One of the things I will miss about Heron island is the sunset. I have been surrounded by mountains my whole life and mountain sunsets are gorgeous, but just in a different way than ocean sunsets. When the you can see the colors in the sky all the way down to the horizon they seem burn like a flame and linger a bit longer. Just when you think it has hit it's peak, you look back and it's still growing brighter. With mountain sunsets you can watch the sun sink out of view and if you don't look at just right moment you've missed the whole thing. It's been one of the best ways to wrap up the day , by heading down to the beach to watch the sun go down while everyone laughs and plays. If I could just take a snapshot about the meaning of life that would be it, just living in the moment. One thing I love about sunsets anywhere is that they are never the same even over the same horizon which means that every day I have something to look forward to.
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Did I ever say that the ocean was one of my biggest fears (and sometimes still is)? I like to pretend for my brothers that
nothing really terrifies me, and over the years, of which I have seen many, I have challenged myself to face these fears. Humans inherently fear the unknown, so I decided that the more I knew the less I would fear. Unfortunately the more you learn more you realise how much you don't know, and you sucked into the vortex of unanswerable questions. So at some point you just have to embrace the fact that you will never know everything and decide not to let that fact scare you. So here I am taking my first ocean swims in Australia because, you know, anything here can kill you, and I am loving it like I knew I would. How can you not love it when the sun is shining and the water is clear and you're surrounded by several friends? Well you just stick the sun back behind some big grey clouds, and then the water is murky and you loose yourself in the giant waves that the wind is throwing in your face and all of a sudden all the fear that you forgot chokes you like salt water as this wave of terror comes crashing down. Ok that's just a little over exaggerated. But really I did have mini panic moment when I didn't see any one else all of a sudden when I swear they were just there a second ago. It's was fine though, because Trisha and Kamp appeared a moment later having just gone down to have a closer look at something. After the fact, I felt slightly sheepish for my irrational paranoia for a tiny second, because after that people started spotting all sorts of little critters, the knew ones to the list of things I've seen are the little anemone fish and my very first wild octopus. Once we were out of the water we witnessed one of the best sunsets of all time, while the kids did head stands in the sand (by kids I mean college students) and Edd did his infamous elephant seal impression. After that much carefree fun I really felt silly for my mental freak-out earlier, but probably not as silly as Edd. It has been a crazy day of cramming for our final project. One unfortunate consequence of final projects is that you are glued to a computer for waaaay too long. Luckily we are on schedule to have it done by tomorrow so that we can present on Saturday. After a few ours on the computer Tia and I would just hit a rut of unproductivity and brain farts, so to clear our minds we would give ourselves little breaks of activity. During our first break we decided to walk around the island and we would have walked all the way around (which is really not far, this is a tiny island) except we ran into a sand storm coming around the corner to shark bay and escaped into the "forest". Tia, bless her young heart, saw a tree that was perfect for climbing, so I skedaddled up there and maybe it will tide me over until I can get to the climbing wall back home. I will miss swimming with the fish and the rays, and especially with the guitar sharks, but getting back to climbing will be like a good stretch after a long car ride. Until then I am going to take every chance I can to get in the water, because I have no clue when I will get to see the ocean again.
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