Alone In Te Anau

Yesterday in Te Anau was nice. I walked along the lake, climbed a tree and read a book in its branches, had lunch in the sun, and walked over to a little wildlife centre with a girl staying in the hostel. I had a couple of mildly interesting conversations and a nice dinner of veggies and pasta, and I even almost managed to partially learn some sort of card game, as long as the person next to me was willing to tell me what was bigger, a queen or a king? I had plans to take a longer walk today and was looking forward to having a little picnic and everything. Te Anau is small but very beautiful and the last thing I thought before I fell asleep last night was that I was lucky: lucky to be here, lucky to be travelling, lucky to be alive and in the world.

I amended at least some of those happy thoughts this morning when I woke up and noticed that not only was it grey and cloudy and chilly outside, but that the little tickle in my throat had blossomed into a more full-on sore and painful. Tomorrow is my much-vaunted Birthday Milford Sound Dive, about which I have been talking for months–and tomorrow’s not even my birthday, but there weren’t enough people booked for Wednesday so it has to be Tuesday and blah blah. Regardless, I knew I wouldn’t be able to dive if I were sick and congested, so I actually went over to the medical centre in town, waiting an hour and paying eighty-five dollars to see a doctor for five minutes and be told that it’s “probably” not bacterial and that I should, like, drink fluids or something.

And then followed the kind of very annoying day you occasionally get while backpacking (and sometimes even when you’re not backpacking). I was tired and achey so I wanted to take a nap, but I’m staying in a six-bed dorm so obviously there are people in and out all the time. I had bought this very expensive cucumber yesterday for lunch and had saved half of it in the fridge but when I took it out it was all moldy and gross and inedible, plus the other day someone nicked some of my milk even though I had my name on it and everything. I finished my third book in three days and started to worry that I only have three more books left. I decided to change some bookings and stay here in Te Anau instead of spending a couple of nights in Milford Sound, so I had to be on hold with the bus company for twenty minutes, and then I was almost out of phone card credit, and then I had to rush over to the information centre, and then I had to go check email in town to make sure I wasn’t getting ripped off with bus prices, and then I had to wait half an hour for a computer–which, normally, no big deal, but I needed to get back to the information centre, you see, to book the bus over again and call the dive centre to let them know where to pick me up. And I was hungry and tired and still a bit headachey, and I still needed to go to the store, and I hadn’t been able to make the claim for my insurance online, and in the middle of it all I was…not lonely, exactly, but…

I guess I still miss Wellington and all my friends there. I guess I feel a little weird about spending my thirty-third birthday basically alone–but not even a solitary kind of alone, not a real kind of alone, if that makes sense. It’s the type of alone that surrounds you with people you don’t really know and aren’t too bothered about knowing, but who are still with you constantly and always in the bathroom when you really have to go or taking the last of the sugar or asking you, for the millionth time, “Whereabouts in the States are you from?” And I am usually equal to that sort of thing, usually it is no big deal. At the moment, however, it feels a bit much. I want either to be with people who really love me (or at least tolerate me) or completely by myself–but I’ve chosen not to be completely by myself, as I would have been in Milford, for various practical reasons that are very sensible and rational but do make me wonder if I’ve done the right thing, on every level. I still haven’t made up my mind if it was right to leave Wellington when I did, if it’s right to be wandering around the country, if it’s right not to be doing Adventure Adrenalin Activities all the time but instead to just sort of stroll around in my ordinary shoes, looking at things and thinking about stuff.

But that’s the beautiful thing about turning thirty-three on Wednesday instead of twenty-three or thirteen: now I know, as I wouldn’t have ten or twenty years ago, that today was just sort of an annoying and frustrating day, and that even if I’m not sure if I’ve done the right thing–by deciding to stay in Te Anau for my birthday, by deciding to travel instead of try for another four-month work visa, by trying to come back to New Zealand next year–that I can still try to make whatever I’ve chosen as right as I can. Even today had its good points, after all: I wore my lucky goldfish underwear and turned out not to have strep throat and I finished a good book and I listened to California Love a time or six and I saved a little money on my travel arrangements, plus I planned an excellent dinner for tomorrow when I get back from Milford and I started yet another good book. Tomorrow I’m going to do a dive I’ve dreamed about for many months, and then the day after that I will be thirty-three years old. Maybe I will take a long walk on my own on that day, to celebrate having got this far in my life, having made the choices I’ve made that have brought me to this gorgeous lake, to these mountains, to the ability to make decisions for myself; to finally be at a place where I understand that you do the best with the sense you have, no matter whom you’re with, whom you’re without, or where in the world you happen to be.