rhyme or reason

July 12-21

I bring the storm with me from the north.  A cold wet fog that sits on the city like a fat kid in soggy nappies.  The only respite we can find is an evening at the Ocean Spa.  The outdoor heated pools provide a refuge against the fierce winds and rain.  It actually makes the spa all the more enjoyable, the chilly air against my face and neck while the rest of me is submerged and bubbly warm.

Life is my own personal joke.  You know the kind.  The one that makes no sense but is somehow hilarious to the holder.  So when I stroll through town or curl up and read I'm never that alone because I've got myself for company.  Getting to know myself so I can smile inwardly on my 'inside story.'  It makes the decisions I make and actions I take mine.  Owned.  Decisions like going out dancing 'til 4am with Anne and the Argentinian couple, Agustina & Luciano, and the Frenchman Julien in my new $4.50 secondhand shop dress.

And I rediscover that a bar is a bar is a bar is a bar, wherever you go.  In walk the ladies in dresses you hope they won't bend over in and probably can't anyway, followed by the happy loud drunk blokes like flies to shit.  Because I'm old now the only guys I'd want to buy me a drink are all married and have no business being here and the ones who do either hand me the cheapest beer there is and start gyrating or hand over 20 bucks because they "don't know what I'd like."  That was a first.  Don't worry people, I politely declined the money and the drinks.  But the decision is mine to not hate on any of it.  To smile and laugh with myself and love them in all their wicked predictable glory and dance (dance) like it's the last (last) night of my life (life.)  Agustina & Anne are shiny happy people, twirling and jumping and matching my full on body bumping bliss.  And Julien's got some fancy French moves that make him quite popular with some Kiwi guys on a bro-out night.  It's messy and buzzy and a bit sweaty and my smile is the only makeup I need.

Coming from a place that basks under at least 300 days of sun a year, Napier's week long stint of rain clouds and gale force winds has put me in a right state of gloom.  But, remembering the curative effects of a little exercise, it's nothing a beach side bike ride can't cure, in spite of the horizontal splattering of dew drops on steroids.  Not to mention an evening of good food, wine, company and movies, and I manage to laugh off the rainy day blues.

The wind has blown away all my blues and the sun shines in a cloudless sky.  Anne makes us almond flour pancakes with fruit for breakfast.  We drive toward Havelock North to visit Te Mata Peak, the apex of a series of green hills with steep drop offs emptying into the sea and views as far as the eye can see.   From the summit all of Hawk's Bay falls below, from Hastings to Gisborne, and there's a long chunky cloud casting a rain shadow over the sea.  The scene continues to the Kaweka mountain range and in the distance you can even spot Mt. Ruapehu covered in virgin snow.  It's so windy and bitterly cold we linger just long enough to absorb the grand views and a chill in our bones.  

We happily tramp the more sheltered nature track as it winds through flora confusingly reminiscent of California and Colorado.  There are towering redwood groves, a few Douglas firs, even mullen (Indian toilet paper) shoot up along a grassy hillside.  There are just enough eucalyptus, pururis and kawakawas to remind me I haven't spontaneously transported to northern Cali.  I'm more than just a little thrilled to be in the sun once again.

A walk up to Bluff Hill for views of the city, the mountains and the sea fills my afternoon.  It's sunny and warm and everyone is out and about.  

Retail therapy with Anne and Agustina.  We jaunt around town searching secondhand shops for the perfect 20's and 30's outfits for Napier's Mid-Winter Art Deco weekend.  There are all sorts of fancy events taking place, which of course cost big bucks.  So my plan is to look awesome all weekend and strut around with a glass of wine in hand at all times.  

I watch the sun set over the beach.  The color contrast makes me sigh with contentment.  The black pebble beach, baby blue sea, purple and pink horizon.  The cliffs of Cape Kidnappers are strikingly pink.  I sit on a hunk of driftwood and my mind and the rhythm of the sea mesh into one and a half hour passes before I even blink.  I feel happy just accepting where I am and enjoying it while it lasts.

Anne and I whip up a big steak dinner with organic beef from a farm down the road.  We chat merrily with backpackers posting up in the hostel for a few days. 

Afternoon bike ride and estuary walk with Anne.  Everyone and their mom, literally, is out enjoying the uncharacteristically warm, sunny day.

The sun rises in Napier and sets on all my worries.  It sets fire to them as it does the clouds.  And I sit on the black stone beach, retro thermos from Wayne in hand, next to Anne and our weekend friends, and breathe a sigh of relief.  Life isn't as complicated as my mind has made it out to be, and sometimes it just takes a quiet moment to remember that.  I close my eyes and take a sip of tea and can't help but smile.  At least I am here.

 

Art Deco day in town.  Anne and I get dolled up and ride around town in a 1931 Model A Ford.
We then bike all over town to Mission and Church Road wineries and the Filter Room cider house for tastings and samplers.

Later we host a wine and cheese tasting party and have a photo shoot.

Model A Ford named Olive

Mission Winery

Filter Room cider sampler

Apple trees

Photo Shoot!

Beat boxing flute player and poi dancing duo

Scenes from Napier:

Out There

2 July

Hard day's work hauling wheel barrels full of gravel up the path to fill in the new walkway around Wayne's house and gardens.  Leveling the ground, inserting wooden sides, and installing a drainage system.  I'm impressed by our professional landscaping job.  Looks great!  

Afternoon walk to ancient old growth forrest just behind the house.  It's a privilege to visit this secret garden.  There are Kauris, new saplings to hundreds of years old.  Thousand year old kaikatias, pururis, remu, all hiding in the ancient sanctuary.  That's the difference between old and new growth.  New growth you practically need a machete to make your way through.  Old growth is a different energy entirely.  Exploring under a canopy where kereru are nosily munching berries and everything is taller than you, looking down with its patient, ancient wisdom, not grabbing and tearing at your skin like a nasty teenager as you pass by.  I loved being back there, like a tiny relic of how things should be.

Wayne's house is on the far right

3 July

And there it is, right on time.  That feeling I know all too well, like all the world has gone on holiday and I'm the last to know.  But no, it's different this time.  It's not a gnawing anxiousness.  It's not Misery, table for one.  It's a readiness.  I'm ready to move on.  Wayne's given his gifts, many of which he's surely not aware he had to give.  And I'm grateful in ways there aren't really words for and can only hope I gave enough in return.  Friday I'll be off, to continue my adventure elsewhere.

5 July

Websters Dictionary defines 'home' as… UGH… I'll spare you.  But my point is, when does a house become a home?  And can something other than a house be a home?  And can one have more than one home?  Today I left the closest place I've come to a home in NZ thus far.  A home, to me, is a place you can kick your feet up and be welcome.  Welcome being the operative word.  Welcome to be there and welcome to stay.  

So after three weeks at Wayne's, working and sharing and laughing and living, I feel I have a home.  Somewhere to go, to escape or recharge or seek solace or for merriment, a place I will be welcomed.  That's a feeling worth traveling over seven thousand miles to experience.  So after a big hug and well wishes and a million more thank you's that don't begin to express all I am thankful for, I'm off on my own.  Camping an hour north at Port Jackson in spot 78 of at least 100, watching the fishing boats and ocean liners draw straight lines across the horizon, and I'm the only one here.

ocean view

Port Jackson beach

looking down onto Port Jackson

6 July

There and back again: The Coromandel Walkway.  Unlike Mr. Bilbo Baggins's trek, whose tale I'm currently re-reading, my journey was a day-long 10 mile tramp from Fletcher's Bay to Stony Bay and back.  Through farm lands green, cliffs steep and forests deep it wound, but in place of the doom and gloom of the Misty Mountains, there was bright sun and ocean vistas divine.  

I did not have the displeasure of encountering the Great Goblin, but I did spy a mighty Kea preening itself in an ancient cliff clinging Pohutukawa.  And while there wasn't a clever Wood-elf in sight, the plump Wood-pigeon could be heard noisily flapping from tree to tree, nearly too fat to be airborne.  I even mustered the spunk to stand on the tallest lookout and flash my goods, New Years Eve in New Orleans style, just for the rush, for the hell of it, to the cloudless sky and the boatless sea.

Yes, it was a wondrous solo path, and my journey was without trouble or distress, until the Smaug of the day burped a fiery one just as I was leaving and landed fair Tin-Tin's wheel into a sludge of sand and stuck fast where it struck.  But Ho!  My Gandalf appeared in the gathering dusk, but her name was probably Ethel, to pull my vehicle from the sand pit of doom with her powerful DOC truck.  Wether dear Ethel was merely a federal employee on a sanitary mission to clean the camp toilets, or an angel sent to rescue the weary, we may never know.  So as I watch the sun set over a deep purple ocean, I raise my glass to probably Ethel, Patron Saint of all things stuck, and read on.

7-9 July

Hot Water Beach is actually all it's cracked up to be, don't let anyone tell you anything different, especially when it's all unplanned and perfect.  Tin-Tin is hugging the steep, winding gravel roads of northern Coromandel set on making it to Taupo by dark.  

But plans are often best when thrown out and Phillip and I are soaking in the beach front hot thermal pool fortress by noon.  After nearly three days of solo camping and seeing not a soul save for Ethel the guardian angel, you're probably thinking Phillip is my imaginary friend I've conjured for lively conversation.  

But he's real, I assure you, and, brace yourself Mom, he's my German hitchhiking pal for the day.  I just couldn't leave him on the side of the road with that eager adventuresome spirit nagging about and a mean case of the, "I've been talking to myself a bit much lately."  "Well then maybe it's time you find someone else to talk to, eh?"

Phillip is a draftsman in Germany, but he's on a journey round the world to find himself.  There's a few of us, eh?  Who've got out there ideas about trees communicating and finding yourself through travel abroad and whatever other stew you wanna dish up.

I enjoy a sunny afternoon feeling all buzzy because I've proved to myself that I am once again capable of human interaction and I step out past the edge of reason when I text K, the fishing guide Jamie and I met at Huka Falls a few weeks ago.  "Hey I'm back in Taupo.  You up to anything?"  The message is sent and there's a response and I'm thinking to myself immediately and even say out loud, "Kaitlyn what are you getting yourself into?"  But for whatever reason my instincts tell me I've got a good head on my shoulders and I'm gonna be okay.  

Cut to me picking at the freshly smoked flesh of a divinely fat rainbow trout plucked from the river just a few hours earlier.  

Catching the trout

K & the delicious smoked trout

Cut to me at 2am in the back of K's 4x4 ute in the middle of Taupo forest with 4 boys and twice as many guns poking out of the windows, spot lights blazing, hell bent on killing anything that moves.  We're a testosterone fueled porcupine robot tank and I'm in the front row if this show called Insane Offensive Racist Addicts with Expensive Firearms.

Cut to me learning to skin a rabbit with a razor sharp switchblade that's just been named Rabbit Slayer and gifted to yours truly.

Yep, this is an opportunity to thank my lucky stars I've got all my fingers and toes and to accept that it was risky business getting myself into a situation like that.  But I don't regret it and it was an experience I'll have and remember forever.  And now I know that there are rednecks in NZ and they wear all camo.

Cut to me getting an invitation to be helicoptered into a remote NZ paradise location to spend two weeks with the most buzzy bloke I've ever had the (mis?)pleasure of interacting with.  I decline, obviously.  I haven't had more than 5 hours of sleep in 2 days and I'm still buzzing hard off the whole experience.  What was that, where was I, who where those people?  Out there, eh?  Better to say you're sorry than ask permission, eh?  So scoff, judge, laugh, breathe a sigh of relief, but that's what happened and I'm just fine.  I still don't know the half of it. 

10-11 July

Been at the Criterion Art Deco Backpacker's with Anne since the 9th after I left Taupo.  Working on hostel maintenance in exchange for accommodation.  It's a lovely city, like a miniature model town with 30's architecture and stylings right beside a long black stone beach.  Many young backpackers coming and going so it's quite buzzy and fun and being reunited with Anne feels so nice, like visiting an old friend.  We visit Opossom World and then do a wine tasting.  Feeling well rested and reasonably normal again.  Even took on my first solo bread baking and it turned out sweet as.  Another home to hang my coat up.