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Dearest Lois,

I have seen a thousand sunsets and sunrises, on land where it
floods forest and mountains with honey coloured light, at sea
where it rises and sets like a blood orange in a multicoloured
nest of cloud, slipping in and out of the vast ocean. I have seen
a thousand moons: harvest moons like gold coins, winter moons as
white as ice chips, new moons like baby swans' feathers.

I have seen seas as smooth as if painted, coloured like shot silk
or blue as a kingfisher or transparent as glass or black and
crumpled with foam, moving ponderously and murderously.

I have felt winds straight from the South Pole, bleak and wailing
like a lost child; winds as tender and warm as a lover's breath;
winds that carried the astringent smell of salt and the death of
seaweeds; winds that carried the moist rich smell of a forest
floor, the smell of a million flowers. Fierce winds that churned
and moved the sea like yeast, or winds that made the waters lap at
the shore like a kitten.

I have known silence: the cold, earthy silence at the bottom of a
newly dug well; the implacable stony silence of a deep cave; the
hot, drugged midday silence when everything is hypnotized and
stilled into silence by the eye of the sun; the silence when great
music ends.

I have heard summer cicadas cry so that the sound seems stitched
into your bones. I have heard tree frogs in an orchestration as
complicated as Bach singing in a forest lit by a million emerald
fireflies. I have heard the Keas calling over grey glaciers that
groaned to themselves like old people as they inched their way to
the sea. I have heard the hoarse street vendor cries of the mating
Fur seals as they sang to their sleek golden wives, the crisp
staccato admonishment of the Rattlesnake, the cobweb squeak of the
Bat and the belling roar of the Red deer knee-deep in purple
heather. I have heard Wolves baying at a winter's moon, Red
Howlers making the forest vibrate with their roaring cries. I have
heard the squeak, purr and grunt of a hundred multi-coloured reef
fishes.

I have seen hummingbirds flashing like opals round a tree of
scarlet blooms, humming like a top. I have seen flying fish,
skittering like quicksilver across the blue waves, drawing silver
lines on the surface with their tails. I have seen Spoonbills
flying home to roost like a scarlet banner across the sky. I have
seen Whales, black as tar, cushioned on a cornflower blue sea,
creating a Versailles of fountain with their breath. I have
watched butterflies emerge and sit, trembling, while the sun irons
their wings smooth. I have watched Tigers, like flames, mating in
the long grass. I have been dive-bombed by an angry Raven, black
and glossy as the Devil's hoof. I have lain in water warm as milk,
soft as silk, while around me played a host of Dolphins. I have
met a thousand animals and seen a thousand wonderful things... but
-

All this I did without you. This was my loss.

All this I want to do with you. This will be my gain.

All this I would gladly have forgone for the sake of one minute of
your company, for your laugh, your voice, your eyes, hair, lips,
body, and above all for your sweet, ever surprising mind which is
an enchanting quarry in which it is my privilege to delve.

Love, Clark