Encounters…
Nathaniel at Port
On the road we meet people. Those encounters might last only a few minutes, yet in that time people reveal things about themselves and their lives. I make notes about these encounters so that I remember them. Sometimes I write these notes into coherent mini-stories, into vignettes. These are some of those vignettes.
IT WAS the end of the first month of winter. The sea was still warm. Further along the beach where the three foot swell broke by the training wall, a clutch of wetsuit-clad surfers made the most of the conditions.
Town Beach, Port Macquarie. It might seem a strange place to talk about snow.
“Where you there when it was snowing?”, Nathaniel asked as he sat in the doorway of his VW van. I told him my partner and I were although it wasn’t snowing where we camped. The wet and windy weather there could only be describes as freezing, I said. He told me was working in Katoomba for a month.
I didn’t see Nathaniel when his yellow van caught my attention. What interested was the cargo pod on its roof. We were thinking of installing one as space in our minivan is very limited.
I wandered over. When I noticed him sitting shirtless in the door of his van in the warming winter sunlight, coffee pot on the footpath beside him, reddish beard, feet in sandals, spoon in hand having just eaten breakfast, I asked him about the pod. He stood up and we walked around to the other side of the vehicle.
”Works well,” he replied. “No noticeable wind noise and no impact on fuel consumption that I notice. It’s full of my climbing gear.”
Nathaniel speaks slowly and softly, like someone unhurried by the demands of life. I’m no good at guessing age, so saying he is somewhere in this thirties may well be wrong.
The pod and a 9’6” single fin malibu board were attached to a wooden roof rack. “Yes, built that myself”, he said.
Nathaniel might have been back home in the town he comes from, however his van was equipped for the nomadic life of the road. There was an awning on the roof rack to give shelter from the hot summer sun and a mattress in the back. Behind where he sat in the doorway was a pile of clothing and stuff, a net basket filled with more stuff hanging from the front seat and a row of Tibetan prayer flags over the door. The side windows were covered with what looked like insulating foil. I mentioned how this model is regarded as a classic by VW enthusiasts. He knew that and said he was getting some mechanical work done in town.
”The size of the van is deceptive when it comes to space. The engine takes up a lot of room in the rear”, he said.
I’m no VW expert, however my understanding is that the this was the first VW van to have a water-cooled engine. Nathaniel confirmed that.
We spoke for only a few minutes. That is too short a time to get a real impression of someone, however I came away with the idea that Nathaniel is happy in a life that orbits around surfing and climbing and travel, working when he needs to.
Perhaps Natheniel has succeeded in doing what military and political leader, and Stoic philosopher of Imperial Rome, Marcus Aurelius suggested. He said that most of what we do is not essential and eliminating it from our lives gives us peace of mind as well as more time.
For Nathaniel, perhaps that is more time for those things that are core to his life, like surfing and rock climbing.
Encounters…
Stories of the coast…
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