The Final Fifty

When I left Newfoundland, I tried to be upfront – I said that this story I was telling, this plunge into the unknown on an island antipodal to the comforts of home, would be mostly true. I haven't lied, but you have to expect there to be things that get left out along the way. As I get into the final fifty days, as the thought of a red-eye flight to Vancouver and across the country to my home and native land becomes a reality, I find myself thinking more and more about one of those subtle omissions. It's played a part in every single day and will likely continue for the next fifty days, and it happened nearly five months ago.

I really did walk through a supermarket in Auckland on January 19 and get overwhelmed by the cooking oil, butter, and spices that I'd never be able to buy if I planned to keep moving. The buckle on my backpack really did snap while walking toward Mt. Eden (clearly it wasn't as big a deal as I thought at the time – I still haven't replaced it), and I really did get lost because I thought I could navigate the biggest city in the country without a map. And those things really made the looming months seem insurmountable, the loneliness and displacement of New Zealand something I'd never experienced before. I really did get a phone call on that walk, inviting me to Tauranga for a week – and that really did set my feet from a rocky stumble to a more sure-footed path.

That's the part of the story that I told. The part I left out took place in Turangi, about a week later. I never uttered a peep here, so a journal I got for Christmas had to take the brunt of it. On January 26, I wrote:

I have never, as far as I can tell, felt this alone before. It's beautiful here everyday, and there are so many fascinating things to see and do, but I'm so aware of the fact that in this travelling state, I don't belong anywhere. The place where I belong is so far away, and even when I have WiFi to reach them, a time difference makes it nearly impossible. And it upsets me, that I have this amazing opportunity that so few people get to experience, and there are days (like today) where I actually want to go home and just hit reset . . . Running counter to the desire to get on the next plane is the fear of failure, of humiliation, and of regret – it's got me locked in a position that I can't budge from, and even though it's far from all the time, when it hits me it's damn near suffocating.

I head for the Tongariro Crossing tomorrow, Wellington and Havelock in the coming days. I hope I feel better and roll my eyes at these desperate thoughts, but the main thing is that I remember the lows to appreciate the highs.

That entry, incidentally, started by me saying that what I was about to write would never make it into the blog. And I think, at the time, I really meant it – I recognized that what I was writing was important, but I couldn't fully appreciate why, not then and there. It was easy to say that remembering the low points was essential to getting the most out of the good parts, but I could never have imagined the extent to which that would be true. Maybe because I had such a hard time imagining the amazing experiences I would have as the next few months unfolded.

No matter what I thought at the time, the problem was never that I was physically alone. It was that, having been gone for ten days, life was already going on as usual back home. I was obsessed with the fear of being forgotten, and in the desperate state of jet-lagged culture shock, it was easy to believe that that was precisely what was happening. And the ironic thing is that, by fixating on that, I lost sight of me. I was on an adventure in New Zealand, but all I wanted to see was the guy picking up bank drafts for a law firm on Duckworth Street. A severing of the self is a pretty serious kind of aloneness, and I don't wish it on anyone.

Actually, scratch that. I do. I want you to feel absolutely shitty about the circumstances you suddenly find yourself in. Then, I want you to try to fix it. It ain't easy, and it will force you to get more uncomfortable and to bend until you feel like you're going to break into a thousand tiny pieces. You might get the upperhand for a moment, only to find out that you're in a caravan outside of Blenheim, back to square one. But then, suddenly, everything changes. You start to figure out where you are, orient yourself so that the dizzying spin slows down and you can walk a straight line. Then, when everything gets shaken up again, you have enough sense of balance so that you don't end up sprawled right back on the floor again. I want that for you, because that's what happened to me, and every day I moved farther from that scared, lost, mildly psychotic version of me, I came to love the new one that much more. Never forget where you came from – you appreciate where you're going much, much more.

Even when I showed up in Christchurch in March, I still had a long way to go. That's why it was so exciting to make the circuit and end up back there, two months later – because the city stayed the same, but I could mark my own change. Over the past five months, I've done the big must-dos – I've jumped into a gorge with a bungy tied to my ankle, taken a boat through Milford Sound, surfed, and eaten lamb, kumara, and mince pies. But the big experiences, the ones that I never specifically looked for but that happened nonetheless, were the human connections. Hitchhiking across the country with ex-convicts and erratic Chinese tourists, watching Flight of the Conchords in the back of a rented car with a New York/Oregon/Alaskan gal and a complete stranger, sharing tea, stories, and pounamu with a Maori friend, tiki touring with a couple that went well out of their way for me, a Sunday Disney matinee with a young family – they're the important experiences. They're the ones that I'll remember, the ones that really stand for New Zealand, wherever else I might go.

I had a conversation with Bob Hallett from Great Big Sea last week for something else I'm working on, and he had a lot of things to say about Newfoundland and the rest of the world, but one thing really stuck out. “So often with travel, it's a personal victory,” he told me. “Nobody cares if you're bungy jumping off the bridge, but the fact that you're able to make yourself do it and survive it and come out the other side without pooping in your pants is a personal victory.” Sometime just before July 31, I'll end up back in Tauranga, the place where this whole thing really started. I wonder what Stewart and Jane will think of me, having gone through the journey that I went through. What a change – the part of me that seriously wanted to leave in January has come out the other side with clean underwear, and now it isn't sure if it's ready to go next month. I wonder what they'll think back home when that Air Canada flight touches down in St. John's on an early August afternoon.

In February 2012, I was supposed to go to Incheon, South Korea, for a one year teaching term. I had the job offer, a guaranteed salary, and place to live – that February ended up being one of the most difficult months of my life, because I decided to stay in St. John's, only to find myself jobless and directionless, all the things I would have avoided in Asia. And yet, I'm glad I made that decision – I wasn't ready for Asia at the time, could never have dealt with the loneliness on top of the major language and cultural barriers in South Korea. I'm not saying I would be an expert now, but I needed to do New Zealand on my own first and go through what I did to ever think about making a leap of that magnitude.

These days are the final fifty. I'm still unabashedly excited at what might be, even if the road is pointing north and, with every mile I go, something irretrievable slips behind me. But knowing how fleeting all of this is – well, it's all part of the same, isn't it? It makes you appreciate the important moments that much more when they do come along. As for home, let me put it this way: not being sure if I'm ready to leave New Zealand is not the same thing as not being excited to go home. I worked hard to make myself whole Down Under, but I know I have to sever that wholeness sooner rather than later and enter into the unfamiliar all over again – if I need a little bit of help, I know where to look for the people who make all the difference.

Once I land in St. John's, I'm getting a Big Mary, taters, coleslaw, and a tin of Pepsi from the Mary Brown's on Freshwater Road. Then, I'm cracking into the Honey Brown, and you're all invited. There's no time for fading away – out of the dying embers of the trip of a lifetime, let's burn out in one gloriously beautiful moment. I'll see you in fifty days. 

Cheers,

rb