The things we crave.

Christchurch, NZ Sunday 9-11-06

Report from the South Island. Groggy and sore, these hostel beds creak in all the wrong places, the pillows not more than a case wrapped around a few fluffs of flat cotton. I woke today and realized, at last, that I am ready to go home.

Two days ago I left Kaikoura. Forgive me if I am not able to properly convey how that place, its people, the great mother whale and her baby, the mountains, affected me. But I think it’s because I don’t know how the experience has changed me, not yet, only knowing that it has.

Experiences. Change. These are things that I have come to accept as part of my desirous nature; things I crave in such abundance that traveling is one of the only ways to appease the hunger. I am excited to be back in Colorado, for all of the adventures awaiting this fall and winter and spring, but I am also excited to leave again…

Sitting outside, in the hostel spa on Friday night with Suzanne and another girl from London, we could feel the ache and pulse of the full moon even through the dense cloud cover; we could feel the presence of the mountains. I was thinking if I could take that moment, that simple moment of sitting in a hot tub on the east coast of New Zealand, with a few independently traveling women, women with dreams and aspirations and ambition, and share that with my own mother, father, brothers, my sister-in-law, my best friends. How I wished I could have transported you all there with me, for one moment. Maybe you would’ve felt what I did—that you would look back on that moment and think, always, “Yes,” but you would never have the words to describe it.

Every moment, of every day is like a “once in a lifetime” experience, probably because it is—these people, these places, these ideas, these memories…once in a lifetime. I realize the nature of my calling—teaching, writing—and how both of these endeavors put me more outside of myself than in. I spend a lot of my time functioning as a stranger to others, at least initially. But there is a reason it works for me, even if it becomes challenging and exhausting at times to interact with new people—those new people also bring new energy, and ideas, and hope.

I’m going to tell you one final story, I think, at least until I get back stateside and change the blog to reflect more daily adventures and ideas.

Friday morning I ran down to the beach to see, of course, if the whales were there. I took a loop through the small town that let me out onto the beach about 4km from the hostel. It was a beautifully, slightly cool morning, the waters flat as glass. An older man, with a bucket and fishing pole, was making his way up the rocky shore and I asked him if he had seen the whales. This became a common occurrence, people asking others, “Have you seen them?” He told me they were there, drifting in the bay, north. I stretched my gaze as far as I could see in that direction and sure enough I saw the baby breach once, twice. It was a fair bit of a walk to them and I thought I’d continue my run and then come back down later with a lunch and sit in the stones, watching, waiting.

John and I talked for a while. He was recently widowed and feared being alone. He moved to Kaikoura only a few months ago because he discovered that his good friend, Shirley, who he hadn’t seen or had contact with in 35 years, lived there. When he made contact with her he discovered that she was a widow as well. That sealed it. They are the best of friends, never lonely, and have one another to look after. His eyes sparkled when he talked about her. It was a very touching and thoughtful story and I appreciated John immensely for sharing it. We talked for ages about this and that. About how having friends to share tea and coffee with, and good conversation, are really the simplest most sought after things in life. I gazed out at the ocean. Just that morning Suzanne and I had had a few epiphanies about our own private lives over good conversation and good coffee (anything that isn’t instant has become like gold to me).

“I was just about to have some coffee,” John said. “You want one? Do you have to go?”

Did I have to go. I thought about this for a full minute. I actually had nowhere to go, nowhere to be, nothing to do, I didn’t even bother to look at my watch but simply said, “I’d love to join you.” I couldn’t remember the last time I felt so liberated by the usual constraints of time. The only place I wanted to be was right where I was, sharing the morning and the experience with this man.

That was something that the whales did rather well: bring extraordinarily different people together. John had one of those cool camper vans (oh, how I want one!) that came rigged with a burner and sink and all the fixings needed to brew up a pot of boiling water. We leaned up against the camper, sipping coffee and munching on luscious bakery rolls (how glorious to have something other than noodles and soups!)

Others came down, asked us “Have you seen em today?” and before too long, a small groggy early morning crowd had assembled. We were mostly quiet, thinking our own thoughts, following the mist across the mountains, scanning the flat surface of the water looking for a strip of blackness. And then, suddenly, she was there. As if on cue. A Right Whale no more than one hundred feet away. I felt the shudder ripple through all of us.

I felt then that I was ready to leave New Zealand, that I could say good bye, that I could wrap myself around that morning as best I could so that I could remember how pure and easy it had come to me. Like the wind, or the moon, or the sunrise. If you wait, and listen, the subtly sweet hand of nature will show you something.

The whales fulfilled an ache in all of us, a void, and I wonder what that is. The first time I saw the whales I felt afraid—not since Alaska and a pod of frisky killer whales five years earlier, had I been that close to something so massive, a living, breathing animal. It became more than a mother and her babies playing, it was the most striking occurrence, and rare, that finally gave us all an excuse to say, “This is big, I can let everything else fall away, because this may never happen again. It’s important.” We were all given a temporary gift of timelessness.

And you all have given me a gift by sharing in this journey. I’m in the Christchurch airport as I write this, waiting for a flight up to Auckland. Tomorrow I head to LA and home and to friends and family, a cat, a job, and even a renewed faith in our country. I have met some good as gold Americans on my travels. I have also met a plethora of others that are trying to understand what goes on over there in America, I have gained a new perspective, and appreciation, for how the world sees us, and vice versa. When you strip away everything else—the colors of our flags, the resources in our soils, the intonations and accents, the various degrees of global warming in our cities and countries—we all want the same thing: to find happiness, to create it.

Stay tuned,
laura