Time is slipping away

Time is quickly slipping away….days are down on one hand and things are coming to a close. I am beginning to have dreams of home in my sleep and that’s always a sure sign that I have accomplished my goals and have no feeling of incompletion on this trip. The last thing to be done is to travel to Rotorua today. New Zealand’s version of Yellowstone…bubbling mud pots, the smell of sulfur and geysers spurting into the air. But the real attraction of Rotorua is that it is the center of Maori culture in NZ. Carol and I were talking last night and we were glad that we had saved this for last…It wasn’t really planned, but it just worked out that way, as itineraries often do, it seems….We’ve seen much and learned much, and this will be our opportunity to put it all together and complete the picture of NZ that has developed in our minds. We’ve been ensconced in a wonderful Servas family. Rodney and Sarah have a beautiful home which they designed with the help of an architect. Rodney ran a “farm” of 5,000 sheep and 500 beef cattle roaming over 1,600 acres (600 hectares) of steep hills and flat bottom land. Stock graze the grass on the hills, while orange, corn, grass for grazing and other cash crops occupy the bottom land. They graze both sheep and cattle on the same ground since they actually work together. The sheep will eat one type of grass while the beef cattle will eat another and so they keep the pasture from being overgrazed. They have contracted with corn farmers to have their husks and stalks dumped here and are mixed with other material to fill in the dips and curvatures of the land to create even more flat land for increasing their arable land. It was an enormous operation and he has sold the land to his four children who now become the 5th generation to run the family farm. What a great tribute to one’s life to have your children want to carry on the way of life in which you raised them. We spent the day on the farm with them showing us the operation…the large sheep shearing shed which is eerily quiet after seeing the one in operation a couple of weeks ago. My mind did one of those slow fades you see in movies where it changes from one to the other, and I could hear the shearing shed noise like someone was slowly turning up the volume knob…the hum of the sheep shears, the bleating of the sheep in the pen, the ratchet of the wool press as it tamped down the wool into the bales to be shipped across the world…it was all very real.

But the real mind blower was when we took the truck to a high ridge where we could see the ocean beyond and the fertile valley below. The vastness of 1,600 acres is hard to imagine until you can look down upon it from high…the hills, the valleys, the ocean and the stock animals in every direction was immense. Down below in one of the fields used for growing different crops for stock feed, one son could be seen driving his pick-up and catching up to a tractor driven by a son-in-law, who was tilling the land in preparation for another planting. The tractor stopped and the drivers exchanged positions…Rodney smiled and said they are sharing the work load. It was music to his heart to see his work carried on and the tradition of real family farming continuing. He said that one son was in charge of every part of the farm that had a wheel in all four corners while the son-in-law had control over anything that had a foot on all four corners. We took the truck up steep hills and Rodney got out and locked the wheels in 4-wheel traction as we bumped and jostled our way up higher and higher, with Carol and Sarah hanging on for dear life on the flat bed of the truck while I jumped in and out of the cab opening and closing the many gates that took us to our picnic spot. We stopped on a rise that gave a lovely view of the farm. Below us was a pond where Rodney said he used to fish for eels as a boy and the pointed out the trees where he would hunt possums with bow and arrow, rocks and slingshots. The dogs would chase the possums up the trees and the boys would take over from there. Possums are a very real problem to farmers since they spread TB to cattle and sheep….there is a HUGE debate in NZ over the use of a poison ‘1080’ which is used to kill possums but also drastically effects the entire ecosystem…80% of the world’s usage of this poison is in NZ. Two paradise pigeons flew in formation with wings seemingly unmoving and swooped down over the pond in graceful precision and then in unison climbed up to catch another thermal. A sheep which had gotten separated from the flock was making her unhappy situation plain to all within hearing distance and Carol and I looked at each other because we remembered our small plot of ground with sheep and this sound which we heard often in our “old life.” I’m embarrassed when Kiwis say we had a sheep farm. It seems so ludicrous in view of the enormous operations here in NZ. On the way back after our picnic, Rodney pointed out a picnic table beside a creek. Here, he said, on hot summer evenings, they would pack all the children and grandchildren (they had 8 under 5 years of age at one point) into the truck and head out with food and drink where the kids would play in the creek while the adults “had a few beers and told a few lies.”

More than anyone I’ve met on this trip, Rodney and Sarah epitomize New Zealand to me…they are tough, self-reliant, kind and generous and confident in their lives. Rodney did a very similar trip as I did when we drove the taxi from London to India, only he did it by himself and on a motorcycle and just one year after my trip. Sarah, like so many Kiwi girls I met in London came to London as a nurse and traveled across Europe before returning to NZ and getting down to the business of marrying and raising her family. They still travel extensively and independently. Rodney is 75 and Sarah71, but they venture into the highlands of Burma (Myanmar) and Laos and obscure areas of China without guides or established transportation…letting the road take them where it will…They travel with a small backpack each and don’t worry about having a different set of clothes for each day of the week nor any of the little bells and whistles that make up travelers suitcases today. They continue the spirit of independent, simple, and adventurous travel that I respect and admire so very much. Last night a daughter stopped by with two granddaughters and had dinner with “mum and dad.”…she too embodies the self-confidence of Kiwis and the lives life to the fullest spirit that Rodney and Sarah stowed in her DNA. While working in London she received word that a friend of a friend was driving a truck from London to Azerbaijan…did she want to go with him…with a typical “Why not?” attitude they made the round trip and eventually married and now run the farm with other family members…tales of the truck being stalled on Hungarian train tracks and border difficulties highlighted dinner conversation while the daughters aged 13 and 11 took it all in. Their traveling days began when they were 9 and 7 when the family went to Indonesia together and traveled as Rodney and Sarah and instilled in them. Now they are off for 13 weeks to show the girls Europe. Such is the spirit of the Kiwi, a flightless, nocturnal bird in the avian world, but the homo sapien variety is a high flying, live life to the fullest, being which I truly admire. Sign of the day: “freshly showered.” A cardboard sign held by two female hitch-hikers.