There are many influences on our lives that we take for granted. It is only when they are threatened or withdrawn for a time that we realise how much we depend on their presence. Particular colors are vital to my life - just how much - I was to find out in a curious way.
A personal story of inexplicable unhappiness.
Several years ago my husband and I left New Zealand, to travel through several States of North America and Mexico.
The flight left in the early evening, flying straight out from Auckland, leaving behind myriads of twinkling lights and dark blue velvet seas. Approximately twelve hours later, our aircraft descended at Los Angeles, through a sickly soup of greyish-yellow fog. It bumped down on the tarmac, to the kind of depressing pollution for which Los Angeles is famous.
Not wishing to venture outside, we collected our things and scurried to transfer on to an earlier flight to Atlanta, Georgia. Once clear of Los Angeles, it was a beautiful experience flying across the United States, viewing from the windows of our plane, the moving geography of a mighty country in all its beautiful colors.
We crossed the mountains, their tops gleaming with the last of the winter's snow and flew over the chequered plains beyond. Below us, we saw the mighty Mississippi River, with its many boats scurrying up and down that mighty waterway like ants carrying cargoes and building their nest. After sitting for a while in a holding pattern, over Georgia, we eventually landed in Atlanta, an airport about four times the size of Sydney airport.
Apart from the shopping, our stay in Atlanta was relatively uneventful - I did the usual tours and shopped, while my husband attended a conference. Two days later, with heavier bags, we headed north on a flight to Buffalo - en route to Niagara Falls, Canada.
Circling Buffalo airport five times, (something that is considered exceptional over there), during which, there were several emergencies with defective landing gear, the crew eventually put the plane down on to the tarmac. As we slewed round to a halt on the snow-covered runway, the relieved American travellers, more aware of the emergency than we were, showered the crew with tumultuous applause.
By this time, it was dark and we shivered, as we emerged from the plane, to the wintry chill of minus fourteen degrees. Warmed by hot coffee from the airport café, we began the twenty-two mile drive from Buffalo to Niagara Falls in a cab. It was the beginning of March, just around the time of the spring thaw, although to us it felt like being in the middle of a hard winter in Queenstown, New Zealand.
The cab driver, a New York State man - born in the Bronx - and his non-stop humorous patter, kept us entertained on the long, cold drive to the Falls. Fortunately, my husband had the presence of mind, to tape the conversation, so we have since enjoyed reliving that ride, many times over.
On entering Niagara Falls and before being dropped to our hotel, on the Canadian side, we called to see the tail end of the Niagara Falls evening illuminations.
Although slabs of ice, crashing onto the river below, seemed enchanting, the colors playing on the cascading water and illuminating the fine misty spray, which rose several hundred feet into the air above the river, left us breathless. We were entranced to see frozen spray dropping down on to the trees below, to form perfect icicles. At that moment, were in wonderland. But, oh it was so cold!
Next morning, we awoke to temperatures of minus eight degrees, which quickly plummeted to minus twelve. Weak rays of pale sunshine, valiantly tried to warm the frozen landscape, through which we toured the famous sights around the falls.
Looking out at the frozen spectacle was like stepping back in time. I was reminded of my mother's battered photo album with its many sepia-toned photographs.
The trees in North America are deciduous, losing their leaves in autumn, before the bitter winter's chill attacks them. The sepia colors I was encountering in that wintry panorama seemed the same as in the album.
Two days later, we left again for Buffalo, to fly on to Cleveland in Ohio. A sharp frost had left an icy terrain in its wake and, as we drove to Buffalo, through miles of snow-covered landscape, I began to feel a decided unease that I blamed on jetlag. I was depressed; although depression is not something I have previously suffered.
Our stay in Cleveland was unusual; we arrived for St Patrick's Day and witnessed a huge St Patrick's parade, where thousands of genuine (and would-be), Irishmen, turned out for the celebration. It was interesting to see dyed green hair and to drink green beer. Everything that day was Irish!
A day later, after exploring the tourist haunts and Art Galleries of Cleveland, tempered overnight, by a whiteout blizzard, which dumped deep snowdrifts on the cheerless city; we set out, once more, for the airport.
But that sense of loss and discomfort had grown much stronger and I struggled to identify its cause. I was becoming seriously depressed, even though I was on a wonderful holiday. Whatever could be wrong? I'd slept comfortably; so it couldn't be jetlag. I was luxuriously accommodated, so it wasn't discomfort either.
We moved on, flying from Cleveland to Chicago, Illinois, where we stopped overnight, before travelling up next afternoon, to Milwaukee by railroad. During the morning, we visited the Chicago Art Museum and I was fascinated to spy a family of grey squirrels, frolicking among the frosty, bare-branched azalea bushes in the garden, fronting the Gallery, on Madison Avenue.
Next morning, as the train passed through the Wisconsin countryside, we marvelled at the magnificent German-inspired architecture of farm homesteads. The spring thaw was just beginning and what grass we could see, still had that lifeless, straw-colored look, we'd noticed at all our previous stopovers. Although a pale sun filtered across the landscape, it was still far too cold for the bare trees to sprout leaves.
On arrival at Milwaukee, we were greeted by the same sepia tinted landscape, as we drove to the hotel, and I felt again, the grip of unfamiliar unease and depression. Determined to get the most out of this trip, I tried to ignore these unhappy feelings. To combat them, I set about being busy, in an unfamiliar city.
The next day, on our return to the Phister hotel from a tour of Milwaukee, the doors of our hotel lift sprang apart and a large group of women, carrying prized tiny poinsettia plants, spilled out into the hotel foyer.
Memories of my healthy ten-foot high poinsettia bush, growing at the front doorway of my home flooded back and I felt homesick for the first time in my life. Try as I might, I couldn't shake off the depression and sense of loss, I felt.
Shopping till we dropped, after seeing the sights, we finally pushed our trolleys through the airport, towards our plane to Mexico City. Once in the air, we enjoyed the flight down the path of the mighty Mississippi River, which wound its way south, to the Gulf of Mexico. For a while, the deep feelings of unease subsided, as our minds concentrated on the view below us.
Five hours later, we landed at Mexico's airport, soaring down through a blanket of thick smog that enshrouded that mighty city, home at that time, to eighteen million people.
Finally emerging through the gates, we were swept into a Combi Van, in the guise of a taxi, to begin the ride of our lives. In and out of an unending flood of traffic, our driver wove his van, hooting and screaming indecipherable oaths at other drivers, as he went. Memories of the song `Tijuana Taxi' were vividly recalled, as we hurtled forward - accelerator - brake, swerve, accelerator - brake, swerve, towards our hotel, a former Mexican palace.
As our tortured vehicle squealed round a corner on the Zocalo; the largest - and busiest - highway in the world; I saw a sight that brought tears to my eyes.
On a traffic island, in the middle of this amazingly busy highway, stood a tree. A tree, so green, it brought a lump to my throat. At that sight, I cried like a baby. That tree revealed the answer to my distress.
Green! An absence of green from my life had deeply disturbed my happy disposition.
I'd travelled this huge distance, to find out how important is one of the most basic influences on my life. Green! It is a color deeply embedded in my psyche. The surroundings of my lifetime were peppered with green, as the dominant flora of New Zealand is made up of evergreen trees.
During my childhood, many of my spare hours were spent happily climbing the trees surrounding my home, a place of exquisitely green lawns and clipped hedges. In flashbacks, I remembered my adolescence, when I'd tramped through miles of mountain beech forests, without ever realising, what a vital part they played. And now, an adult, I'd created luxuriant gardens, featuring lush green ferns and evergreen trees.
Yet, for more than forty years, I'd taken those important and fertile surroundings for granted - until that moment.
In that instant, when I saw that tree, I knew my life could never be complete without the healing and relaxing shades of green; the color of Mother Nature herself. I'll never forget how important a part the color green plays in my life. It is the source of my happiness and inspiration.
