The crunch of the crayfish shell as you carve up today’s catch,
The tenseness in your shoulders as you enter your first left-lane roundabout,
The soil that’s been trapped under your fingernails for the last week,
The pump of adrenaline and the feeling of complete weightlessness before the bungy cord goes taut
It's the subtle curve of the silver fern in the forest's endless silence,
The tenseness in your shoulders as you drive into a left-lane roundabout,
It's using 'sweet as' no less than six times a day,
Or forging a makeshift insole out of a foam mattress
It's taking a wrong turn, but continuing on anyway,
It's not "what's next?" but rather "what now?"
It's caring less about appearance, and more about substance,
It's forgetting your phone has been dead for three days,
Or sacrificing eating meat because you want to sleep in a bed for once,
It's watching the sun slowly dip behind the Tasman sea and feeling the world slowly turning in space,
It's walking on Mars by the red craters in Tongariro,
Or staring out the bluff peninsula with nothing till Antarctica but cold open ocean
It's never running out of things to climb,
It's the blood-boiling and spine-tingling sensation as the Maori perform the haka
It’s illegal campfires on the beach; mussel foraging; shucking an oyster and gulping it down while sitting on the rock it was plucked from,
It's German tourists, German Tourists everywhere...
It’s the seemingly endless array of beautiful, life-thirsty, passionate, intelligent, soulful, creative, and energetic people you meet from all over this incredible world,
It's a hiking trail waiting to be traversed;
A people who value simplicity and humility over all,
Or the grandmother who addresses people as "bro"
It is a place of peaceful calm,
Of reckless abandon and adrenaline,
Of hobbit holes and run-down garages,
It's discovery, serenity, beauty, opportunity
What is New Zealand?
It is adventure.