When you grow up in one corner of the world, you take the sky for granted. You know where the sun will rise and set and what stars you will see above you. Always up there, sometimes shifting, but never far from where you expect them to be.

I first saw the stars of the Southern Cross on a dark night in Santiago, Chile. For those in the northern hemisphere, the big dipper is generally the most recognizable constellation – at least the one they teach to elementary school children that they never forget. But south of the equator, the Southern Cross blinks to the stargazer that they are now looking at a completely different bit of space than they ever have before. Imagine that – a brand new corner of the universe to peer into!

The Southern Cross constellation

My first trip south of the equator was as a teenager to Chile, in South America. It was with great fascination that I found the four stars marking the perfect shape of a cross, and looked for it every night after. I saw it again a year later in Australia, as we rode across the Snowy Mountains on horseback in Kosciuszko National Park.

I still love to see the Southern cross on my travels. It’s a silent signal that though I am very far from home I still have some kind stars watching over me. In South Africa, the Cross waved a greeting across the bushveld as I looked out into the sunset across a watering hole filled with hippos. Last spring, in Hawaii, I was told the cross was visible in the very early mornings on the southern horizon. As it turns out, waking up very early on vacation in Hawaii is just not a thing. Until the morning I left. My 5 a.m. flight took off, banked around and out the window of my airplane were those four stars, blinking hello.

Australia’s flag features the constellation

I was far too distracted on the next leg of my trip to Melbourne to look skyward much, and I wasn’t confident in my star-identifying ability – the Cross was quite on its side down here, if that is what I was seeing after all. But on the night I was driven across a hot red desert in central Australia, I laid my head down for a brief nap on the armrest and out the window were those same four winking stars. They followed me all the way home.

I spent a lot of time on the highway on this trip to Australia. In a country as diverse and vast as it is, there is no other way to see so much of it. And no better way, I would add.

I arrived in Melbourne freshly off a 14 hour trip from Maui, where I’d already spent a week. I was fully in vacation mode and ready to begin exploring the city before we ventured out of town. But first – coffee. Melbourne has a healthy coffee culture, music to my Seattle heart, and within a few days I was able to settle on a favorite spot. The Petty Officer in Albert Park is a sweet corner cafe with a properly caffeinated long black and entertaining stack of daily newspapers. Do stop in if you are in the area.

Once I had a chance to repack, we were off. The first road adventure took me and my traveling companion, only a year into her ex-pat status and 4 months pregnant to boot, up the winding Great Ocean Road. Beginning in Bells Beach, a breathtakingly deserted stretch of oceanside, we watched surfers glide in and out of the break with a howling wind at their backs.

Onward through charming seaside towns to Lorne, where we watched perhaps the most perfect late summer sunset drift off as the moon rose over the calm waters of the small bay.

And then to the dramatic Twelve Apostles on a stormy day where the sunlight slashed through the dark clouds at unexpected moments, lighting up pillars of limestone in a way I wouldn’t believe was real except that I was there to see it.

We threw in a few lighthouses to round out the trip, and unexpectedly stumbled on a koala teasing a small roadside crowd with his slow blinks and a mouthful of eucalyptus.

We managed to the highway on a shoulder season, with little traffic and many room vacancies, but still warm days and nights. It was a part of Australia I never knew I needed to see until I saw it, in person, through the passenger-side window.

My first night in Cape Town, I could not sleep. I had spent over 36 hours in transit, between Seattle, Dubai and this new city at the bottom of the world. My internal clock was all wrong, and I was dead tired and desperately willing myself to sleep. I woke up at roughly 4 am local time and saw for the first time a skylight in the room I shared with my best friend and travel partner, Joan. She was soundly sleeping. I was counting the stars I could see through the skylight, and I watched as the light in the window turned from black, to pewter to rose to light blue. And I still could not sleep. My mind was racing through all that happened in the past two days. A brutal flight in coach to a hot city in the middle east; a view from the top of the tallest building in the world; dinner (minus cocktails) with veiled women and robed men; a picturesque landing on my sixth continent; and a white-knuckled ride on a South African freeway past townships and into the city of my dream. It was enough to make my head spin. It still does.

Cape Town from Table Mountain

How I ended up in Cape Town is both a mystery and obvious. In basic terms, I spent a few weeks planning, gave a paycheck to Expedia and then got on a plane. Mysteriously, I didn’t ever mean to travel to South Africa, at least not now. But I had a dream and in that dream I saw what I believed to be South Africa, near Cape Town. I still believe that. And then I called Joan, my college friend and frequent travel partner, and asked her to think about a trip to southern tip of Africa – we’ll see animals and oceans, I said. She said she was supposed to be paying off student loans this year….but, sure, why not! This is why I love her and also why we travel so well together.

Giraffe’s on the airstrip at Arathusa

We planned and discussed and planned some more, and then we got on the plane to the city that I never knew I wanted to see but that I cannot imagine not knowing. We did see oceans and animals, and sheer cliffs for roadways, and warthogs on runways, and ostriches sunning themselves on blustery beaches at the south-westernmost point of the African continent. We saw it all, and we saw nothing – only a glimmer of the mirage that is one of the most profound places on our planet. Like a view through a skylight, what I could see was only one window into a vast space, but it was still magnificent.

Sun down in South Africa

I am not very good at sports. Honestly, I was generally chosen last or very close to last on any team. There are a long string of coaches from elementary to high school who knew I only showed up at my chosen sport practice to chat with my friends. My mom’s best memory of my short-lived pee wee soccer career was watching me pick daisies in the backfield while the game went on around me.

But I love to ski. For some odd reason, my mother would bundle me up in all manner of puffy clothes and lug our skis, both annual ski swap purchases, across icy parking lots to spend what was likely a hefty amount of cash on a day of skiing. I’m guessing she liked the sport a little, too, although the first few years of my downhill education she spent hunched over as I teetered between her legs, hanging over her ski poles. No way was that fun for her – but it was an outrageous time for me!

As I got older, I got better and eventually started skiing faster and steeper stuff, all the while demanding better equipment. And money for lift tickets and lunch. She complied. I skied. I loved the speed and the near-death experience you can have while facing down a tree or leaning just a little too far back on your heels. I loved the icy air, and hidden trails between runs, and the rhythm of turns to get lost in.

View of the imposing Andes from Santiago, Chile.

It was inevitable that when we went to Chile one summer in June that I would insist on a trip to a ski slope. It was winter there, after all, and the Andes shoot straight up behind Santiago. I could practically smell the snow from the city streets. We found a small tourist shop that rented skis and sold reservations for a bus up the mountain. I remember arriving at some early hour to pick up our equipment with a few ex-pats and tourists, and off we went. Straight up the mountain, on roads covered in snow and ice, in a bus with bald tires. There was only room for one car on the narrow road, so the morning route meant everybody was going up, and in the evening everybody went down. Like suicide lanes on city streets, only deadlier. I remember sliding backward for the umpteenth time when our bus had to stop abruptly while a plow pulled out the car in front of us, and realized someone had forgot to put guardrails on this particular switchback. Actually, all the switchbacks.

Lunch break at the ski lodge, atop the Andes mountains.

We finally made it to the top, thanked  the many saints and angels on duty, and went about spending a fine day skiing the Andes mountains. El Colorado was the resort where we skied and it could not have been a more perfect day. Blue skies, fresh powder and view from the top of the world. I could not believe my luck! I may or may not have accidentally fallen off the side of the lodge deck while peering down into the city far below, but aside from that slight misadventure, I thoroughly enjoyed my first ski trip on the South American continent.

I still ski, and will continue as long as my legs hold me up. It’s probably the most expensive hobby one can enjoy, and every few years they change all the rules for equipment. But for me, it’s still about the speed, the sound, the rhythm and the icy, open air.

Tulip in bloom

It is late April. All my windows are open and I feel the cold air rush in and around my home. The new air is coming in and I can nearly see the stale, pallid air rushing out. The cold and newness is touching everything I own, giving a hint of what is to come.

I’m feeling particularly inspired now, though I have no reason to be. One of my favorite songwriters, Roseane Cash, said that inspiration is not linear. You are not always inspired by what has happened to you. Sometimes you are inspired by things that have not yet happened. I’m feeling the pregnancy of a moment not yet on the horizon. I’m not sure sure what to do with it yet, but I know that opening the windows and doors of my home, my heart and my life will let the cool touch of newness in where it needs to be. Change will occur where and when it is meant to, and my job is to be here and do what I know best – to observe and record what it is that has become my life.

My life is not always (or even regularly) filled with flash or even excitement. But it is always here, waiting for me as I awake, and standing steady by my side while I sleep. I can be grateful for that.  There is a bit of heaven that  awaits me, if I choose to see it. It is in the clouds that roll in and out of my view; the rain that washes everything clean, leaving a slash of green for weeks to come; in the moments where I know I am, finally, becoming the thing that I have been all along.