an update! about time.

hey, there! for the last three months or so, jessica and i have been busy with the process of integration into our new chosen home, midcoast maine. finding jobs, a place of our own, social circles, movie theaters, etc, is an all consuming job, and add to that taking on new projects with our newfound legal freedoms concerning livestock production. more on all that later. sometimes you have to start at the start.

from mid march to the end of april, we traveled about the south island of new zealand. i had been before, in 2009, bike touring, and had such a great experience all around, that i'd always wanted to go back at some point. with a move and a dramatic change in lifestyle directly ahead of us, we decided that a big trip was in order, and as jessica had never been outside the country, we rejected an epic cross-country jaunt for an equally epic 'cross-the-planet jaunt! we had scheduled and budgeted ourselves 6 weeks, the first two, joined by good friends andy gunn and morgan ward, and the third week, met by one of my best friends and all-around good guy, andrew johnson-lally. the last three weeks, well, we'd see what happened.

what happened was rain. alot of it. i'd say a good 4 of the 6 weeks had rain during the day at some point, and the last three, the south island was beset by a tropical storm on one coast, and a real-life typhoon on the other, laying waste to roads, trees, a campervan or two, telephone poles, and washing our best-laid-plans right out with it. we spent alot of that time driving around in our neon-orange campervan, finding every 'road closed' sign we could, between us and our desired trailheads. oh well. we came out of the experience with dreams of what lay ahead of us moving north, and plans to build a campervan of our own at some point.

here are some 'then and now' photos that i took. 2009 photo first, then 2014.

my, how things don't change. just get hairier, seems.

this is the franz josef glacier, on the west coast of the south island. it and it's neighbor, fox glacier, are unique amongst glacier-kind as the terminus falls in a tropical rain forest habitat. i took these photos to document glacial recession, a very real problem the world is facing due to climate change and the warming atmosphere. at some point in the foreseeable future, the glacier could recede back up over the lip of the saddle it sits in, changing not just the physical landscape, which in itself is a shame, but also the economic landscape of the surrounding towns which gain their livings heavily through glacier tourism.. i had known of this problem through articles and documentaries (Chasing Ice, namely. a good watch!), but had not thought i'd see it firsthand. i do recognize the irony that to see this phenomena, i had to fly to the other side of the world, and drive a minivan around, with their attached sizable carbon footprint. i feel any justification i could give for taking the trip is ultimately selfish, and i recognize that. i also feel that sometimes the cultural and personal experiences i undertake add facets to my personal narrative that influence me, and help me strive to be an environmental steward as best i can. sometimes you need to see things in person.

anyhoo, enough of that. here are some photo montage panorama thingies.

this is the parking area for the gertrude's saddle hike we did with andy and morgan. lovely day, lovely scenery, even in the parking lot.

this is the peak of a mountain adjacent to lewis pass. it was a pretty rainy day, but we found a break, and made a break, for the peak. towards the end of the trip, we were stealing summit hikes anywhere we could. as long as it wasn't dangerous. scrambled down from the peak with thunder rumbling a couple times..

all of our photos are on my google+ account, here