From Cairns, we fly seventeen hundred miles south to Melbourne for a long weekend with friends. This is the first time on our travels that we connect with people we already know, and it is a melding of two worlds—our previous, “normal” life with our current itinerant one. We know Darren and Vanessa because we share fields of work; in fact, Darren is the one who brought me out to Australia on my previous work trips. They are native Melburnians, and their city is so much like our Portland—moody weather but brilliant when it’s behaving, indie coffee shops on every corner, bearded hipsters everywhere—that it feels like home. I adore it. We are here only for a weekend, but in every hour I inhale familiarity.
Our friends take us to their kids’ favorite playgrounds and to their favorite winery, we crack open a bottle in their backyard while the six children jump on a trampoline, and we join their company holiday party at a city park, where we meet their employees and share a potluck lunch. It would be the equivalent of the Fourth of July in America were it not for the impromptu pickup game of cricket, the Christmas music on the speakers, and the pavlova served on the picnic table (a fruit and meringue-based dessert controversial in these parts, based on the argument concerning whether it hails from Oz or the nearby Kiwis).
We are with people we already know, and right now I’m unaware that we are reaping the benefit from the simple act of befriending people regardless of where they live. Continual good-byes have been a staple in our family. Kyle and I met in Kosovo, and we are used to the risk of hurt. The curse from this is a growing hole in our hearts because friends are always continents away, no matter our geography. The blessing is, well, friends. Wherever we are.
We watch our children play at the park, and Vanessa asks, “So you love being around your kids all the time, then?”
I laugh. “Good gosh, no. Why? Does it seem like it?”
“Well, I would assume you’d have to, to take on a trip like this. Plus, you homeschool. I could never do either of those things.”
“This is the hardest part of the trip so far, honest to God,” I admit. “I love my kids. But I have been around them for three months solid with no break. I’ve even been around Kyle that whole time.”
Vanessa laughs. “That’s veritable sainthood right there.”
We fly to New Zealand.
It is nearly midnight when we land, and for the first time on the trip, I pull out my socks. It is biting cold compared to the tropics, where we’ve mostly been thus far. This is the first time on our trip that the temperature has dipped below eighty degrees, and it’s the first time in our lives we dip below the 45th parallel south, halfway between the equator and the South Pole. This week will be the southernmost point on our journey.
We walk out of the airport, and the wind and drizzling rain shock the breath out of me. My teeth chatter. The driver tosses our backpacks into the shuttle van, looks at our paper-thin windbreakers and says, “I hope you’ve got more than that in your backpacks, mates! We’re expecting a cold front this week.”
Tonight, we wash our socks and underwear, then dry them overnight in the heat billowing from our guesthouse radiators. It is one week until the summer solstice.
Our plan is to drive southward from Christchurch, the south island’s capital, and meander down to Queenstown. We will avoid highways at all costs, and we will stop for wildflowers, well-painted street signs, and hobbit sightings. The drive is three hundred miles, which means we calculate about five hours till our arrival at the next guesthouse. The south island’s population is only one million people, yet it’s roughly the size of Illinois, which has a population of thirteen million. Surely the traffic here is nil.
This is what’s important about New Zealand: its residents, known as Kiwis, are friendly to strangers, the cost of living is startlingly expensive, and the country selfishly holds captive the most staggering creation God has yet brainstormed. We drive away from Christchurch, and everything outside quiets. There is a chill in the air, but I crack down my window to hear the birds. The late morning sun rises above thigh-high golden grass, and our two-lane highway slices through the field. We follow its dotted lines, watch them chase each other beneath our car. They meander to the right and so do we, tucking into a valley and fields of purple lupine.
“Oh my God,” I utter. I am not swearing.
Kyle lifts the pressure off the gas pedal and we stare at alien pastures of chiaroscuro shadows, light-carved hills on a flat plain. Clouds dawdle above, their silhouettes below dancing with wildflowers. The scene before us ranks with Tuscany and the Pacific Northwest. I respond the only way I know how—I laugh helplessly.
Kyle whispers, “What in the world?”
The kids exclaim, “Whoa!” and return to their books.
We pull over for roadside lupine again and again, the sun crawling across the sky morphing their colors hourly from iris, lavender, amethyst, lilac, violet, sangria, wine. Cerulean streams and clusters of agapanthus stow away in leggy grass. It smells like sweet spring, tender and hopeful. I take an hour to photograph a stone chapel overlooking the milky green Tekapo Lake, angling to avoid the throngs of Japanese tourists shooting peace signs in the background. The kids impatiently wait in the car. As the sun fades, I force Kyle to pull over so I can capture a local post office’s red clock swinging above its front door.
We arrive on our next front porch ten hours after leaving Christchurch this morning.
“Finally!” Tate announces as she heaves her pack through the front door. It is starless outside, pitch-black beyond the cottage’s windows. Tomorrow morning, we will see our surroundings. I swing open our bedroom windows and they entangle with vines outside. The earthy smell of garden barrels through our nostrils—soil, dew, musty compost, wet grass—weaving with stealth through the air and hitting the back of my throat. We brush our teeth, change clothes, stock the fridge with our groceries, collapse into bed.
The gold of morning rouses us, and I look out our window from bed.
“Oh my God,” I utter. I am not swearing again.
We are carved into a rose garden.
I climb out of bed while Kyle still snores, open the double doors in the living room. I am ensconced by thickets of pinks, yellows, whites; I am standing on a patio thrust into the flowers with a table, chairs, chaise longues. Virescent mountains praise the sky behind the neighbor’s house across the street. I head inside to the kitchen and start the coffee; I find my bag and dig out my current book (At Home, Bill Bryson). The family sleeps; the coffeemaker murmurs awake.
I have found my elysian fields. I don’t plan to leave.
We are technically in Arrowtown, a tiny bedroom community of several thousand residents outside Queenstown. After breakfast on the patio, we walk to the town’s main street, a conglomeration of Old West–style storefronts now holding trendy clothing and bespoke home goods. We stop at the post office (its wooden sign: Post and Telegraph) and mail postcards to grandparents. It is a stockpile of stationery and stamps, books by local authors on local places. The standard red mailbox is out front, but inside is a temporary mailbox for letters to Santa. I ask the two women at the desk who in town handles the letters.