The Souls of My Shoes

"Clothes mean nothing until someone lives in them." —Marc Jacobs  

It started out as a search for our hiking first aid kit, but ended as an epic closet clean out. I’m a Virgo; I can’t help it. I’m hard-wired to sort, categorize, and arrange. We have more containers to put things in than we own things to put in them. I have banned myself from The Container Store, for I cannot resist the siren song of baskets, bins, and boxes.

Stuff, however, I can mostly do without. I’m not terribly sentimental about things; I’ve moved too many times to become attached to more than a handful of keepsakes. My collections are contained in pretty jars (shells and stones from around the world), or on bookshelves (Austen and Dickens in those beautiful Penguin Classics Hardcover editions), in my iPod (hundreds of albums), or bound in archival albums (travels and life moments captured on film).

But every so often I let something go and mourn a little at its passing. Perhaps for the object itself. Perhaps for what it represents and the memories it holds.

Pulling this pair of shoes from its cubby, I admitted their time had come. The soles are disintegrating, the soft and supple leather has been worn irreparably thin at the toes, and on the sides where I pronate. I love these shoes. Comfortable beyond all reckoning, they have traversed Seattle, Christchurch, Paris, and Dublin in recent years, but mostly, they’ve just been my go-to shoes, the footwear equivalent of your favorite pair of lived-in blue jeans.

These shoes appeared in my life in early 2007, on a day very much like today—a warm splash of gold at summer's end—in Christchurch, New Zealand. Which means it was February, not September, in that topsy-turvy shift of hemispheres. I recall telling Brendan, "I never want to work at another job where I have to “dress up.”" We were several months into our new lives in the Land of the Long White Cloud. I’d just finished culinary school and we’d bought a house in a village on the Pacific Coast, leaving Christchurch to make our way in the vineyards and olive orchards of the South Island's pastoral idyll. I’d found an office job, but it was all-casual, all-the-time. At a slaughterhouse, actually. But that’s a story for another time.

But never did I dare dream, when I made that declaration in a tony shoe boutique on a summer’s day in Christchurch, that I would find myself slicing away at my wardrobe, discarding piece by piece all those blouses and skirts, dress pants, and heels worn by the white-collar professional I had been, for a writer’s uniform. I don’t know what you all wear to the page each morning, but my current wardrobe, workout gear notwithstanding, could fit on the end of a pencil. Once the weather is such that I must remain indoors to write, I grudgingly don denims and comfy shoes before heading to a café. These shoes, specifically.

I have other shoes. Sure, I do. But I don’t have other shoes that represent a decision, a moment in time, a dream. A heartbreak. For never did I imagine that in less than a year after buying these shoes, we’d be back in the United States, looking for work, that our hearts would be broken, if not our spirits. Turns out, I did end up in one more job that called for the occasional pretty-girl tights and mascara, but I loved that job, and sigh. Yes. I do love the occasional dress-up.

These shoes walked, worked, wandered. I’ll never have another pair like them, for I will never be in that place again. It's the road I've already travelled, the road behind me.

Here is another pair of shoes from New Zealand, which I found in a tiny boutique in central Christchurch that no longer exists. The building collapsed in a heap of stone and brick and beams and dust in the February 2011 earthquake. These are my dressiest shoes and I reckon they’ll be around a while. But I don’t have a thing to wear with them.

The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton

The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The Wild, Wild West, a frontier filled with dreamers, convicts, schemers and entrepreneurs. Some hope to make that lucky strike, others attach themselves like parasites to stars on the rise and the canniest let the eager do the dirty work while they provide the booze, drugs and women for which all men—regardless of their luck—will lay down cash money. This is the Gold Rush, the West Coast, the late 1860’s—but we’re not in California, Toto. This is the South Island of New Zealand, circa 1866, in the wet, green folds of the Southern Alps where they tumble into the Tasman Sea.

Eleanor Catton’s The Luminaries is also the frontier of storytelling—a no-holds-barred, raucous flight of imagination that I devoured with Epicurean pleasure. Jumping into its alphabet-soup cast of characters with chewy names like Emery Staines (an angelic young man, popular, rich and missing), Cowell Devlin (a man of God), George Shepard (whose flocks live in the town jail) and Anna Wetherell (a prostitute~ingenue who weathers all kinds of storms) is like tumbling in a dryer with towels and tennis shoes. You never know when you’ll get smacked upside the head with a plot twist.

This is a Gold Rush-era version of The Usual Suspects: Everyone’s got a story and no one is telling the truth. In this case, a hermitic prospector is dead, the town’s richest man is missing, a prostitute is senseless and wearing a dress lined with gold, a politician is being blackmailed, a body rises from its makeshift coffin in a doomed ship’s cargo hold and a beautiful redhead has just sashayed into town, claiming to be a widow and seeking what remains of her husband’s estate. Spinning all around this stage are twelve Luminaries: a constellation of men whose points of view we dip into throughout the novel, trying to unravel a mystery that is woven more tightly with each page.

Much has been made of Catton’s clever structure: The Luminaries is a set piece held aloft by an astrological chart that divides each part into smaller and smaller sections (Part One is 358 pages long; Part Twelve, two), according to celestial logic. But don’t be deterred by this ornamentation. I didn’t pay a whit of attention to the charts that precede each section—I couldn’t be distracted from carrying on with the story. Yet, there is something to be said for Catton’s conceit. The novel begins with a crowded, opulent jumble of characters and detail, like a sky full of dazzling stars. As its 832 pages turn, black space is allowed in, the focus narrows and individual details begin to sharpen.

The tale is told first from outside-in, then inside-out, from high to low, back-to-front, by the dead and the living, in court, in bed and in confession. Mystery is added to adventure and star-crossed love eventually conquers all.

I can’t remember when I’ve taken such delight in reading, when I felt the author’s sheer joy in writing. I've seen a handful of gripes that Catton’s story and style lack warmth and her characters are shallow. I dunno. I didn’t get a sense that she intended to write epic historical fiction in which the characters’ characters rise and fall and rise again and we feel morally lifted from the lessons learned. Sometimes it’s perfectly all right for the reading experience to be sheer pleasure. When it’s not only pleasurable, but intellectually stimulating, laugh-out-loud surprising and historically illuminating, you’ve got a five-star read.

Eleanor Catton has crafted a rollicking, unexpected and deeply satisfying carnival ride that ends all too soon. I doff my top hat and bow. Brava.

View all my reviews

Wherein I rail against cheap wine and contemplate unemployment.

For many years, the résumé folder on my hard drive remained unopened. A small lifetime of sorts passed by, rendering those dozens of NAFSA: Association of International Educator conference presentations meaningless and nullifying my skills in various software programs (PeopleSoft? Access database? Anyone? Bueller?). I let the bones of my career as a study abroad program administrator calcify. Once I turned my back on the Ivory Tower for the green shores of Aotearoa, I never looked back on that decade-plus of world travel and helicopter parents (would I have turned to salt had I tossed one last glance over my shoulder?). Then it was off to the world of wine, first in vineyards, then in store aisles and finally in a cramped office in Seattle’s University District, sipping and spitting dozens of samples a week. A terrific gig, really - leading people to phenomenal wine is awesomesauce.

Inserting impassioned parenthetical:

Working in vineyards in foreign lands sounds very glamorous, but the months spent pruning and training vines wrecked my hands and wrists: for several months I couldn’t hold a coffee cup, I had to sleep on my back because of the pain, my liver suffered from the massive doses of NSAIDs. It was bliss. Best job I ever cried in pain over.

So when I see people who would bite off their right pinky toe before tossing Kraft Cheese Singles on their grilled sammie throw good money after cheap wine, it breaks my heart.

Ever ask yourself how a labor-intensive, high-overhead agricultural product made from raw ingredients subject to the vagaries of weather and disease can be produced so cheaply? Because the "winery" used crap juice. Best case scenario the juice was rejected by producers who don't want their names associated with poor quality, so they bulk it off. Worst case, your $5 steal was produced not by people, but by machines, factory-style. It’s made from fruit laden with herbicides and pesticides grown on a massive farm with little regard to land stewardship, and the wine was manipulated to taste exactly the same every time, vintage in-vintage out (if it even boasts a vintage). You paid for a bottle or a box, a cutesy label, overhead, maybe even an ad campaign. You did not pay for wine anyone gave a shit about, except to rip an easy buck from your wallet.

You can do better. You should do better. You don't have to spend a lot for quality vino. Ask me for a $10-12 wine recommendation. I'm thrilled to oblige. Because I love wine. I love the process. I love the people who grow the fruit and craft the wine with passion and integrity. Because I will never forget the shooting pain in my hands as they closed around a pair of pruning shears or wrapped a cane around a wire. Those tortured hands were producing something of beauty.

Alas, a manifesto for another time.

I find myself opening that résumé folder not once this spring, but twice. I may be in for a record number of W-2s to track down next year. So far, the count is three (Wait, you say, I missed one! Yeah, well, you blinked). Pretty sure I’m guaranteed a fourth.

Unless.

Here’s where I admit I am strangely relieved that the non-profit for which I have been Business Manager since April is about to go belly up. The Board of Directors recently passed a unanimous vote to close it down over the summer (ahem, not my doing, folks – this is a disaster eight years in the making. I’ve just been paying the bills for six weeks. In theory. Well, not the bills - there are plenty of those. How to pay them, and myself, is another matter entirely).

How can I be relieved the spectre of unemployment and over-paying for inadequate private health insurance is now a real-life ogre? Because it has forced me face what I’ve been pushing off for yet another “Someday.” It’s giving me an out.

I’ve known since those anxiety attacks of mid-April, which I wrote about here, that my head was trying desperately to tell me something. The message finally found a way through my heart, with those terrifying moments of choking panic (which have ceased, tap wood). And this is, in part, what I believe the message to be:

...  ... ...

This is the hard part. The part where I stare out the window for long moments, check my iPhone for possible life-changing Facebook updates, rearrange the coffee shop punch cards in my wallet. Because it’s so difficult to come out and just say it. Here's a practice run:

I think I should let this job run its course, not look for another one for (an undecided period of time) and write. Finish my novel? Maybe. At least get it to the point where it's ready to be turned loose on beta readers, which means a couple more rewrites. Pour out some of those short stories clamoring for attention. Pull together a book proposal - a several-week endeavor. Submit said book proposal to those agents and publishing companies I have yet to research. Attend at least one week of the Centrum Writers' Conference in July (located conveniently one mile from my house).

And heal. Heal after a year of loss and anger. Run and bike, walk on the beach, cook healthful meals, open my home to friends, read Thomas Hardy, find a park bench overlooking the bay and sit. Sit still. Work on being present, not six months or six years or twenty-six years in the past or similar time spans in the future. Be amazed to have a partner who needs no explanation, who asks “What are you waiting for?” Have faith that even without my income and with the added burden of said stupid health insurance policy, we’ll make it.

Step off the ride, leave the carnival. Do Not Pass Go and definitely do not collect $200.00.

There. I’ve gone and said it. I might just do this thing. This “What do you do, Julie?” “Who, me? Like, what do I do for work? I’m a writer.”

Right. Well. I just submitted a résumé to an art gallery in town, in response to a Help Wanted in the weekly paper. My résumé’s pretty cool, actually. I mean, how many people do you know who have a Masters degree in International Affairs and can boast a stint at a slaughterhouse in New Zealand? What’s that? You say you want to see this résumé? What, you hiring?

Then again, I promised my husband if I ever sell this book, I’d buy him a vineyard in the south of France. Because next to growing stories, growing grapes is the best job there is.

I guess my feet know where they want me to go

Spring entered as she should: with hair tangled and knotted, streaming in the wind. She shivered as the sea air pierced the holes in her ratty sweater, but her bare toes burrowed in the sand, the only surface which absorbed the sun's fragile warmth. Tossed between two seasons, one wan and weary of red fingers and runny noses, the other brazen and heady with the scent of lilacs and sweat, Spring arrived to claim her equinox.

And so have I arrived on the other side of winter. It began in a stew of anger and bewilderment, passed into determination and defiance, ending at last in hope.

Had you told me at Winter's Solstice that the turning of the seasons would find us not just in a new home several zip codes distant, starting new jobs—hell, completely new lives—I would not have thought it impossible, but not likely. Had you told me what we would have gone through to get here, I would have slammed the door in your face. Absent a door, I probably would have asked you to get me silly drunk.  

But we did what we seem to do best: we took the pieces that remained and we rebuilt. I hope we did it with dignity. I hope what we left will make it easier for someone else to stand up and say "No." Or whatever form of "You will not fuck with me" one is comfortable with issuing (see above comment about dignity). I hope the truth we shared will be set free.

But that is in the past. It belongs to Winter. This moment, in its blossoming present, belongs to Spring.

I find myself in this town which seems to capture all the precious places that have shaped my character and spoken to my heart. It is the pastoral peace of my childhood, in the gentle climes of Oregon's Willamette Valley and the mountain-to-coast splendor of the Olympic Peninsula, (where I am once again, a short drive from the home of my formative years). It is the feisty mix of town and gown of central Washington, where hyper-educated ivory tower types knock elbows at the bar with old timers who have more sense than money. It is the casual warmth of New Zealand, the muddy cheerfulness of Ireland, the pride and passion for place and history of France. It is a place of such profound beauty that my heart skips with joy each time I wander out the door.

I cannot make sense of what happened this Winter. I can neither believe the cliché "It was meant to be,” nor in a cosmic manipulation of circumstances that made this end - this beginning - inevitable. I do believe that we took back control of our lives, at least as much as the universe allowed. Without knowing the outcome, we set out the intention to move forward with hearts open to possibilities.

And now I have what I have so long wished for: a room of my own and a part-time job that will allow me the hours and energy to write, in a community steeped in creativity. Water and forest surround this peninsula in the rainshadow of the Olympics. It reaches for Canada while turning its pert backside to the Big Smoke smothered by rain.

And I’m terrified. Terrified by paychecks gone “Poof!” in the breeze, terrified by the budget that marches in columns more red than black. Terrified by the cursor that blinks black on a white, white, empty, empty screen. If we’re talking clichés, how about “Be careful what you wish for”?

But I can’t squelch the hope and joy which blooms inside, anymore than I can halt Spring. And who would ever wish to?

My writing routine has been torn asunder by the move, the transition, the emotional strain of our bittersweet farewell to Seattle, the risk we took by not leaving quietly, the physical wrenching of two people in their mid-40's tackling the same moves they made with disquieting regularity in their mid-20's.

The routines are the first thing to go in a move. The challenge is to embrace the new while clinging to those most dear. I have more time to write but a more wily work schedule; I must be ready to crack my knuckles and call upon my muses at odd hours and in unlikely places. But my morning pages are immutable: the last routine to go in the final throes of moving, the first to return.

The story hasn't stalled completely; I have worked on scenes here and there these past weeks (those morning sessions). I am so close to the end of this first draft that I am tempted to begin a rewrite to fill in the missing parts and call it Draft 2. But I've latched onto a magical final word count for Draft 1 and for the moment, until I get back into the groove, I work toward that end before I allowing myself to edit. But I have written the ending. Now I write just below that ending, trusting I will know when it is time to stop. And to begin, again.

Not All Who Wander Are Lost*

“Travel is more than the seeing of sights; it is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living.” – Miriam Beard

There was never a question that the celebration of our 20th wedding anniversary would involve passports. It was just a matter of where. I recall having plans to celebrate our 15th in Greece, but we found ourselves living in New Zealand that year, so we traded in visions of the cobalt Mediterranean for the reality of the cerulean Pacific. Not a bad deal. Greece is back on the table for our 25th. Italy sat at the tippy-top of the list for a long while. I've travelled it knee to toe; Brendan and I have been to the Veneto and Trentino together. But there is so much we want to do in Italy, we couldn't decide where to start. Italy got reshuffled back into the deck.

Southeast Asia was mentioned. Enchanted by Cambodia and Vietnam during his stay in 2005 as a Fulbright Teacher-Scholar, Brendan can't wait to return with me and I can't wait to go. But it requires more preparation and planning than we have energy for right now. Then there's that walking and whisky tour of Scotland we've mapped out, with a long weekend in Iceland on the way over. Maritime Canada. Mongolia. I've been after South Africa for some time now and I've just about got Brendan convinced, but not in time for this year.

At some point in early spring we realized we were over-thinking the whole program. If you know us, you know we'd pick up sticks tomorrow and move (back) to France. France forms the foundation of our dreams. It is where we both entered adulthood, Brendan working at a family-run vineyard and Cognac distillery the year after he graduated the University of Oregon, I studying at the University of Savoie. It is the reason we met, a shared struggle over Proust in Advanced French Literature. Brendan was completing his teaching certificate at the same university where I was finishing a double major after a year studying in Chambèry and a summer teaching in Japan. We've returned to France several times over the years, mostly together, on occasion alone.

When we moved to Seattle from New Zealand, we did not resume our former careers as a high school teacher (Brendan) and study abroad program manager (me). This meant no more summers off for Brendan and the drying up of my frequent flyer mileage account. We determined that for the next few years, given the demands of our jobs that zap time and energy for complicated journeys, we'd limit our travel to the one place we know we love, where every visit solidifies our desire to make a life there, someday: France. It is travel with a strategy. We keep up our language skills and culture specific know-how while scoping out long-term possibilities (I'm talking retirement here, people, nothing like a little 20 year vision). We visit a new region each time, staying in one place to really learn it, then end the trip with a couple of days in Paris. We even have "our" hotel in Paris. It is never work to plan, but it's an adventure from start to finish.

This year, for our 20th, Burgundy called. We decided to base ourselves in Beaune and bike the countryside, rent a car for a long weekend hop over the German border to visit friends in Freiburg, take a few day trips by train south to Macon and Beaujolais; we'd drink and eat and bike our way through one of the most beautiful regions of France we've never seen. Done deal.

So, we're headed to Ireland. Come Wednesday, our anniversary, we'll be lacing up our hiking boots and setting stride along the Kerry Way.

It's been a year of tremendous change and turmoil. Events exhilarating and exhausting have left us with such a need for peace, reflection and a complete unplug from our current of thoughts. One afternoon as we mulled over where to pick up the rental car, which weekend to dash to Germany, if we should bypass Paris to spend a weekend in Champagne, Brendan turned to me and said, "Let's go to Ireland." In that instant, I knew. I felt immediate peace.

By just speaking the word "Ireland" aloud, I feel my heart rate slow, my shoulders relax, my jaw loosen. I envision those long, quiet hours on a trail, surrounded by every shade of green, blue, gray and gold the fields, sea and sky can offer, the clouds overhead as creamy white as the sheep that watch us as we tramp through their paddock.

This will be our fourth trip to Ireland in ten years. We do the same thing, in a different area, each time. And that thing is The Walk. We surrender all planning to the darling, generous, efficient, tremendous team at Southwest Walks Ireland. We simply arrive when and where we are told. We rest and rise the next morning to begin days and days of walking. There is a map, we have our packs, we hike hill and dale, stopping to marvel, rest, eat, talk when and where we will, trusting we will find our way each day to that night's lodging. In the evenings there is a snug B&B, a warm pub, a steaming bowl of stew, a Paddy's over ice or a pint of Guinness with a head taller than my hand is wide. There is music, there is silence. And always, every day, there is the long, long walk. 

In the early days we stick together, chatting, bubbling over all the things we haven't had time to share in the rush of days and weeks when we hardly see one another. But soon we fall silent. Words are no longer necessary when your hearts are in perfect synchronicity.

Warm beaches on remote islands or ocean liners on the high seas don't interest us. We both rest best when we are in motion - it is a mélange of play and exercise that allows us to let go of the pressures and expectations of our everyday lives and brings us back to the sweet and simple people we are at heart. Walking our way through a holiday adds a significant dose of zen - there is nothing more meditative than the motion of one foot in front of the other for hours on end. And nothing more delightful knowing you do not walk alone.

This is a bittersweet journey. We embarked on our last visit, in 2006, just a month before we moved to New Zealand. An enormous adventure blossomed before us, dreams on the cusp of being realized. Thinking of all that has happened in the intervening six years just rocks me. Starting over more times than we'd bargained for. Saying goodbye far too often - to loved ones, to babies, to dreams. It is staggering.

We shared that last hike in Ireland with two of our dearest friends, two men as in love and committed as Brendan and I could ever hope to be, who had been together at least as long as the anniversary we celebrate now. We made plans during that hike that they would join us in New Zealand when their retirements were finalized; we'd open a café, have a small farm... One of those men is gone now, taken by cancer. Even after two years, my life will never be as bright without Peter in it.

Ireland is in celebration our lives together, this amazing adventure that we've lived in the 20 years, 5 months and ten days that have passed since our first date. It is to recapture peace that we have lost in a tumultuous year. And it's to touch that fragile, tender part of the soul that needs looking after, before you set it free to dream again.

 “I soon realized that no journey carries one far unless, as it extends into the world around us, it goes an equal distance into the world within.” – Lillian Smith

*All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost; The old that is strong does not wither, Deep roots are not reached by the frost. - Gandalf, "Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring" by J.R.R. Tolkien

Wild is the music of the autumnal wind

Wild is the music of the autumnal windAmong the faded woods. William Wordsworth "Book VI The Churchyard among the Mountains", The Excursion 1814

Two days ago I was driving up Florentia, on the north side of Queen Anne, when I entered a tunnel of scarlet and gold. The maples danced like Moulin Rouge chorus girls. They were perfectly aligned on either side of the road, flashing their brilliant leaves like petticoats a-whirl, their delicate limbs swaying in the wind. It was a gift that lasted but a few heartbeats, until the clouds shifted and the leaves ceased pulsing.

This autumn has offered many moments of heart-bursting beauty. Such an autumn as I have never experienced in the Northwest, certainly not in this city that is often shrouded by endless varieties of greens and grays. A warm, dry September and the gradual cooling of October and November set us up perfectly for this year's bounty of vibrant color.

The process itself is poetry: chemical pigments - carotenoids, anthocyanin, tannins - develop as chlorophyll production slows in the cooler weather. They mix and mingle, producing tones of bronze and gold, pumpkin orange, maroon and Burgundy red, and scarlets so deep they are almost purple. The leaves are incandescent, as if lit from inside. Their copper hues blaze on hillsides and urban avenues, they shimmer in the early morning light and radiate in the glow of sunset.

The riotous palette lasts until shortly after the first frost, which occurred yesterday. The drift of leaves towards earth is accelerating. On my run this morning it was clear and cold. Showers of crimson and golden foliage fell onto grass rimed in white. Soon we will be the Emerald City again, our firs and hemlocks, pines and madrone providing shelter, texture and tones of green to the soft grays and browns of winter.

The season has been a gift. It has given me yet another reason to be grateful for the grace this city has brought in the four years we have lived here.

A sense of place -  a connection to my environment - is vital to me. It is perhaps why travel has long been at the core of my soul. The places I discover, try on, taste, listen to, interact in and dream of reflect what is most precious to me. Every village, town, state, and country in which I've lived and many in which I've travelled have left impressions that follow me around like a gaggle of shadows. Some -  New Zealand, Ireland, the western slope of the Colorado Rockies, the deep hollows of Appalachian Ohio - have moved me, shifted my soul, altered the course of my life. It is these places I explore the most as I write, giving shape to characters and events through the lens of setting. I write of seashore and mountainside, of broken-down hamlet and hidden paradise, of antique markets and manicured gardens.

Other places - I think of France and of my backyard, Seattle - are too much a part of my present and immediate future to appear in my fictive scribbles. Though I do have plans for France: there is a story that's been burning inside me for a couple of years, but it's set in the past. My shadows will get walk-on parts, at best.

The November I returned to the Northwest, to call Seattle home for the first time, played itself out far differently than the colorful, sun-filled season now ending. That November was muted, sombre and wet. I arrived from late spring in New Zealand - where there is little pollution to block UV rays and the light is dazzling no matter the season - to the soft watercolors of the Northwest in late fall. My new-old surroundings cloaked me. I too was muted and sombre, a shadow of the vibrant soul I had been before being felled by deep, malignant depression. Re-entering this country in the season of darkness and chill gave me a chance to heal and rebuild in a cocoon of a cozy apartment, the bustling joy of holiday cheer, bursting coffee shops, and peaceful bookstores. As the city blew off the sodden leaves coating its lawns, as the light from the east broke into our bedroom earlier each day, as the season of renewal approached, I felt green shoots of hope and health bursting in my heart, even as the roots that connected me to this place grew deeper and held me fast, at long last.

And here again, as autumn drifts to winter, as day seeps toward the longest night, I am in my season of content and I am home. I am grateful for the beauty of this incomparable autumn, but I look forward to the rich darkness of winter that promises peace.

He Aituā Ōtautahi

It is strange how people seem to belong to places, especially to places where they were not born. Christopher Isherwood, The Berlin Stories. Christchurch rises in a glimmer from the estuaries and marshlands that separate solid ground from the Pacific Ocean. Silver suburbs fill the vast valley like chessboard squares; kings, queens, bishops and knights meet as dark towers in the city centre. They huddle against the ever-present winds that change the weather from beaming to blustery with scarcely a moment's notice. The prevailing easterly is a raw, damp ocean kiss; the nor'wester plows its hot breath into the plains from the Southern Alps, bringing swirls of gritty earth from Rakaia Gorge and Ashburton to settle on clothes just pinned to the line.  The light that shines over the city is sharper, younger - as if the sun is just discovering its own power. Even on cloudy days Christchurch shimmers; it is that much closer to heaven.

The compact city is a study of colonial contradictions. Its romantic Gothic-Revival architecture - a style that seems misplaced in such a bright and bustling land - knocks against post-war modernism that represents Canterbury's soaring peaks and sunswept plains with glass and steel. And scattered throughout, as counterpoint to pretension, are throwaway structures of indiscriminate style. These contain tiny dairies (what we know as convenience stores), mobile phone dealers, bank branches, and internet cafés. It is a city that, for all its high heels and wine bars,  its silk ties and leather satchels, can't hide its rough and tumble roots as a Maori battlefield, as the pride of the Church of England's colonial ambitions in the Southern Hemisphere, and as even now, as an urban anomaly surrounded by paddocks and vineyards, towering mountains and infinite ocean. Sturdy gumboots and delicate rose pruners, Crusaders' jerseys and Christ College blazers meet to define the grit and grace of The Garden City.

What Lyon is to France, Christchurch is to New Zealand. It is a city that celebrates food, from local produce to imported exotica.  The most beautiful cheeses from around the world and from farms next door are hand-matured at Canterbury Cheesemongers; the bounty of Waipara Valley, Selwyn, and Hurunui farms is celebrated at the year-round Christchurch Farmers' Market; olive oil from Athena Olive Groves, Akaroa salmon, Pigeon Bay lamb, wines from Waipara, locally-roasted coffee from Underground, local chocolatiers She-Chocolat and Xocolatl seduce punters and local gourmands alike.  It is a city of cafés that are 100 percent Kiwi- offering long blacks, flat whites, and lattés in glasses, tantalizing slices and soups of roasted kumara; it is a city of restaurants ranging from Burmese to Basque. Cantabrians are as passionate about the provenance and preparation of their food as any Parisian or Piedmontese.

Christchurch is a punting serenely down the Avon River and boosting major air in the surf at Sumner Beach. It is Evensong at the Cathedral and trance 'til dawn at Base Bar. It is a leisurely stroll through Hagley Park's botanical gardens and a jarring descent on a Port Hills bike trail. It is sweetness and sophistication, the Kiwi "No. 8 wire" independence bolstered by keen sense of community.

He Aituā Ōtautahi!  O sweet Christchurch, why did this happen to you?

In the early afternoon of February 22,  this lovely city crumbled in the wake of a 6.3 temblor, an aftershock of a larger, but much deeper earthquake that occurred in last September.  The projected death toll is above 20o, more than 10,000 homes are marked for demolition, the cost to rebuild the city is estimated in the multi-billions. The spire of the Christchurch Cathedral toppled and countless Victorian era-edifices, weakened by the earlier quake, are beyond all hope of repair. Modern buildings, built before the stricter codes of the 1980s, flattened like decks of cards. Roads throughout the Canterbury region were made impassable by soil liquefaction; even homes and business still standing are deemed too hazardous- their owners given only a few minutes to gather valuables and to say goodbye.  Our friends are safe, though several have lost their homes and, temporarily, their livelihoods.

Christchurch was our home. I pore over the on-line photographs and videos that detail the earthquake's damage and my heart breaks anew each time. I biked those streets, wandered in those shops, felt the stone of those landmarks. I long to be there, to help sort through the rubble, to help rebuild, to mourn all who were lost. I know the city will return - more beautiful than ever - with a renewed sense of strength, survival and commitment to community. But seeing it brought to its wrecked foundation fills me with a longing that will never heal. It is a reminder of a dream broken, a story left untold, a heart that will never be whole, for so much of it was left behind in Ōtautahi.

The Slaughterhouse

The first set of kill sheets are presented to me by Graeme, one of two MAF (Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries) -appointed butchers who come to Harris Meats each week to stun and slaughter dozens of pigs, cattle beasts, sheep and lambs. The kill sheet is damp from the chill of the killing room floor and spattered with blood and small bits of flesh. I wipe away the gore carefully without smearing the thick red pencil used to record flesh weights.

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About sixty miles north of Christchurch on Highway 1 you will come upon the old Domett Railway Station.  It's been transformed recently into the charming Mainline Station Café- I recommend stopping in for a bowl of Kumara and Roasted Red Capsicum soup, served with homemade wheat toast and local Karikaas cheddar. Just across the highway from the café is the Hurunui Mouth Road. Follow it, taking care to look for stray sheep that may have wandered from their paddock.

About a mile up on the Hurunui Road, look for a low, gray, pre-fab structure on your right. The gravel lot in front is enormous, to accommodate the livestock semis that rumble in and out from dawn to dusk.  Although they are largely hidden from view by the cement walls of the meat processing plant, the holding pens and slaughterhouse stretch behind the office. You can certainly hear the animals- the deep bellows of cattle, the eerie shrieks of swine, the nervous blatters of sheep.

If you continue along the Hurunui Road for about 5 miles, you will tumble into Manuka Bay and the Pacific Ocean. It is an achingly beautiful, peaceful site that is surrounded by the majesty of the Southern Alps to the west and vast blue of the Pacific to the east. North Canterbury is pastoral and largely undeveloped, its arable land given over to vines and olive groves and pastures for sheep, cattle and deer farming. It is a most lovely region in this most beautiful of lands.

It was the peace, the beauty, the simple life, and the strong sense of community that drew Brendan and me to Cheviot and the Hurunui District from where we were living and working in Christchurch.  Cheviot, a hamlet of 400 souls, is a service town right on Highway 1. North of Cheviot, along a stomach-turning and jaw-dropping series of switchbacks, Highway 1 leads to the coastal gem of Kaikoura, a whale watcher's Mecca. The two-lane road, which is the principal north-south route of New Zealand's South Island,  then hugs the coast to the wine country of Marlborough, the utilitarian city of Blenheim, and declares its terminus in the port village of Picton, where fingers of land stretch across Cook Strait to the North Island.

But wee Cheviot is a blink along the way: a petrol station, a chip shop, a hardware store,three pubs, two churches, a couple of gift shops. There is also a K-12 school of 150 students that services the communities of Cheviot, Parnassus, Gore Bay, and Motunau where Brendan substitute taught until he landed a regular vineyard gig. It is also home to Harris Meats, a butcher, abattoir and specialty meats processor, which has been the valley’s primary employer since the 1950's. It's in its second and third generation of Harris's, as the founder's son Bryan is training his sons to run the family business.

I accepted the position of Accounts Manager at Harris Meats the week we made an offer on our Cheviot home. I had to look deep to determine if I could work at an abattoir. I knew, as a meat-eater, that I could not turn a blind eye and pretend the tidy packages of pink and red flesh that appeared on the gleaming surfaces of my grocer's meat case were not at the expense of a life. I also believed, as someone who loves to cook and cares about the quality of the food I eat, that I had a responsibility to know the full circle of a market animal's  life. It wasn't an opportunity I would have sought out, but once it was in my lap, I accepted its value.

The kill sheets landed daily in my In-Box. My task was to record their data into spreadsheets that I sent to MAF headquarters in Wellington.  There were dozens of weights to tally and cross-check, averages to calculate, notes to make if the beast had tested positive for disease prior to slaughter, minutiae regarding its weight class, muscle mass, age. If the animal was for commercial processing, the butchery, packaging and destination were verified with a standard MAF worksheet. If the animal was privately owned,  the butchery was cross-referenced with the pink file cards we maintained for each beast that indicated how many chops, steaks, flanks, T-bones, sausages etc., the owners wanted and who would pick up which portions of the meat; most large beasts were co-owned by families or neighbors and the processed meat was apportioned judiciously.

I came to dread Wednesdays. Wednesday was pig day. When I pulled into the parking lot in the morning, the air was already heavy with the putrid fug of terrified swine. All day I could hear the hogs screaming and jostling in the holding pens; I have no doubt they knew they were living out their final moments.

Swine slaughter began early in the morning and lasted through the evening.  I was obligated to stay until the end of the slaughter, to count and recount each kill sheet and to call Mike, my contact at MAF, to report the statistics of that day's kill and to verify that the appropriate reports had been received by various MAF offices. I never determined why swine tallies were treated differently, but New Zealand is fanatical about biosecurity and protecting their fragile ecosystem, so I surmise it had to do with the prevalence of viral infections in swine.

Managing the kill sheets was one aspect of my job that I eventually was able to knock out in first and last hour of my work day (except for those horrible Wednesdays). I spent most of my time tracking money coming in and going out of a small business that employed 40 and maintained 1000 accounts. But it was the aspect that had a lasting effect; those surreal moments when I was handed sheets of paper spattered with blood and gore are unforgettable.

An unexpected joy of the job at Harris Meats was the interaction I had with farmers and small business owners throughout the South Island. I delighted in the pregnant pause that followed when I answered the phone or spoke with a customer for the first time- I could just see the puzzled thoughts like a cartoon balloon over the caller's head "A YANK? What's a Yank doing at Harris Meats?" No one could quite believe how or why an American ended up in this back-of-beyond corner of the world. And I had a hell of a time understanding the rural Kiwi accent- the drawl was worlds apart from the crisp but bland voices of city dwellers.

I worked at the abbatoir for only a few months. When an opportunity appeared for Brendan and me to work together in vineyards throughout Canterbury, it was too good to pass by. It meant leaving the comfort of an office for the unpredictable weather of the Waipara Valley and the hard physical labor of maintaining a vineyard; it meant giving up a steady paycheck for the vagaries of contract work. But I must admit that it was a welcome relief to work with  my hands to produce life and growth, not to record its end.

I did not become a vegetarian as a result of my time at Harris Meats, but it changed forever my buying habits.  I ate only meat for which I knew the source, i.e., the conditions under which the animal was reared. I stopped eating pork  for the rest of our time in New Zealand. I am now fortunate to work for and shop at a natural foods retailer that offers only meat and poultry which are verified pasture-grazed, free-range, antibiotic and hormone-free and humanely-raised. I'm not as concerned with organics- it's the animal husbandry that decides what I will buy and consume- but the two are often hand-in-hand.

Growing up in rural Clark County, Brendan and his dad raised the family's beef cattle. The beeves were halter-broke, would eat out of Brendan's hand, had names and were treated with compassion and tenderness. And yes, they eventually ended up on the Johnson's dinner plates. I don't know if I could lead to slaughter an animal I had raised with such intimacy. But I respect the care and respect they and other small-herd farmers show the animals in their care. And I am grateful for the nourishment those precious beasts provide.