I spent a week volunteering for the Department of Conservation in the Nelson Lakes National Park after the kayak trip with Mary.  We were charged with cleaning and painting one of the remote huts in the East Matakitaki valley and clearing a bit of trail.  We easily accomplished these tasks and the rest was like a vacation.  Myself, a young German guy named Moritz, the two Kiwis above, Nigel and Martin, and our DOC trip leader Kerri flew in to this beautiful valley for five days of tramping around, working and deer hunting.  Both Nigel and Martin bagged a red deer hind a piece.  It was a good week.

She's done it again, Mother Nature never ceases to inspire me to put pen to paper.  The slow trickle of a spring waterfall behind me, birds singing in the breeze, the alpen glow of west facing peaks at sundown and the low rushing churn of the river below is where I live right now.  Perched in a rock slide high above the East Matakitaki Valley below, looking South at the Majesty that these mountains behold as the sun lingers no longer and the foreboding gray of a cloudy twilight over stone peaks starts to take shape.  I feel infinitely inconsequential amongst these giants, but privileged to be allowed in their company.  For a brief moment in time I get to exist in a place that they've called home for thousands of years.  Time marches on and they watch it march right on by.