Student Bloggers

When I opened my eyes this morning, I was struck by the familiarity of what I saw: my old ceiling, with its off-white, 1950s-style wooden beams; a large cabinet stuffed with DVDs and old photo albums; a painting of a kangaroo I made when I was 12, complete with disproportional features and paint bleeding beyond the lines; my old fleece blankets, looking quite enticing as my state of summer homeostasis has suddenly been thrust into the bleak midwinter; and finally, my luggage, strewn across the floor and awaiting processing as I overcome two hemispheres of jet lag. I’m home, I suppose, although my new reality hasn’t quite sunk in yet. My mind is still mulling over the last two weeks- I drove over 1000 miles from Queenstown to Auckland up New Zealand’s wilder western coast, camping on the beach, climbing mountains, (almost) getting hopelessly lost, and really getting to know the land. I also spent a week in Australia, marveling at art galleries in Sydney, convening with worldly Europeans in youth hostels, chasing wild kangaroos and kayaking through saltwater rivers in the Gold Coast. And after a whirlwind of airports, passport control, and soggy in-flight meals, here I am, in the same bed I spent the night of July 11, my life not much different on paper than the night before I left.

But as has been painfully apparent to me as I search for employment, some aspects of living and growing do not necessarily fit well on a resume, and often wisdom and skills do not translate into tangible accomplishments. Still, I am undoubtedly wiser, stronger, and more perceptive than I was 5 months ago, and my life is much richer for having gone. I look forward to reconnecting with old friends and commencing the timeless tradition of condensing years into sentences, where we blur the subtleties and choose which experiences are most salient. My time in New Zealand will make up at least half of my paragraph, but it’s not clear yet which memories will come to the forefront and which will remain in the catacombs of my camera roll. Even so, I’m a writer, and being a writer is being a collector, and whether it’s memories, photos, or little notes I wrote for myself along the way, my New Zealand collection has provided me a vast wealth of material I will pull from for the rest of my life.

As I bring my blog to a close, I must admit that, for the first time since embarking on my journey, I don’t really know what to say. I don’t have a grand revelation about the human condition that made itself apparent upon arrival in the Sacramento International Airport. Perhaps it was grandiose of me to think such an epiphany would be available, and perhaps it is a sign of maturity that I am okay with the fact that it is not. Art, mystery, poetry- these things take time, and I am still processing all the lessons that are flooding my synapses. At times, being a writer is also being a statistician, seeking patterns in the data and pulling shared significance out of isolated events. However, we must be careful not to find patterns when they aren’t really there, all in a vain attempt to “bring things full circle.” Progress isn’t linear, but it probably isn’t circular either. I could force a contrived and cliché conclusion, but for both of our sakes, I won’t. However, even though I can’t put it into the right words quite yet, my New Zealand experience has been deeply formative, and if you are considering a similar journey, know that you won’t regret it.

New Zealand has a way of bombarding you with beauty, to the point where you become almost desensitized to some of the world’s most stunning landscapes. Facing such an over-saturation of awe, I quickly ran out of ways to articulate my feelings. I made a close friend, as we traveled well together and shared a similar sense of humor, and as I ran out of words and she ran out of patience for my overwrought reflections, I began to rely on a catch-phrase whenever I was struck by a particular scene. I would simply say, “this is what it’s all about.” While lacking in specificity, this is the phrase I return to when I consider all the times that words aren’t enough. In a way, its simplicity makes it all-encompassing, and when my sixth sense of beauty and meaning kicks in, it conveys all I need to say. On top of Mount Tongariro, watching the hailstorm disperse, exposing the desolation of the vast volcanic landscape below; spotting a vibrant rainbow span the horizon to the east while the sunset paints the clouds over the coastline to the west; seeing a full sky of stars bleed into the city lights below on the first warm night of spring- this is what it’s all about. And, in the spirit of simplicity, I leave you with one more phrase, a phrase that does what little I can to connect the end of one era with the beginning of another:

Haere ra, New Zealand.