After a long trip away, how does one reconnect with home? After speaking in broken sentences for weeks in a foreign language barely understood, where does one relocate the language common to one’s self of well being? Tongues in trees as Shakespeare said?
I ask these questions because it has been just over two weeks since returning to Tasmania from my stay in China and time enough, I would have expected, to have gotten back into some form of rhythm here. Not so.
It was easy enough to open the door and walk into the house that is nestled in the grove of trees on the hill that overlooks the ocean. Harder, though, has been opening and walking into Windgrove’s larger house: the one that is the hill and the ocean itself.
So daily I venture out of the one house to try and familiarise myself with the other house. Some wanderings start off totally aimless. Other times, I have taken several groups of people around Windgrove’s Peace path or have worked clearing a new footpath through the scrub. But, in the midst of all this, I have kept searching for some clue, some hint, some hook to finally bring me back to this place; this land called Windgrove. My home. Something that will ease me back into a comfort zone of recognition.
Colour, oddly enough, is helping with this process. And the colour is green. Or, more precisely, lime green.
Yesterday’s evening sun reflected in breaking waves produced such a green. And, during recent rains, the wet eucalypt bark cracking off a branch revealed such a green.
The colours I associated with China were red and gold. Here, the signature colour of the land—the fresh perky quality of new green/ spring green—is bathing my spirit with a welcoming home coming.
How marvellous to reunite with such vibrancy.
This calls for a gin and tonic. And, a slice of lime, for sure.
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