Titirangi, New Zealand, North Island; January, 2011

After spending the last week in Titirangi with our hospitable and rather amusing English host/terrific cook Catharine (cheese polenta, wild mushroom soup, homemade hummus, fresh garden veggies, etc. etc. all made for yet another superb culinary score) and her loving, wide-eyed, precocious five year old, Thomas James Miro Forrest-Dawson, Dave and I find ourselves in steamy, hot spring laden Rotorua, and in utopia once again, and that is not at all to say that Titirangi was unpleasant by any means; I couldn’t foresee keeping in touch with our first hosts, especially after they, among other things, revoked our phone privileges (can you say, spite?) but I really look forward to Skyping with Catharine and Thomas.

But, hindsight certainly is 20/20, and had we realized how close Titirangi was to the city we arrived in nearly four weeks ago (Auckland), we would have shot straight over to our current base (Rotorua), right after our first assignment in Waimaku, which was a beautiful suburb of Auckland that took us far from the city to the heart of the country, and onto a farm housing a flock of sheep, two horses, a kunekune pig, hard labor, and one adorable, chainsaw wielding farm boy named Logan (one of our favorite characters on this trip thus far, save for our friend Thomas, and maybe Peppermint Hannah, as Dave has so lovingly dubbed our first host.)

So, as we worked that week in the burbs of Titirangi, Dave mending a fence and weeding the garden, and myself donning my nanny hat once again to lovingly care for sweet Thomas, I couldn’t help ponder, what is it that I am going to take away from this week? What’s going to happen to me that will stop and make me look at myself and the world and my life in a fresh perspective, that will either add to, or diminish, what I once may, or may not, have previously viewed as true, or even valuable? How will this particular experience shape me, and who I am, and, just what the hell were we still doing in Auckland four weeks later for crying out loud!?! Time is precious! Tick tock! The South Island is calling, “Come! David and Aimee! Hike my volcanoes and witness my ancient glaciers! Swim freely with wild and endangered Hector dolphins, and gawk and coo at the feral penguins! Why are you wasting your time in the north end of the North Island!? Nobody spends as much time as you have so far north! AMATUERS!!!!!”

This anxiety slowly drained from my veins after a couple of our favorite New Zealand beers, Monteith’s Summer Ale (savour that ginger aftertaste!) and I snapped back to the reality that A. the South Island can’t talk and B., most importantly, I was in New Zealand…..wait, let me say it again (in the present) I AM IN NEW ZEALAND. I needed to, as my favorite NYU student would say, chillax.

I then took the opportunity to practice the one thing that I try to remind myself of when I start driving around Crazytown with a blindfold on…. stay present, appreciate the moment, have a little (or a lot of) gratitude for what is before you, and Let. Go. Control. Freak. Easy peasy, eh? Not for someone who, for a large portion of her adult life, has insisted on living in the past and worrying about the future; both places that don’t or haven’t even existed yet; crazy? Yes. Hey, old habits die hard, but practice makes perfect…. although “perfection” bores me, and crazy definitely has it’s place; Crazytown, though? I think I’m ready to pack up and decrease the population by one; I hear it’s fun over in Slightly Insane Land.

There’s a lesson in everything, though, and that is one of the two most important things I took from Titirangi; worrying about anything, from where you were, to where you’re going, is only detracting, and distracting you, from where you currently are, which is the only place that really matters or even exists; The Now. Like anything, this won’t last forever; everything is fleeting, so sit back and enjoy the ride while you’re on it. It sounds so simple, and so cliché, but how often do we really adhere to this extraordinarily valuable idea? Me? Well, I hear the iPhone went to Verizon, so now I can get one and set an alarm with a really cool ringtone for five minutes of Presentmindedness every hour! Yahtzee!

The other invaluable moment I took from Titirangi didn’t necessarily have a lesson in it, but it was one of the most unforgettable experiences of my life thus far. It’s something that I’ve felt before, once while standing in the middle of an ancient water village in Xitang, China with my Uncle Tom, and a handful of other moments as well; and although fugitive, they’re probably the most extraordinary and precious memories to me.

These moments are nearly indescribable, and are possibly comparable to how a new parent might feel upon first gaze of their newborn baby, or maybe it’s like seeing things for the first time through the eyes of a four year old, but as an adult. Without sounding too Alice in Wonderland-Hookah Smoking Caterpillar, it’s this surreal mix of awe and fascination, and utter calm and peace, an otherworldly feeling that you’ve transcended time and space, and, for those who know the You Tube phenomenon, it is totally Double Rainbow happiness. And all it was, was a bushwalk I went on with my good friend Thomas, and his German Shepard Keira.

It might sound trite or, again, cliché; but, it is something that can’t be duplicated, nor fully explained without sounding like someone at a Phish show whose friends keep asking them, “HOW much did you take?” So all I can tell you is this: Google “New Zealand forest” and find the most astounding image you can of hundred foot ferns, manuka and kanuka trees, 1000 year old kauris the size of redwoods, all coated in fifty shades of brown and green, sided with every species of moss imaginable, complete with prehistoric weta bugs jumping into pools of water fed by streams and waterfalls, sprinkled with gnarled hobbit tree trunks growing horizontally from the sides of ravines where a lone hiker, a five year old and a German Shepard might carefully creep along on a narrow, muddy path winding through this enchanted forest that looks and sounds and smells like you could possibly be inside the imagination of whatever God is. It’s a kind of place where you can’t help but feel that you’re a part of everything, and everything is a part of you; dig? If not, hell, go have one too many and stand out in the middle of a field under some stars, or on top of a skyscraper looking out over 4 million people; you very well might achieve the same feeling. If not, I highly recommend a bushwalk through a New Zealand forest, with Thomas and Keira as your guides.

Author's note, post trip: after re-reading the last paragraph, it sounds like I actually did learn a little something about being present after all....