Walking old pathways in a new pair of feet...

So...  So, I went to the other side of the world, as far away as previously I could only imagine. And, and well now I've come back again. Initially upon my return, it all felt oddly different whilst strangely familiar. For a while it all seemed rather new, while at the very same time it was still just the same old recognizable comforts of home, exactly the way I'd left them. I left more weeks ago than I can vividly remember, on a train ride that now resembles only the initial and novel adventurous memories of 12 hours of riding straight up through the central north island of New Zealand, on to Auckland, and then somewhere out into the sky.

I've now been home longer than I was away and all I have left of the actual journey to England itself are a few interesting items I collected along the way, a handful of enthusiastic memories and a collection of photo's that will always remind me of the places I've been to, the people I met and the little friends I made...

the furry ones too..

It was certainly an experience, one that has altered my perspective of this big ole world. But the longer I'm home the less I feel the literal experiences of the trip have impacted on me.

Although at the time, between flights and train rides, the wonderful people I encountered and the magnificent sights that I greatly appreciate my cameras accompaniment to have captured, I really felt that this new and unusual sense of freedom beneath my freshly spread wings was exactly what I wanted to grasp onto tightly and not let go.

Wandering amongst enormous cities full of centuries of history and intrigue was so far away from my normality that I found myself lost in the novelty. But amongst the sea of people who barely notice you're there, in a world so full of busyness, I couldn't help but stop and considered my own significance in the greater scheme of things.

So instead I let myself be carried off by the breeze to where ever it wished to take me... and it was upon hilltops and beyond grassy fields that I found a peacefulness in just appreciating the unknown skylines beyond my sight, and the unfamiliar pathways beneath my feet.

Despite the disorientation of the inevitable returning home, the returning to what I was anticipating would be a concoction of uncertainty and the dreary monotony of real life compared to the vastness and colourful excitement of what I had just experienced... was in fact returning to my little sanctuary on the edge of the world; to my little boy, to whom I mean the world; to a community where each day I find increasing significance in my participation with my very own people, and places, and clouds, and hills, and trees. Maybe I needed to leave this place not to discover how much I love my home and that this land of the long white cloud will forever be that place; but it was to realise where I've buried my roots, where it is I grow best; where I feel an immense belonging.

My world got bigger having left, although it was not in the leaving that it was significant, but in the returning home. Yet not only did my world get bigger, but so too did my hopes and dreams and ambitions to flourish in the fertile soil of my life, to continue to find within myself a significance in the choices I make, within the community I am already part of, in the adventures I have right here at home - as a father, a brother, a son, a friend, a student, a foodie, a gardener, an artist, a musician... to be purposeful simply in who I am as me...

In the life I create daily just by living...
In our house on the edge of our hill.