Part I is here
I’ve become lazy with blog post titles lately. Also, really lazy about these Throwback Thursday posts about New Zealand! I will do one today and then one at would be the end of the journey, in about 3 weeks. So, not every week, but that would be excessive anyway.
I was sitting in a restaurant last Friday night in New York, eating a really spicy, really expensive burger that I myself created, and this song came on. Which.. Even thinking about this song gives me goosebumps! At the Outdoor Pursuit Centre, we were this group of 18 teenagers, and on any given night (as long as we weren’t wiped out from the day’s activities) we’d have these dance parties in a little carpeted room, and Flagpole Sitta by Harvey Danger became our anthem. We played it our last night at OPC (July 22) and the next day we said goodbye to each other and it was one of the saddest days ever. Anyway. I’ve heard that song a few times here and there, but hearing it out of the blue, so very close to the actual 10 year anniversary I left OPC, I got chills. I texted a friend from those days, Leslie, who lives in New York, and I said we should get together. So we did! I saw him the next day, and he’s the first person I’ve seen from that group in 10 years, and neither of us could believe it! I guess what I’m trying to say, is that this is a trip that was utterly life changing, and is still affecting me in crazy ways today.
But, anyway. The photo up there I think was taken on a two-day backpacking trip we took from I dunno, somewhere (they drove us in a van) up to the tippy top of Mt. Ruapehu! Backpacking is hella hard, especially on volcanic ash for miles and miles. Plus at this point everybody had all but chosen the clique they were in. Teenagers. I recall we walked through a forest at one point, and it was completely this lush green color. Everything was colored in it. My camera was in my backpack and I couldn’t be bothered. I can’t imagine myself on a similar trip today. I’d need at least 3 lenses for this trip, and some sort of complicated rig that makes me look like a tool. It was winter in New Zealand at the time, but it rarely snowed anywhere where I was. Once we got high enough I guess, that’s where it started. We had trekked to a little hut (they have these all over New Zealand, for hikers and stuff), had a fire, had food, played card games. Then a brave few of us decided we were really going to rough it that night. The coolest thing about that night, is that when we left the hut to go down to the tent, I looked up and was nearly knocked back because the sky was jam packed with stars. It was, and still is, the starriest night I’ve ever seen, and it was snowing! It was amazing. It was fucking cold ass camping though. Read more ›