Haere Rā: Farewell, New Zealand

I’m sitting by a beach in west Auckland. It’s a sheltered beach, part of the Manakau Harbor. The waves are soft and calm and consistent and they are the only sound other than the occasional whistle of a bird and a few chirping insects. I’ve been in NZ for 288 days. I arrived in Auckland, I leave from Auckland. I bought a car, I’ve sold a car. I’ve lived a life here, albeit a miniature one. 

While I didn’t live anywhere specific, I still lived here–sleeping, eating, and breathing New Zealand for the past 9.5 months. It feels like these islands are a part of me.

Sometimes it feels like I haven’t done it right. I met people who have come over to do the Great Walks (and squeeze three of them into a three week vacation). I’ve only done two. I met people who bought a camper van and lived the nomad life, campfires and surf beaches and hammocks. But I stayed in places with guaranteed showers. I met people who visited fifty back-country huts, who hiked miles back to tiny sheds (not the glamorous ones I visited, with 20 plus people and mattresses and gas stoves). I met people hiking the Te Araroa trail—four to five months from the top of the north to the bottom of the south. While I don’t relish the trench foot they talk about, I wonder if I should have had a goal. I wonder why it seemed so many degrees harder to just buy a camp stove and be able to hike cheaper, less popular multi-day tracks. Why I didn’t hike to more huts. Why I didn’t meet more people my age. Why I didn’t get a job and stay somewhere for a bit. Why I’m leaving 2.5 months early. 

Sometimes I wonder that. 

But there’s no right way to travel. There’s no right way to live. Just as I bucked tradition (stable job, work-focus, save for a house) and set out on my own for a while, I can buck tradition in the way I set out too. I’m not a broke backpacker. Not a hippy. Not a party traveler. Not a serious tramper. Not a regular working holiday visa-er. I didn’t live just one life here. I lived many…little pieces of a thousand lives. 

I’ve had adventures. I’ve struggled. I’ve had to look stupid. I’ve had to challenge myself.

But in 9.5 months I have accomplished nothing concrete. Produced nothing. Checked nothing exceptional off the list. 

Except that I did it. I solo-traveled New Zealand. 

U.S. society teaches us that something isn’t a success unless there is something to show for it. A trophy, a degree, a dollar prize, a name on something. Writing without the validation of an award or a book or an income is nothing. Art without a gallery to hang it in or a prize or a bidder is nothing. Small breaks are acceptable, short vacations, occasional days to relax, a few hours at a movie theater. But a whole 9.5 months with nothing tangible to show, no list completely checked off, nothing but photos and memories and thoughts and feelings and an indeterminate and not preset goal (and therefore worthless) amount of miles walked. 

So I have to remind myself of everything that I did do that western society might deem worthless but is really invaluable.

Maybe conquering the preconceived mind set is the true victory. 

So there’s no list of everything I’ve done and seen. No bucket list I’m going to leave behind for future travelers. There are proud moments, vivid memories. Bungy jumps and multi-day walks and animals seen and beaches visited and mountains hiked. I hiked more mountains than some and fewer mountains than others, but I did New Zealand my way. My way, based on who I am now and who I was when I arrived and who I was three months ago.

And now I’m leaving.

Not because I’m tired of New Zealand. Not because I’ve done everything I wanted to do (there’s absolutely a list of things I didn’t get to). Not because I’m homesick. Not because I’ve run out of money (I could get a job here). But because I suddenly feel as though I am running out of time.

Nine months disappeared in the blink of an eye. I’m nearly 25 (a quarter of a century, but most people don’t get a century). I’ve always had this low-lying anxiety that I’ll never be able to read all the books I want to read. That I’ll die with a “to read” list longer than my list of books I’ve read. And suddenly, I’ve begun to feel this way about the world. Not that I won’t get everywhere I want to get to, but that I’ll never be able to get to know it the way I was blessed to get to know New Zealand. Having the privilege of getting to see so much of New Zealand, to sink into it and let it become a temporary home… And suddenly knowing, experiencing, that there are other ways to travel. Ways that immerse you in a place rather than rush you through. But I also know there is not enough time to do that in every place and every country that I want to do it in.

That’s where this fear comes from. That’s what is compelling me to leave, to go more places. Even though I won’t get to know those places like New Zealand, I will know them in some way. That is what is dragging me from an amazing country, that is what is forcing me to face more fears and concerns and anxieties in the next few months. 

And that is also, ultimately, what is leading me home. Because I want to see the world and be at home in equal measure. As days disappear across the globe, they disappear in Colorado too. Days away from parents, siblings, friends…

In 9.5 months, I’ve lived little pieces of a thousand lives in New Zealand. And it’s helped me, just a little, in wondering how I really want to shape the single life I’ve got.