Category Archives: New Zealand

Opening Light

14 Friday May 2010

Posted by in Alaska, New Zealand, Travel

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Farm time, real time, no time, all the time.  Time is–what?  It flows so many ways here.  When I am at the school everything runs on a schedule; there are bells and lessons and meetings that happen when they are planned.  When I am at the farm time is more abstract.  It moves loosely; 5:00 could mean 6:30, 12:00 could be 1:00, or 6:00 could be 8:00.  Even so, everything is moving.  Fields are being prepped, planted, and watered; goats are being milked, ewes are giving birth; people are moving across the terraced land, cultivating.  Then there are days when time disappears altogether.  When I am running, climbing, or whenever I am outside and forget that darkness does not settle in at night anymore.

Last Sunday I went rock climbing and we spent the night in a cave called the lizard’s eye partway up the granite tor.  The light kept us climbing until 9:30, and as we sat cuddled in our sleeping bags, dusk slowly came and floated on into midnight.  How is it that after so many months of meditating on darkness, of moving through my own darkness, that I am now in a place of so much light?

Before I traveled to New Zealand this past fall, I talked to my mom about loss and the breakup I was experiencing.  She had known something was different for a while.  “You had begun to lose your whole-heartedness,” she told me.  There was a friction in my movements that held me back and a tiredness that dulled my smile.

I am laughing again now.  It almost came as a surprise when it returned, that deep-belly jitter that welled up and exploded out of me, but now it comes almost every day.  Here in Ester, Alaska, I have found this immense feeling of openness and space to grow in, and after all the stages of contraction, expansion, loss and gain I’ve gone through in the last year, I feel I am finally ready to meet this new space without expectations, but with the honesty and openness within myself.

In the garden, on the farm, at my house, on rock climbs and along trails through the woods, I soak happiness up and hold it in an open palm, wanting to experience it just as deeply as I experienced sadness.  In these moments I smile with my whole being.

Breaking Open

13 Sunday Dec 2009

Posted by in Love, New Zealand, Travel

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“The heart that breaks open can contain the whole universe.  Your heart is that large.  Trust it.  Keep breathing.”  ~Joanna Macy

Just as my body has finally adjusted to the lengthening days and summer fruits, it is time for me to board a plane and fly back across the world.  The question that always arrives at endings swirls through my mind: where did the time go?  For the days themselves passed perfectly, not too slow or fast, and yet here I am wondering how 2 1/2 months can be over so quickly.    A week or two ago I thought, “okay, I am ready to be home,” and I filled with excitement at the vision of falling snow and a white Christmas.  But despite the readiness I had then, I feel a steadiness in where I am now.  Even though Christmas music plays in all the stores and resorts, the idea of a winter wonderland seems millions of miles away from the 80 degree temperature and warm aquamarine waters of Fiji.

I am preparing for reverse culture-shock.  Never before have I returned home uncertain of my next move.  Where will I work?  Where will I live?  But these questions are small compared to the ones I started this trip with: how do I move through loss?  How do I let go?

These answers don’t come quickly or easily, for the only way to find them is to live through each moment whether it bring sadness, distance, heaviness, aloneness, numbness, or anger.  Ignoring the waves of emotion that come with letting go only drowns one further in pain.  Bobbing along in the storm, however, has led me to discover caves I never knew, to enter them and find solace in their hollowed spaces, and to exit them to light my eyes upon the shifting colors of sunrises.

Thinking back to the middle of October, I see myself on the train to Christchurch.  I was listening to a playlist, dozing off and on as the wheels churned south along New Zealand’s east coast.  I woke up in the middle of a song to hear Ingrid Michaelson sing the lyrics “I am blind.  I cannot find the heart I gave to you,” and tears welled up in my eyes.  I turned my face to the window and wrote a note to Matt that I never sent:

Sometimes I can’t help but think I was supposed to do this trip with you.  And it catches me off guard.  I will be fine, smiling, happy, and then your memory enters me and I feel your arms, I see your eyes look at me with so much love.  And then it’s gone again and I wonder, How? When?

I find myself crying on a train.  Where are you?  When it starts to get hard, I tell myself: I left him.  But that’s not completely true.  We left each other.

I put my pen down then and let myself be lost until we arrived at the station.

This trip has been as much about finding myself again as it has been about letting go.  It is so easy to give up, gain jealousy, and blame another for everything that led to the break.  It is much harder to step back and see one’s own mistakes, and harder still to claim them, but that is what I had to do.  Now here I am.  I am broken open and I fly in the space I fell into.  Of course there are moments when the wind drops and my wings falter, but no longer am I pulled constantly down by a weight inside of me.  With the help of Erin and time, I see myself as love again, feel my body shake with laughter instead of tears, and grow anew in the space that expands inside of me.

How much effect does a place have on one’s growth?  Can I return to Vermont and remain detached from all I have shed on my journey?  The answers will come with the moment…

Tasmania

06 Sunday Dec 2009

Posted by in New Zealand, Travel

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The orange boulders that line Tasmanian shores ignite a spark for exploration within me.

In Bicheno I spend hours discovering sea glass and scallop shells in the cracks between the rocks.  Gingerly I move, crawling like a crab, spreading like a wave, becoming part of this landscape.

The fine white sand along the Freycinet Peninsula slips like silk between my toes as I explore places with names like Friendly Beaches, Wineglass Bay, and The Bay of Fires. The ocean pulls me in with its undertow,  spits me out with each crash, and I laugh with the mix of excitement and uncertainty that windy shorelines create.

I find that traveling alone is not lonely, and I experience the world in a new way, spending time to examine the details that paint the larger view.  With each town I visit, each walk I take, each person I speak with, I think to myself I love Tasmania.

Sweet Darkness

28 Saturday Nov 2009

Posted by in Love, New Zealand, Travel

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Thanksgiving has come and with it a deeper look at all I have in my life.  Much of this trip has been about letting go of the loss that followed my breakup with my boyfriend of two years.  On the plane ride to New Zealand I wrote a poem called Sweet Darkness by David Whyte in my journal:

When your eyes are tired
the world is tired also.
 
When your vision has gone
no part of the world can find you.
 
Time to go into the dark
where the night has eyes
to recognize its own.
 
There you can be sure
you are not beyond love.
 
The dark will be your womb
tonight.
 
The night will give you a horizon
further than you can see.
 
You must learn one thing:
the world was made to be free in.
 
Give up all the other worlds
except the one to which you belong.
 
Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet
confinement of your aloneness
to learn
 
anything or anyone
that does not bring you alive
 
is too small for you.
 
I have returned to this poem many times since as I learn to expand instead of contract in the space of loss.  Darkness itself is a thing I have written and meditated on for over two years.  It often seems that we spend so much energy on light that we forget the truths the darkness holds, but when you sit in the night and let your eyes adjust you see it holds everything. 
 
There is a line in the Tao Te Ching, as translated by Steven Mitchell, that says:
Darkness within darkness
The gateway to all understanding
Something resonated deep inside me the first time I read these lines, though I really understood them for the first time this October when I visited the Waitomo Glowworm Caves.  The night before I had written in my journal: Universe, help me heal.  Help me let go.  Help me go deeper and deeper until I reach the other side.  Thank you.  I walked into the caves through a vault door in the earth with a group of ten people and one guide.  Slowly we weaved through untouched limestone illuminated by hidden lights on the ground until we reached a part of the cave called the Cathedral.  There no lights shone, and I walked into the blackness, looking without being able to see.  I felt the space around me; I walked slowly as if I might fall but knew I would not fall.  A feeling of sureness and safety alive with calm, steady energy washed over and engulfed me.  In that moment I held everything and nothing; I went to a place where understanding is beyond words. 
 
When the tour guide flipped the lights on, the high ceiling and steep walls of the Cathedral were illuminated and the feeling left me.  We then walked further down to the water and boarded a small boat that floated us through the caves.  Above us millions of tiny glowworms smaller than stars emitted a green light.  No one spoke, and in the silence and speckled darkness I finally understood what it means to go deeper.  There, below the layers of soil and rock, is a light that will only shine in darkness.  A light that does not take over, but blends quietly with the black and allows one to blend with it, too.  My prayers of the previous night were answered in the caves: I did go deeper and deeper, and I did find the other side, and I was alone until I wasn’t.  This shared experience allowed us all to be alone in the same boat, but we ended together as we emerged from the cave into the afternoon sunlight. 
 
In the month and a half since this experience there have been moments in which I held sadness and loss, and I still have a lot of letting go to do, but the heavy pain that weighed me down has lifted.  Now, as I reflect on these past few months, what I see is the incredible network of support weaved together from all facets of my life that caught me as I fell.  In the midst of my aloneness I found myself cradled in the love of my family and friends, and I stand in awe at that love that surrounds me. 
 
I say thank you everyday for my family and our blessings, but this year I say it more deeply.  It is their support that has kept me going and reminded me that I am love.  Now I am beginning again, growing out of emptiness to find all that brings me alive. 

Goodbye to the Farm

24 Tuesday Nov 2009

Posted by in Farming, New Zealand, Travel

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This is my last day on the farm.  We leave for Nelson tomorrow, where I will stay for two nights before saying goodbye to Erin for a while and heading north to Auckland.  Between now and December 14 I will be in Nelson, Wellington, Auckland and Sydney before flying to Tasmania for nine days and flying back to Sydney for a night, and then off to Fiji where I will reunite with Erin for the last four days of this two and a half month adventure.

Already I can feel the quickened pace, so different from this quiet morning, sitting at the kitchen table with oatmeal and tea, listening to the tui birds and looking out the window at the tall grass that engulfs the woodshed and the punga and Tasmanian blackwood trees that rise up behind it.  Rose, Gary and the kids are still asleep.  Erin is upstairs packing.  At this time tomorrow we will already be gone.

Perceptions of time change based on experiences.  When Erin and I first arrived in New Zealand we though a month to travel would be enough to see what we wanted.  In reality we found ourselves cutting out several places from our list because we wanted our pace to be more of a breeze than a whirlwind.  I don’t regret it at all; even though we didn’t make it to Kaikoura, Dunedin, Milford Sound or the Fjordlands, we got to experience more of the towns and cities we did stay in.  When we arrived in Karamea, population 650, we thought these 3 1/2 weeks would move at a turtle’s pace.  The isolation on Rose and Gary’s farm, 20 km away from Market Cross (Karamea’s main streets), contrasts from the easy access to busses, cafes and people we were used to.  Even in Punakaiki, which felt like a private retreat, we could walk to the bus stop in thirty minutes.  But I forgot how fast turtles can swim, and now here I am on the last day and I wonder how it came to an end so quickly.  I know now that by the time I get to Fiji it will feel as though I simply blinked my eyes and arrived.

Having a home to live in these past 3 1/2 weeks has been invaluable.  More than learning about starting an orchard, permaculture design, rock wall construction, companion planting and soil health, I have been to a birthday party and poetry night; met friends and neighbors at the potluck and outdoor movie night Rose and Gary hosted; hiked part of the Heaphy and Wangapeka tracks, and through the bush with Gary, Curnin and Erin; walked along the beach and gotten caught in waves, found sea glass and pua shells; and I have become part of a family, if only for a short while.

My travels thus far have taught me many things, but perhaps the most important thing I’ve learned about myself is how much I value knowing a place.  I guess it makes sense that constant movement would make me appreciate being settled, but I didn’t expect it.  As I come to the final leg of my journey, I am feeling ready to be home for Christmas.  I will not rush through these next three weeks–on the contrary, I will soak them in and stretch in each moment–but when the time comes to board the plane back to the States, I will take my last breath of summer in New Zealand and look forward to my first breath of Winter in Vermont.

Opening Up

22 Sunday Nov 2009

Posted by in Farming, New Zealand, Politics, Travel

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I have been thinking more about patriotism.  After my last blog post, my cousin Amy asked me “what if you could never care about what a single person thought about you or your country again?”  I immediately thought I could love more freely, more openly.  It is such a simple answer, yet my mind still swirls with the enormous ideas of citizenship, country, love, and identity.

The subject of patriotism is a complicated one for me.  It seems  that to be a patriot one must close part of oneself off to the people and land that stretches out past the borders and thus attain an attitude that one’s own country is the supreme power.  This mindset requires defence and offence, but it has little use for neutrality or a deep questioning of actions.  While exploring the subject of patriotism in her essay “Jabberwocky”, Barbara Kingsolver criticizes the Smithsonian for cancelling an exhibit on the atomic bomb in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and placing emotions over analysis.  “I’m offended by the presumption that my honor as a citizen will crumple unless I’m protected from the knowledge of my country’s mistakes,” Kingsolver writes.  She goes on to ask, “What kind of love is patriotism if it evaporates in the face of uncomfortable truths?  What kind of honor sits quietly by while a nation’s conscience flies south for a long, long winter?”  This question challenges the blindness that I often associate with patriotism, at least the form of it that has risen in the US since 9/11 and the fear tactics employed by the Bush administration.  Given the choice between a sweet dream and a hard truth, however, I’ll take the truth.

According to the Collins New Zealand English Dictionary, the definition of patriot is “one that loves his country and maintains its interests,” and patriotism is “inspired by love of one’s country.”  How can love maintain wars?  How can I hold the love I have for my home next to the violence that the US commits on the environment, in Iraq and Afghanistan?

My friend Sam once described to me how he learned to let go of something without losing the parts of it he cherished.  Holding a penny in a closed fist, he then turned the back of his hand toward the ground and, stretching his fingers out, revealed the penny in his open palm.  I understood then that it is not about clasping to love in order to defend it, but rather it is learning to hold it freely so it can be shared.  By letting go I risk the chance of losing, but I cannot let that deter me because I know the tremendous possibility of growth appears to the things and people who are not constrained.

What is patriotism but a way to express love?  There are many things about Karamea that remind me of the North Country: chopping wood, cows in pasture, the community that working the land fosters.  These things make me feel close to home even though I’m far away, and I’ve found that what matters most are not the borders I stand behind, but  what I love and how I express that love.

At the end of her essay, Kingsolver concludes, “A country can be flawed as a marriage or a family or a person is flawed, but ‘Love it or Leave it’ is a coward’s slogan.  There’s more honor in ‘Love it and get it right.’  Love it. Love it.  Love it and never shut up.”  So I will love the US and the world, and hold that love in an open palm.  I will continue to look further than immediate presumptions (including mine) and extend peace to all I interact with.  It may not always be easy, but I do not imagine that it is easy for the seed to spring its first stem through the soil.  When it does, though, the sun is waiting, already extending its warmth to the first tiny leaves.

Discovering Patriotism

16 Monday Nov 2009

Posted by in New Zealand, Politics, Travel

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What does it mean to be an American abroad?

When Obama became President I thought oh good, the world will like us again, but I wasn’t completely right.  Since I’ve been in New Zealand, I ‘ve had several reactions to the phrase “I’m from the States,” one of them being “Oh, I’m sorry!”

When I first arrived I was quick to concede to America’s failures and faults.  I found myself describing Vermont’s location by its proximity to Canada and joking (sort of) about the desires of some Vermonters to secede and become a part of Canada.  It was difficult for me to defend a country that re-elected Bush; a country with politicians that ignore separation of church and state and spend more energy trying to make abortion illegal than they do making sure schools have enough funding for an arts department, let alone a sex ed. program; a country that consumes, wastes and pollutes at a fantastic rate.  While looking at the US from afar has allowed me to understand the tremendous impact the country has on the rest of the world, the longer I am here the slower I am to concede to the negativities without balancing the score between good and evil.  As Erin points out, there are 300 million of us, and just as not all Kiwis are friendly and environmentally conscious, not all Americans are money-driven, corrupt media-drones.

The first day Erin and I worked with Gary, our WWOOF host, we were in the middle of a conversation about agriculture, the States, and environmental problems when he said to us, “some people say the world would be better off if we just killed all [Americans],” and if the US disappeared.  Hitler thought the same thing about the Jews.  How can more violence make anything better, though?  If the United States were to disappear what would happen to the countries receiving aid, or who have trade agreements with us, or who depend on Peace Corps volunteers?

Since this conversation we have had many more about Americans and our problems, and Gary does admit that he’s met some great Americans (Erin and I included).  How many “good” citizens does it take to outshine the “bad” ones, though?

When we were in Wellington, we met a Canadian girl named Caroline who said to me, “When I look at you I see a kind, loving, informed person–not a typical American.”  What is a “typical” American?  When I look at my community I see passionate, motivated, caring, intelligent people.  Yes I grew up blessed with a supportive family, with parents who could afford to send my brother and me to private universities and still put organic food on the table, but I do not take for granted the comforts and advantages I enjoy.  I want Caroline, and all the people I meet, to look at me and not see and ugly red-white-and-blue stain on my shirt, but to recognise that I am who I am in large part because of where I grew up.

I will not defend big business, environmental ruin, or war tactics, but I will point out grassroots movements, sustainable initiatives, peace-workers and vast tracts of wilderness.  This trip has opened up a way for me to look at the US with pride again, and looking home I see the countless American communities of people who live with respect, care and love.  For the first time in my life, I say this without flinching or feeling cheesy: I am proud to be an American.

Seasons in Reverse

10 Tuesday Nov 2009

Posted by in New Zealand, Seasons, Travel

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I left Vermont on October 6, just as my body was swinging full into fall mode.  One evening a couple of weeks earlier, as I was wrapping up a day’s work on the farm, I felt the first autumn breeze: crisp and a little bit heavy, bringing with it the scent of changing leaves.  I stopped in front of the barn and breathed in through my nose, filling my lungs with the cool scent, and instantly craved apple cider.  It didn’t take long after that for my taste buds to yearn for squash, pumpkins, apples, cider doughnuts, and all the flavors of fall that swirl around with the foliage.

The week before I left I filled up on Cold Hollow cider, and on my last night home my mom baked pumpkin pie for dessert.  My last taste of Vermont before traveling halfway around the world was a simple sandwich on honey-wheat bread from Northfield with Cabot cheddar cheese, a honey s apple from Grande Isle, Pete’s Greens mesclun mix, and a thick layer of honey mustard from South Burlington, which I took with me on the bus to the Boston Airport.  (Mmm, I crave this as I write, thinking of autumn afternoons in my kitchen at St. Lawrence University with Katie Craig, Jaffe, KO and CQ when we’d made this ame sandwich open-faced, melting the cheese under the broiler).

Now, in the end of New Zealand’s spring, I find myself confused by the reversal of seasons.  As the locals are getting excited for summer, I keep expecting the sun to go down at 6:00, then 5:00, even as it stretches on past 8:00 p.m.  The excitement and lightness that comes after winter is visible in the eyes of the people in Karamea.  The menus boast of asparagus, rhubarb, and whitebait (a small fish whose season lasts six weeks in the spring).  I see calves, buttercups in green fields, unripened strawberries and greens just popping up in the garden as the spring rains water the ground.

This past Sunday we seeded corn and pumpkin; I imagine houses in New England decorated for fall with dried corn husks tied up around porch beams, with mums, gourds and pumpkins lining walkways and framing front doors.  The contrast is so vivid–Karamea in the stage of rebirth and Vermont at the end of harvest that autumn’s death brings–and I am pulled between the place I am in and the place I came from.  It is said that for every time zone you cross, it takes that many days to recover from jet lag.  I’ve been in New Zealand for more than 17 days, and though my sleep schedule is back on track, it will take much more time to adjust to the reversal of seasons.

How does one move in time and still be part of the rhythms of a place?  How long does it take to really be part of a new landscape–a week, a month, a year?  It is hard to know.  I can think of only one answer: Stay put.  Be still.  Listen.

At The Farm

05 Thursday Nov 2009

Posted by in Farming, New Zealand, Travel

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I am in Wangapeka, the outskirts of Karamea, where I will be WWOOFing (Willing Workers On Organic Farms) until the end of November.  As I write I am sitting in the garden, in between rows of salad mix and white chard, overlooking 15 raised beds, fields, and trees.  Rose and Gary, my WWOOF hosts, are reclaiming the land from bush and transforming it into an orchard.  While the fruit trees take root and mature, the garden supplies produce for the markets.

On Tuesday, our first day of work, we weeded some beds and planted 70 alder trees, which have a deep tap root and will protect the fruit trees from wind.  (This area of New Zealand get so much rain that the trees don’t need to have deep roots, making them more vulnerable to toppling over when big gusts whip through.)  It feels good to be back on a farm and feel the soil work its way into my skin.  After three days of weeding, my fingers are beginning to look like a farmer’s again: nails tinted brown near the cuticle and tip, dirt ingrained into the crevices of skin along the sides of my forefingers, and callouses thickening on my palms from digging, hoeing, and raking.  Even though I worked on a farm this summer, this is a whole new experience.  Yes, they grow kale, chard, garlic, lettuce, rhubarb and strawberries, and calendulas line many beds, but they also have kiwis, tamarillos, bamboo, and giant fern trees.  Aside from working on a growing orchard for the first time, I am surrounded by tropical plants and new birds, and I am feeling the springtime sun move into summer as October passes into November.

There are so many kinds of life here that I have never seen before, and each unfamiliar leaf, birdsong, and smell excites me and fills me with curiosity.  At the same time that I am bounding with energy to learn it all, I am also calmed by the familiarity of the garden and the interplay between the land, plants, insects, animals, people and elements.  I love how it all works together to find a balance, and how I am part of the circle and not the end of a line.  I do not feel far from home in these surroundings, and even though I am missing autumn in Vermont, it comforts me to know that I will see it again because the cycle always continues on.

High Tide

30 Friday Oct 2009

Posted by in New Zealand, Travel

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Since leaving Alice’s, we have been to Queenstown, Wanaka, and Franz Josef, and we arrived in Punakaiki this afternoon.  Our traveling time is coming to an end on Monday when we reach Karamea, where we are working on an Orchard for one month.  But I don’t want to write about all that I’ve done and will do right now.  In this moment I am sitting on a green cliff overlooking a half-moon beach.  The sun is kissing the ocean, the waves are growing and exploding in a passionate response.  In the time it took to write those words, the sun sunk, leaving the soft tangerine glow that will turn pale purple, then dusky blue and then give way into night.  The moon takes over now, calling the ocean to high tide.  Each gentle roll of wave gains momentum, rises, and crashes violently upon the pebbled shore where the foam spreads like spilled cream before it is sucked back to the ocean.  The mist from each crash softens the sea cliffs and huge pedestals of rock standing in the shallows.

I’m not sure how much longer I can stay here; the sandflies are coming out and biting at my legs.  But the tenacity of the waves ignites something within me that keeps me here just one more minute, one more minute…

How is it that I am both quieted and enlivened at once?  I am like the last lace of wave, reaching ever further up the shore at high tide before being pulled back to the depths.  This is my second visit to this beach since I arrived in Punakaiki six hours ago.  I will return tomorrow.