It’s like a new skin of an old self that I’ve returned to.

Sitting on sunken couches, under windows with cobwebs triangling the corners. Waves, wind rain; a door-stop of a book opened in my lap, unread past the first paragraph. Walking barefoot to the shower outside and standing there under the heat, the plastic curtain pulled back, the wind chimes going, watching the sea and flax, as rainwater batters the tin roof. The sound of the tea jug boiling on the gas burner when I get back to the main crib. The smell of toast and salt air and sea mold is deep in the walls.  That’s the skin I’ve returned to.

We are on the West Coast of New Zealand’s South Island. It’s an off-grid shack I booked months ago because it was cheap and on the beach and just off the winding remote highway that I used to drive down once a month for work, wondering who lived in these weather-beaten cribs that have been here for generations, just barely enough shelter from the tides, storms and sand flies. For these first two nights, it belongs to no one but us.

It’s a perfect crash pad after four hours of buses, Ubers, check-in lines, a bad airport bar, then finally an 11-hour flight to Fiji, a 3-hour layover, than a 5-hour flight to Christchurch, bio-security checks, then finally, a 5-hour car journey from the East Coast of the South Island, to the West Coast.

I was emotional just walking out of the airport in the sunlight to collect our car. Then there was the long last stretch: a drive through mountains, over a hundred rivers that my husband craned his head to look at as we passed over, bright red rata vines in the bush around us, waterfalls exploding down, and finally that first glimpse of the Tasman Sea as we dipped down to the mouth of the Grey River that used to make my heart explode.

John has his fly rod and back-country pass. I have no agenda for our three weeks in New Zealand, except to follow him to rivers around the South Island, swim, eat lots of ice cream, and re-visit the haunts that shaped me in my 20s and early 30s when I lived here, in my father’s homeland.

It’s strange to think that a week ago I needed snow boots to walk to the car in our yard in Montana. I don’t need shoes to do anything here. John can’t get over that on a sunny day, entire families will march barefoot through the supermarket to do their shopping.

I have the same wonder – a returner’s wonder, I’m calling it. It’s about all those things you took for granted and forgot when you left a place. It’s been four years since I left New Zealand; seven years since I’ve been on this coast.

Being Here

Note for travelers, both returners and first-timers: I booked our first two nights in NZ at this rental and I’d highly recommend it – but there are about ten more that I’d love to book in the future,  up and down the Tasman, many for under $150. My almost rental was here – please tell me this doesn’t make you want to book a ticket to the South Island just to sit in this bathtub and watch penguins. Some other picturesque options near Punakaiki: A beachfront cottage for about $115. This off-grid sea shack tucked away into native bush is rentable for around $75. Stock up on groceries – we brought coffee, fruit and yogurt, lamb chops, fresh corn, salad, wine, beer and venison sausages for a barbecue on our second night – in either Greymouth (about an hour and a half away) if you are coming from the south, like we did. Westport would be the nearest hub north of this spot, also just under two hours.

Also, if you’re looking for a good read to take along with you, pick up Eleanor Catton’s The Luminaries. She’s the youngest author to win the Man Booker Prize and it takes place just two hours south of here, in Hokitika. It’s crazy and beautiful and a pretty beefy, tough 826-page novel. But it suits this place.