In one week, I'm leaving New Zealand, flying back to Massachusetts, and driving to Colorado. Shortly after, I'm quite excited to announce that I'll begin work at the High Country News, a magazine covering the environment, land use and culture in the American West.
Instead
of posting on this blog in the past month or so, I've been trying to
find a wider audience for my writing and have been submitting to
various publications – hence the apparent lack of output. Once I
begin my new job writing and blogging for HCN, I'll try to post links
to my work here as often as possible, but in the meantime, some notes
from my journal in New Zealand.
14 November 2012
Leg three of my
trip to New Zealand, and time is becoming irrelevant. I nap, I wake,
I eat, I drink, I read, I write. My legs feel twitchy, the muscles
tight, and so far I've only driven to Boston, spent a mostly
sleepless night in a hotel, and flown to Philadelphia. Now we're
somewhere over the West, the earth below barren and cracked, looking
uninhabited and inhospitable. There's an old Asian woman next to me
who has done absolutely nothing but stare at her hands for the past
five hours.
Soon, I hope – I
am watchless at the moment – we'll land in LA. Then I'll have an
eight-hour layover, followed by a 13-hour flight to Auckland, two
more hours to Christchurch, an overnight layover, a 9-hour bus ride
and, finally, a 2 hour drive to Milford Sound in Fiordland National
Park. The world suddenly falls very large indeed.
15/16 November 2012
We've just crossed
the international date line over the Kermadec Trench in the Pacific
Ocean, southeast of Fiji. Outside the plane window, a strip of
blood-orange meets a strip of deep turquoise over a bank of clouds.
The last stars are dissolving from the sky, and 10,000 feet below,
the islands of the south Pacific are waking up.
Cottonball clouds
retreat to the horizon and a neon orange sunrise suddenly shatters
the vista like a basketball thrown through a wall of glass. Shards of
light and color pierce the sky. Flight attendants come
through with coffee as though nothing extraordinary has happened.
The Air New Zealand
plane whisking me across the world is brand new, with touchscreens at
every seat and a first class section that looks straight out of a
spaceship. Information abounds: my screen tells me that the outside
temperature is -54 C, our altitude is 10,972 meters and our ground
speed is 761 kilometers per hour. We've traveled 9,891 kilometers so
far, with 624 to go.
17 November 2012
New Zealand, so
far, is much like my memories of Australia – clean, modern and full
of charming people with charming accents. Steve, the bus driver on my
trip from Christchurch to Te Anau, talks over a PA system about the
Canterbury plains through which we're passing. They stretch 200
kilometers north and south of Christchurch, he says, and 80
kilometers to the east and west. For the past couple centuries
they've been mixed-use farmland, mostly crops and sheep, but within
the past few decades forests have been cut and many farms converted
to dairy, which is more profitable. Steve is regretful that sheep
farmers are losing out to the dairy industry, and while I suspect
he's driven by nostalgia, he's also armed with plenty of reasons why
sheep farming is culturally and environmentally superior.
Half a world away,
in Vermont, sheep farming was replaced by dairy well over a century
ago, and while no one alive today laments the loss of sheep farms,
nearly everyone mourns the demise of small scale dairy farms as
factory farming in the midwest runs them out of business. A hundred
years from now, I wonder, will Kiwis be mourning the loss of dairy
farms as well, as yet another change rolls in? Is it simply that we
humans resist change, while simultaneously finding it inevitable? I'm
no different, I suppose, seeking out change and adventure while
quietly longing for comfort and familiarity.
There are yellow
bushes blooming everywhere, huge clumps of them lining flat green
fields that stretch on to distant craggy mountains. The bushes look
like forsythia, and the landscape like Idaho. It is all
disconcertingly familiar. I have a bad habit of trying to wrap my
head around new places by comparing them to places I've already been,
but here, flying across the international dateline and into another
hemisphere, I half expected the plants to all be as if from another
planet – wild, Dr. Seuss-shaped leaves, surreal flowers, Jurassic
Park-like sizes. But it's all rather mundane. We pass by rows of
yellow flowers, small neat houses, a river braided with gray cobbles
spilling from the mountains.
A group of
teenagers boards the previously-quiet bus, wearing sweatshirts that
say Santa Cruz and Waikiki – places they haven't been but that are
synonymous with sun and surf. Girls in Costa Rica and New Zealand
wear the same sweatshirts, look at their cell phones with the same
practiced indifference. Teenagers are teenagers the world over.
In another small
town now – Timaru is it? They all look the same, safe and clean and
modern with lots of green space, very pleasant – and yet there's
something stubborn in me that rebels, wants a bit of dirt, some rough
edges, grit. Something old or crumbling or neglected. As we continue
south, the sky turns to a low gray and rain streaks the windows of
the bus, making things look dreary, a bit Irish. Good. That's better.
It's green here,
green as shit, with fat white sheep everywhere standing in the rain
like dirty woolen cherubs. I have never in my life seen or thought
about seeing so many sheep. There are 4 million people in New
Zealand, and 64 million sheep. It rains and rains and rains, and I'm
glad to be on a bus.
20 November 2012
Milford Sound first
impressions: there's been a high pressure front sitting overhead
since I arrived three days ago, and the weather has been stellar, all
blue skies, 65 degrees and an afternoon breeze. No one wears shoes,
ever – there's nothing dangerous, no spiders or snakes or even
thorny plants. The scenery is spectacular, and the living conditions
good – Jesse & I get our own room with double bed and views,
and the rest of the house is stocked with every piece of kitchen
gear, household good, outdoor gear and electronic device you could
desire. It's luxurious by guide standards.
26 November 2012
It's a rare quiet
morning, with a gray rain dripping outside and a few tuis and
bellbirds singing from a tangle of wet branches. Doors open and close
– this place has a million doors, it seems – as my housemates get
ready and go off to work. As soon as they're gone I sneak out of my
room, a quick barefoot hop across wet rocks to the kitchen for a cup
of coffee, then back to bed with a book. It's my first morning off in
New Zealand.
Most mornings, I
pull myself out of bed at 6 a.m. and carry kayaks to the water in the
early morning stillness. Then the customers come, 20 or 30 at a time,
mostly international travelers speaking in all sorts of different
accents. My body readjusts to padding 20+ kilometers a day, and I
learn about the fiord, its geography and wildlife, absorbing yet
another new place into my skin and bones.
The weather had
been ideal until yesterday, when the afternoon forecast was northerly
30 knots and heavy rain. I led my first solo trip in the morning, got
soaked, and was settling in for a cozy afternoon of movies when Horey
comes in and tells me to get ready to paddle. There are three
strapping young German lads keen to go out despite the storm blowing
in, and while we'd normally just call it off, Horey wants to show me
what the outer fjord is capable of.
The boat ride out
to sea is stomach-lurching, and as the Sea-ka slams into yet another
trough beneath a curtain of water, I think, really? I'm kayaking in
this?
Horey assigns me
the lone single kayak while he and the Germans get into doubles. And
then it's full-on. The wind is gusting 50-plus knots, I am surfing
waves, bracing, surfing, bracing, being blown down a channel that
feels more like a whitewater river than an ocean. By miracle and
luck, I manage to stay upright. I can't keep up with the boys in
their doubles and fall behind, which is even more nerve-wracking, but
after a while what began as terrifying becomes normal, and I'm able
to look up and see that the sheer granite walls are streaming with
more waterfalls than I ever imagined possible.
At one point, I
catch up with Horey, and he shouts to me over the wind, spitting
rainwater out between words: “If you ever. (gasp) Come out. (gasp)
And it looks like this. (gasp) You know you've made. (gasp) A bad
decision!”
10 December: Tutoko
valley
It never gets old:
hiking on a shitty trail as evening descends and rain drizzles
through the trees, nothing to see but green – green moss, green
ferns, green trees. Smaller ferns growing on larger ones, six or
seven different species of ferns in a square foot of forest. The
trail is wet and muddy. I'm glad to be wearing Chacos and not boots
until I over-confidently step into a mud puddle and sink to my thigh
in the only pair of pants I've brought.
We walk on and on,
not tiring so much as growing tired of the repetitiveness, the
constantly stepping over roots and rocks and puddle and streams,
seeing nothing but rainforest. But here, the temperate rainforest
abuts alpine splendor, and suddenly we break out of it and the clouds
are just lifting, the forecast right for once, and as we walk over a
meadow toward a river we begin to see snowy mountaintops and
waterfalls emerging through the clouds.
At 11 p.m. it's
still not dark but we go to sleep anyway, and in the morning we bury
our heads from the brightening sky. The sun takes its time reaching
this valley – it has 5,000-foot peaks to climb up first – and we
don't rise until it reaches our tent at 9 a.m. Then we sit up and are
blown away. Our tent is surrounded by mountains and glaciers and snow
– there is a luminous turquoise river flowing outside the tent,
waterfalls dripping from cliffs, the sky a brilliant blue. We spend
the day following the river upstream to the glacier that's created
it.
15 December
At what point does
the sacred become mundane, and what do we lose in the change?
The first time it
rained here – really rained – I was enthralled, raptured, awed.
You've been told that thousands of waterfalls will appear in a heavy
rain, but how do you prepare yourself for that? You've seen a
waterfall, and you can conceptualize thousands as a number, an amount
– but try as you may it is impossible to imagine the dry cliffs
you've come to know covered in literally thousands of waterfalls. It
is majestic. It makes you want to run outside in the rain, hands in
the air, letting water pool in your palms and trickle down your arms.
And then... several
feet of rain later... days later, when you realize you can never
count on the clear skies to last, that you've chosen to live in one
of the wettest inhabited places on earth and that this rain is
costing you your livelihood, when you run out of things to do on
rainy days and you start to feel old, run down – then what? Someone
always puts on the TV and it's all downhill from there. There is no
sacred when the TV is on. Not even when you look out the window
across the river and see water cascading into the sea.
So it was with the
monkeys. I was beside myself with excitement the first time we
spotted howler monkeys in Costa Rica earlier this year. It was like a
scene from a movie – Jesse and I on the wraparound porch of our
jungle cabin, monkeys and bats and lizards in the trees – but after
a few days of hiking, we glanced up, saw monkeys on the trail and
kept going, feeling slightly superior to the tourists who stopped in
their tracks with cameras pointed at the canopy. Is this how it is,
then? Must nature present itself in ever new and exciting ways to
hold our attention? The natural world as a whole still entices me and
drives me and amazes me, powerfully or subtly, but the individual
phenomena are becoming like items checked off a list. Thousands of
waterfalls? Check. Manta rays? Check. Now how about some whale
sharks...?
24 December 2012:
Routeburn track
I do not stop and
write as I'm walking, because the sensations are too multitudinous to
describe. They come and go quickly, each turn of the trail bringing a
slight change in the feeling of the place. As the sun travels across
the sky, we travel up a valley, through mature southern beech forest,
alongside a turquoise river dropping into pools, into open meadows
flanked by alpine peaks. With each bend, the light changes and brings
a different kind of magic. Who has the words to describe this?
I know I do not. I
walk on, sometimes in silent awe, sometimes exclaiming to myself out
loud. At the top of a valley where large, scattered boulders and
clumps of purplish fern mingle with a sea of golden grasses – where
the river deposits itself in pools and cascades before spreading
itself wide and braided across the valley below – here we stop for
a swim and lie naked in the tussocked grass. There is nothing that
could be better than this. The air, the light, the scenery, the
solitude – drinking water from the river when we're thirsty,
walking barefoot in an alpine valley – we are surely spoiled for
life, because nothing else could compare.
13 January 2013
Today I read a
passage in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek in which Annie Dillard
leaves her cabin on a winter's night to walk in the dark over frozen
grasses, and I am suddenly struck with remembrance. Last year at this
time, that's exactly what I was doing. I would walk out into the
frozen fields of New Hampshire in the moonlight, head bent against
the cold, tears dried on my face, until I would realize where I was
and stop to look around: tiny stars in an enormous sky glittering
above, crystals of frost sparkling on the grass below, my kitchen
light glowing yellow in the distance, reminding me which way was
home. Which way is home? I still haven't figured it out.
But how much
changes in a year. I quit my job and have been living out of a
backpack, making hardly any money but nonetheless living richly:
traveling in Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Colorado, Utah,
Alaska, Washington, Oregon, California, Costa Rica, Panama and New
Zealand. Now, it's 10 p.m. and the sky is still an approximation of
blue. A bird still sings. Jesse, tired, sleeps by my elbow; I can see
his pulse beneath the skin of his neck. Outside our bedroom door,
people are moving around – finishing the dinner dishes, walking to
the bathroom to brush their teeth, a quiet laugh. Sounds of life
being lived. It doesn't occur to me to be lonely here. But therein
lies the paradox – I also do little in the way of reading or
writing or being creative. I watch movies, hang out, go places with
people. It's all good until weeks pass and my blog is stagnant and my
journal blank. Must it be one or the other? Or can I write and create
without being lonely and alone?
18 January
I sit in the back
of Harlan's car on a gravel road while Jesse and Harlan scout the
river. It's windy, and cold for the middle of summer – wind whips
the million-hued leaves – all green – and pulls the clouds and
sun apart and together, creating bursts of cold sunshine that quickly
fade back to gray.
Driving. Flashes of
trees punctuated by slivers of light, the open vistas of valleys and
rock walls misted with waterfalls, caught in glimpses. My bare feet
stretched out in the flickering light. The roof of the Mazda gouged
from kayaks and paddles, the floor littered with rocks and pine
needles, hats, sleeping bag, atlas.
22 January
Yesterday will be
added to my memory as one of those days that define my time in New
Zealand: Jesse and I exploring in the wild, free outdoors, scrambling
up rocks, following a crystal river to its source in the snows. We
crisscross over waterfalls, bend to our knees to drink from a cupped
palm, swim naked in a deep pool, walk with the sun on our shoulders.
On these days, there is nothing in the world to worry about.
Following the Tutoko, the North Routeburn, Bowen and now the Gertrude
rivers through valleys and up to their source in the mountains have
been among the most carefree days of my life.
This morning, Jesse
and I were up at 5 a.m. to go deep sea fishing with Thor. I managed
to pull up a shark, two barracudas and a groper before becoming
terribly seasick and hurling my breakfast into the Tasman Sea. Back
to work tomorrow.
2 February: Catlins
coast
This is the kind of
ocean I like best: cold, lonely, windswept. We drove all day across
the South Island to the Catlins coast, a place where sea lions flop
ashore at long sandy beaches, rolling farmland laced with rutted
roads abuts the ocean and surf from the Antarctic pounds and swells
against cliffs. The kelp forests pulse in the endless rhythm of the
sea and penguins walk across pockmarked rocks like flat-footed old
men.
The skies are
overcast and the evening light is all purple and gray. Jesse and I
cook dinner on the grassy bluff where our tent is, and below, along
the crescent beach of Porpoise Bay, a handful of lights come on. Four
days off here, then back to work, a short road trip, and Jesse goes
back to the states. I try not to ask, then what?
6 February
Jesse and I got in
a fight last night after downing beers with old men at the one pub in
Kaka Point. We turned down an offer from one of the fishermen to
stay at his house and pitched our tent on the beach instead, fell
into an uneasy sleep. Now, Jesse stays in bed while I make coffee –
a peace offering. We are among the first people in the world to see
the sun rise today, what little there is of it. Far east, and far
south, camping among low dunes with a lighthouse in the distance, the
ubiquitous sheep pasture behind us and a sweep of ocean in front,
stretching unbroken to Antarctica. I can feel Antarctic winds in the
spray of sea salt on my face. This place feels like it's at the end
of the world.
27 February
There is less to
write about – or so it seems – when I stay in one place. Perhaps
that has fed into my apparent aversion to it. New experiences force
me to open my senses, to observe – to write. But when life becomes
routine, I lose that drive.
Guiding in Milford
is dynamic. Every day the wind and weather and light change, but the
mountains stay locked in the same positions, towering landmarks that
stay constant as the moon and sun and stars travel around them.
Surely, there is enough to write about here. Surely, there is much I
will forget otherwise. But the days go by quickly, seemingly the
same, and the season passes with little to say.
4 March – Haast
Pass
Yesterday was
Jesse's last day in Milford, and today we left for a whirlwind tour
of the South Island. We're camped a few hundred meters off the road
by a braided, cobbled river, and summer is on its way out. Days are
shorter, nights cooler, and driving today, piles of tiny, golden
beech leaves swirled in the wake of cars like glitter sparkling in
the autumn sun. Time as flown – I can hardly fathom that I've been
here for four months. I'm ready to move on, but at the same time I've
grown accustomed to life in Milford, that strange intersection of
wilderness and scenic beauty combined with heaps of tourists and the
daytime drone of boats and cars and helicopters. New Zealand hasn't
quite captivated me the way it has so many others – for all its
beauty it often feels packaged, too organized, too tidy and
homogenous compared to, say, Alaska. But nonetheless, I'm glad I
came.
8 March – Abel
Tasman National Park
We drove for three
days to get here, and to see the country along the way, since it's so
far from home and we may never find ourselves here again. Each night
we slept by a body of water, falling asleep when the stars came out
and waking up with the sun. We drove for long hours, but slowly,
stopping wherever interested us. It sounds romantic, but the reality
was long and tedious – the old Corolla we've borrowed won't stay in
fifth gear, the front windows won't roll down, and the landscape was
certainly nothing worth driving three days for. But at least now we
know. And the nights almost made up for the days – finding a quiet
spot to camp alone with the waves and stars – until Jesse forgot to
put my tent back in the car at Gillespie Beach and no one noticed
until we went to set up camp that night in a pine grove overlooking a
harbor in California-wine-country-esque Mapua. My tent that I've had
for seven years! I loved that tent. So we slept on the ground at the
end of a residential street and were woken by retirees on their
morning walk and I had a slight breakdown because I'm 28 years old
and felt like a homeless person and am sick and tired of always being
so broke.
But now we're in
Abel Tasman, and it's the first time all week we haven't had to drive
anywhere. Yesterday we kayaked to a place called Mosquito Bay, a
boat-access only campsite in the national park, and spent the evening
drinking good beer and whiskey and playing canasta. Unbelievably –
in one of the smallest and most-visited national parks in New Zealand
– we have this gorgeous, gold sand beach with a lagoon all to
ourselves. Last night we spread our sleeping bags on the beach and
while stars swirled overhead, an Australian possum tiptoed around us
and the tide slipped out and back in again.
13 March
Back in Milford.
The road trip was fairly bland – the scenery uninspiring, the
driving long, the towns and cities all seemingly alike. We drove and
camped, drove and camped, until Jesse lost my tent and I had a minor
breakdown. After that we stayed in hostels and motels for three
nights. Once, in our $80 private room at the hostel in Kaikoura, we
were woken up by loud drunken backpackers who set off the fire alarm,
and we had to stand outside in the street until the firefighters came
to shut it off. It's funny how quickly things change – not long
ago, I used to think backpacking foreign countries and staying in
hostels was just about the coolest thing ever, and now all I want is
to camp somewhere quiet and beautiful and unregulated away from the
noisy backpacking crowd.
I left Jesse at the
airport in Christchurch and drove 11 hours solo through the heart of
the South Island to get back to work in Milford. I wanted to stop and
record my impressions of this country, but I also wanted to make it
home before dark and so I drove on, one landscape blending into
another, green pasture to golden hills to craggy mountains, and now
I've lost the words, the fleeting impressions. Now I'm back in my own
bed, and of all I've seen of this country, I like Fiordland best.
It's good to be back. The water is clear and the stars are brilliant
and at night I have to go outside to pee, which is something I rather
enjoy because it forces me to look at the night sky.
Paul Theroux on
ocean paddling: “Sailing the sea was a monotony of doldrums
interrupted by windy periods of nightmarish terror. No desert was
ever deadlier or more tedious than an ocean.” So true.
3 April
I am a person who
thrives on change, and nothing makes me happier than the changing of
seasons. Tonight it is fall. The sun sets early and we stay in, those
of us left , steaming up the windows while Tex fries up steaks and
potatoes. My room is so cold I dive for the blankets, but I won't
shut the window yet. Just as the frost arrives, I will walk aboard a
plane and fly back into spring in New England, just as I did when I
came here in November. I met a girl from Oregon last week who has
skipped 11 winters in a row, but it throws me off, settling in for
the winter like this and then being yanked away – twice. Tonight,
though, I don't care. One by one the guides trickle out of Milford,
and those of us who remain grow closer. I have a glass of wine in the
evenings, sleep with the windows open and wake up warm and
well-rested under a quilt breathing in cold, fresh air. The days are
short and brilliant. There is nothing right now that I crave or
desire.
For more photos of New Zealand, check out these links:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.743634772895.2127893.10401476&type=1&l=ba47de65af
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.772707091735.1073741825.10401476&type=1&l=5103e7dc8a
