EL QUESTRO

Good afternoon from Perth! My Aussie home base. I am back here after three months working in the Kimberley; the wild untouched lands of northwest Australia. It is a 3.5 hour plane ride north of here and yet somehow still in the same state. 

I arrived here much different than I left. Shins scratched up, split ends, a cavity that needs to be filled. Red dirt in my nose and my lungs. I am 3 pairs of shoes poorer; one lost to mould, one worn out from walking through spinifex and pandanus, and the other with souls so thinned by the rock I didn’t bother wasting space in my bag for them. I left my towel, stained by red dirt and grass, hanging on the communal clothes line, and I donated my worn out SkipBo cards to the staff games pile. My sunglasses are at the bottom of the Chamberlain Gorge, no doubt sitting there with a hundred other pairs. 

What I did fit in my bag were polaroids from sunset drives, swimsuits that still smelled like the Pentecost River, and a pair of blue jeans that will never be clean again. A new beer coozy made it in there, and a card from the girls saying how much they’ll miss me. A crocheted Mario Kart mushroom, a decorated envelope with gift cards inside, and a sketchbook full of crocodile paintings. Even my phone has a crack in the screen from dropping it on the broken-up sandstone they call a road, while we drove up a ridge to a lookout point. The speaker on it isn’t the same, either, but there are hundreds of photos on it to remind me where the dirt in the charging port came from. 

The other thing that’s different is my heart. When I got to Australia I was afraid of opening it up. My recent years in Canmore and Calgary held a lot of love but also a lot of hurt, and it felt scary to move to a new place and meet new people who I’d inevitably have to leave again. The last 4-5 years of my life has been so full of exploration and travel and new people, which is beautiful and exciting but also sometimes so sad. Nobody ever talks about the part of travelling which is the feeling of constantly missing people. Over and over again meeting gorgeous people and then saying goodbye to them. It’s hard on the heart. 

El Questro forced me to open up again. There is only so much living and working and eating together you can do before you fall in love with the people around you. Our little staff village became a community so quickly, and parts of it felt like family. The girls at reception were my sisters by the end, reminding me I need to eat before I get hangry and teasing me about my bedhead. We bickered and hugged and laughed like family, and without even realizing it I was loving fearlessly again. Staying at dinner to chat instead of taking food to my room, singing loudly to music while we dance around the fire, painting with friends rather than by myself. Those were the bigger things but in the smaller things, opening your heart helps you notice the beauty that this silly little world is absolutely riddled with. The wind rattling leaves off of the batwing trees, ants carrying small snacks over branches, the way the moon changes paths every night. You notice how every evening exactly 10 minutes before the sun sets, the Corellas take flight and squawk so loudly you’d think they are announcing the end of another day. Looking around in a group of people you really actually care for so much, it becomes so un-scary to love that you can’t believe you were ever stupid enough to close off your heart.