Lost in the Grove

So off we go to Takaka, a day trip from Motueka and what do I do? I venture into the labyrinthine. Within no less than 5 minutes I was lost. Water carved passages in solid stone, a 3 dimensional passage way system nestled by the road in a cliff of sub tropical green. It is here that I meandered left, then right and before I knew it I was turning in circles... every direction: the same; sometimes it looked like I was here before, but I couldn't tell... after an hour of running down various passages and no closer to finding the way out, I started to get frustrated and decided to climb atop of the rock walls to get a better view; but this didn't help my situation at all.

Some birds took to my attention, a fan tail followed me all over the place, hoping in front of me doing the "feed me" gesture [he kept eating bugs I disturbed as I walked]. I cut through vast webs, crawled up drying vine tops, but I was just making spirals.

eventually, luckily, I got the cliff edge, from here I could see cars in the distance and a farm down below. Along the cliff face I moved, towards the direction I knew the car/exit must be... finally I was making some progress!

Only within a few minutes the path near the edge of the rocks became difficult to ford... the temptation to cut through the bush down the cliff face pulled me; I saw a point I could venture into it and down I went: aiming to get to the farmed land below.

My progress at first was reasonable, I was pushing down plants, standing on them with the help of thick sticks, pushing shrubs aside and avoiding the very prickly/painful gumb trees by making circles around them. That is, for a while at least.

Eventually the brambles started, with their rose-sharp thorns and boys berry blossoms; these combined with the gumb trees and un-firm footing into steadily more difficult terrain. My progress slowed to about 1 meter every ten minutes; and the frustration level raised again; I was no longer taking this in my stride - my thresholds were compromised... My hair was being caught in a plant every 20 seconds, causing me no end of annoyance. I admit it; i began to whack at the trees with my big stick in anger... [though only at the ones I wanted to move out of the way].

I gave up, eventually. I'd been cutting through brambles with my pocket knife; but in the end they were cutting me just as badly; and a few times I even cut myself with my own knife when the floor would evaporate below me, so I decided to retreat back up the cliff wall to where I was... even though I knew I was no more than maybe 50 meters from the edge of the forest I couldn't get through... another hour passed.

This might have been a reasonable plan; if I had been able to find where I came from. I ventured back along my foot steps; but no where could I find the passage of destruction I opened to the top; I tried making a new passage, but this one ended in more brambles on all sides; and believe me it MUCH harder to climb up sharp plants than it is to climb over/down them.

Desperate and unsure what to do, i knew Corey would be worrying about me by now quite seriously, and I wanted to get back to Motueka in time for Helen/Alan's performance...

Suddenly, out of nowhere, I see a marker from a trail on my left, right here in the bush. I follow it, the first 10 meters are easy, just some over growth. But after that it suddenly became hard, a tree had fallen and sharp berries were all around it... I only had one option to get past it... cutting all the sharp plants away, and then crawling on my belly underneath it hoping, I would get caught.

I crawled through, only to find a new obstacle, over came that one, parted many thickets of vines, and suddenly I was in a lighter area beneath trees... a nice feeling, but the path I was just on was no where to be seen.

fortunately these trees were in a community, and I could still tell which way to go by the sloping of the land. from tree to tree it was much easier as there was much less wild bush growth and quite suddenly, I was at the fence of the farm land!

A hop over the fence, 4 farm plots later, I was back at the van - Corey had just hung up the phone with the police search and resque teams who were on their way!

Ug!

So here is what really surprised me...

Firstly, I was obviously careless and got myself lost in the first place, I over estimated the complexity of these passages quite a bit!

Then I realized I was determined to solve my problems by venturing forward - it was extremely difficult for me to convince myself to go backwards at any time. Is this a function of my traveling? Or a stiffness of the mind?

Thirdly, the whole point of me goign a bit off path was to get a bit of solo time - no matter how cool or nice someone is, or how well I get along; it seems essential to me that i get some good quality alone time regularly. The problem with traveling with someone is that you have to really work on getting that time in a way that isn't seen as 'bad' by the other person. The alternative: traveling alone: is valid, but it also means you spend most of your time alone; so hard to get a balance here! I suppose I can just accept it the way things are; but it isn't easy when you know what you need to be happy and yet the solution is still hard to access.

To balance this last paragraph, let me tell you a bit about Corey; he's quite like me, maybe even a younger brother manifestation. he's 20, Canadian, heavily interested in electronic ambient/idm music. Organizes parties/festivals and DJ's. He draws, thinks the same about the universe as I do, and is extremely easy going - and he;'s a fan of burning man. We are so similar in many ways [although naturally still very diferent peope] that I wonder how it is I just met him so randomly.
;)

This time I am sleeping in the van with Corey here in Helen and Chris's drive way. Their 3 children are very sweet; I have seen Alan and Uisce a few times; but far less than the last time I was here. It's a very different energy. Helen and Chriss are very sweet and welcoming, the gig I went to last night; where Helen and Alan were playing, was loads of fun. They did Bob Marley covers for his birth day and their whole band was at least 11 people! Each person took the lead for one song and they rotated instruments - really cool!

Admittedly I was exhausted from my 'lost in the bush' experience; so even before we went there I was dead tired. I took a shower; to wake up as well as get clean - but this only moderately helped. Most people leave hair behind in the shower, I was leaving branches and leaves [who have taken a home in my dreads]. At about 2am I feel asleep in the back while the band kept playing. While I was sorry to miss the last hour [I'd seen them play the first few hours just fine]; I was also not really sleeping and I could see Alan's shadow on the wall singing in pure happiness; and the band and dancers were so happy; it was like being in a world of ecstatic sleep - very happy place to be resting; although the sleep was so profoundly affected by the music I can't even be sure I should call it sleep.

On the way back Helen and Alan sang every Beatles song she could remember! That was quite a treat.

Today we went to the beach all together, a small secret beach that feels like I'm in the abel tasman again; the water was warm, another beautiful swim and a snooze on the sand; back home for dinner - which i just finished; another wonderful meal and lovely day.

An extensive report I suppose this has been... tomorrow we are back on the road. On the 6th is national Moari day; everything will be closed and the tribes will be having feasts all over the country; I'll try and find one, I'll probably be in Wellington for the potential.

With love to all,

Sebastian.