We escaped with next to nothing, one Saturday morning,
Ollie and I.
We wove our way up the West Coast
sleeping in the car and under the stars
and with a host of mosquitoes and sandflies.
Each day was our own, to do with as we pleased,
and what we pleased to do was to walk.
To walk beside blue rivers.
To walk in mossy forests, under beech trees bearded with lichen.
To walk on the beaches - rocky ones, pebbled new beaches of river-stones.
To walk seeking waterfalls hidden in the woods.
To walk under the austere gaze of glaciers.
We were like the tributaries and small fissures of a river, making finger-like journeys into the bush and the coastal dunes on either side of that narrow, black stream - that one road that runs along the rim of the island.