Rainbows for Days

I live in a room commonly referred to as "the closet," tucked into an unkempt brick house in a neighborhood that actually happens to be pretty schwank, filled with fancy houses, vintage op shops and narrow twisting streets. My house itself sits a half-block from Suncorp Stadium; if I knew anything about Aussie sports I'd be able to follow rugby matches solely though the deafening noise on game nights. A distinctive bitter, sultry tang often wafts over the neighborhood from the XXXX brewery, located just down the road, where monster crimson neon letters illuminate the night. I'm a short walk from downtown in one direction and from the river promenade to the other, with all the mass transit I could ever want in easy reach.

I'm still getting used to viewing the coastline as situated to the east, and I have to remind myself almost every day that the sun shines from the north at noon. I'm also still adjusting to seeing lorakeets flock over the city in lieu of starlings and foot-long lizards sunning themselves next to ibises on the riverbank. City parks greet me with bronze platypuses adorning picnic benches and monster trees, and mantises make themselves at home in my living room.

Communication, too, at times proves simply baffling. Don't get me wrong– we all speak English here, but the words coming out of our mouths tend to comprise utterly different languages. Gas stations are called servos, freeways motorways, downtown the CBD (central business district), and neighborhoods suburbs (once I figured that one out, everything seemed a whole lot closer together). Ketchup is tomato sauce, Jello is jelly, red peppers capsicums, SUV pickups are utes and afternoons avos. "Mass transit" doesn't exist in local vocabulary. I will never, ever bring myself to instruct a class full of sixth-graders to make sure they have thongs on their feet. Just as I've cringed at a few phrases heard in "sophisticated" conversations here, one or two words used in daily conversation in the states would probably result in writeups if I let them fly at work in Queensland. Sometimes I feel like I walk a super fine line between dialect clarification and presenting myself as an utter idiot.

The stars, however, have begun to feel more familiar: Orion hangs in the sky every evening, a welcome reminder of the first constellation I ever recognized on my own one crisp winter night after a school event. I've learned to find geographical south from the Southern Cross and its pointers, following in Orion's path, and I get to see Scorpio in all of its blazing glory.

Work in late April takes me southwest of Brisbane and inland, to an area filled with mountains and ridges and the occasional lake. I spend two days backpacking near Lake Maroon with rowdy 13-year-old boys, hiking through dry forest to the top of Mt. May to look southward over a sprawling web of worn ridges and mountains, and an occasional lake nestled in the arid land. We spend the last day canoe orienteering, criss-crossing Lake Maroon from shores lined vibrant lily pads and dead trees as sea eagles accompany us overhead. The boys provide a day filled with comic relief, complete with tantrums thrown over (intentionally) capsized canoes and compasses disregarded for "general haunches."

Later in April I work further north, at a site where the road to high ropes looks down over the Glasshouse Mountains, glowing through the golden hour as they rise from the plains while I gather firewood with my girls. The place also introduces me to Aussie snakes: a red-bellied black greets us from smack in the middle of the cow paddock as we head toward our orienteering session. Which would have been way super cool, had I not had 17 antsy twelve year olds in tow.

Outside of work, I play. In early May I head north one morning with a friend to the Eumundi Market, which once upon a time was probably a quaint, slightly touristy, classic Aussie coastal craft and produce market. Today it's more of a historic tourist trap, half-chintzy yet still totally enthralling: I wander rows of organic wraps, tropical produce and handmade jewelry. I also find imported games (repackaged and sold by independent shops), stalls brimming with chintzy jewelry and belts... and cuddly stuffed koalas made from very real, silky-soft kangaroo fur.

I spend the night south of Brissy with friends camping in Springbrook National Park, arriving to set up tents just in time for a frogmouth owl to determine my rainfly the ultimate evening roost. We wake early to cocoon ourselves in sleeping bags and watch the sun rise over the gold coast, flaming rays punching through low clouds to spread over the sea. Our hike later that morning (after coffee!) follows a mellow down and around the cliffs curled around the Purling Brook falls in a widespread embrace. Vegetation changes drastically as we descend, merging from dry, windswept gumtrees to fully buttressed rainforest complete with bromeliads latched to canopy branches. A delicate, fickle rainbow greets us from the mist at the bottom of the falls, where water plunges into a pool below bands of orange and white columns stained black.

The trail eventually arrives at a deep, shade-dappled pool beneath a short drop where we break our cheese and apples and crackers as we watch a monster brown eel makes itself at home among the rocks below us before beginning our walk home.

I spend another Saturday climbing with my friend Paul at Mt. Tibrogargan, the largest of the Glasshouse Mountains. We climb 200 meters through awkwardly angled basalt begging to explode beneath us, dodging golden orb spiders the size of my palm in webs suspended amongst the sparse brush spotting our route (I very nearly pull off a torso-sized block and shred our second rappel rope in the process). I watch rainstorms move across the coastal plains beneath us as we ascend, rainbows taking shape in the sky next to me. Paul leads the last pitch through a somewhat infuriating downpour, topping out to a sweeping view of the Glasshouse mountains to our left and the sea to our right before we descend to dry sweatshirts, water, and a stop into a nondescript fruit stand serving a locally known gem known as Pineapple Crush.

At times the rock we climb on around here likes to test my faith in the world's integrity. But: it makes me think and guts up and trust myself, and I get to place gear while I'm at it. And the rainbows... I've seen more rainbows since arriving in Queensland than I ever could have imagined. They're just so mindblowingly vibrant; they blaze and linger in the sky, just long enough for the rest of the world to fade for a moment, before picking up and continuing on my way.