This summer I’ve got friends to visit from California and Minnesota, who I haven’t seen in ten years. I get to show them my home, by way of the road. Having spent half of my life in each island, with a couple of years overseas in between, I’ve driven to almost every corner of the country and these roads are home. It feels as though in the southern hemisphere we live all year for the months we can roll down the windows, turn up the music, stop for a river swim or to cross the hot gravelled road to the dairy for a scoop of ice cream.
A lot my travel time happens in solitude as I drive from Dunedin to Auckland via Lake Rotoiti and it’s there that so much thinking happens. Decisions, that I’ve never been great at, but I’m realising that these magnified decisions are only difficult up until the second that they are made. So I make them and promise myself that 2014 is going to be a year of change. I can feel it already. Old friendships rekindled, a strengthening of current ones, but most excitingly, the fear and anticipation of new friends I haven’t met yet and new places to call home for a while.
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