Antidote

It is amazing how a night in the wild can make all your worries fade away into fresh air and bird sounds, smashed to a million grains of sand by a crashing ocean. We have just had a lovely night away in one of the most beautiful beaches in the world. We slept in a hut perched on a ridge high above a pohutukawa framed beach.

I have invented a new term called life-fever. It's like cabin fever except it encompasses all the trappings and reasons to stress that we modern-livers carry. It's like an ezcema from too much indoors, too much screen time (guilty as written), too much thinking of what will I do tomorrow and what I did yesterday. An irritation that gets under the skin and niggles until you scratch it unconsciously.

Our cure was to jump in the car with the boys, their cousins and uncle, fill a few packs with yummy food, and chocolatey snacks. One change of clothes each, sleeping bags, and one emergency bottle of wine. We tramped out over the boulders, and up into the crisply wet greenery. Big brother jumped in every rock pool he could find, then when we got to the beach ran in and out of the waves, soaking wet, naked, cold and in perfect bliss.

No bath, no routine, late to bed, eating sausages under the stars, playing frisbee until it was dark.

Little brother was not the best hut-companion, being he wanted to sit up and play in the bunk we were sharing. He discovered torches, and worked out that he would be rewarded with a breast every time he squawked throughout the night. So it wasn't the best night's sleep, but it was the best antidote to life-fever. And a great wee medicinal dose of perspective.

W. George Quotes:
Driving through the bush - 'Mummy, I can hear the trees'
Counting the stars.. 'one, two, three, eleven'