There’s more than just a low, scrub-spotted hill separating Waitati from Dunedin. It often feels like there should be a border-post on top of the ridge, at the point where the city’s energetic thrusting finally loses its momentum, restrained by the weight of its own demands, and ahead lies only fields pouring into the sea. Yet it’s not just the city itself which you are leaving behind. It's alos the urban frame-of-mind.
It’s not the smell of the country which encourages you forward, but the scent of community. Because although Waitati could be a suburb, drawn into the commuter-belt by the ever-tightening girdle of highway, it retains its semi-rural aloofness, a personality moulded by the sunshine dripping into the bay and the silky mists rolling in from the sea. Although it could be a country village, turning its rigid back on a stranger’s world, it retains its cosmopolitan vigour, inviting life inside for conversation and a cup of tea. It’s inhabitants living independent inter-dependent lives, individuals existing apart yet also as part of a community.
It was the first place I felt at home. The first place where it was the people, not the location which inspired me. (Or maybe it was just that the hitching was so good.) But it was me who had to make the initial effort. It’s a basic fact of life that most people just don’t like leaving their homes, preferring visitors to visiting. This, combined with the fact I was a newcomer, meant it was particularly unlikely anyone would visit me.
A few people I’d met earlier at a local dance had invited me to ‘pop in sometime’, so I decided to take them up on their offer. Yet although I hadn’t pulled random names out of the phonebook, those first unexpected, uninvited visits were emotionally harrowing affairs. Does ‘pop in’ imply a quick hello at the front door, a cup of tea and a biscuit, an hour or an evening? Can it be spontaneous, or are bookings required?
When is ‘sometime’? And was it all sincere or a polite social formality? So I not only had to overcome my initial fear of interrupting, but the fear of intruding, of rejection, of not being considered interesting enough, of not being liked, not to mention my fear of being bored, of being trapped in a complex social web, of setting off a tiresome chain reaction of unwanted visitations. Though my visits were greeted with unanimous enthusiasm, my social antennae were always alert to the merest flicker of discomfort. After all, it’s so easy to cross that line of dropping in too much or staying too long.
I was comfortable living there, in Marion’s little house, by myself. I had a job which was both challenging and fulfilling - though the frustrations continued mounting and the fact it remained a 60 hour per week unpaid position began to take its toll.
I had an extensive social network which was both supportive and inspiring. I have, traditionally, been someone who cultivates many acquaintances yet harvests few friends, simply because so many relationships fail to fully mature or ripen, and so many wilt on the vine or shrivel beneath the harsh sun of truth. But Waitati is fertile social soil, and the bountiful harvest I reaped there will sustain me through many long winters.
But soon, too soon, I also had to leave.
Marion returned from another tumultuous season. For a while, we tried to live together again, but though we often basked in the familiar warmth of our companionship, too often it flared into a fiery inferno of unresolved pain and guilt. So I moved out. First into a spare room in the Environment Centre, then into another flat - both unsatisfactory, both unsuccessful. The city was no substitute for friends.
So when a house became available in Waitati, I gratefully moved back out there. Back to the place which had, in the meantime, become my second home. If only I could move my house, my property, my creek, somewhere into the valley there, perhaps I would finally discover the perfect balance between people and place. Perhaps I could finally settle one of my life’s greatest conflicts.
But the Minzion again began calling my name. No longer a siren’s song enticing me onto the rocks, it was now the lilting refrain of freedom. There was where I wanted to be. There was where I could finally build the kind of life I wanted. The isolation was no longer frightening, because I was no longer cast adrift, alone. Now I had a life-line, a social umbilical cord nurturing me, sustaining me, no matter how far I drifted. Being by myself was no longer painful, no longer a punishment. I was not my jailer, but a friend. Though I may live alone, I’d never again be lonely because my self was now the best company I could keep.
I suddenly realised I was happy. Happy, again, with my life. Happy, finally, with myself.
Now was the time to continue the journey.
Now was the time to finish building my house and begin building a life. A self-sufficient life. My life.
Now was the time to return to Millers Flat.
Now was the time to go home.
And perhaps I could one day entice Waitati to join me at my place.
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