Visualize Your Eventual Demise

Visualize your eventual demise. It can have an amazing effect on how you live for the moment.

~ Lululemon

As soon as I turned off my cell phone, a wave of enlightened freedom washed over me. The weight on my shoulders had been lifted. I had done it. Disappeared.

That was yesterday – when I arrived in Kaikoura. After endless hours of working over the course of 10 days, I had finally made it to my four-day stretch of nothingness. And it felt brilliant. Originally, I had planned to head off to the west coast, to see Nelson and surrounding areas, but plans changed when Cat had to go home to see her family before work started up again. She was the one with the car. And in the midst of school holidays in which both of us were off, it would have been perfect to have a few days of adventure together. But also, just as important – it was a perfect time for her to make the long trip to Dunedin to check in with her loved ones. It only made me wish that it was that simple and easy for me to do the same.

Instead, I was left without a ride. Without a plan. Without a companion to share an adventure with. All I had was a “Plan B,” but no plan. As I laid awake in my bed two nights ago tossing and turning at the frustrating thought that I had finally gotten time off but had nowhere to go – one thing continued to come to the forefront of my brain. I wanted to disappear.

I wanted to let go of everything. To get away. To be free of all ties of responsibility and obligation. The stress of the past month at work was eating away at me. Worrying about doing my job right. Stressing about internal staff relations. Trying to keep a smile on my face as I shared the camp with customers, fellow co-workers and volunteers to which I supervised – all the while wanting to curl up in the corner and hideaway. It was time for a much-needed break.

Sunrise - Mt. Isobel

And so in the late hours of Monday night, my Plan B was formulized. I would skip my morning run in exchange for rising early to walk to the petrol station on the outskirts of Hanmer Springs and hitch a ride east to Kaikoura. I had never been to Kaikoura before and with what everyone continued to tell me about it, it seemed like the ideal location for a few days of rejuvenating “me time.” I only hoped the nerves of hitching on my own wouldn’t eat me alive before I even left town. I focused my energy at smiling brightly and appearing care-free and casual as I stuck my thumb out and hoped for a ride. By 7:00 a.m. I was on the road with a lawyer on his way back to Christchurch for work. He dropped me at the next major highway intersection as he headed right to go to the Garden City and I walked to a pull-off point along the road so that I could head left. Within five minutes I had another ride.

Three guys in a rented campervan picked me up within five minutes and I joked with them on how no one with a rented campervan ever picks hitchers up. They were all from South Africa and touring around the country with the primary purpose of following the Rugby World Cup. Sitting in the back of the campervan on the made-up bed (which the guys informed me was much too short for a South African man – to which I noted they were rather tall), I happily settled into the get-to-know you conversation that comes with spontaneously being together with random people. I only wondered how backpackers riding the Kiwi Experience tour buses ever felt as though they got any sort of “Kiwi experience.” I have never been on any such bus while travelling and felt the comfortable ease of spontaneously conversing with the person in the next seat. I, in fact, avoid such travelling “experiences” for such a reason. I suppose that explains my desire to hitch to Kaikoura rather than take a shuttle bus. That and it was a little easier on the wallet.

After one gas stop and some time winding our way along the narrow mountainous roads towards the famous seaside town, we came across a man running on the side of the road. It was none other than Richie McCaw. Only in New Zealand would you come across one of the most recognized faces in sport casually doing his morning run on the side of the road. We honked at him and shouted words of encouragement as we zipped on passed – and then we were there. Kaikoura.

With no time at all, I had found my way to a hostel that could offer me a private room with ensuite that suited my budget and after a quick walk to the local grocery store, I was sorted. I haven’t even minded that it has rained nearly continuously since arriving here – being outside and doing the touristy things wasn’t my primary reason for me.

I’ve just needed time to shut out the world and be by myself. Be in my own bubble where there are no worries of recognizing people I know. Be anonymous to those around me. Be invisible. And so I have turned off my cell phone with glee. There is nowhere I need to be. No one that I need to be in contact with. No one that needs to know where I am. And it feels brilliant.

This morning I went for a run and found myself missing the mountain trials out my back door in Hanmer Springs. But that didn’t stop me from enjoying the ability to do some yoga on the beach while watching the water lap the shoreline and the sun come up over the horizon. Early morning fishermen were out in their boats on the calm water and I watched them as I did my sun salutations. I did the warrior as I gazed back at the majestic snow-capped mountains just behind Kaikoura and felt my soul calm down in a sense of peace. Today would be a good day.

And it has been. The hours have ticked passed as I took a long shower, leisurely ate breakfast while gazing out over the ocean, had a late morning nap and walked to the secondhand bookstore to pick up something to read. But most of all I find that my mind is aimlessly wandering through all the things I haven’t felt I’ve had time to think about in a while. I find my brain picking up a topic and critically going over each angle of it, testing it, analyzing it and then letting it go.

Ever since walking Te Araroa Trail, I have felt as though my “me time” has lessoned quite considerably. I got used to having the time to simply just think. The pace of life was such a way that a person could finish a day and feel quite secured with how they fit into the world around them. Or at least that is how I felt. A quiet contentment would fill my soul on most days – even the worst days – in the knowledge that the simplicity of life would ground me in whatever I was thinking or doing.

But not any longer. Sure – life is still fairly simple. It’s not as though I have a high-powered job in a fast-paced city or anything. But my life now is a lot faster than what it once was. I am no longer walking through life with a fine-toothed comb. In some ways that’s a good thing, but in other ways – it eventually builds up inside me until I get to the point where I need to hideaway for a while and untangle the mess that my thoughts have become.

I have now passed the year mark of which Alex and I started walking Te Araroa. A year ago we would have been setting up camp in Ahipara, thanking all the higher powers that we made it off the beach and had found civilization again. A year ago we were unsure what the future held – Alex’s ankle was injured. My blisters hurt. My shoulders felt as though they were going to fall off. And that was just the beginning of the adventure.

And now I sit here in my private room in Kaikoura and contemplate the rain as it pours down outside and think of how much I am still so much traumatized from the rain Alex and I walked through while doing Te Araroa Trail. I avoid any sort of time being out in the rain simply because the feeling of being wet eternally as become a fear ingrained within me. I have yet to re-discover the fun I once had in the wet as I did as a child. Right now it is lost from me and I much more content to simply watch it from the comfort of my room while reading a good book.

So much has happened in the past few months that these few days have been needed for quite some time. I haven’t quite processed all that happened while trekking Te Araroa Trail. I am not sure I ever will. Not to mention that it hasn’t really sunk in what I am doing here in New Zealand. My aim of travelling the world has somehow morphed into the desire to seek out putting some roots down in Hanmer Springs. And oddly enough, I am at peace with that. I think. Every so often I start to freak about it and I have to remind myself why I am doing what I am doing. And sometimes I am not even sure what that is.

With all this reflection, I have started to enter my age into the equation. I have never before considered my age to be a factor in what I do with my life or what I want to do until now. All of a sudden I find fleeting thoughts and concerns about where I am at with my life and wondering if it’s where I am supposed to be. Though I know I am where I am meant to be – how could I not be? – It still makes me wonder. With all the people I have met around the world, everyone is in a constant struggle of competition with everyone else to find where they fit in the world and be able to declare that they have found “it.” Whatever that may be. It seems to always come down to the battle between settling down and living the “dream.” I have yet to see if a person can have both.

As it stands – I have figured out in my time of being with myself – I am living my dream. I figure I am probably living more of a dream than I ever figured I could dream. I also figure that I need to stop worrying about what will come – what will be – and enjoy the ride that will take me there, as it surely will be good won’t it? I also need to stop stressing about things that don’t matter and just work on loving the people around me that care about me. Including myself.

I find it easy to get caught up in a whirlwind of self-destructive thought processes with regards to my own personal perspective on myself. Who doesn’t? But when in a foreign country, with no word on whether I will be staying longer or leaving tomorrow and living in a small town surrounded by people I have only known for a few months, it is easy to get caught in the trap of feeling isolated and lost. My solution? To disappear.

And so here I am. Cut off from the world – other to write this very public blog entry – and it feels brilliant. Time to work out the thoughts in my head. To figure out where to go from where I am. To come back to work and life in Hanmer Springs stronger and more determined to go after what it is I want. What it is I am meant to do. What it is that will continue this adventure another day.

Better to not know which moment will be your last – every morsel of your entire being alive to the infinite mystery of it all.

~ Pirates of the Caribbean – On Stranger Tides