Written by Alexandria Hilton
At the top of the mountain is where I first realized a want I have not since been able to shake. It wasn’t even the tallest mountain — that’s what they don’t tell you about these things — that the epiphanies don’t all just hang out together in the spots that go viral online, no. It was not the tallest mountain where I realized it; it was one with a view of a lake whose glimmer from up so high stole my breath. And I was entirely alone — without other humans — for one of the few moments of my life where that aloneness was true and real. The more days I collect, the smaller that slice of aloneness shrinks. Isn’t that something?
I lived in New Zealand for just under one year after I graduated; I landed in Auckland for my first ever time in July 2023 and again for my second ever time in November 2023, after Thanksgiving stateside. I remember being, upon landing in Auckland that second time, in awe of the plane perspective, taken with the land itself and grateful for my visitorship onto it, specifically. The realization, potent and loud: I’m not entitled to any of this — I am a visitor here. When I walk off this plane and when I walk to work and when I walk these trails, it is with human feet upon wise soil as a visitor, returning the land to its source with each successive step.
It felt like a realization of presence only afforded to me (1) by foot and (2) alone — being only exactly here for this one moment without obtaining any sort of deed or ownership.
In the way that some people hate to hear their own voice and recording back to them, I hate to feel as if there’s no place I can sit in nature without other human beings, their eyes or mailboxes or some other trace of their existence in sight or within earshot
And then there are the car troubles…
The other day, my car started making this terrible noise and when I put it in gear to drive, it wasn’t functioning how it once did. It was all of a sudden one day different from the next, and I’ve had to take it to get serviced and then it turns out I also needed new tires, as is usually the case for the single woman who braves the service center…
It’s not that I hate cars. It’s that I want to go places they cannot go.
When I went for my big hike, I came across some fellow trailperson who, when I asked his reason for starting Te Araroa, told me he just wanted to go places cars cannot go. And I thought it was dumb. And now as I, fighting tooth and nail, succumb to this life surrounded by people and their many things, as I sit and feel my shoulders starting to creep forward more and more minute-by-minute, my posture launched forward by a pinch on my right side, I am craving to get where cars cannot go.
Simply, it’s is a kind of privileged access. There are as many definitions of true luxury as there are human beings walking (and driving) the Earth; to go somewhere otherwise inaccessible is a luxury.
ATAdventures is, among other monikers, our “going places cars cannot go” segment. If that’s your definition of luxury, let me know!
