Kaikoura musings

Hello!

We have successfully navigated our way down the east coast of New Zealand and have arrived in Kaikoura, a beautiful beachside town about halfway down the south island. I can't help but imagine how much more beautiful this place is in the summertime - its cold (about 50) and rainy today and the sea is still strikingly aqua in color and stunning to gaze at from inside our nicely heated backpackers' residence.

Kaikoura is typically known for its seal colonies and whale watching tours. For awhile this morning there was a seal perched on a rock not too far from the front window of the kitchen. As Trevor bundled up in preparation to go capture this cute pup on film, he promptly swam away (the seal, not Trevor). Perhaps he had a lunch date.

In addition to seals and whales, there are large numbers of dusky dolphins and a variety of birds here as well. Though Kaikoura is, in numbers, so much smaller than Seoul or any other place I've lived in, I can't help but feel that it is so much more alive. I can't explain it, but there is a harmony here that resonates into a soft, peaceful atmosphere. I'm reading The Four Loves by C.S. Lewis, and at one point he says:

If you take nature as a teacher she will teach you exactly the lessons you had already decided to learn; this is only another way of saying that nature does not teach. The tendency to take her as a teacher is obviously very easily grafted on to the experience we call ‘love of nature’. But it is only a graft. While we are actually subjected to them, the ‘moods’ and ‘spirits’ of nature point no morals. Overwhelming gaiety, insupportable grandeur, somber desolation are flung at you. Make what you can of them, if you must make at all. The only imperative that nature utters is, “Look. Listen. Attend.”

There is comfort existing in a place that says to you, "I am bigger than you. I have existed longer than you. And I will continue to exist even after you have gone."