To Middle Earth

It took me a minute to realize what I was feeling.  A kind of rejoicing, that a place such as this can exist.  Where the people are the friendliest, the air is pristine, and the land is raw.  The sea is a million shades of green at any given moment, jade and turquoise, pistachio and lime.  Crystalline and clear, it's home to more whales, dolphins, and penguins than anyplace, anywhere.  Commanding, magnificent, and proud, this is a place still seemingly as uncorrupted as the day is rose from the sea so many eons ago.  An island home to some of the most hilarious creatures I’ve ever met, big fat ninjas who are the best of company, and a reminder of the bulldogs with whom I was raised.  This place is New Zealand.

Before I left home last year, I thought I’d be zooming around this country in a camper van with a friend from home.  I didn’t realize that our southern hemisphere reunion wasn’t to be, or that I’d arrive here in the middle of winter.  It felt wrong to do Middle Earth without my Samwise Gamgee, but, as all bends in the road lead to somewhere, I kept on with my plan to do this country, even if it meant doing it, like the countries that came before, alone.  And thank God I did.

In my continued effort to remain present, I find myself basking in this joy, this opportunity to lose myself in this most perfect of places, with these most cartoonish of creatures.  I’ve lost hours and days among the seals, tripping over the fatties blending into the rocks as I climb among them, befriending the pups playing in the waterfall.  I’ve seen enormous sperm whales surfacing from the underwater canyons where they’re feeding just off the coast.  I’ve gotten sucked into the drama among a little blue penguin colony, as little Solo showed off for his new mate, and the little twin chicks begged for food.  It’s been glorious.  

Despite this saturation of majesty though, I still have to check myself.  Because sometimes I feel guilty for experiencing these things, for knowing this kind of joy.  People all over the world and in my own life, people I love most fiercely, are suffering.  Really, truly suffering.  And I’m not there, and can’t actively do anything to alleviate their pain, apart from praying and being in touch.  So maybe joy is a choice, believing in hope and beauty in a world laced with fear and pain.  That roly-poly seal pups will make me laugh out loud in the midst of acute heartache is proof of joy; that roly-poly seal pups are joy.  In fat rolls.