R & R & T (Rest and Relaxation and Toutons)

I spent some time on my own in the temple overlooking Akaroa the other day. Maybe I needed it – some semblance of aloneness, to actually process some of the things that I'd been exposed to. You'd think, meditating three times a day, that there'd be plenty of time for reflection, but the pace at Christ College of Trans-Himalayan Wisdom was relentless: morning meditation, tai chi, breakfast, work, meditation, lunch, lesson, meditation, dinner, decompress for bed (read: watch Arrested Development), and repeat. By Friday I was exhausted and more than ready to leave.

I do think, as it was explained to me from the outset, that I figured something out about myself, in the week I spent there. And it was counter-intuitive to what the meditations centre was all about. We spent long stretches of time closing our eyes, monitoring our breathing, and asking for some transcendent soul to reveal itself, in the hopes of achieving communal peace. And I discovered that I don't buy it, not entirely. I don't believe that inner peace is something that can lead to making this world, in all its flawed enormity, any bit of a better place – I think it's the other way around. You can't close yourself off from society and deal solely in the etheric – the world is out there, and it's only by getting yourself knee-deep in it, the good and the bad, that you can ever come to terms with it and, in the process, with yourself.

I'm grateful to the crowd at Christ College for having me spend a week there. I ate fantastic meals, learned how to build a chicken coop, and thought about things I'd never considered before, but this is not the way I could ever live my life, or even a longer portion. There's too much life to be lived, not contemplated in isolation.

I had already been awake for two hours when I drove down to Akaroa at 8:30 on Saturday morning. The weather had been gross from Sunday evening right through to Friday, which probably didn't help the sense of being cloistered, but it was gorgeous on the day I left. Back in 1838, French settlers set their eyes on the harbour at the tip of the Banks Peninsula, a rim of an ancient volcano that helped create the jutting ripple of land – the English got there before they had a chance to make any footholds though, declaring sovereignty with the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi, and so now Akaroa has just a petite amount of French-ness about it.

It does, however, have the salty smell of the sea, and some fish and chips that were the talk of the town. I walked along the walkway overlooking the rocky beach for a couple of minutes before I ran into Sam and Jonas, the two other guys who had been WWOOFing and meditating with me up the hill. Since it was too obnoxiously early to try the fish and chips, we went for a stroll through the town, past the lighthouse and up through a few steep sheep fields (possibly trespassing, the jury's still out) to get to a little grassy patch peering down on the small community.

 

High time for deep fried gurnard, excessively salty kumara wedges (that's sweet potato, back home), and a bottle of L&P soda. I worked it off by opting for the scenic highway back across the volcanic peninsula, the wide mouth of Akaroa on my left, the rolling hills dipping into the ocean on my right. In the right weather, it really is a great drive, and once the sinusoidal countryside settles on the flat, there's a panorama of the Southern Alps straight ahead.

 

I plunked my bags back in the loft in Methven, joining the McGraths on a day trip to Christchurch. Peter Pan was showing as the Sunday family matinee, the playground was packed, the harboured nook of Lyttelton at the other end of the tunnel (may I present the other significant volcanic inlet on the Banks Peninsula) was in the same dishevelled-striving-for-business-as-usual state as two months earlier (the decades long earthquake repair is daunting – that anyone stuck around is testament to the fact that this area is important, and means something to people), the view from the Christchurch gondola was clear and beautiful (if windy), the Thai takeout was tasty, and the full moon was a glowing orange on the lip of the horizon. A good day, in other words.

 

 

On the ride back over the dark, flat countryside, we got talking about food. In particular, what's the typical meal back home?

 

 

I drew a bit of a blank. Cod tongues, turrs, and seal flipper pie are part of the local cuisine, but tough to say if they're typical. Then I remembered a delicacy I haven't had in far too long: beans, fried Maple Leaf bologna, toutons, and a tin of Pepsi. Substitute those beans for Kraft Dinner and I'm in Heaven (bliss and coronary-wise).

 

I didn't quite sell the car-full of CFAs that frying up some lumps of dough on the outside and leaving the middle soft is delicious, so this afternoon I ended up at the supermarket in Methven, picking up vegetable shortening, flour, and a small log of ham and chicken luncheon meat to substitute for the Newfoundland steak (it wasn't spot on, but it was pretty close). With a couple of small hands to help me knead the mixture, the pan was sizzling just in time for dinner.

It tasted a lot like a weekend morning in Pasadena this evening – I was nervous, since I'd never actually made touton dough before, never mind the fact that you've got to get the lumps the right size, not too small and not too big. Just the same, I think they earned their hyped-up reputation (you time life events as either Before Toutons and After Toutons) – granted, one of the youngsters ended up crying mid-bite through one of the crispy golden cakes, but I blame the flu that's going around, not my cultural culinary prowess.

About twenty minutes outside of Methven, near to Rakaia, there's a family farmhouse sitting empty for the next month or so. There's a lot to be said about the friendliness of Kiwis – I met Cara's parents Ross and Averil only twice, but it was enough for them to trust me with the keys for as long as I'm in the area. There was a light skirmish of wet snow on the ground tonight, so the wipers were flicking in time to Oasis as I went down the lonely highway to the farm, where there's a bichon asleep on my jacket in the corner, a fridge full of food, and a glowing fire on the hearth – how do you go back to real life after this?

 

 

The reclusive nature of Christ College may have frustrated me, but that's precisely what this self-imposed retreat miles from anything is. And yet, I can't wait to sleep in tomorrow morning, read a book, go for a walk, try to cook some pumpkin soup, and nothing else – I haven't had that kind of luxury since January sometime, and even though I've got a slew of things in the works for the next little while, they can wait one day more.

Cheers,

rb

Eat, Meditate, Love-Wisdom

The first time I spoke to Lawson Bracewell on the phone, he was pretty upfront about Christ College of Trans-Himalayan Wisdom: “You probably shouldn't come unless you're prepared to truly get to know yourself.”

There's a 155 acre plot of land just outside of Akaroa, on the Banks Peninsula, that has some basic housing, a communal kitchen and classroom area, and a temple for meditation. At 6:45 every morning, before the sun comes up, a candle burns in the middle as a small group gathers around it, chants a surprisingly harmonious “Ommmm,” and visualizes the soul sitting outside the realm of the body before practising tai chi. And that's just before breakfast.

If ever there was a time when it's appropriate for you to shake your head and say, “What has he gotten himself into this time?”, it's now. I'm sort of wondering the same thing.

I left Methven on Sunday afternoon, driving back towards Christchurch and up a highway full of loops and twists. It's not particularly far to Akaroa, but I had to keep my speed somewhere in the vicinity of 40 km an hour, so it was dark by the time I saw the twinkling lights from the top of a hill looking onto the bay. I've heard the drive to the small coastal town is pretty special – given the steep climbs and the wet, dark, foggy night, it felt more like the drive to the Overlook Hotel. I got myself mildly lost amongst the French rues in town, until I found Long Bay Road, a middle-of-nowhere backroad that my headlights could barely penetrate. I got even more hopelessly lost than before, possibly driving onto a hiking trail at one point, before I found the nondescript driveway amongst the trees.

You're thinking it, aren't you? What has that silly, strikingly handsome Canadian gotten himself into this time?

I came into a full kitchen: the caretakers, Orest and Julia, and their visiting friend Ara. A few pleasantries about where I came from, and then they're taking guesses at my Zodiac sign and chatting about the etheric body, a network of electricity in all living things that's just one layer of personality.

I should explain. The College isn't your typical college – granted, it's still in the development stages (the eventual plan is to implement a five-year residency degree program), but even so the curriculum is what some (most) would call . . . different. The basic philosophy comes from theosophy and the teachings of the Ageless Wisdom, passed down to a few different women in the last hundred years through supposed channeling. The most notable of these was Alice Bailey in the mid-twentieth century, who ended up writing 24 books (The Blue Books) that laid the foundations, delving into death, astrology, and how this all ties in with the Seven Rays.

It's all about spiritual enlightenment – outside of the physical body (the soul's vehicle) sits the personality (in three layers – the etheric, the mental, and the emotional, what they mean when they talk about your aura), and floating above that and permeating all is the soul. From there, we have a group soul, a collective human consciousness outside of everything but present everywhere. The idea is that all souls are in a constant quest for the answers to the big questions: Is there a God? What's my relationship to Him? Where did I come from? What's the meaning of it all? Y'know, the things that people have been wondering since it all began. Anyway, this mortal life is one stage of the soul's development, and once we die our soul is reincarnated, but it stills maintains some knowledge of the big spiritual revelations we accumulate in a lifetime. Eventually you get to a stage of enlightenment, and that's when you join the Spiritual Hierarchy. Christ occupies a significant spot in that hierarchy, but the teachings aren't Christian (they're more or less a boiling down of the common beliefs of all major world religions).

That explanation probably made things a bit more unclear and a whole lot weirder. I'm not here because I've had a New Age spiritual revelation – I'm WWOOFing here, doing typical stuff like chopping wood and washing dishes, but it's in this context. And even though I say I haven't had an epiphany of the soul, let me be clear – I'm not making fun of this place or these people's beliefs, nor am I dismissing it with complete detachment either. It's all totally different from anything I've ever been exposed to, an unorthodox cloister outside of “normal” society, but what an experience. I grew up in what felt like one of the most complacently Christian parts of the world, where even considering something beyond the Bible was looked at as strange and deviant (unless the alternative you were dabbling in was Atheism – that was acceptable, and I suspect a decent chunk of my generation identify that way because of sheer frustration with the dogmatic institution we're brought up in). Part of that frustration spurned a generalization that established religion is a plague on happy, healthy society, but an unfortunate offshoot of that is a complete ignorance to the multifaceted (and, quite frankly, pretty interesting) religions that exist in other parts of the world. And that sucks, because I think that understanding a particular society's religious values are absolutely crucial to understanding that culture, because religious histories and norms are so deep-rooted. I can't tell you a whole lot about Buddhism, I know next to nothing about Islam, and Shinto could be a philosophy or something on a Japanese restaurant menu for all I know.

What I do know is that my ignorance of those beliefs is a limiting reagent to how I interact with the global community, and that I have a desire to at least start to understand. There's a library here, wall-to-wall of books on astrology, numerology, world religions, rituals, and anything else considered to be Occult – but it's far too daunting and superficial to sit down and read them. The best way to learn is to do, and whether I believe that meditating for 45 minutes, three times a day, is going to bring my soul one step closer to enlightenment or not, I can assure you that I'm doing it, and asking a lot of questions along the way (that burning curiosity was pointed out, incidentally, and attributed to the stars and planets I was born beneath – I'll get to that).

The first time I meditated in the temple, I had no idea what to expect. The only other time I've done meditation in the past was when I led a Reflections session at summer camp, and that was just the first one I could pull off the Internet. It was probably about a stream – before this week, I thought they were all about a stream. The atmosphere was very symbolic – walking silently around in a circle before sitting down, around a candle on a marble tiled floor looking through clear windows at Akaroa Harbour below, everything from the number of walls (8) to the sides of the roof (6) representing something. A bellowing chant echoing in the small, open-space enclosure. Focusing on your breath for ten minutes.

 

Now, I didn't saddle up to the high seat of enlightenment this time. If you've ever had the pleasure to sit through a movie with me, you probably know that, like as not, I'm going to start fidgeting before the end. And if it's annoying for you, imagine how annoying it is for me, when I'm overly conscious of my elbow to the point where it starts to freak me out a little bit. Anyway, my mind wandered a bit, and no matter how hard I tried to bring everything back and focus on a pulse of light, I started squirming near the end. Thank God I never thought about having to pee (like I inevitably will tomorrow, now that I've said that).

At 7:30, Orest was leading a session on tai chi, the age old Chinese martial art form. A lot of moving the body in alignment with a partner, something of a bodily orchestration that relates back to the electrical currents of the corporeal form and balance. Hot porridge and coffee followed, a brief repose before the Bach flower remedies.

Lawson, the director of Christ College, trained as a psychologist before getting involved in astrology, and eventually yoga and the Ageless Wisdom, followed by a Ph.D. in Esoteric Psychology. For him, it's about the spiritual reality, but it all comes from a genuine interest in people. This homoeopathic method has something of that psychological background, although there's quite the mystical twist. Basically, the guide is looking for psychological issues in participants and seeking to remedy them, but he does so by waving a pendulum over a strand of hair plucked from their head – with the other hand, he goes over a few rows of tree extracts, and when the pendulum changes its rotation, it means he's arrived at the right bottle. That bottle is the remedy – two drops in water, sipped over a few days. I have two drops of willow and two of chestnut bud in my water bottle, which correspond to an anxiety over the role of fate in my life, a failure to learn from past mistakes, and self-pity.

Before lunch, we went through another meditation. Before you start assuming that this whole WWOOFing gig is a façade, and I'm really just sitting around focusing on my inner thoughts and talking about the soul, let's be clear – we worked hard in the interim, swinging axes and loading wheelbarrows for a few hours, until my arms were sore and I had blisters on my hands. We had a class on the basic setup of the Ageless Wisdom (one of the most important ideas to emerge is that the proponents of this belief system don't agree on everything, and that this is largely seen as just a model, not bonafide truth) before another mediation, and then dinner.

There's a balance, and the work of the mind is balanced by the work of the body. Fitting, considering that Tuesday marked the sun's ingress to Gemini, the twins in the Zodiac. We had a sunrise mediation, but also a special one just past 9:00 am, marking that moment in time. Lawson drew up an astrology chart, explaining why this was a particularly significant moment in time – from what I could wrap my head around, Pluto and Uranus, on opposite ends of the symbolic spectrum, are currently in a state of flux, shifting places over a nine year period that began roughly around the time of the Wall Street collapse, and came to an alignment at the same moment as the ingression. The last time they frigged up the cosmic system like this, it was in the 60s, allegedly playing a part in the radical changes that occurred – the thought is that a similar thing could be happening right now, and we're moving forward into something of a new world order. The two planets (as far as the symbolism is concerned, Pluto is still a planet) are due to align in a similar manner seven times, seven being the big number of high significance – apparently unprecedented in history. It doesn't mean a whole lot to me, but it'll probably be the setup to a Dan Brown bestseller soon enough.

I wonder how I'd feel about this whole experience if it was being led by a bald monk or an Indian guru on some snowy mountain in Tibet, rather than a white guy with an American accent and jeans?

After that meditation (this schedule is getting a bit intense for me – the founders of the school have followed this routine every day for four years, which sounds a bit numbing, just two days in), we had another group lesson, this one on astrology. Having already given our birth information to Lawson, right down to the minute we were born, he had drawn up our natal charts, a wheel interspersed with planetary symbols, numbers, and lines linking up different areas. This isn't so much a horoscope as a psychological personality assessment – the explanation is that, sitting in the womb waiting to be born, we had nine months of darkness, and a steady thump thump of a heartbeat. In other words, we were meditating, and when we came out into the light, that was traumatic as hell. That moment left a psychological imprint, the way that the planets and the moon and the energy of the solar system was aligned, and even if it doesn't dictate everything we do and say, it's in our mental framework and there's no way to get rid of it.

Besides for the fact that I'm a bit uncomfortable reducing my personality to the position of the planets right from the moment of birth, I'm skeptical towards astrology because it's so easy to read about yourself with a bias. A statement like “You are a great leader” is one of these that pretty much everyone agrees to, whether there's an ounce of truth in it or not. It's too general and it's too subjective.

At any rate, this is my star chart, and what some of it means. For the most part, I do agree, but remember that there's that tendency to find a way to apply everything in some way to your own life not to mention the fact that Lawson, a psychologist in his earlier years, interpreted this for us, having spent a bit of time with us already (it would be an interesting experiment, to draw up these charts for complete strangers, read them out, and see if the participants could accurately identify which one they are).

Right, so my moon is in the sign of Leo. That's my unconscious nature, the stuff I don't even think about. Leo's a fire sign, which means that I want to be doing something and engaging with my environment. Fair enough, but then it's also a fixed sign, which means that I'm more likely than not to get comfortable and want to stay there. Last week, I was driving up the West Coast and sleeping in a car. A week before that, I was bungy jumping, and before that I was somewhere in Fiordland, climbing a mountain. Right away, that looks to be a pretty inaccurate assessment, but it's subconscious – and, like or not, I do get comfortable fairly easily, and even though I'm in a state of flux, there's always a bit of reluctance to leave that comfort zone when I find it.

The other major thing that's happening with my moon is that I'm squared with Pluto. I might look calm, cool, and collected on my exterior, and people might be able to come to me for advice, but when I get emotional, I get emotional, and it can be with the sudden intensity of a train derailing.

As far as my sun sign is concerned, the typical astrological imprint we all know about (whether we believe in it or not) and that operates on a conscious level, I'm an Aries. That's the start of the Zodiac, and it tends to be an initiator. That's the positive spin on saying that I'm also a bit impatient, and don't always consider everything before I rush into a situation or make an impulsive decision. Again, fair enough, that always annoyed my parents, even when they figured out that it's my nature. Aries is a masculine sign, governed by Mars, the God of War – and a fire sign as well, which means that I'm good and stirred up, most of the time.

Does that sound a bit like me? It's hard to wear a natural expression while looking into a mirror.

The weather has been damp and foggy since I arrived in Akaroa (where are those Seven Rays breaking through?), and now it looks like the afternoon will be spent inside with a hot cup of tea and a book. I don't know that I've had any profound insights into who I am as a person (in this body or otherwise), but I can tell you that the gears in my head are grinding in a much different way than they have before. This little commune isn't a spot where they force any belief system on you, but they do expose you to an alternative lifestyle in a very intense way, and through osmosis you take in a slew of new experiences and thoughts that inevitably leave some impression, even when your mind wanders during meditation.

Then again, I'm pretty sure that my real meditation started the moment I stepped off that plane in Auckland, and the drifting in and out is just part of an out-of-body experience on the other side of the world.

Cheers,

rb

Southern Escape: Lakes, Mountains, Ice and Sky

Right. Where was I?

After an 800 km drive up the West Coast and back east through the mountains, I dropped my car/bedroom on wheels at the Christchurch airport, and started hitchhiking on the busy highway on the outskirts of the city. Which wasn't exactly the easiest thing in the world, considering that this is arterial traffic going in a hundred different directions at each intersection (or, ok, four) and cruising along at highway speeds, with nowhere decent to pull over, given the construction zone lining the sidewalks. I had to walk a while with my pack, but eventually a German guy saw me, pulled a U-turn, and came back and got me. Turns out he'd done a fair bit of hitchhiking before he had a set of wheels at his behest, and felt bad about my predicament.

He brought me as far as Darfield, an inland community about halfway to Methven. It was a slow road though, with barely any traffic, and I found myself flicking through a paperback novel more often than trying to thumb down a car. Eventually (probably my longest waiting time yet), a sheep shearer on his way home brought me just outside of Glentunnel – and lo! an Irish voice on my cell phone.

Colm and the boys bailed me out, and brought me the rest of the way to Methven, where the lamb in the oven was very nearly done. I've said it a bunch of times that I'm luckier than I deserve, but something struck me a while back: that's not true. Sure, I can rhyme off a dozen names of people who have gone out of their way to give me a ride, give me a place to stay, point me in the right direction, and help make this trip the amazing experience it's been (ok, it's a lot more than a dozen), but that has absolutely nothing to do with luck, any more than it has to do with inherent charisma or effort. It's because people are genuinely interested in helping other people out, however they can. All of these things could (and do) happen to other people all the time, and it doesn't make me feel any bit less special or privileged – if anything, it's über inspiring, and makes me a lot happier to be alive and part of this global community today. Don't believe me? Try it for yourself.

From the upstairs loft, sound from the living room carries well, so when two small boys are up before 7:00, making a racket, you might as well shake off the dust and get up semi-early too. Cara's parents have a fairly large farm, that's been in the family for 80 years, just outside of Methven, and both the boys know as much about the farming lifestyle as I knew about the Montreal Canadiens at their age (at the risk of tooting my own horn, I was something of a prodigy, for some totally out-of-character reason) – they were keen to show it off, so away we went.

Oh, incidentally, it was a sunny day – I'd never believed Methven was in the vicinity of mountains before, but now I could actually see them. Turns out it wasn't just a running joke to play on visiting Canadians after all.

After a lunch of pumpkin soup and pastries, myself, Cara, the boys, and her father Ross set off in the truck, driving through paddocks recently harvested of Chinese cabbage, wheat, barley (to be malted for beer), and grass (for seed). I finally figured out how the irrigation machines work – a hose runs the length of the thing, connected to a reservoir deep in the earth. The machine runs the length of the field, and is on wheels, so that over a 24-hour period, it slowly runs up the field, intermittent sprinklers hosing down the field. There are some other little features, like strategically placed gates so that the machine can move to the next field, concrete areas to pivot, and a computer sensor that measures field moisture to determine when to turn on the rigs – pretty cool, and pumping out some 80 L of water a second, it makes you realize how big an operation this is. They're everywhere in Canterbury, a major expense, but a neccessary one when you consider how much it amps up the produce of the farm.

By the end of the tour, I had a place to stay after my upcoming stint in Akaroa, if the mood strikes and time allows, as well as the use of a Corolla that I brought back to Methven that afternoon. I'm spoiled now, being able to drive now when I choose – I've already clocked in about 700 km on this vehicle, if you can believe it.

We continued on through Methven and up to Mt. Hutt, a ski field on the outskirts that the local Lion's Club helped develop in the early 1970s, effectively putting Methven on the map. We're looking at a mountain about 2000 m above the flat Canterbury plains, and from the top of the winding, slushy, dirt road, it's like looking out on a patchwork quilt of farmland. By this time in the year, even though it's still nice down below in Methven, it's starting to look a lot like winter up here – ski enthusiasts are no doubt starting to get excited, and that includes me. I'd be hard pressed to find trails through the trees up here, and the idea of cruising down a snowy rock face is almost making me say shag the beaches away up north, I'm working on my goggle tan instead.

Wednesday morning was another clear day, so I set out to make my first dent in that little car's odometer. Continuing on down Highway 72, the Inland Scenic Route, I came to the tiny town of Mt. Somers, where I turned onto a dirt road some 40 km long. It was slow going over the loose stone, but pretty cool – yellow, grassy fields, contained in a mountain valley with a couple of lakes along the way. Eventually, the road ended up at Mt. Potts Station, a cafe closed for the season – but, just beyond, was Mt. Sunday.

I remember, in one of those production videos that no one except me ever watches, the crew from The Lord of the Rings talks about how the location for Edoras was one of these almost-too-perfect finds (Hobbiton in Matamata being another one): here was a hill on a plain, totally in the middle of a range of mountains, but at 500 m still high enough to build a little city on it. So, when you see this in the movie:

I can attest to the fact that, yeah, that's pretty much what it looks like in real life. Rock on.

I passed a few tour vans on the dusty road in, but there was no one on the go on the actual walk up the hill, which took about 45 minutes to scramble up the gentle climb. Most of the sets from The Lord of the Rings aren't exactly that recognizable, even to me – granted, you recognize that the background scenery is all very New Zealand-esque, but narrowing any particular shot to one real-life location isn't exactly easy, especially since more than a few are outside of the public domain, accessible only by helicopter or special permission. A lot of people come to New Zealand thinking they're going to recreate the movies, and the somewhat disillusioning fact of that is that you can't really. Edoras though, despite being a bit of a drive, is one of the ones that's totally open, and it's the real deal. There's no sign pointing advertising this as a place in Middle-earth, but if you've seen the damn movie, it's pretty obvious. Looking out over the grassy tussocks, interspersed every so often with boggy peat and rivers, I swear to you – this was Edoras. The city and Golden Hall are long since gone, but this wasn't a set born in a studio – this was a real place, not so long ago. The place where Eowyn stood and looked out is a real place. The place where Theoden buried his son is a real place, and it really is at the base of the hill.

I poked around the hilltop looking out over the basin for a little while, somewhere in the middle of nowhere in a vast, empty desert land.

By mid-afternoon, I was on the road back to Methven, for an egg burger from the fish and chip shop and some Pineapple Lumps, two Kiwi delicacies that went down a lot smoother than my feijoa. Pints at the newly-refurbished Last Post (which actually used to be the post office until 1989) followed by the side of a crackling fire, which isn't a Kiwi delicacy so much as a universal one.

Yesterday morning, I set off on another highway adventure, and this one needed a sleeping bag. With the Juno soundtrack and a cassette that had Oasis's (What's the Story) Morning Glory taped off (I hope everyone owns at least one copy of that album, and that yours doesn't cut off midway through “Champagne Supernova”), I left Methven after breakfast. Back I went down the Inland Scenic Route as far as Geraldine, where I topped up the gas tank and headed towards Fairlie and Burkes Pass, opening onto Mackenzie Country. The lowlands had earlier given rise to rows of deciduous trees against a mountain backdrop, but now it was the sparse country of the mountain flats. This distinctive area (I'd go out on a limb to say that the countryside from Te Anau to Mackenzie Country is the most sublime places I've seen on earth, and I don't make that comment lightly) is named after James McKenzie, a Scottish rogue who probably stole a thousand sheep in 1855, went to jail, got pardoned, disappeared, and became a folk hero.

The first major stop on the way is Lake Tekapo. Light blue glistening glacier water in a mountain basin – definitely worth a little walk around the shoreline, wrapping along the gentle tide until the Bronze Sheepdog statue, commemorating the role of the dogs in early settlement of the area, and the Church of the Good Shepherd, a tiny stone church from 1935 that's a popular tourist spot (because of its quaint look and its stunning view of the lake), as well as a functioning church for Sunday services.

One of the heights flanking Lake Tekapo is Mt. John, atop which sits a major southern sky observatory (the main one in New Zealand, in fact). There's a decent walk, along the lake to the cafe and giant telescope sitting just over 1000 m high – but screw that, this the first time I could opt for the lazy option of driving instead of walking, so away I went up a narrow paved road (closed after 5:00, because of the headlights – this area is pitch black once the sun sets, which is why it's such a key astronomy observation point).

For what it's worth, driving didn't diminish the impact of the view. It's a pretty telling thing that, after four months of wandering through heaps of distinct wild settings, there's still something that can take your breath away and make you stop and state. I'm sure it's possible to get jaded here in New Zealand, but I don't see it happening to me during my brief stay here.

Next stop, a bit further down the road, was Lake Pukaki, another glacial lake, slightly larger than Tekapo. The road to Aoraki/Mt. Cook departs from the main road and runs along the side of the lake, and the whole northern side was a wall of mountains, reflected in shimmering waters.

It almost makes you want to leap around like Michael Flatley. Which is a weird thing to say, without this picture (actually, even given this picture, it's still a bit weird):

I kept on the southbound Highway 8, as far as Twizel. A hydroelectric service town from decades earlier, Twizel isn't exactly a hopping city hub – no offence to Twizel, but I went looking for a coffee at 4:00 in the afternoon and found the whole place to be a ghost town. Bored, I scooted up to check out Lake Ruataniwha, an artificial lake from the Waitaki hydro project, bought a can of L&P, and went back up the highway to a picnic area off the road with no sign prohibiting overnight parking. Armed with some chocolate, soda, a pulp novel, and a James Bond movie, I was set to recline the passenger seat and settle in for the night in the middle of the woods.

I've said it before – there's a small window of time in most people's lives that they can get away with things like this. It would be a sin not to make the most of it while that window's open.

This morning, I was awake soon after the sun, and after a little stretch through the thicket, it was back on the road towards the Mt. Cook Village, a half an hour drive off the main drag. People don't come this way for the shopping – it's tramping and exploring, in a little cloister at the foot of mountain peaks and glaciers. The village itself isn't a place to set roots (although about 300 currently do), little more than a carpark, visitors centre, pub, cafe, and a few hostels (slightly more bustling than Milford) – I parked the car and took the half hour stroll out to Kea Point, where I didn't see a cheeky Kea (I've been in the hotspots, Milford and Arthur's Pass, but still haven't seen one of the signature mountain parrots), but did see the deep blue glacier ice clinging to Mt. Sefton (3,151 m high – Mt. Cook might get all the glory, but the peaks in the vicinity aren't exactly molehills), the blue pools left in the retreating glacier's wake, and a high wall of debris that Geography 3202 taught me is called a lateral moraine.

Oh, and the big brute, Mt. Cook itself, from an opposite angle as was reflected in Lake Matheson earlier this week. At 3,754 m, it's the highest peak in the country – no big deal.

I figured I'd take a little tiki tour through the area before heading back to Methven, driving out a dirt road that branched outside of the village towards the Tasman Glacier, the longest hunk of ice in New Zealand (everything's bigger in Aoraki/Mt. Cook – this one is 27 km long, and that's a big retreat from where it once was). It's a rough old road, but only a short little hike leads you to the Blue Lakes (more mirky green in colour, but that doesn't have as nice a ring) and on to a viewing point of the glacier.

The first thing that catches your eye is the greyish water of Tasman Lake, the result of the retreating glacier. The lake has only been here for a few decades, and it's growing by about a foot every week – rocky icebergs float aimlessly in the still waters, doomed to add to the lake's volume sooner rather than later. The whole place looks dirty, like a quarry, but that makes a lot of sense – this giant chunk of ice has been scraping along the earth for hundreds of years, and as it melts it dumps the rocks it's been carrying. That's what you see from up here, and as your eyes carry on down the lake, you come to the glacier itself – and that, more than anything, looks like the snow the plow pushes in the ditch in April.

Even on a drizzly, overcast day, it was a gorgeous drive back to Methven, where dinner was nearly on the table. I'd say that it was all a giant stroke of luck, but then again, that's just the way things happen down here – although, when I spun around and put my finger on New Zealand on the map about a year ago, that definitely took some freak surge of luck.

Cheers,

rb