A month ago I lost my wristwatch in Lake Tarawera on the biscuit. What, you may wonder, does that even mean? It’s actually something quite meaningful for me; it means that time isn’t measured by the arms on my Swatch anymore, but by the instances in life which happen to and around me, something I’ve always striven for, and now have no other choice, but to just let live and be; it’s a gift, really (both the watch AND losing it; sorry Uncle Scott.) Sure, after sporting various wristwatches since the approximate age of 6 (my Annie watch being my all-time favorite, and the Goofy watch with the numbers reading counterclockwise a close second) I’ve conditioned myself to glance at my wrist at least once (or eighteen times) an hour. But since my watch was ripped off my wrist by the sheer force of water wrapping and winding itself around my body after being tossed like a rag doll from the back of a water raft (the biscuit) which was tied to a speedboat driven by Captain Leadfoot (hi Chris!) I find myself looking for the time less and less, and just letting the day roll along, taking me with it ….. a little more gently than I rolled off the biscuit, that’s for sure.
So where has life taken us since our last blog (which feels like a hundred million years ago) and what instances might we be measuring our days by, you ask, dear Readers??? Well, if I had one hundred pages to blog with, I still couldn’t describe to you all that we’ve experienced since my transcendental bushwalk; but I can say, for the both of us, that it’s permanently changed us and our lives for the better; absolutely.
BUT! Nobody likes answers like that; we’re Americans! We need concrete evidence! So I’ll sum it up for you in a list that you may or may not appreciate and/or entirely understand, but, think of it as a photo album of snapshots; you’ll get the gist of the adventure, but until you decide to undergo your own life altering journey, the air of mystery prevails….. and besides, remember the last time you asked your friends about their trip to Europe, and suddenly you were knee deep in stacks of photographs and caught in the middle of a bombardment of the well intentioned couple’s story, after story, after story? Like a soldier in the midst of a hail of bullets; choose your moment wisely to duck out or it’s your life….
ANYWAY! I won’t be that guy, but here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DyLOkbW9yCI if you listen to this while you’re reading, it may add a little something that will make it less of a “List of Things We Did” and more of “An Overture of the Time of Our Lives.”
What really gets me is that we still have more time left on our journey than we’ve already used up; how much gratitude do we have? Immeasurable amounts.
Cheers!
The last two months looked, sounded and smelled something like this:
hay
a “Hay party”
chickens…. and then the rooster, strutting around outside our door
sheep, outside the door, chewing and staring at us inside the yurt
being treated like family everywhere we go, and eating like kings and queens!
observing a dinner table full of drunken Kiwis (native New Zealanders) and wondering what the hell they’re even saying as their accents grow more and more “lush”
“Good on ya!”
“It’s all tickety boo!”
“Sweet as!”
“Suck the kumara.”
rosemary HEDGES
lavendar
basil
HONEY
star/satellite/Milky Way gazing while enjoying a Monteith and talking about Life and the Universe
looking at our view across Lake Tarawera at the volcano that destroyed the Pink and White Terraces and imagining what it was like the night it erupted
brushing our teeth to the sounds of laughing hens in the morning, who shared our sleepout
waking up to the rooster at 4:30am….and again at 5am…. and then again at 5:30am…..
birds with songs so beautiful they don’t sound real, and one that even sounds computer generated
cicadas and GINORMOUS crickets with a GINORMOUS chirp
sitting in a natural hot spring tub with a bottle of wine each night after dinner
zen for Aimee: mowing a lawn for hours on end
listening to our hosts tell us the stories of their lives
the FOOD: warm, fresh eggs straight from the hen house, the brilliant, yellow/orange color of the yolks, fresh veg and herb straight from the garden, fresh meat from the paddock, fruit compote made from the fruit trees in the yard, pear/apple/lemon juice squeezed from the crop we picked, and on and on and on…..
walking up the hill behind the sleepout through a shady path into an enormous, sunny field of rolling, amber hills dotted with sheep, into a winding, manuka forest, and out onto a private beach setting on a crystal clear, green-blue lake so private that one could sunbathe topless……if they wanted to
the smell of exotic flowers in breathtakingly beautiful gardens buzzing and humming with giant bumblebees
the scenery outside the bus windows to my own personal soundtrack on my iPod (thanks Mom!)
pointing out huge spiders to each other, and I know they’re big when Dave says, “wow that IS a big one.”
determining whether an article of clothing needs to be washed or whether it’s “clean enough”
hiking the inside of a volcano and having lunch by the Emerald Lakes of Mt. Doom!
useless warning/evacuation signs inside said volcano
partying with people from all over the world
8 bed hostel rooms and a French guy with a lung infection = no sleep all night long
hitching
Dave’s “bubblin mud” song
Dave’s flute playing
Dave’s impersonation of Fabian
Dave’s hilariousness in general
guitar lessons from a six foot tall, 15 year old, righteous chick
guitar lessons from a gypsy
rolling green hills reminiscent of Ireland, splashed with golden hues as the sun sets
strangers from Piha bringing us dinner and G&T’s for an evening in Wellington
stranger from Wellington buying us beers all night
dancing and drinking and laughing to bossanova/samba music at the Mussel Inn, followed by a beautiful moonlit walk home
gypsy sing-song by a full moon and fire, with a true gypsy
housetruck home by a stream and a swimming hole
15 years in a housetruck
tried and true, dyed in the wool hippies
Diamond Steve and the worst nickname story ever
a rockin’ one handed guitarist
“Roy, 2 minutes for Christchurch?” “Oh, yeah, right.”
lavendar balm
sandflies
self sufficient and living entirely off the grid
I’ve Been Workin….I’ve Be….I’ve Been Workin on th….I’ve Been Workin on the Raaaaailroooooad…..
herding sheep and milking goats
ocean walks on beaches that have no end in sight, and a sunset so beautiful you can’t tell where the sky ends and the ocean begins
Danny the English wwoofer
Michael the English “wwoofer”
hundreds and hundreds of sand dollars; sea stars, jellys, hermit crabs, jelly egg sacs
Sandcastle in a yurt by the sea
dislocated shoulder and an extracted tooth
gypsy fair
“Golden sweat I eat the cheese”
an ashram in the clouds
SANDFLIES!!!!!!
being dropped off in a solar powered home inside the Abel Tasman National Park where the closest human is over an hours walk away and the river is our fridge
watching Dave turn a wisteria vine into a piece of art
a campfire under the Milky Way and homemade honey whiskey
solitude.
and so, SO, SO much more………
Alright so I chose one thing from the list and decided to elaborate a little, since it was one of the more memorable things we did (besides hanging with hippies and gypsies, one handed guitarists and chainsaw artists….that’s going to be the title of my wwoofing memoirs, by the way.)
So the people we are currently staying with meditate at the local ashram (a spiritual center) every week on Wednesdays. On our first Wednesday with them they invited us to go, but they got too busy and couldn’t, so they sent us without them in their car; nice! Steve, our super awesome, sweet as pie host, drew us a primitive map of lefts and rights into town, and then simply wrote, “Up and up!” for the way to the ashram, and off we went; me, Dave and the English traveler-in-resident, Michael.
So Dave drives…. on the other side of the car, the other side of the road, a shift stick, in a tiny VW, and I’m in the back. When we reach the base of the climb where do we go? Why up and up, of course! We drive up…. and up… and then we twist, and then we turn, and then we go up some more, and up…. and suddenly, the turns become jack knife turns….. and then, the banks on the road aren’t banks anymore, but instead they slope downward at dizzying heights, and then the shoulder disappears so that staying to the left side where the cliffs are is essential to our survival…. and then, a HUGE yellow sign with a GIANT exclamation point on it, and below it, it says FORD, which means there is a fast stream ahead for us to, well, FORD, and suddenly, there it is! And for each one I am forewarned, “FORD, BACKSEAT!” And! It’s forded! Nice work, Dave.
So, picture it; we are crossing streams, twisting and turning on a slippery dirt road, traveling up, and up, and up, and UP…. and UP!!!!!! And then, we look down…. and we realize, okay, so, we are climbing this entire mountain to get to the ashram; it’s not just up and up, it’s literally Buddha is on TOP of the mountain. After about 20 minutes of this careful creeping turtle’s pace, and two gates to stop, get out, open gate, pass through, stop, close gate, get back in, and go….. STILL no ashram. The white’s in Dave’s knuckles are now starting to show.
But man, when we look back, it is thee most beautiful, incredible, amazing view I have ever seen in my life, of mountains and valleys and sheep and sunset and the ocean and greens and blues and golds, and reflections from the sunset of pinks and purples and orange, and beauty and serenity and maybe even a little bit of what heaven might look like, and an exclamation from the UK that he thinks he could cry it’s so beautiful. And every jack knife turn we take, and every stream we ford, and every corner we turn, I think that I am seeing the most beautiful scenery of my life, until we take just one more turn…. couple that with being absolutely terrified that, as we climb along the edge of this mountain, we could also easily brake too suddenly or gas the car too quickly and end up rolling down the side of the mountain in a fiery ball, makes this one of the most intense car rides of my life.
We kept this way up and up the side of the mountain, the view growing more exquisite every, single second, until we finally reached….. the clouds! And, in the clouds, was the ashram; THANK BUDDHA (thank you Dave!)
So here we are, me, Dave and the English boy, Michael, at this ashram, at the top of a mountain, so happy to have finally arrived. We enter the establishment to see about 20 people sitting calmly and quietly on the floor, on a rug, in a room; the majority are women with shaved heads, and a few men, also with shaved heads; apparently there is a ceremony on Saturdays where you can donate your hair and rid yourself of attachments; there was only one girl, with long, blonde hair, who was either new, or bucked the system, for she still had her blonde locks. I, myself, would love to shed my hair in such a manner; but I would be afraid of my vanity getting in the way and stopping me of doing so; what would you do?
Anyway, we were warmly welcomed by them all and were offered a bowl of vegetarian soup (which Dave was thrilled about, being a veggie for the last 19 years) and mung patties (saturated in jelly, they were just o.k.) I sat next to a beautiful German girl with a shaved head, and we chatted about her time at the ashram here in NZ, and in India, and she was intrigued by my stories of NYC; god I miss that place sometimes.
After we ate we walked from the dining hall to the structure where they meditate; kind of like a huge version of the yurt we’re in (Google yurt; you’ll see what I mean) and we proceeded to meditate in this style of meditation called Kirtan, which is like chanting and singing and meditating all at once. It’s unlike anything I have ever experienced, and something that I can’t really express through writing without it sounding like just another experience, because it wasn’t; combined with the drive, it was incredibly special.
So, if you ever get the offer to meditate on top of a mountain in an ashram in the South Island of New Zealand, I highly recommend it. It will change your entire life.
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