New Zealand part 2 – Living in the Sun

I turn my face to the sun and wait for the chatter of the walk signal to usher me on. “My god,” I think “it’s perpetually fucking beautiful here.” Four days of travel just to get to the country followed by two days of walking through the endearing city of Christchurch have left my body aching and fatigued, yet my mind yearns to see and feel as much of the city as I can. The light turns, the crosswalk chatters and as I open my eyes to my surroundings an older person on a bicycle comes sliding past, singing cheerfully as they go, a musical of one.

Christchurch is proving to be an easily loveable city. Golden rolling hills extend to the south while the ocean to the east provides a cooling onshore breeze. New construction abounds as does street art and a seemingly endless supply of small coffee shops. I am both compelled on and struggling under drooping eyelids. And it is this drooping fatigue that I eventually pay heed to as I turn my feet back towards our hostel.

Our trip to New Zealand and Australia is ultimately unlike any other travel Keith and I have done. Previously, when traveling to another country our tactic has been to cram in as many things as humanly possible, relying on the return to home and employment to provide the rest forgone on the trip. A trajectory well suited to a trip on the span of days to a couple of weeks. Conversely, when we thru hiked the Pacific Crest Trail the whole endeavor was undertaken with a goal in mind: Canada, the finish line, the accomplishment of a completed hike. But neither of those ideologies seem to fit the ethos of the three and a half months that lay out before me. For on this trip, the end will be less of an accomplishment than a termination; while cramming each day to the fullest will almost certainly bring on burnout far ahead of our return flights. And in that burnout lays another danger, in the form of my tumultuous struggle with mental illness: a formidable danger both literally and metaphorically resting at the back of my mind.

So what then? Can a goal be as simple as living? To live through each day as both the point and the accomplishment of the trip? Can I push myself to adventure and see while simultaneously letting go of the frustration that will inevitably come when I cannot do everything I think I must? I suppose it’s far too early to tell and in the sunshine of this day I don’t feel the need to tackle such conundrums to their terminus. So I return to our small hostel room with my tired feet and mild sunburn, with the plan to begin this quest of living anew tomorrow, and, I figure, for every day after.