The blue jumper

The first morning was spent in a trance for the beauty of the area around me and disbelief I was really here. It was my first time seeing the area in the light, the scary toilet shack I’d visited the night before looked much less scary. The working day I fumbled around, clueless of what to do and where to go but I got paired with my wonderful cabin mate - Chloe, who I spent the first week and a half calling Claire. We were tasked with stapling and I never knew it could be so complicated. Finding the staples, cutting the correct size tarp, making sure the staple had gone through - luckily a break in the day came where I was introduced to the happenings of ‘break time cake’. It’s currently 2 days before I leave and I’m already mourning the loss of cake at 11:30. After continuing to battle the staple and tarp debacle, the end to my first work day came and I was then introduced to the incredible vegan chef skills the host had.

Throughout this trip, I have been in awe of the food thats been created, but mainly the importance of the nutrients and the beauty of community around the food. For me, I became severely unwell with anorexia in my teenage years and to this day I have continued to battle the illness that is embedded into my brain. Because of this, food has never been just ‘food’. Food was something to comfort, something to control. Cooking was a hassle that meant that a meal I had made always resulted as a plate of numbers in my eyes. But being here, eating, cooking, food, has become normal. People eat when they’re hungry, they eat because the food is so yummy, they eat to celebrate, they eat their cooking. Being here has shown me the beauty of food. The privilege we have to eat it, the importance of it to the body and mainly, how much love it holds.

Wednesday morning I woke up after realising I had slept since 4:30pm the day before and journaled about the lack of distraction for my brain, wrote a message to myself to believe in myself and cracked on with my day - continuing stapling. I saw the light in it all a bit more that day. I did some cool $h1T like make a fire for the shower and I talked to the people around me - which may sound like a silly small thing but it’s always been something that terrifies me. Thursday was spent painting the windows on the inside of a house that had been incredibly crafted in the off grid area.

So much time was spent staring at the area around me - the raw, natural, real nature around me. The stream running down the hill of rock leading to the little lake, the grand, strong, tall eucalyptus trees with their peeling bark swarming them, the noise of the birds and the acorns falling on the roof of the cabin. The glistening crystals that shone in the mid day sun. But, it was also spent admiring the incredible craftsmanship of the buildings that had been made with creativity and love. What had been a patch of mountain land, somebody had crafted into a self sufficient area of living.

Friday was then spent carrying wheel barrows up the mountain and bringing them back down with bags of groceries. As if that wasn’t tiring enough, we were then tasked with finding big rocks. It was quite a pleasant task, collecting pretty stones and gorgeous crystals, until we were told that they weren’t big enough and were then shown the size of rock needed - literal boulders. Now maybe that’s an exaggeration, but I’m talking BIG. Nevertheless, I felt like an absolute muscle mummy. It dawned on me that evening that it was my first weekend here was approaching and I had no structure in place at all. Luckily I managed to arrange a hike - yay!

The peace and quiet leading my brain to have the ability to think was really proving to be quite the difficulty that weekend. I now know that I was PMSing hard, but still. The morning I spent it questioning if I’ll ever have a good brain but once I had finally got out in the sunshine, walking around the land, I remembered that life was beautiful. I saw some incredible sights on this hike and even found an old abandoned miners town. Once we had established that the buildings were safe to go in, I explored around and found a pile of forgotten clothes with a blue knitted jumper full of holes and patches of dirt. I decided to take it and put some love into it. We met a German couple, ate a delicious wild berry, got lost, got back on track, got majorly lost and then realised that of we turned the other way, it would have just been a 10 minute walk up to the area.

That evening we had been invited to a pizza party that the big community was having - words can’t describe how beautiful the atmosphere was. So much love, laughter, peace and despite the freezing cold temperatures, I had never felt more full of warmth. I’m not too sure what existential effect that had on me, but Saturday night resulted in being high on hinge. That then meant that Sunday was spent moping and feeling sorry for myself whilst working once again - on the masterpiece you’re reading this on.

The first week was a roller coaster of highs and lows. I realised that just because I’m in the mountains, the bad bits in my brain don’t disappear when I do. I felt lonely, I questioned my purpose, I stressed about the future, I went back to old habits - but, I also saw the beauty of peace, glorious sunlight crested mountains, how good socialising was for the soul,  the benefit of trying new things. So, I continued to try the new thing…