The day Lisa and I cried. We had woken up in a Nelson city car park, ironically opposite the education ministry. A subtle annoyance. Our first mistake was made when we drove away and unintentionally donated out two travel chairs to the homeless. How kind. It was only an hours round trip to see if they were still there. "Are you kidding? They would have been gone the second you left." Ah well they need them more than we do I guess. The second was all me: I reached left to the sat nav instead of right to the seat belt. That cost me $150. The most politely delivered fine I have ever had which seemed to concentrate the frustration inside me until the pressure had irrevocably changed my perception of what was in front of me. I was looking at the world through someone elses eyes.
I have never smiled with such hatred in my whole life. We don't speak. For some reason it takes a few minutes to put things into perspective. We are without income and wasting money seems to hurt a lot more than normal. We move on and it gives me time to reflect both on how impassable emotions are the second you feel them and at the same time how instantly malleable they are. It's like the surface of what we are is so soft that it flexes instantaneously; completely changing the angles from which you view everything. The question is: does it flex back to the same shape exactly or does it hold small indications of the changes forever. I have always been susceptible to emotion and I wonder if each spike or dip leaves a mark like a stress ball that never quite fills out fully. We flexed back perfectly. So much so that the next morning preparations for a four day hike were more than enough of a distraction. Turns out neither of us really cared after all. Then I reverse our van into a tree and along with the rear window everything shatters. Tears roll and finally frustration of a few bad days thousands of miles from home forces itself to the surface and again I become aware of how everything can instantly change. Relationships, experiences and life seems in my mind like a sheet of squared maths paper. You put your finger on the middle of it and push and it's not just the bit you touch that changes; it pulls everything along with it; from every point on that paper every other point is suddenly in a different place and is being viewed from a different place in turn.
I made a few phone calls and the owner of where we were staying was the finger on the opposite side. Our van was safe while we left and a free mini cabin would be available if we needed when we got back. His kindness pushed back and things again shift to where they were. Almost further. We started walking. It started raining. A different finger pushes a different place and all of a sudden it's forgotten. But the same lesson is repeated, you walk down hill and speed throws you into confidence. Reds and greens paint pictures that I don't have the talent to recreate in my photographs. Then you have a 20 kilo pack on and you walk up hill however and an hour later you are at the end of all that you have and the beauty drains from your surroundings like colour draining from a wet photograph. Even when you feel lonely and like you make too many mistakes sometimes it turns out no one else but you really cares about them. Then all of a sudden you don't. It took roughly five steps until we were a completely different shape again. It was a perfect place to be. You speak to someone who loves you and another the whole way across the world and it all shifts again. Achievement inflates the waves and the ride back to dealing with things is amazing. We even saw the rarest species of dolphin in New Zealand for the first time.