Northern Queensland is a land with beauty that grows up from the wet ground with scented flowers, filling the air, making it thick with flavor. The humid air fills my lungs with every deep and restful breath and long exhale.
The wild drive along the blue coast with hair flying around and the Jeep hugging the road, curling around the sharp turns through the tropical Cairns, North Queensland. The summer solstice passed the day we drove through Kuranda to see the small trickle of waterfall that lay victim to the drought. Meanwhile, the winter solstice dawned on the northern hemispheres and the short day set into cool action.
Photo Courtesy of Karoline Meador
We had six days in Cairns and they passed like a time lapse. Slow in the moment, recording and soaking in the feeling and then fast when you look back at it. Fleeting, like every other beautiful thing. The Coral Sea in it’s violet blue water, is inhabited by deadly stingers on every single northern shoreline. An old local man told us that swimming in the water was a death wish. But that is only at the shallow, sandy surface.
Photo Courtesy of Karoline Meador
Far off the shore, on the Great Barrier Reef, the only wish for death is the weight they strap to your waist before you jump into the cool water. But once you’re in the water, it’s all blue and orange with coral and fish and light filters in from the surface. The Great Barrier Reef is teeming with life and color. Giant clams rest, mouths gaping, on the sea floor and giant sea turtles glide past in graceful strokes.
With a regulator and nitrogen and flippers and goggles, it’s a bit claustrophobic, very opposite of falling from a plane. Very different from skydiving. But even that can be considered a death wish in which you find ultimate life. The cool rush of wind all around. The curved landscape underneath, flying forward so fast that you forget to think about death. Instead you think about beauty. Instead of death, you think about life. You think about how one experience can be so indescribable. Flying and falling and trusting that something will catch you. That is life. The free fall. The rush and excitement, the wind in your hair, plummeting so fast that water streams from the corners of your eyes. So, swimming along the sea floor with fifty pounds on your back or jumping out of a plane at 14,000 feet might seem to be fatal decisions, but I have found that these are the moments when life begins.
Photo Courtesy of Karoline Meador
