It’s April 17, ninety-five days into this sabbatical, or as Melissa insists we now call it, a “retreat.” She doesn’t want people to think we are on one long vacation, goofing off, doing nothing productive.  Sometimes Melissa finds it difficult to believe she deserves a vacation for as long as she wants.  She also finds it difficult to believe that I do some of my most productive work when I’m goofing off.  I’ve been goofing off for almost ten years now.  You be the judge.

We’ve planted (and that is the best word for it) ourselves in a one-bedroom cabin smack in the middle of the Otway National Forest perched between a long graceful arc of the Great Ocean Road and Antarctica.  Okay, so Antarctica is probably something like 5,000 miles across the ocean, but still, we are, by any definition, squatting at the edge of civilization. As our young innkeeper warned us when we checked in around sunset, “At night you can’t see a thing.  No, seriously, I mean you can’t see anything.”

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Melbourne may be less than three hours away, but once we wound our way off the highway into the beautiful forest of huge Mountain Ash (second tallest tree in the world) with sunlight splattering through the branches like giant drops of rain, and turned off of the tiny paved road onto a rugged wagon track winding through tall grass and thick bush before stopping at a cabin that looked as if the forest would reclaim in within the hour, all I could imagine was a scene from The Thorn Birds when the family arrives in a rundown wooden home miles from the nearest living human.  Well, Lis, we wanted a retreat. 

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We had the essentials: coffee, milk, OJ, stuff for a pasta dinner.  I did not have to set up a tent or boil our water, although our young inn keeper, in response to Melissa’s comment that the water in the cabin had a metallic taste, said, “Ya, you probably shouldn’t drink the water.  It won’t kill you, though.”  We have a cistern of sorts in the kitchen that we fill with tap water to filter it.  It would have been nice if someone had posted a sign letting us know that. 

To be fair (and honest), I love it.  The cabin is not fancy, but it is not rundown.  More importantly, I am alone with my beautiful wife in the middle of nowhere without Internet, without neighbors, without the need to wear clothes. Okay, I won’t go any further than that. Although, the romance was dimmed a bit when Melissa discovered the water pressure in the shower was somewhere between a steady leak and a trickle.  Not to mention the hot water was either scalding hot (but only for about thirty seconds) or underground spring cold.  She was a good sport about it, especially after a candlelight dinner, windows open, big gusts of wind sweeping across the bush.

Our night in the cabin feels like all of Australia, a rugged elegance, a beauty that demands caution more than an embrace.  Huge crescent beaches with rocky headlands, sheer massive cliffs and water ten different shades of blue all but dare you to plunge into the surf, but you better be a damn good swimmer if you hope to get out again.  The Great Ocean Walk winds in and out of the shade with peak-a-boo views of the ocean and coastline.  The trail is open and easy to walk, but watch out for the poisonous snakes, and after an hour, you will be desperate for even the smallest patch of shade.  On one of our walks in the Blue Mountains about a week ago, Melissa, a few steps behind me on the trail, said, apropos of nothing in that moment but relevant to everything we have experienced, “Australia: it can kill you.” 

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I do a lot of reflecting when I am in a place like this, remote, cut off, wild.  It’s not because I am some deep, introspective poet-philosopher. Think about it.  It’s dark by 7:00.  I don’t dare step outside, at least not too far.  I’ve been hiking most of the day anyway.  I can only read for so long.  (Melissa has a much better reading attention span than me).  What else is there?  Okay, there is dinner and romance, but that gets you to, say, 8:30. I end up reflecting on the things I thought about during the day.

I noticed I have been thinking about death.  Maybe it’s Australia, but I think it has more to do with The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, a book I was reading before leaving on sabbatical.  One of the reasons Sogyal Rinpoche wrote the book was to help westerners prepare themselves to face death.  I analogized his book to preparing to run a marathon.  You don’t simply show up at the start line on the day of the race. You have to train.  More importantly, however, (in fact, this is his main point) preparing to face death allows you to live more fully now.  

When I get to that point on a hike where the initial wonder of the sights along the trail has worn thin and the sun has grown hot and my feet are starting to complain, along with my knees – my knees are particularly loud complainers these days – I let my mind drift into a daydream of sorts in which I imagine I am walking the trail with people I love, showing them all this beauty as if I were their guide.  It produces a feeling not unlike the feeling of sharing really great news with a close friend.  If nothing else, it drowns out my whiny knees and feet.

More often than not, I find myself walking the trail with my parents and surrogate parents, those people who make up the thinning ceiling in my house. Imagining I am on the trail with my mom, Jack, Carol, Margaret, Fr. Paul, it is not a big brain-leap to the realization that soon I will be the ceiling in my house.  Yet, it is hard to prepare for a day in which I cannot call Jack for advice, or plan Carol’s Christmas trip to Seattle, or hear my mom say for the umpteenth time, “I love you, and God loves you.” 

In the inevitable sadness of that thought, I find myself suddenly talking to my dad who died many years ago.  I remember the time he and mom picked me up from Georgetown, driving the twelve hours in our station wagon before turning around and driving home.  Dad insisted we stop at the Outer Banks simply because he had never seen it before.  We spent one night.  Dad and I walked across the street from our roadside motel and stood on the vast expanse of beach.  

As Melissa and I crest a headland and reach a lookout, I see another crescent beach.  This one more golden than white, wilder, bigger waves and dangerous rip tides.  I hear myself saying, “So, how about this Dad?  Never seen this before.” 

The strange thing is, I was mad at my dad when he died and for very good reasons.  I stayed mad for several years, wanting to forgive and forget, but unable to find the right combination of thoughts and emotions to get me to that place.  Somewhere on one of these trails, I met my father again.

I was incorrect.  I did not need to forgive and forget.  I needed to forgive and remember.  I needed to talk to him again, to call him and tell him about everything I was experiencing.  I am not so young and naïve as to believe he hears me, and I am not so old and cynical as to think he doesn’t.  I am content to feel his presence, to hold a memory of him that is real and true and good and allows me to live more fully now.

As I said, talking about death makes us squirm.  Yet, how else could I convey to my parents and surrogate parents not only how much I love them, but how much I like having them around, even if it is only in my head?

As they say in Central America, si quiero Dios, if God wishes it, I will wander lost in a daydream with squeaky knees on many more hikes talking to people – living and dead – that I love.  And maybe, when the time comes, I’ll be ready when my trail finally gives out.  At least my knees will have nothing left to complain about.