Hope for Harry ❤️🙏

Forgive me, but I’m a bit distracted at the moment…well, actually a lot. Partner’s cousin, Harry, has gone missing in Peru. He went for a trek alone in the mountains nearly 2 weeks ago and hasn’t yet returned. I don’t know what to do. I feel so helpless and out of control and so I thought that writing about it might help. I thought that if I tell you all what an amazing person he is, it will be a positive use of the time spent waiting. Waiting is awful. The only good thing that comes from waiting is that it gives you perspective, as you have the time to think about what really matters to you, but most importantly – what doesn’t. You have no head space to let things wind you up and so you let them go. Some of the things I have let go of the past few days, I never want back, even when Harry returns.

I’ve known Harry for 6 years and he and his family have made a huge impact on my life. None of them will know this, because of course, we don’t talk about such positive things, until shit happens. Of course we don’t tell people how inspirational we find them. How we think that they are simply one of a kind and that they hold values that I would like to hold, but don’t. How often do we tell each other these things? We tell partners and children that we love them, but have you told your best friend how impressed you are with her for the way she handles her life, or your brother or your neighbour or the cashier who you see regularly at the supermarket how friendly and positive she is…do you tell her? Sometimes, but quite often, do you not think that we go through life thinking these positive things about one another, but only really expressing them when they have gone away.

I am hoping with every aching bone in my body that Harry is just lost. That he is wandering like a nomad and that any second now, he will wander back to his group of friends in Pisac, as the helicopter looks down on him, his family who have flown out hug and berate him and the thousands of people who are on line, awaiting his return breathe a huge sigh of relief. I hope that before I post this, he is back. The world is a better place with Harry in it. I have read this many times in Facebook comments over the past few days.

I know that many of you reading this do not know who this Harry is, so please let me indulge in telling you a bit about him, because he really is unique. To quote from, ‘The Search for Harry’ Facebook page: Harry is one of the most loveliest men you could ever wish to meet and be friends with. He is an extremely genuine and caring person who acts from his heart and with pure integrity. He cares for people and he cares for our earth. Harry is a very-skilled furniture maker and promotes to transform the world by embracing permaculture and writing life-inspiring poems. He has been sharing his gifts and skills generously and he is dearly loved and respected in his vast community and network of friends and family.

I cannot even begin to contemplate the enormity of the search in the 20 square miles of high altitude mountainous lake terrain. My thoughts are with his parents Sarah and Simon, his sister Ellen, all his family and those amazing people who are involved in the search.

“Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I’ve heard it in the chilliest land
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.”
― Emily Dickinson, The Complete Poems

I’m hoping, Harry, that, as one of your friends put on Facebook, you are being fattened up by a Peruvian lady of the mountains and when you leave, you will find your way home.