I only wanted to drive as far as Hokitika but as I turned onto State Highway 6 and saw the mountains in the distance, I suddenly felt their call. As I wound my way through the thick West Coast rainforest, I caught glimpses of lakes sparkling in the sun and of snow covered peaks. And from Franz Josef, feeling called ever further, I drove over another mountain road, in search of that famous reflection. The sky slowly turned golden as I walked up to the viewing platform. It was warm, unusually so, and sandflies nibbled at every inch of exposed skin. Someone behind me sat and drew, the four of us on this wooden platform looked up at the mountains and the lake, quietly and in reverie. The faintest breeze ruffled the surface and so there was no reflection but there was golden light and silence and these mountain peaks that had always been shrouded in clouds and that felt like enough.
Eventually, I tore myself away, content with what I saw. At an opening in the trees, I turned around one last time, and there it finally was, a perfect reflection.
“Life offers up these moments of joy despite everything.”
Sally Rooney, Normal People
There is a part of me that wishes I hadn’t lost weeks to a sadness I couldn’t shake. But I also know that it was a sadness that needed to be felt. You can run but you can’t hide from feelings that demand your attention, eventually they will always catch up with you, no matter how well you thought you’d compartmentalised them away.
A good friend reminds me of the importance of this, of Wintering, as Katherine May calls it. Wintering is „the active acceptance of sadness“ and the „courage to stare down the worst parts of our experience and to commit to healing them the best we can“. I didn’t want to winter, even though I suspected that coming here might force me to. I didn’t want to sit in beautiful places, looking at mountains and the sea, and wonder what the point of anything was. What the point of me was. But I did, because I knew that I had no choice. So I sat and looked, treating myself „like a favored child: with kindness and love“. And, eventually, like all winters, it passed and I could see the wonder again.
„Wintering brings about some of the most profound and insightful moments of our human experience, and wisdom resides in those who have wintered.“
Katherine May, Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times
R appeared out of the blue. All sparkling eyes and floods of words. Everyone around us disappeared and I could feel myself wanting to hold on to every word and to this moment. We talked a million miles a minute, exchanged messages while the days were suddenly imbued with gold and the nights lit by the glow of a screen.
And then, just like that, it ended. Honestly, vulnerably and with a kindness so rare I’d forgotten it exists. Some connections are real and immediate, not bound by time or in any way explicable. They burst into your life, shake you up, help you heal or understand something and then, they end, much too sudden. I am not good at letting real connections just pass through my life without trying to desperately hang on to them, trying to make them last longer than they should, but it’s something I’ve been trying to learn. And here he was, a burst of life, the living, breathing manifestation of a lesson I thought I’d understood somewhere on the road but hadn’t really, forcing me to just be present and allow it to be and pass exactly as it should.
And I had finally learnt another lesson, too. Where before, I was too scared to take up space, too scared to ask a simple question for fear of inconveniencing anyone, of hearing a no and not believing myself worthy of someone else’s space and time, here now was a person in whose life I wanted to take up space in and so I asked for it. But he said no. He explained his reasons and I understood. We all carry invisible wounds but rarely are we brave enough to share them, especially with people we barely know. It hurt but it didn’t end me, like not asking almost had. He was honest and kind and we honoured each other’s needs and there’s nothing more you can ask of someone.
„I guess when you are young, you believe that you will meet many people with whom you'll connect with, but later in life you realize it only happens a few times.“
Julie Delpy, Before Sunrise & Before Sunset: Screenplay
Returning to the North Island felt like a shock to the system and like waking up from a beautiful dream. For a little while, time had stopped. Nature and this very moment were all that mattered. And with the addition of some gold, all the blue had turned to green and I felt like I was alive again.
When you feel deep joy, time loses all meaning. A week could feel like a month, ten minutes turn into an eternity. „Joy is not made to be a crumb,“ Mary Oliver writes in a poem that I just so happen to stumble upon one morning as my brain is trying to berate me, telling me to not be such a cliché, to not allow a simple, brief meeting to make me so happy. Because, after all, it was just that, a crumb, a glimpse of something, a toe dipped in a pool of what should have been so much more, and yet it was everything, exactly as it was. And so I let it carry me forth, across braided rivers, into the sea and through endless days of rain.
I think about joy a lot in those last days and weeks. “Joy is probably the most vulnerable emotion,” Brené Brown writes in “Braving the Wilderness”. It’s vulnerable because we know it cannot last and because it’s usually attached to someone or something we have no control over. Joy, unlike contentment or hope, isn’t really something you can foster all on your own. You can seek out moments when it might come. You can try to be open to it. You can surrender to it when it comes but it’s not something you can hold on to or constantly live within. But Mary Oliver tells us what we should do when we feel it. “Don’t hesitate,” she says, “give in to it” and also: “don’t be afraid of its plenty.”
“… when you give yourself to places, they give you yourself back; the more one comes to know them, the more one seeds them with the invisible crop of memories and associations that will be waiting for when you come back, while new places offer up new thoughts, new possibilities.“
Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust: A History of Walking
On a long drive, I listened to a podcast by The Atlantic, at the end of which they have listeners answer when they were last truly happy. It’s a scary question. Before this trip, the last time I was truly happy was for a few days in May and before that it had been years. And so when I did finally feel joy and true happiness again, I gave into it completely. I was “tough and tender, excited and scared, brave and afraid—all in the same moment” (Brené Brown, Braving the Wilderness) and I let myself be astonished by everything. I marveled at the way braided rivers wound their way from the mountains to the sea, constantly altering their path, adjusting to the environment and yet taking up the space they needed. And I had some of the most meaningful and fulfilling conversations in hostel bunk beds, in kayaks, on tour busses and small shops in even smaller towns.
If there is one thing I believe in life it’s that you can only feel true joy if you also allow yourself to feel your pain. Both are vulnerable, both are scary but one cannot exist without the other. And maybe I also believe these words by Mary Oliver: “Instructions for living a life. Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.”
Just gorgeous x I also loved Wintering - so helpful to see those times for quiet as necessary spaces to allow everything to be felt. x
Oh this was exactly what I need to read. Such a great reminder, I have read Wintering two years ago but I think I’ll dip into it again over the holidays.