I Got Lost In My Travels: Australia, Part 1

I've never really trusted time. It seems to be one of the most inconstant concepts, you know? You're experiencing something wonderful, and time flies. You're witnessing a catastrophe unfold and 5 seconds can feel like 5 minutes. You're engaged in something absolutely boring and time seems to move backwards. You graduate from college at twenty-two and then five years later, you're forty and trying to figure out how many years have actually passed. 

So? Time? Never to be trusted, in either the best or worst of circumstances. And then there's time in 2020--we'll call it "Plague Time." I've recently started falling into the habit of saying something like, "Oh, yeah, we did such-and-such about seven years ago, back in August." Y'all know what I'm talking about. I've heard a dozen variations of it over the course of the last eight months; I've seen it play out in countless ways. Someone forgets to pay their rent at the beginning of the month because what is time anymore? Someone no longer can find their watch, because they haven't had to be anywhere at a certain time since god only knows when. I've missed more than one meeting, forgotten more than one appointment, and entire months have blurred together for me.     

So it seems a little ridiculous for me to say what I'm about to say, given that Plague Time makes the following statement feel a little impossible: 

A year ago today I was on a flight to Australia, with my friend and travel companion, Brian, headed for an unforgettable Bucket List experience.

Whenever I start to feel a little low, or anxious, or isolated, or completely defeated--which is to say, about once every ten minutes--I remind myself of how, a mere year ago, I was so very lucky and privileged to be able to go on that journey. The timing was freakishly lucky--the Australian Bushfires had already started but had not yet gotten out of hand, and we had about four months to go before the world really went to hell in a handbasket, with the pandemic. Of course, when Brian and I were sitting on that plane, happily availing ourselves to the free booze and trying to figure out which movies to watch first, we didn't think about pandemics and travel bans and masks and crowds and all the ways that our lives were about to get completely upended. 

It was an incredible trip; we spent almost twelve days exploring Tropical North Queensland, snorkeling the Great Barrier Reef, hiking through the Daintree Rainforest, and simply reveling in a land so completely different from what we've known and experienced. And then, in a blink of an eye (that pesky, fickle concept of time again) we were back Stateside, and returning to our homes and our jobs and our cats and the holidays. And what with one thing and another, I never did get around to posting on the ol' blaurgh about this magical trip. 

Well, now that we are in the middle of a raging pandemic, and the weather here in Southern Indiana is turning pretty durned cold and precluding even outdoor gatherings, I certainly have a bit more time on my hands than I used to. So I'll see if I can't take a bit of that fickle time and spend some of it recalling and recording my journey to Australia, and my explorations there. Maybe it will only serve as a memorial for that one time I went somewhere--or maybe it will be an inspiration and reminder that fuck yeah, some day, some time, I'll go somewhere again. 

And you will, too.