Common Sense Ain't Common

I've found my way into outdoor education here, traveling each week to run programs for kids ranging from nine to 15 years old. The industry is different from home: every year starting in fourth grade, kids go to camp as part of school curriculum to engage in teamwork activities, development challenges and outdoor recreation pursuits. Whereas Outdoor School in Oregon centers strongly on field science, community, expanding social and environmental awareness, here it focuses more on teamwork and leadership development through structured, sometimes expeditional, outdoor rec. My work is an odd mashup of everything I've been doing in the past few years, drawing on ODS experience working with school groups, Asia Outdoors work guiding climbing and kayaking, Search and Rescue navigational skills and lifelong pursuit of... following fun outside the city.

The everyday differences? I've shifted from mandatory long pants and rain coats to sunscreen and hat checks, from raccoons and deer and coyotes to kangaroos and killer snakes and spider webs with a tendency to rebound like trampolines. I've relearned how to bandage snake bikes from venom that simply dissolves your flesh in ugly fashion to venom that works it way through your lymphatic system in uglier, faster fashion.

The work has been an awesome introduction to the local industry, allowing me to explore how centers situate themselves, how their views and methodology differ and how they treat their staff. I also get to travel and meet people-- although I'm based out of Brisbane at the moment, I work in a three-hour radius from the city. My first week had me headed north to a place called Brooyar, teaching kids to belay each other and climb on deep red sandstone cliffs. Our base sprawled beneath rolling hills alongside a creek filled with fish that nibbled the dead skin off our feet as we relaxed under a full moon after sending kids to bed.

I stayed on to climb that weekend on undulating sandstone with a coworker named Paul, one of those guys who's kind of hard to figure out at first but offers so much goddam knowledge and skill and life experience you just want to hang out and explore and learn from and do things with the guy. I returned with some new friends from Brisbane to set highlines in the same spot, called Point Pure, and stand in the sky for the first time since mid-2014.

Photo: Nico Torres-Don

I spent my birthday with a few friends from my first week of work in a small coastal community called Noosa North, eating proper pizza, napping in the sun on the sand and "learning to surf"– code for I just got my ass kicked by the water, a lot– on my first beach full of breakers and currents and waves in recent memory.

A couple weeks later work took me south to Tyalgum Ridge, nestled into the edge of an ancient, sprawling caldera surrounding Mt. Warning– a basalt plug known as the first place in Australia to see the sun every dawn. During the day I ran kayaking beneath paddocks filled with horses, goats, alpacas and oreo cows. After work we gathered to drink beer and chat as we watch clouds boil into thunderheads, giving way to brilliant lingering double rainbows over the mountain. Crimson and green king parrots foraged amongst nearby shrubbery as black macaws emerged from the mountains,  forewarning imminent rain with their descent into the caldera.

Being foreign in this field has proved something of both a blessing and a curse. In a lot of ways, I'm able to lean on my nationality to bond with my kids. We argue the merits of Shapes vs Goldfish, Vegemite and Butter vs PB & J (Jam, as they call it here, because Jelly is in fact Jello on this side of the world). Occasionally the tactic backfires, though: at one point my 8th-grade girls inform me with the most blasé attitude ever that goannas are super tame, and you can totally walk up to them and put your hand in their mouths. (You can't; their claws are no joke and their bites are ugly as sin.)

While my coworkers field quintessential pesky 9th-grade curiosity (How many dreadlocks do you have? How many girlfriends have you had? Do you have a girlfriend for every dreadlock? How many times have you done drugs?), my personal FAQs center on "world politics" more often than not (What do you think of Donald Trump? Are you going to vote for Donald Trump? Do you like Donald Trump? Have you met Donald Trump?). And, very, very occasionally, "Have you ever seen a bear?"

Interesting enough, I have similar conversations with so many people I work with here. "I would never come to America," they tell me... "you guys have bears there!!" And in Oz you have brown snakes and taipans and redbacks, all of which I'm willing to bet are more common here than bears in the states.

I've never really worried about bears or raccoons (really, if you're going to worry about something, make it the raccoons!) because I've simply grown up playing in places where we coexist and securing food in potentially troublesome territory. West coast wildlife safety is second nature to me. Here in Australia people don't worry (too much) about snakes and spiders because they're part of the natural web amongst which they've grown. We walk heavy and keep from sticking hands blindly into hot crannies. And somehow, that means more hard-to-see little things that kill you faster are way less scary than big, easy-to-see things that run away from you. Chilly nights are natural to me and 90°F weather unbearably hot just as the kids I work with bask in summer heat and perceive snow as alien.

That's just it, though. Wherever we live we contend with hazards of some sort, which can be pretty much eliminated through a little education, logic and common sense. We just have this skewed, glorified perception of the unfamiliar, whether it be politicians or environment or wildlife, abroad or closer to home in settings we're unaccustomed to.

I should write a book of Classic Kid Experiences, including but not limited to:

• The girl who tried to pet a horse after we told her not to. The horse very nearly took off her boob... (As terrible as it sounds, it was really, really hard not to laugh after the fact.)
• The boy who spent 20 minutes crouched under a shack composing a motivational speech for his raft building team. The text in its entirety? "Men, keep doin' what you're doin'."
• The 6th grader who actually took some personal responsibility: "I did something stooooopid in the bushes and now my boat is covered in spiders!"
• The other 6th grader who curled in on herself on high ropes while belting, "I came in like a wreeeecking baaaaallllll!"
• The girl who came up with her group's teamwork motto: "Cheating is more efficient than doing it the right way!"
• The 11-year-old boy who told his instructor, "With all due respect sir, you're not in the military any more and neither am I. You can't teach me anything, old man!"
• The girl who insisted I should have whisked the deadly snake away from her tent's vicinity with a stick instead of letting it go on its way. 
• The boy who got sent home for exploding bottles of hair spray in campfires, after letting loose language that made Game of Thrones look mild.

And on that note, as a long-time mentor back home has been reminding me since I was nine: Common Sense Just Ain't Common.

Stranger in a Half-Familiar Land

Brisbane reminds me strongly of home... even more so than Melbourne. It's a relatively small, liberal, bike-friendly city full of green spaces, bisected by a large river. Bridges cross the water in a dizzying spiderweb and downtown– or the CBD, as they call it here– edges straight up on the water. Like home, half the city's draw is easy access to beaches and mountains within a few hours' drive. Unlike home, the city proves downright impossible to navigate. There's no grid, no numbers, no alphabets. The river meanders in dizzying loops, negating any sense of direction as I follow the shore. Instead I find twisting roads, neighborhoods scattered without apparent organization and road systems named after the first person to arrive. Said road systems were apparently established following old cattle tracks, and it is in fact still legal to walk your cows down the middle of the highway.

That being said, Brisbane's mass transit is somewhat ingenius. Throughout downtown and neighboring central districts a network of tunnels provides traffic-free causeways for busses and emergency vehicles (one or two of these allow civilian traffic to bypass large portions of the city underground, as well). Trains reach outward from the city, passing through stations shared with bus routes. Ferries cross the river in the absence of bridges' span. I carry a single card that gets me anywhere I want to go: I load it with money and a universal network deducts credit when I board and disembark busses and trains and ferries throughout the region depending how far I've traveled. For all the weird and frankly obnoxious first-world issues I've encountered since arriving, this goes pretty far to make up for it. P-town, take notes!!

Speaking of weird and obnoxious first-world issues. I have yet to encounter a place where I can fill a bag of bulk coffee beans, chuck them into a grinder and take the finished product to a counter to check out. Coffee literally comes in two forms here: whole beans (rare) and superfine power (ubiquitous). My french press is on the strugglebus. And, drugs are more regulated here than I've ever experienced in my life. I knew I had it easy in Vietnam, walking into a pharmacy and leaving two minutes later, two dollars down with necessary drugs to treat whatever gross infection accompanied the monsoon's heat and humidity. But seriously, Australia makes the United States look easy. Benedryl cream doesn't exist here... even ibuprofen is regulated in packages of more than 24 tablets.

Other things that've changed: Voting is compulsory. I literally signed a friend's ballot, with street address and everything, as a witness to verify he had voted before he could send it in. My entire identity also seems to have changed since arriving in Oz, as it's affectionately known. Whereas at home in a country of immigrants we tend to inquire about each others' heritage, here, I'm simply American. My accent screams it to the world.

The states have turned into a running joke. Everywhere I go conversation turns to a certain redhead with the world's worst combover. Unfortunately (and understandably) people find the whole thing a vastly entertaining comedy show more than anything else; the very real, very menacing impact of what Donald Trump has said and spread into peoples' lives in schools and at home doesn't extend across the sea...

In any case, I chase work north to Brisbane in mid-March, landing for a couple weeks mid-city with a couch surfing host named Stefan, your quintessential brilliantly scatterbrained German physicist. My first night we take a walk along the Kangaroo Point cliffs above which he lives, walking past bolted wall upon chossy bolted wall literally smack across the river from downtown's nightime glow. We find a perch to watch the sun's light fade over the city as flying foxes the size of ravens emerge, flocking over the river on slow wingbeats before descending in droves into trees to cling amongst fruit-filled branches next to roosting brush turkeys. Bats' chatter accents the city night like an army of droids as they squabble amongst themselves.

My first weekend in Queensland, we drive south to Tamborine Mountain in the late afternoon with Stefan's brother. As night falls and wind rattles palms we hike down through the rainforest, finding bioluminescent mushrooms rooted in decomposing logs, glistening brown tree frogs and (introduced, invasive) toxic cane toads larger than my fist. Another trail leads to a short waterfall tumbling into a small pool surrounded by cliffs from which trees grow and ferns cling in thick bundles. Glow worms' tiny, turquoise lights shine by the thousands from the foliage, reflecting in the pool to create a full constellation surrounding us as the crescent moon and stars overhead complete the 360-degree illusion.

Later in the week I head north to explore the seaside cliffs and beaches of Noosa Heads with another friend from the area. Gary and I walk broad golden beaches filled with sunbathers on neon towels and watch surfers play in classic gray-green waves before making our way into the headlands' thick scrub. As storms darken the sea offshore we skirt rocky shores and pass tangled roots the same deep ocher hue as western red cedar. We find waves crashing into sheer, vaulting walls beneath wind-twisted trees and look down on broad, sweeping coves embraced in green... for all the nature documentaries and publicity, no one ever mentions you can find places on this continent so verdant.

Toward the end of the day we hike a couple of short Aussie-style mountains, looking east to the Sunshine Coast in its classic Australian sunbathed, beach-swept splendor. Then we turn to gaze south over the Glasshouse Mountains, broadly clustered ancient volcanic plugs jutting from the land toward Brisbane, and the sun sets on my first week in Queensland.

Kookaburra Sits in the Old Gum Tree

The crisp morning air carries a snap, fresh with the scent of dew-dampened earth. By smell I could almost believe I'm home in the high desert, except crimson and blue parrots gleam in the sun as they dart across the small clearing out front and white cockatoos perch amongst gumtrees while kangaroos bed down on the lawn overnight and spiders the size of my hand make themselves at home on kitchen cupboards. By midday, however, the sun beats through air drier than anything reminiscent of Oregon gorges rimmed in juniper and sage.
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I touched down just after midnight; my passport is the first of the year in Melbourne International Airport to read "28 FEB." I walked down a hall filled with automatic passport processors and agents who greeted me with a twang. By 1:30 AM I collected my bags and found the welcome embrace of my mom's cousin Esther. In an offhand tone she informed me that "I'd normally go home across country, but we'll take the freeway tonight because there's more chance of kangaroos."

Between the kangaroos and the accents, I'd walked straight into a movie.
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I spend my first week with Esther, becoming re-acquainted with the developed world. We go on a sustainable houses tour, where buildings collect sun from the north and back yard fruit trees droop with ripening apricots. We take care of the nitty gritty, setting up my first international bank account and obtaining a sim card while I apply for jobs on the side. We take time to explore the area around Esther's place, an hour's train ride northwest of Melbourne in a rural town called Woodend. We drive to Mt. Macedon, a deceptively large undulation rising above the countryside, from which we look over the plains extending below. We walk around a historic sanitarium's small remnant lake where Esther points out laughing kookaburras as they fly amongst gumtrees growing tall over sun-dappled ferns. We head north for a morning, hiking a trail amongst rolling land filled with small rises and dry runnels and the sun glares through trees' slender leaves.

Terrain is different here, lacking prominent landmarks. The earth undulates with windblown trees, but I find no ridges or mountains or rivers or valleys by which to gain my bearings. Other things have changed, as well: I've traded earthquake architecture and tsunami protocol for summer shade maximization and wildfire evacuation plans. Instead of deer, I scare up kangaroos. And, kangaroos are... simply a part of everyday life.

I remember watching the womens' world cup years ago when it was moved to Portland on short notice, and seeing my first streakers as they raced onto the pitch, streaming banners reading, "Adidas kills Kangaroos!" Funny thing is, they really do seem to simply be Australia's version of backyard deer, commonly regarded as pests.  They graze on lawns, they're ubiquitous on road crossing signs and their meat is sold in supermarkets... apparently kangaroo bbq is a thing here. I never foresaw myself writing "no kangaroo" into dietary forms.

I find my way into Melbourne after a week basking in the blessed quiet of the non-Southeast Asian countryside. I meet up with a blast from the past at the Sydney Road Party, a once-yearly block party reminiscent of Alberta Street's Last Thursday. It's been six years since I studied next to Juan De Dios in the Galápagos Islands; somehow we managed to miss each other when he came through Cat Ba during my last month or so working in Vietnam.

Photo: Juan De Dios Morales

Together we wander Sydney Road at its liveliest: street bands play in front of historic churches, food stalls line sidewalks in front of Victorian facades from which the road draws so much character and women dressed as flamingos on stilts dance around children as they weave through the crowds. An old man in a fuscia plaid hat, rubber boots, translucent shift and crimson polka-dot thong wails on a harmonica as he manipulates a wooden duck marionette with gusto. A massive concert organ parked on a side street belts classic tunes in a one-machine symphony. I eat my fill of watermelon and massive wraps as I navigate the mayhem, eventually following Juande into a hardware store to provide moral support as he builds a camera base for an upcoming trip to Indonesia. Also, I buy proper shades for the first time in years.

I spend the night at Juande's place near the university where he's finishing grad school, reminiscing with his girlfriend and roommates in a welcome reminder of Latin American hospitality and relaxing in a place that feels so comfortably lived in after extended time in hostels homestays and hotels. 

I crash the following nights with Georgia, an artist recently returned from overseas, originally from Esther's town of Woodend. We wander city parks and avenues brimming with factory outlets and secondhand shops as I pursue my mission to reestablish a wardrobe decimated by SE Asia's heat, humidity, wind, sun, saltwater and corrosion. We bond over tattoos, world travel, shopping, and some quality time in my first proper-sized bouldering gym since leaving home.

My search for functioning clothes also takes me to Brunswick Street, lined with Victorian facades and independent cafes, vintage shops and high-class grafiti-filled alleys.  Cathedrals bookend the avenue, glowing in late afternoon sun as trams cruise the center lane. If Sydney Rd is Alberta St, down under-style, then Brunswick St is most definitely Hawthorne Blvd with a twist.

I take a day to explore the city's botannical gardens under low clouds, wandering through pockets of succulents and plush wetlands full of unfamiliar birds, long toes splayed through slender rushes. I pass sweeping arrays of flowers surrounding the Governor's Mansion as I work my way toward the city, eventually finding a bridge to cross into downtown. All around me an odd mix of Victorian influence and cathedrals mix seamlessly with ultra-modern architecture bursting with color. Federation Square, ringed in abstract glass and metal paneling, sits across from the classic Flinders Street Railway and shares real estate with St Paul's Cathedral, dwarfed by surrounding skyscrapers erected since its construction in the 1880s.

In some ways, Melbourne reminds me of home. The city sings with art and music. Everywhere I look I see tattoos displayed carefree. Coffee shops wait on almost every corner. In other ways, however, I experience a stark contrast to the town which raised me. The metropolis carries a staunchly urban atmosphere. Rather than cold, clouds bring humidity and pounding monster raindrops to interrupt the day's dry heat. Parakeets flock in place of starlings. In the afternoon, streets swarm with youth in old-style school uniforms. Sprawling metro stations burst to overflowing during afternoon rush hour. At the end of the week, however, the train carries me back into the countryside, to family and kangaroos and gumtrees and kookaburras, and the crisp morning scent of dew-dampened bush.