dry you.
Happy Spring everyone. Write me or comment me! How is the weather in Santa Cruz/San Francisco? I have forgotten how to type.