New begginings

I'm back and I'm alive!
just spent an hour in the hostel hottub!
I didn't do the milford track... there was torrential downpour in the forcast for my day of ascent... so I chose the keppler track. Total distance walked in the past 4 days, over 70km. 1200m vertical (3600 feet for all you feet and inches people)
Unbelivable trek. Only downside was that my knee was acting up.. I forget how I injured it but it was a long time ago... crops up every now and then.... It started half way through the first day, on my ascent and remained very painful throughout the entire trek. I toyed with the idea of turning back after the first night... but decided to proceed with determination. I didn't climb a mountian to go back down the same way I came.... so I walked back down to the treeline and cut myself a walking stick.. and ventured on. really glad I did. hobbled on like an old man for the remaining 55km.
Spent the second day above the treeline, in the snow, wind and rain. MY GOD. no person on earth could have chosen a better colour sceme for a landscape! (don't worry, I took shitloads of pictures) I took the side trips to two mountain summits along the way and decended on day two. spent the last couple of days in the bush. Stayed in the huts along the way. ($10 a night, down from $40 in the high season) There were very few other trampers... in one of the huts we moved the matresses into the kitchen and crowed around the woodstove telling stories half trhe night.... at the hut last night I met a german girl on a very similar spiritual path to myself... vipassana meditator/dreamer... conversation started with dreams... I asked what she does, she says primary school teacher, I resopond by telling her that I was a priomary school teacher in my dreams the night before... which I was... symbolic of new begginings... probably a result of my cutting off of my dreadlocks the day earlier! ahahha yeah. I have no hair. well almost no hair. it's about an inch long or so. really intense experiance. I cut them off naked in the forest (getting too personal here?) on an island where a river splits in two, (a loop in the lifeline of the handprint of god) I cut them off with a pocket knife. been cutting them off every now and then and leaving them in places that were special to me... top of mountains... on the north island... gave one to chrysi.... yeah...
I feel really good about it. soooo nice to beable to feel my head! and to shower and not feel like a drowned rat afterward!!! and people respond to me much differently. really bizzare how much changes when you change a hairsyle... altough it has been 4 or 5 years.... anyway...
ok. time is running out! check my pictures section if you haven't already... check the last message or the one before for the link. I'll post more pics when I find a place that isn't $1 for every 10minutes....
I've got to go.
off back to queenstown toamrrow... then north.,
fly out of christchurch on the 15th.
love you all. gtg