The Past Crashed...

...into my present on Wednesday.

An old friend, Dayna Roberts, sent me an email a little while ago saying that she was stopping in Vancouver for a day and would we like to meet for coffee? Coffee? How about you stay at my place and we hang out for the day? So on Wednesday she arrived on Air Canada flight 855 (delayed) from London, and I didn't recognise her at first because she was wearing glasses - a new addition to the facial arrangement. She had been traveling overseas with her husband Dean and had the kind of plane ticket where you needed to stop in at least one North American city. Dayna knew I was in Vancouver and decided to stop here en route to Sydney to say hello. Dean was heading to Oregon to join a vineyard there for a month. Dean is currently learning to make wine. He has a job lined up at a vineyard in a beautiful part of Australia (Diamond Valley) when he gets back. Somehow he landed an opportunity to hone his skills at an American vineyard; thought he'd give it a go. Why not. So while Dean went straight on to Portland, Dayna dropped in to see beautiful Vancouver.

I have known Dayna since Grade 4. We were mates from church and we both lived "up in the mountains" of the Strezlecki Ranges that surround the LaTrobe valley in Gippsland, Victoria. My family used to run a large holiday facility there (we had horses and adventure sports and lots of awesome hikes and snakes and koalas and the like...) called "Jumbuk Park". Dayna and her sister Shahan used to come to our place and ride horses and go swimming in our lake and join the camps that we would run for city kids. Quite possibly some of the best times of my life.

The last time I saw Dayna was in Adelaide of 2000. Lissa and I traveled there to attend the national Assembly of the Uniting Church of Australia. The Assembly was a terrible experience (it was at the assembly that I decided I could no longer be a member of that denomination); however, we both loved Adelaide and the surrounding hills. We took a trip up to the mountain town of Sterling: a place so quaint and beautiful it took our breath away. Dayna and Dean were living there at the time; they had rented a small stone cottage that was once the servant's quarters for a big old hotel. The hotel had at one time been turned into a residence, but had recently been re-sold and was in the process of becoming a hotel again.

It must have been around that time that Dean got interested in viticulture and winemaking, which would make sense, since he and Dayna were living just a few minutes from the Barossa valley (possibly the best wine region of Australia).

Dayna and Dean had spent the last 12 months traveling through India and Europe, but were getting ready to head home, settle down, and go the way of all flesh.

The experience was all very surreal and disorientating. I felt like my childhood ran full-steam into my present Adult life, with all its angst and expanding waistline reality.

I showed Vancouver off to Dayna, and she thought it was beautiful. We rode the buses; went downtown and ate lunch and Subees with Tracy; I showed Dayna some of my favourite shops; we went to Stanley park very briefly; we drove along the beach; and we admired the downtown buildings glistening in the afternoon sun (I told her that Vancouver was chrisened by Douglas Copeland as "the city of glass"). We talked all about her adventures in Europe; my adventures church-planting in Vancouver; and we reminisced about the good old days when we had no responsibility and could ride horses through the fragrant Eucalypt forests of the Victorian mountains, with the Cockatoos sqwaking overhead...

It was hard to say goodbye. I couldn't help feeling that a little piece of my past life was once again slipping away through my fingers. I couldn't help but feel sad that time had moved on so quickly. How could I have imaged then where I am now? And yet here I am, and there Dayna went, back to my beloved soil, back into the world of memories and broken hearts and forgotten dreams that only long-lost friends can reawaken.