The Heroes Journey!

The grass rustled under my swift footstep. There was no need to hurry, but I was eager. I wanted to know. I wanted some kind of answer. The SHEEP tour is a Spiritual journey. I know it!  The trees of the park were whispering to each other, it seemed, as I strode beneath them. The day was somewhat dimly lit, and the park wasn’t as alive as I had always known it to be. But I barely gave a passing thought to that. My mind was intent on contemplating something else: the meaning of the SHEEP tour. At least, what it meant to me and my life journey. What am I here in Auckland to discover? Why the tour .. why now?  Eyes fastened ahead, I could see the place I was so keen on visiting. Spiritual insight… It must be, I thought confidently, quickening my pace again. A pilgrimage to Dunedin. There were a number of places I wanted to visit during my two-week window in Auckland. But this stood above them all. Snug in the grand park known as One Tree Hill, it was a cluster of trees within

Loading all the gear into the Emerald Wagon was a game of Tetris. “So glad we don’t have to take the bass amp,” Tommy said, pushing his guitar case into the last slot left, above all the other gear. So much stuff - AC30 guitar amp, the instruments, cables, our bags, all piled on top of each other quite neatly. He was really good at stacking it all so it fit. If it was up to me, we wouldn’t have been able to shut the boot. We were ready.  After multiple runs back up the steep staircase to the flat to grab things we had forgotten, we were finally on the road. The journey to Auckland had begun. Tommy was driving; he insisted. He loved driving the Emerald Wagon - I didn’t mind. I could sit back and watch the world go by at my own leisure. Tommy put on Blondie’s Parallel Lines for the first leg. The speakers in the back pounded the classic bangers without complaint. I glanced over his way, and his pink/orange hair was flailing in the wind rushing through the window. He pull

February, 2018 Wind streamed through the open window of the Emerald Wagon. It was gushing through, and something in my gear was flapping wildly in the back. I stole a quick glance through the mirror. My whole material life was sitting there, in the back - suitcases, keyboards, knickknacks and bags, all bunched up together. I darted my eyes back to the road before me. It veered down to the left, and beyond it was a wide, golden expanse of Central Otago reaching to the horizon, chewed by scraggly rock formations. I was leaving my life in the Mountains, and heading Bonnet-first into a whole new adventure - I was on my way to Dunedin to live. I imagined Dunedin city sprawling by the seaside, seagulls surfing the wind above the beaches, and heading into the city streets to scab a few nibbles.   A whole new chapter begins… I thought, pressing hard on the accelerator, and zooming into the plains of Central Otago. Dunedin was just as I had remembered it. It came up to greet me