Perspectives - March 4, 2016

A day of new and different perspectives. I've been listening to Eleanor Catton's book, The Luminaries  which won the Booker prize in 2013 and takes place right here on the New Zealand South Island west coast. I stopped in the town of Hokitika where the story is centered and enjoyed the museum which has a display related to the book with historical photographs of streets, the quay, wrecked ships and I walked out to the infamous bar, hazard of ships. It was eerie and wonderful to bridge the book and the place across a time span of about 150 years.

At the Hokitika spit

Carnegie Library, now Hokitika Museum

Then I took a brief helicopter ride (my first) to see some glaciers. It was a thrilling perspective of mountains, rivers, forest canopy, low cloud, glaciers ... and cows lying about in a field. Things look really different from above.

And it raises the whole specter of perspective ... there is no absolute reality.