you must make this fire very big, Sabu.

I'm just back from a few days visiting friends in western australia, marilyn and allen graham.

marilyn and I met ten years ago at borders books & music in redmond when I was a staff trainer and she was a new bookseller. we quickly discovered we shared a passion for drinking endless cups of tea, stimulating conversation, and quoting the classic film Out of Africa. to this day we call each other Sabu.

a few months before I left for mongolia and the peace corps in 2000, marilyn, a single grandmother who had been footloose and fancy-free for forty years, decided on a whim to post a profile of herself on a dating website. she got a hit from a fellow poster who opted not to put a picture of himself on his profile. he was an erudite, charming e-mail writer. intrigued, she wrote him back. then he wrote back. his name was allen graham, and he was a sixty-year-old widower living near perth, western australia.

soon they were e-mailing or talking on the phone every day. he sent her a charming video of himself shot by his best mate keith, in which he gave her a virtual tour of his small but tidy home. he appeared as a dapper, white-haired gentleman with a mischievous smile. then she flew to western australia to meet him. and returned with an engagement ring on her finger.

I wrote him an e-mail introducing myself, congratulating him on the fine choice of marilyn as fiancee, and cheerfully informing him that if he ever did her wrong, I would hunt him down and break his kneecaps, a memory he fondly recounts out loud and often.

a couple of months after I left for mongolia, they were married in st. margaret's church in bellevue, washington. soon thereafter, she moved to safety bay, western australia to live with her new husband.

I visited them in 2002 on my way home from mongolia. theirs is a cozy, welcoming home on a quiet suburban street, filled with beautiful handicrafts both of marilyn's own making and from her world travels. she is an accomplished craftswoman who spins and dyes wool, knits and crochets and does needlepoint and quilting and cross-stitch. she can knit with her eyes closed. on that visit, we baby-sat a working sheep farm for a week, during which there was nothing more to do than make lemonade from the giant lemons on the tree outside, walk the paddocks with the sheep on the lookout for kangaroos, and read. she taught me to knit, a pasttime I gratefully enjoy to this day.

here is a picture of me and allen trying out a new mp4 player he's just purchased on eBay.

last year, just as I was finishing my first season in antarctica, marilyn was diagnosed with breast cancer. she underwent nine months of procedures -- treatments, surgery and consultations that sapped her energy and made her hair and eyelashes fall out. allen uncomplainingly made her whatever foods she felt she could eat -- usually plain boiled potatoes with butter -- and drove her every day for six weeks to perth for her doctor's appointments.

today her hair has grown back, a lovely silvery gray, she is just as gracious and strong as I remember her.

at the end of Out of Africa, the Baroness Karen von Blixen (Meryl Streep) is getting ready to leave Kenya. her faithful servant Farah assists her in getting her house in order, selling off her assets, and ensuring that the Kikuyu natives who live on her land are relocated to an appropriate location. it is obvious that Farah is saddened and perplexed by the baroness' imminent departure. so she uses a familiar analogy to help him understand.

Karen: Farah, do you remember when we were on safari, and during the day
you would go ahead and find a camp, and build a fire?

Farah: Yes. And you would see the fire and come to this
place.

Karen: Well, it will be like that. Only this time I will go
ahead and build a fire.

Farah: (after a pause) You must make this fire very big, Sabu,
so that I can find you.

while in perth, in between long conversations and trips to the city, marilyn and allen and I watched films. it had been a while since I sat in a movie theatre and I found myself having to sit near the back of the room. the images were too large for me to take in if I sat closer to the screen.

we saw two excellent oscar winners: Babel and Letters from Iwo Jima.

and as an antidote to the grave intensity of those two films, marilyn and allen introduced me to my new personal hero, whose adventures in porta-potty plumbing are the subject of a hilarious homegrown australian mockumentary: Kenny.

seriously. I have never laughed so hard. everyone must see Kenny. this is an order. do what you have to do -- play hooky from work, bribe your local video rental clerk, commit piracy to get a copy. your life will be better for it.

I also finished two excellent books: The Places In Between, an autobiographical account of a Scotsman who walked across Afghanistan in 2002 soon after the fall of the Taliban; and The Last American Man, the story of a modern-day mountain man named Eustace Conway who lives off the land on a thousand-arce parcel called Turtle Island and tries to reconcile his rigid personal beliefs with the modern world and his own need and want for companionship.

when marilyn asked me what I would like to do on my visit, I had only one request: that we visit the pinjarrah parrot sanctuary, where we had gone in 2002. the sanctuary is home to dozens of species of australian bird, including cockatoos, cockatiels, lorikeets, and galahs.

ordinarily I would enjoy a stroll through the walk-in aviaries for its own sake, but on this particular visit I wanted to commune with feathered friends for another reason: my beloved cockatiel, Boba Fett, died last week in bellingham, washington.

my bird-sitters and friends christy and eli noticed that she was having trouble breathing. thinking that she was eggbound, they took her to the local vet, only to discover that she had a large tumor in her uterus.

Boba Fett was ten years old. she had had a great life, due in no small part to the fact that for the last few years, she was mostly under the care of two of the most fanatically healthy and bird-crazy people I've ever met.

here are a couple of pictures of her. wherever she is now, I'm sure she's happily munching on organic millet spray.

the galah in the pictures came right up to me and climbed up on my shoulder. boba fett would approve.

more to come after I arrive in hawaii.