I was delivered here by mail truck.

“Well I don’t know any sheep farmers but I do have a few friends who run dairies. Would you want to work on a dairy?”, Asked Kent the courier as I mused over the idea of doing volunteer work exchange for accommodation on a sheep farm. We soon reached a cellphone coverage area after passing through another rural town or two (including one that sells “Pete’s Famous Possum Pies”), dropping off mail and packages along Kent’s ~200km west coast mail route. Immediately, he began making calls on my behalf to try to land me a job.

We stopped in at his family home to pick up cans of petrol that needed to be returned to his cousin. He reveled in the unlikely silence of being home; none of his four children were there for the moment. He used a paper phone book from his kitchen counter to grab a few more numbers for me. Unfortunately, no one could be reached since they were all out on their respective farms working. 

His cousin’s whole family was home when we arrived with the petrol and pretty soon, they too were making calls on my behalf to onion farmers and kiwi packers in the north. Nothing quite panned out, at least not immediately.

I was on Kent’s mail truck because earlier that day, I’d been by the Inn at Fox Glacier looking helpless, having missed the bus (and there would not be another for a few days). The Inn manager seemed to be the type who enjoys rescuing the damsel in distress and without trying too hard, I played the part well. He told me we’d grab a coffee and then he’d get me on one of the passing trucks that would surely come through at lunch. He sent me to the store to buy ingredients for apricot-cream cheese muffins and we got to work in the Inn’s pub kitchen baking the paper-lined delights. As we mixed and chopped, he told me stories of crazy Inn guests, including a (Dutch?) guy who punched him in the stomach for supposedly no good reason. We nibbled the muffins over coffees with his band a of Swedish volunteer staff. Mid-bite, he jumped up and sprinted across to the petrol garage to intersect the mail courier who had stopped there. Sure enough, he’d secured me a ride on the mail truck. I waited quietly in the carpark as Kent tagged off packages to another courier from the East who was also carrying a backpacking passenger.

When we reached the town I was to stay in, Kent the courier delivered me (not unlike his other cargo) to the doorstep of a backpacker’s (youth hostel). After frolicking around on the driftwood art-strewn Hokitika beach and making my own small contribution to their gallery-like beach with a poorly constructed driftwood teepee, I discovered that Hokitika has easy access to more hut tramps (overnight hikes where you sleep in a hut). However, the weather was finicky alternating between sunburn territory and sideways rain. So I bought a bus ticket to Nelson on the north tip of the island. For some reason, I promptly felt disappointed to have stepped out of the current that was already taking me in the direction I was going. So I nervously made the decision to miss the bus.

At the tourist information center counter, the lady helpfully explained that while there was a guy who ran shuttles to the trail head area, he was sort of not very friendly, overpriced, and required a minimum of four people per shuttle anyways, but if I would stay in town another night, she’d be happy to listen for people heading that way and give me a call. This was not the news I’d hoped for, and having missed the bus, I wasn’t sure what to do with myself. I nervously futzed around pretending to look at the map. Fortunately, I soon overheard a lady ask the information gal about Kanaire Lake walks, and this is where I needed to go! I asked the woman if she could please give me a ride. Thankfully, she and her husband obliged. I quickly ran off to the bakery to buy them thank you treats and hopped in their car. Generously, they dropped me all the way down the 5km dirt road to my trailhead, which was a little out of their way and of course they refused petrol money. These people are somebody's grandparents and they weren’t going to leave me alone so far from the trailhead. In fact, they are the grandparents of a three-and-a-half year old girl who recently broke her arm falling from her mommy’s bouncing lap (in case you wanted to know). I bet that mom died of guilt a few times over!

So there I was, in the wilderness at the start of the track. Unlike the other 900 or so hut tramps in New Zealand, this one was created and is maintained by volunteers in the community rather than by the Department of Conservation. As such, the track basically just went straight up the side of the rainforest-covered mountain until a little ways passed the tree line. The track featured near vertical sections of slushy, muddy tree root climbs, which handily required enough concentration to keep my mind off of worrying about what I was doing going into the wilderness by myself.

At the end of the day, the community-run hut was marvelous and I sat there with my toasty fire that I build myself, enjoying my hot chocolate which I heated over my fire and pondered over the question of where I would go if I could go anywhere? Apparently, if I could go anywhere, I would make a series of choices and stumble across a string of lucky breaks that would land me in a little hut on top of a little mountain writing by candleight in my journal about how I got there, having in fact gotten here on foot via somebody’s grandparents, via somebody’s mail truck.

If I could go anywhere in the world, it turns out I’d end up right here. 

And when it would be time to leave, apparently, I would wait out the howling winds that awoke me throughout the night, hike down the trail with my remaining segment of audio book as company and hitch a ride to town in a hippy van, crouching on the floor next to the bed in the back driven by a couple (or maybe it was an “open” relationship?) in their 70’s with hearing aids and hokey, but reassuring wisdom about life being “like a river where you just have to flow with the current” Followed by “You are really doing a good job of staying in that current”. And “I was much older than you when I figured out to live in the current”. Furthermore, I should not pass up the opportunity to mention that the man driving would look the way Dumbledore would look if he were to become a holistic medicine man/dairy farmer with a mullet. 

Kitchen Dick Road

“Yes, we have a Kitchen Dick Road and it intersects with Woodcock Road”, Confirmed Tony, a fellow backpacker and hiker. I had asked him if I’d correctly remembered that such a road existed in his home town of Sequim, Washington upon meeting him on the side of the road in a random New Zealand wilderness parking lot. Forgive me for seeing the intrigue and serendipity in finding Tony, a recent college grad from Sequim, Washington at a time when I needed a ride and he had a car. Events taking place on Kitchen Dick Road in Sequim, Washington changed the course of my life in many ways. For starters, in Sequim, I launched into a fairly serious ten year bike racing career that influenced everything in life including my future job prospects and choice in university, etc. But more interestingly, Kitchen Dick Road marked the start of my adorably shy long-term, long-distance, strictly platonic, but also strictly exclusive sort of first love.

Having visited Sequim at age 14, I found the name of this road infinitely hilarious. I was riding my bike on this humorously named road because it was on the course of my first ever bicycle race. Donning unspeakably neon clothing, I was the only girl in a pack of 15 and 16 year old boys. (And yes, I did keep up with them, thank you very much!) I had already been competing in triathlon at this point and my tri-coach had encouraged me to try a bike race.  I finally signed up when one 15 or 16 year old boy in particular invited me to the race.  We claimed to be “just friends”, of course. He was wonderfully sweet to me, holding my hand (and holding down a job), calling me every night and even writing hand-written love letters to me, etc. So naturally, like a frigid bitch, I abruptly dumped him one night. I cannot for the life of me remember why I did this. But I remember responding with “if you really loved me, you’d leave me alone” to his admirable follow-up hand-written letter asking me to reconsider being friends (respectfully sent a whole month later to give me time and space). Again, I have no recollection of why I did that to him. But I hope that he is happy and by all accounts deserves to be with a woman who treats him better than I did!

In further coincidence, Tony and I were staying at the same backpackers (youth hostel), so over a couple of burgers, I decided to invite Tony along on a tramp (hike) I’d wanted to do along Haast Pass a few hours south. We were to meet up with Tom and Jaryn (British Mountain Guide and American East Coast cyclist and business development man), who I’d met a week earlier during another tramp on the Routburn track. Of course it’s worth mentioning that I had met them by chance, too. We had bonded over our shared adoration for Hut Warden John who gave a 45+ minute hut safety talk which included a voluminous history of the hiking trail and surrounding area. New Zealand is littered with back-country huts (which conveniently eliminates the need to carry a tent). The popular huts are staffed with full-timers like Hut Warden John. Charmingly, at age 75(?) John seemed to be as determined to continue wielding a trail-maintaining shovel as he was to wear his old man slippers around the hut like your grandpa would.

During our two day tramp, had quite a lot of time to ponder how I wound up there with those guys: in fact, I had nearly 50 km of root climbs, creek navigating, monotonous forest sections, wonderful valley crossings with towering v-shaped waterfalls tumbling into wildflower-peppered grasses, and steep ascents  to ponder this question. And what I came up with is:

1) I’m not totally sure how I got here with these guys, but I do know that if you end up in a back-country hut with a group of exhausted people who all obtained business degrees at one time or another, it is inevitable that your group will entertain fellow hut mates with musings of to make a million dollars selling dehydrated wine (which will seem like a good idea at the time).

2) It is extremely difficult to scramble carrying a backpack while collapsing in fits of hysteric everything-is-funny-when-you-are-the-right-quantity-of-tired giggles (Admittedly, this revelation is totally unrelated to the question at hand, but at this point, you will be unable to focus on one train of thought).

3) If you wind up with two wheels on Kitchen Dick Road in Sequim, Washington, you should probably go race your bike.

How To Be Alone (In Public)

"Can I get you to run?" Instructed my new volunteer job boss as I lamely attempted to herd sheep who were not particularly inspired by my walking pace. Besides, there was other work to be done like scraping paint from a 100 year old house, or shoveling gravel into potholes leading up to the adorably restored homestead. 

Somehow in the span of four days I've managed to ride a horse across the set of Lord of the Rings, sleep in a 19th century cottage (with running water AND flush toilets!), mountain bike through a braided river to an enchanting forest where I secretly hosted a private dance party, using up the remaining 10% of my battery, kayak to a hidden mossy waterfall/glacially cold swimming hole, compare the bioluminescent sparkle of glow worms against the backdrop of clear mountain starry night skies, eat yummy BBQed lamb and listen to fantastic acoustic songs by the fire pit (to be shared later once "Steve The Band" gets some recordings on the Internet). And all this for the price of a few hours volunteering my manual labor. In and of itself it makes me happy just because I CAN lift a shovel AND carry the ash bucket. 6 months ago I couldn't lift ten pounds off the ground let alone shovel, scrape, and scrub all day before pedaling and paddling the evening away. And to think I used to pay money for gym workouts?

How did I get so lucky? Because of the generosity of people willing to take in a random traveling stray for a few days, obviously. Less obvious, how did I get noticed by random chance? By having a beer alone at a bar without pulling out my phone to have a pathetic date with Facebook by myself. Because I'm recently inspired by what can come of being alone, I am going to attempt to write a manual in how to be alone in public places. 

The most fabulous quirky little moments of my life have come about while alone. For instance, there was that Friday night back in San Francisco when I noticed that End Games improv was having a free show at StageWerx.org. I couldn't find anyone to go with so I went alone. I must have made friendly eye contact to someone in the queue to get in because someone held their hand out to introduce themselves and before I knew it, 7 or 8 other people also introduced themselves to me. We were chatting and laughing and drinking poorly concealed hipster beers that someone had brought to share. Before long, someone busted out a deck of Cards Against Humanity while we waited in line to see the show. At first, I figured all these strangers were being randomly friendly to me because it was an improv show and anything can happen in improv. Then, as people made references to others who weren't present and giggled at inside jokes, it dawned on me that this was a group of friends and and everyone in the group assumed I was a friend of someone else's in the group! Whoopsies! Oh well, accidentally making new friends is the way to go.

Aside from the realization that doing things alone is a wonderful thing that people too often miss out on, I will attempt to write my "how to be alone" guide because often there can be long stretches of uncomfortable, uncertain not-so-amazing downtime between chance improv encounters and acquisitions of volunteer jobs in Paradise. In the past, when Random Chance has gone out for a coffee break, I've satiated my discomfort of unplanned time and space and sense of purposeless by making plans so that I can tell myself "look how important I am with this stuff on my calendar". But I feel that I have acquired a few helpful tips on being alone after a month of solo travel and a lifetime of doing things alone that most people don't attempt alone (Like the time my sister found me in a puddle of tears hiding behind the bathroom door after crookedly attempting to cut my own bangs because "mom was busy so I thought I should just do it myself"...luckily mom had the sense to call in for backup (my best friend Mel who you may remember from my 24 year friendaversary post) to surprise and distract me from the resulting horror). In fact, I've done so many cool things by myself (aside from the not so cool solo haircut experience) that being alone is becoming nostalgic as if I'm visiting an old friend. As I do new cool things by myself, I'm reminiscing about "that one time when that other cool thing happened...was that ten years ago now?" This is not to say that I am always happy alone nor am always competent at being alone. The mere fact that I've needed to devise a strategy to tackle aloneness indicates that aloneness hasn't come with ease. So without further ado, how to be alone in public:

1) When eating alone at a restaurant, if you want to socialize position yourself at a restaurant where you can eat at the bar. Appear to be having a wonderful time. If you look like you are enjoying yourself, people will come talk to you just to find out what you are so damned happy about.

     1a) If you don't feel happy sitting there by yourself, fake-it-till-you-make-it.

     1b) If you are female and of any age and are anywhere on the spectrum of ugly-to-gorgeous, someone will come talk to you. Eventually. You might not want to talk to them, but someone will come.

2) Be polite and at least a little friendly to anyone brave enough to come talk to you even if you don't want to talk to them (unless they are creepy, then be a jerk to them). This sends the signal to others (who you may want to speak to) that you are approachable. 

3) Entertain yourself by people-watching. Sadly, this will make you feel grateful to not be in one of those relationships anymore as you realize that 80% of the other tables are full of couples alone together on their smartphones 80% of the time. 

And what is loneliness really? Whoever invented that word was an idiot because it seems to imply that the feeling is derived from being by oneself. This is completely wrong and misleading. The feeling called "loneliness" is caused by being with people you think you should be connecting with but aren't (or admittedly by being by yourself when you think you should be with other people). Loneliness essentially= your expectations + other people not living up to them. The presence of other people or lack thereof is completely irrelevant to the process of becoming lonely. Being by myself is consistently and reliably the least lonely place I can think of. Maybe "loneliness" should be replaced with the word "crowdiness".

     3a) My favorite new people watching technique is to watch people's feet (best done when sitting in the grass next to a busy footpath). You can tell a lot about a group of people just by noticing who aims their feet toward whom and who appears to be leading, etc. For bonus points you can make up interesting stories about how these passive and dominant feet owners know one another.

4) Contrary to popular belief, this technique is unnecessary to meeting strangers, but it is also useful: talk to strangers. The key to this is to say "hello" right away rather than waiting 20 minutes to then awkwardly acknowledge the other person. I did this with fantastic results in a Queenstown bar the other day! I sort of made a snarky comment to this group of blokey 50-something year old guys who were heckling the acoustic cover guitarist. Before I knew it, I was swooped into their vortex along with a few others who joined the conversation. This one man kept mentioning that I needed to look out for the 50-ish American Floridian woman who was bopping to the music from her chair. "You've gotta watch out for those American women." And "she's your kind" and "keep an eye on her." He kept telling me of mz. Florida. Catching on that he had an eye for her, I waited until the headlining band got started with a good dance song. Without thinking it through, I lept across the room, grabbed her hands and danced her back across the room until I was in arms reach of the guy. Then I pulled a sneaky maneuver that involved putting his hand in hers and sitting down in one smooth motion. The whole thing proceeded to erupt into a pub dance party for the rest of the night. Even the lead singer commented over the mic that he thought my technique was pretty clever. (And yes, "How To Start A Dance Party" was an alternate title for this post).

The spontaneous dance party thing might not have happened if I'd not been alone. Other people often find me embarrassing when I interact with strangers. For example, there was the time when my friend Rebz and our late friend Marc dared me to talk to this very out of place reality TV star-esk chick among flannel shirt-wearing San Franciscans at an after work happy hour. But when I stood up to actually do it they were both so embarrassed that they ran away giggling! Oh Marc, I hope you are getting to enjoy a slice of my travels from wherever you are. If you can read this, I have a sheep joke for you that I learned from a bus driver: Why did the kiwis cross-breed their sheep with Aussie kangaroos?...so they could have wooly jumpers!!! (Hint: a jumper=a sweater).

5) If nothing cool unfolds while being alone, keep yourself entertained by writing blog posts about being alone.

Party Boat

"So it's just going to be the three of us on the Milford Sound fiords tonight since all the cruises and heli-tours have finished for the day. Nobody else signed up for the evening outer fiord tour." Said, Tanner, our adept and entertaining Rosco kayak guide. And for all the world, this is where the party is at just like it was on a random Amazonian street almost exactly 8 years ago.

Elusive yellow-nosed penguins slip inconspicuously beneath the surface while a dolphin jumps in the backdrop of two giggly best friends paddling with surprisingly good coordination and matching "Milford Faces". ("Milford Face" is a wide-eyed grin pointed skyward toward the unfathomable cliff heights that shoot straight out of the water and the expression is often accompanied by little regard to what direction one is headed). 

Interrupting the rippled reflection of the mountains and sunset on the water, paradise ducks follow each other around in a sickeningly cute fashion. Paradise ducks are known for being adept at lifelong courtship, followed by literally dying soon after their partner dies. But across the way, there is trouble in paradise: sitting on the rock, she denies passage to her male seagull companion for proverbially failing to restore the toilet seat to it's rightful down position.They remain still, waging a stubborn sit-off, breaking only for a moment to attempt "everything is fine over here" looks as we paddle by before returning to their silent feud.

Still, I'm inclined to believe that there are still a few seals who have been ejected from the clan upon failing to make it through rush week. In particular, there was one blissfully solo seal who caught my attention as he enjoyed his fish dinner, playfully cavorting around, teasing the nearby freeloading seagulls. Sometimes I think maybe I'm becoming a blissfully solo little seal. The other day, I found myself humming over a sink fully of icky youth hostel dishes (even though I had to conquer heebie-geebies by touching the nasty sponge) and I'm making good headway on my goal of developing great smile wrinkles in preparation for old age.

We decided to check out the festival of waterfalls which only makes a tour stop here after heavy rains. There were about 20 stages competing for our attention but somehow, we managed to score front row seats at every splish splashy turn. Some stages even featured accompanying windy droplet dances with interesting asymmetric choreography. While camped out behind one waterfall, we heard the main stage rage so loudly we almost mistook it for thunder. These dueling falls reminded me of boi bumba which is a genre of Northern Brazilian country music in which there are two teams (Garantido and Caprichoso) who perform (Read: compete) at opposite ends of a stadium to (as far as I can tell) see who can get their fans dancing the most. You have to show up wearing your teams colors and logos like a sporting event and you better pick a side before you get crushed.

Yes, this too is the sort of party that gives birth to tangible joy like the samba rhythms of Brazil in which the force is an energy so powerful that it transcends even bodily needs like managing hunger, hydration, needing to pee, and fatigue (despite paddling 15 km with limited upper body strength).

Move over Brazil, this is New Zealand "samba" where dissonance between where you are and where you want to be hasn't been invented yet.