Liminal Haze
This is now chronologically out of order. I am intentionally jumping over Te Araroa. It’s just too big to rush into, and I’m just not ready yet. So there is some retrospection in this post, and I’ve done my best to explain it as best I can without opening the TA box. Those posts are coming, I promise. This post starts the day after finishing Te Araroa.
Friday, February 21st, 2025 - The day started with a bit of a lay-in and was slow to get going. Not that it mattered. What did I actually have to do?
The minutes and seconds seemed to whizz by, and I tried desperately to make them slow to a trickle. These were the last moments, the inevitable conclusion to the most epic of adventures. For more than four months, I had worked to reach this moment. And now, all I wanted was for it to last just a little longer. I begged time to stand still. To give me one more laugh with these people.
As we finished our coffee, we all tried to find reasons not to utter the word goodbye. I walked with them, in the opposite direction from my destination, not wanting to let go. It reached a point where it no longer made sense for me to continue.
We hugged and said our goodbyes, made a few last jokes, and went our separate ways. I turned around to watch them disappear from sight. I had spent 110 days barely more than a breath away from these two people. And then in the blink of an eye, they were gone.
As I headed towards my accommodation, I was struck by the immediate sense of familiarity. I was back in my “normal” life. A solo, wandering nomad. It came flooding back as if I hadn’t just spent the last four months wandering through the woods and mountains. As if yesterday I was in some other place, and today was the start of a new place.
Which it was, both metaphorically and realistically. I was in a new place, alone, walking to a hostel.
Hello old friend, welcome back.
The next morning, I took a bus from Invercargill to Dunedin. I had no plan, which isn’t necessarily a new concept for me, but being at the end of the world made it hit different.
Dunedin was a fun and quirky place to rock up for a minute. Decompress, maybe formulate a plan. Maybe.
After speaking with my dear friend Dom, whom I met in Morocco, I booked a flight up to Wellington. That’s where the plans start and end.
I stayed with Dom and her mother for a couple of nights, and then moved to a hostel in the city. I booked in for two nights, hoping that would be enough for me to get my shit together.
Two nights turned into two more, then a further two more. Not only did I not have a plan, I didn’t have the emotional or physical motivation to do anything about it either. The inevitable crash after such a sustained high had hit – hard. Days blurred together. I’m not sure what I even did each day.
My only constant was Pour & Twist, my favorite coffee shop in the world. Mind and body empty, I spent each day from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., sat in the homey and welcoming space. It’s my perfect kind of coffee shop … a slow bar. They only do pour over (or hand-whisked matcha if that’s your thing), and they put love and care into each drink they craft.
Invariably, I came to call the owners, Zuyi and Elaine, friends (don't forget Mikey, the coffee hound). I had come in twice when we had passed through Welly on trail. On the second visit, I asked for a recommendation of beans to take on the trail with me. Zuyi was super helpful and very interested in my trail setup. On my first day back, he recognized me immediately and welcomed me back. I knew then that this was my place.
I went to the shop every morning at opening, and left every afternoon just before close. I was drinking them out of all their coffee! They started asking each other what else they had that I could try, pulling out rare beans of limited quantity several times.
We bonded first over coffee, then photography, travel, video games, art and tattoos. They felt like family, and for a moment, they were. Sure, it was about the coffee, but it was also about people. I became a regular, and I recognized actual regulars. I formed friendships and bonded with like-minded people. I got new tattoos from said people and connected with others over entrepreneurship and business.
In a final act of true connection and friendship, on my penultimate day, Zuyi asked if he could take my portrait. I’d never been photographed before, outside of my senior photos in high school. I felt honored, and awkward, as I tried to act normal.
When I look at those photos now, I see a man who’s seen some things, someone with experiences. A being at peace with himself. And yet, I also see a person lost in a moment, vacant from reality, outside of themselves. It is an intimate look, a snapshot of someone between two worlds, outside space and time. From the outside, I see myself looking at myself from the outside. Like the layers of an onion, I gaze through iterations of myself. I see myself for who I am, where I’ve been, how I arrived in that moment and how it all made the person in those photos.
Days turned into weeks. I simply kept extending my stay at the hostel, a few days at a time, convinced that at any moment, inspiration would strike, and I would have my plan. The longer that went on, the more I felt lost and unsure.
Here’s the thing. Post-trail blues are real. I felt them deeply and acutely when I completed the Camino in 2023. It took nearly a month to recover then, and the Camino was only a month-long walk. I wondered how long it would take me to recover from Te Araroa. In the moment, it felt like I would never recover. And if I’m honest, even now, writing this some six months later, I’m still struggling to find my footing in a post-TA world.
As I reflect on my time in Wellington, I see I didn’t know how to catch back up to the pace of a world I had come to live outside of. Life had been so easy when all I had to do each day was walk 30km.
Adding fuel to the fire was the reality that I was nearly broke. I hadn’t worked in over six months and hadn’t been as fiscally responsible in 2024 as I thought. I had purchased nearly $4000 worth of trekking gear. Both Oz and the trail had been more expensive than anticipated.
I knew I had to do something, but what, when, where and for how long? Desperation and procrastination gripped me in equal measure. They clashed like two Greek Gods, battling for my very soul. Do something! But what!? Anything!
Deep down, I knew the something was getting back to my stuff in Australia. Without my laptop, I couldn’t work. Yet still, days slid by, and I did nothing. February turned into March, and still, I did nothing.
Finally, on the ninth of March, I summoned enough something to book a bus ticket. On March 17th, I boarded the bus to Auckland.
That seemed to break the impasse. On the 10-hour journey, I finally started making moves. I changed the date of my flight back to Sydney, moving it up nearly a month. In three days’ time, I would be leaving Aotearoa.
I was grateful to spend my final days with Thumbs (aka Gerhard). I’m pretty sure I spent more time on trail with him than any other person. Thumbs is a founding member of the Flash Maggots and the artist of my latest tattoo. We met on the first morning and never went more than a single night out of each other’s company for the rest of trail.
March 20th, 2025 - Exactly one month, to the day, from reaching Bluff and thus completing Te Araroa, I boarded Air New Zealand flight 103.
Like many, read most, of the places I’ve visited, I’ll likely never return to Aotearoa. It’s hard to wrap my head around the month after Te Araroa; such was the mental and emotional abyss I found myself in. I felt empty and in a haze. At times, it was like watching myself from above, without agency. It wasn’t depression (that would come later), it was just …
Yet, somehow, I look back on Wellington with a fondness that I wouldn’t have foreseen in the moment. They say you can’t beat Welly on a good day … and there were a lot of good days.