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Things are happening; I used my last weekend to the fullest and did one of New Zealand's "Great Walks": the Rakiura Track, a relatively easy, three-day track around Stewart Island. According to Maori legend, Stewart Island (or Rakiura) is the anchor of Maui's canoe, the South Island, while the North Island is Maui's fish. In its way, the island remains an anchor: Rakiura and the surrounding islands have become sanctuaries for some of New Zealand's endemic birds. Stewart Island is one of the last places to see wild kiwis (the birds, not the fruits or people), and the entire remaining kakapo population lives on nearby Codfish Island, which does not allow visitors and is only inhabited by the Department of Conservation workers who steward the birds.
I didn't see kiwis, if you were wondering; but each day was a cacophony of unidentified birdcalls, and I did spot fantails, tomtits, and little blue penguins. And it was good to be outside and alive, and carry my house on my back like a turtle. I thought of all sorts of clever things to write here while I was walking, but of course I forgot them.
The Most of It

He thought he kept the universe alone;
For all the voice in answer he could wake
Was but the mocking echo of his own
From some tree-hidden cliff across the lake.
Some morning from the boulder-broken beach
He would cry out on life, that what it wants
Is not its own love back in copy speech,
But counter-love, original response.
And nothing ever came of what he cried
Unless it was the embodiment that crashed
In the cliff’s talus on the other side,
And then in the far-distant water splashed,
But after a time allowed for it to swim,
Instead of proving human when it neared
And someone else additional to him,
As a great buck it powerfully appeared,
Pushing the crumpled water up ahead,
And landed pouring like a waterfall,
And stumbled through the rocks with horny tread,
And forced the underbrush-and that was all.

-Robert Frost

It's still Wednesday poem day--I didn't have time to look up something novel for today, but it was only a matter of time before Robert Frost made an appearance, anyway, and this seemed appropriate. I did see deer on the island, as well--it has one of the largest populations of Virginian white-tailed deer in New Zealand. Or something like it.