Hold On Lisa…..

….there’s a light at the end of that tunnel.

I have taken to watching train videos while on the treadmill: someone sets up a GoPro camera in the cab for a driver’s-eye view and I go along for the ride. Er, run.

I have traveled from France to Italy. Through the Swiss alps. Capljina to Sarajevo in the Czech Republic. And since I have always dreamed of visiting  New Zealand, today I “ran” from Wellington to Masterson.

I confess that I was disappointed. We traveled through a lot of industrial areas. I saw lots of freeways.  Then, just outside of Featherston, we entered the Rimutaka Tunnel.

A digression:  Dear friend Lisa emailed yesterday to say her 2020 was craptastic. Like us all, she is Covid-19 weary. This winter her son who was visiting fell and broke his ankle. She needed orthopedic hand surgery. Then, late this spring, a family emergency mandated a sudden trip to the mainland which has been indefinitely extended.

Yesterday, while riding her bike, she fell (into a busy road) and fractured her wrist. Today she had surgery, including a bone graft because the radius was shattered.

I worried about her all day, and fretted about all those calamities, and relaxed when she texted that she was out of surgery and recovering.

So, back to that train “trip.”  We entered the Rimutaka Tunnel, 5.5 miles long. Narrow. Dark. Claustrophobic.  Just when I thought we must be near the end…..we weren’t, and the darkness continued. My anxiety level was climbing with each kilometer traveled, despite the fact that I was watching a damned video while on my treadmill.

Finally, we rounded a gentle curve and I could see it…..the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. We burst out of the blackness in to startlingly  bright sunlight. Gone was the industrial corridor: now we were high in the hills, a huge body of water off to the right and beautiful hills and forests all around and I was traveling through the New Zealand I had always pictured.

For all of us….may the bad memories fade. May our isolation be eliminated. May we burst out of confining darkness into beauty and light.

And may Lisa see light at the end of the “craptastic” tunnel of 2020.