June 9, 2024

[017] A New Decade

I'm travelling in South America. Here's what I'm up to, some photos and other bits

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Yesterday I turned thirty. It was the final day of a 600km bike ride down the Chilean/Bolivian Altiplano (more to follow…!), and I woke to the sun rising over the beautiful Uyuni Salt Flat. As I cooked breakfast outside the tent with my brilliant new friend Izzy, two beautiful yellow Sierra Finches came to join us, then we sang badly and danced to tunes.

Leaving my twenties was always on the cards, but it's still crept up on me. I feel utterly lucky for everything they gave me, and am totally up for the next decade.

Below is a little poem I wrote on the salt flats as I contemplated how I felt turning thirty.

Hope all is well back home

Love George x

You could see it from space, they said
so I figured it my best bet
I placed my bike wheels on the dry white crust at dawn
Pushed off from the west shore
pedalled towards the sun
Picking up pace I turned over my shoulder
and saw my twenties, abandoned, sulking, sat on a boulder on the shore
I pushed forward into the blank sea of white
and found my decade didn't flash by like film on a reel
but instead dissolved like sand through a gold pan
leaving behind fragments in the fine mesh
less so any successes or failures
more moments of tenderness and joy,
that feeling so to speak:

Not a table at that expensive restaurant, but sat in the long grass on Oxley Bank gazing towards the mast on a still summer's dayNot watching the footy from a corporate box, but being tended to in my sick bedNot drinking that expensive bottle of red, but washing dishes as a family at the sinkNot attending the party of the century, but entwining our limbs as we floated in the murky North Sea off the shingle shoreI reached an island that night and 
lit a fire, a beacon to the sky
to which I asked
for time which cannot be given;
not that I wasn't happy with my lot, but 
because it didn't feel right to rush on
so soonBut no one above returned my signal
Instead a canvas of endless stars
with a million more years than me
and destined to outlive me 
laughing in the face of my impermenanceSo I left in the darkness
to the east shore
arriving at day break 
when the rising sun revealed 
a solid black cube on the beach
no taller than my knees
padlocked, it's weight unknown;
And high in the sky, growing ever brighter
a flickering light sent a beam down
to me which said:"Welcome to your new decade old boy,
sorry about last night, we found ourselves
floating above The Humber Estuary
we followed it's tributaries to their source
Aire, Derwent, Don, Ouse, Trent and Wharfe
and came to let you know that
everything is running it's course"