Remembering New Zealand 10 Years Later
Memory is a living thing
I like the theory that we experience time in an ascending circular staircase, crossing over the same planes over and over again, but approaching our challenges from a different vantage point.
In the last 6 months, I’ve been recrossing my experiences from 2010 at various levels. Recently, that path brought be across my notes from my solo trip to New Zealand ten years ago this month. I think everyone ought to be able to go to the other side of the world by themselves at least once in their youth. Bonus points if you’re doing it to give yourself distance from heartache.
In the spring of 2010, I called off an engagement, finished college, and threw my social life in a blender. Taking that leap of backpacking and WWOOFing on the literal opposite side of the planet was a crucial part of my coming to understand my power, my purpose, and my essential truth. I knew it was important then, but I couldn’t quite process it or incorporate what I learned into my daily life. It was all too big for me to quite get my arms around, too much for my eyes to take in all at once.
(The story of how I learned to self-define as “artist” can be found here.)
My camera seemed to have a similar problem. The little pocket Canon camera I took with me got some super-bright blue and green images, but I’ve always been pretty disappointed with the results. All these years, I wrote it off as not having the right camera (it’s never the camera), or being too inexperienced to know how to frame a shot (also bullshit, I’m an artist, I know how to compose things, it’s just hard to capture the scale of a mountain range that is literally called The Remarkables). This week I dug out that old hard drive and sent some of my favorite shots through Lightroom. Guys, it turns out I just didn’t have the right software to get what I saw to match what it felt like! I literally couldn’t process what I had experienced!
“We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.” - ANaïs Nin
Look at this tiny, short-haired baby child! She had no idea that every step she was taking was setting her course for the next decade.
The images, and the lessons I brought home, have for so long felt immature, raw, flat. But viewed through the lens of 10 years of experience and growth, with all the tools I’ve acquired along the way, I can see that journey clearly for the impact it had on me at every level.
One of the themes I’ve gleaned from the journals I had with me on that trip was the theory of inspiration flowing like the breath. I must admit that the idea was lifted directly from Anaïs Nin’s journals, which were my only companion on the trip. In Volume 1 of her diaries, she explains that one must go out into the world and live fully, observing, and inhaling. Then you must return home, to a safe nest where you are free to process and exhale your experiences as art. Then back out into the world you go, then home again. Like the natural inhale and exhale, one cannot happen without the other, and you can’t hold on to either side too long or else you’ll suffocate.
That, for me, is proof enough that my innate desire for travel is inextricably linked to my natural state of creativity. They are not two sides of the same coin, or compartmentalized areas of my life, but a full state of being. To go out, to live, to experience… to process, to distill, to create. It’s why this sacred pause feels so heavy - staying so close to home, I feel a shortness of breath.
Looking back through these pictures with new eyes was like a sharp inhale of crisp air in a fjord. I’m ready to spread my wings again.
I’ll leave you with one more note from Anaïs: