Holiday reflections

Standing in the current of the main channel of the Rangitata braided river.

The river bed is very wide with many channels we waded through. In floods this area would be covered. I wondered what stories that old drift wood could share? Where did it originally grow? How many floods brought it here?

Just “being”

We have been on holiday away from home for nearly two weeks. A lot of the time has been doing nothing or whatever takes our fancy in our isolated rented holiday house. We  did things like; sitting and watching a DVD or two - wandered down the river picking up interesting looking pebbles - had a morning cup of tea in bed and stayed in bed reading or snoozing - drove up the road looking at farms and scenery, stopped and had a picnic cup of tea -  just blobbed out reading. On our second to last day we decided to get active. We needed to go out to civilisation to buy bread so we thought we’d go to Peel Forest, where there is a little shop/café/bar and include a walk in the bush. While driving there (33k) we got talking about a second hand shop our sister-in-law had mentioned in Mayfield, (20k further on) so we decided to go there first. We had a leisurely lunch in a café there and then spent nearly an hour wandering this old cluttered second hand/antiques store… it was like a museum. (We made a total of $8 worth of purchases … big spenders we are!) That prompted a memory that we had seen a sign to a vintage car/tractor machinery museum in Geraldine, so off we went there.  We enjoyed another couple of hours lazily exploring another antique shop/museum and the car museum.  They had “vintage” plumber’s tools displayed… I still have the same ones in my workshop! We had owned the same make and model of a couple of the cars displayed. An old Fordson tractor on display was the same model that was the very first vehicle I ever drove. We stopped by a café for a lazy cup of tea, joking with the waitress then dawdled our way home. It was not the exercise we had planned for the day, but that’s the nature of our holiday. We did whatever took our fancy. At the holiday house the lawns and garden were not our responsibility.  I did decide to pull a faulty door handle to bits and fix it. It was annoying me, but no other “work” was done.

It is a strange feeling going from a lifestyle where there does not seem enough hours in the day to doing “whatever whenever”. In some ways at first it is frustrating.  There is no outlet for creativity. Who am I if I do nothing? But I got used to it. I read, reflected and refreshed those deep motivations that drive my life and make me who I am. It has been an experience of renewing and refreshing my “centre”. It is good doing nothing, so often we fill even holidays with things to do, destinations, people-to-see and deadlines.

Health changes.

It is interesting, there are changes to the way my body operates when on holiday. I have slept like a log. (During the year I have long periods of wakefulness in the middle of the night) Often too I have dropped to sleep while reading after lunch. It is like I was making up for a year of insufficient sleep. In recent months I have had trouble with sensitive teeth. Hot drinks annoy and ice cream makes me scream. I recognise that this happens for me when I am stressed. On holiday it does not happen. There are other symptoms that I will not divulge which have disappeared while on holiday. I am glad that there are plans to lessen my workload this year. I think it will be better for me.

Unplugged

The other adaptation I had to make on holiday is that I was not “connected”. There was no cell phone coverage away up Rangitata Gorge where we were. A toll bar on the phone allowed family to phone us if there was an emergency, but we could not phone out. Of course there was no Internet connection, even though I had my laptop. I found this so difficult to start with. At home I so often give up on the mindless TV programs and go watch a TED talk, check out the latest news and views on the net, do a blog post and check out other’s blogs and of course there’s Facebook. I read commentaries and theological stuff on line. I have some friends I chat with on Facebook. I have some overseas contacts I Skype with. But on holiday I could do none of this. I could not even text. It was so hard to get used to at first. Then I remembered that it is not long ago we did not have such connectivity! I survived without it! I recognised a sort of addiction to the World Wide Web. It has been an interesting experience going cold turkey.

An old bridge on the way up the Rangitata River Gorge. Old people can still be exploring "new territories." 

Old implements at Mesopotamia Station. 

Written off as too old?
In the car museum there was an old 1940’s Morris Eight. Somebody had written up the story of the vehicle as if the car was telling the story. It was well done. The car “told” how once she could keep up with the traffic, but then discovered modern cars found she was nuisance on the road and sped past her. She “told” how for a time she had been retired to a farm shed but was now happy to sit in this museum where she could see people coming and going. It was a cute story. We drove up to the big sheep/cattle station at the end of the road called Mesopotamia. There and at other farms along they way you could see “retired” farm implements and vehicles left in the paddock or parked up in farm sheds. I got to thinking, “Is that me?” Am I an old man irrelevant, unsuited to this modern world? Am I an old “Morris Eight” unsuited to today’s roads? Sometimes the way younger people treat me I get to feel like I am a rusting old implement past my “use-by” date. I am often guilty of such thoughts when I talk to older retired ministers or people. They express views and thoughts and I’ll listen, but think, “That’s not the way the world is now! Those issues are old issues.” Maybe I am treating them like rusting old implements just as younger people treat me? The funny thing is that I feel I am still growing and really beginning to get a truer handle on life, faith and humanity. I think, read and reflect and get excited about the directions my mind is heading, discoveries I make and the connections happening in my world view. I am still dreaming of new possibilities for a different shape of “church”, community and world. Outside I am greying and shrinking in my physical abilities, but inside I am still blossoming. Sometimes too I look at younger people, young adults and people in their forties, and rather than envy their youth, I feel sad for them. The priorities they have, the things they get excited about, the ways they think often seem irrelevant and a waste of life when looked at from this later stage in life.  I am reminded of this when people my age and older are forced to “down size”.  We work and slave to gather “things” about us. We feel we are achieving, but very quickly these precious “things” become a nuisance and we can’t even give them away. From this perspective we wonder why we bothered in the first place? I sometimes look at lifestyles and think, "You are sure you are on the right track, and you appear to be enjoying the moment. You would not want advice from an old man, but I have seen the consequences, in health, in relationships and in inner well being down the track." I feel sad because of the paths and priorities often chosen. I often look at younger people and think, “You think you are so vital and you look down on me and count me out, but from my perspective, you’re investing your precious life in things and causes that ultimately don’t matter”.  Anyway, I digress, all that to say I don’t feel ready to be an implement parked up! Wisdom, proportion and perspective can happen as we age, and the younger generations miss out on so much by writing us older people off as if we know nothing. We older folks can be still dreaming, growing and adventuring.