I had no idea so many people would be excited to see or meet my mother! I’m on an airplane flying over the Pacific, headed to New Zealand and one after another, people come by to say Hi, Jane! Or, are you Jane?

I knew my mother had traveled to different countries to attend conferences or to visit farms, but I didn’t realize how highly respected she was in the world of organic farming. This was the 1970’s, and she had been writing since the 1950’s I’m guessing. What she cared about was where food came from. She cared about the cleanliness of the water, the kind of fertilizer used to grow crops. And she cared about… cows. She loved her cows.

This was not something common to most women in Charlottesville, Va., in the social circles that my father enjoyed. He wanted it to be a well kept secret. So my mother showed up for him. And cared about her farm concerns separately.

This was her separate life . And I was with her, headed to see Jennifer. Jennifer, my friend. My friend and my mother’s friend.

See, years earlier, when I was at the University of Colorado, my mother had flown out to go skiing and asked me to invite others. I had just gotten to know Jennifer, from Seattle. In the next year, she would leave Colorado to learn about farming in Norway, and I would leave to study languages at Middlebury College in Vermont (to share my love of art worldwide) which was followed by time in Yugoslavia for me.

But Jennifer had met my mom. And then she had fallen in love with farming… which took her back to Virginia and a good year or more working on my mother’s dairy farm, which was organic, long before there was a label for that. When Jennifer later married a New Zealander, AND some world dairy conference was scheduled for Aukland… we were on our way.

And all because… my mother LOVED cows. Sweet quiet mellow cows. Which also were raised in …New Zealand!

A country which ended up surprising me in many more ways…

• While my mother was off at her conference, Jennifer and I decided to hike on Mt. Cook – the highest mountain in New Zealand, covered by glaciers even mid summer. We took our camping gear and started out, full of confidence. The trail was paved after all! We could see a fast-flowing river, milky colored from the ice melt, to one side of the trail that walked along a slope slanted steeply toward it. We would cross the streams that fed into that river as we climbed higher. Ahead of us was a group of Germans, chatting away. All we needed to do was follow them. As the paved trail turned to gravel, and as the gravel trail became narrower and less obvious, we just followed, crossing the streams where the ones ahead crossed. This went on until, at a certain point, we noticed the Germans were walking up and down the side of a stream, but not crossing. And then, as we approached, they turned around and said to us emphatically, “We want to live,” and u-turned to head back down the trail. Jennifer and I looked at each other, stunned. We considered ourselves somewhat fearless. But the roar of the milky river down below? This stream that was uncrossable?

I believe we mustered the resolve to find a rock or two over to cross and make it to the hut. But I remember that moment – in New Zealand on Mt. Cook, the trail that deteriorated so quickly from a sense of civilization/paved to unprotected wild. What a contrast to experiences I’d had in the mountains of New England and Colorado.

Travel. Life. Contrast.

Until you’ve done it. Until you’ve been there. You don’t know, right?

Then again, you can always:

just dream about it.

I