A Collision Within a Collision
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I naturally feature collisions when I write about a destination and my brushes there with taste and purpose. The more consistently I write about my travels, the more I anticipate and recognize these fateful nudges, coincidences and encounters. Because I consider each such a meaningful steppingstone in my journey, I’m starting a weekly series to highlight the unplanned moments that make our travel matter that much more.
I think about collisions as among other things, a conversation that shifts something, a stranger who becomes a mirror, a place that hands you a piece of yourself you didn't even know was missing. Each impact reveals a truth, leaves its mark, deposits residue meant to shape not only how we move but who we become.
From the moment I arrived in Wairarapa wine valley’s Martinborough, New Zealand, I loved it. It was quaint and charming with all the treats and trappings of a sleepy but cozy small town.
But taxis? Not so much. If life has taught me one thing, it’s strike up a good rapport with the local taxi dispatch. For reasons that still aren’t abundantly clear, I failed on all counts to do that in Martinborough. And without saying it, the service’s one and only dispatcher made it known I was effectively never getting a taxi in her town.
The immediate and most damning impact of that discovery meant I was walking three weeks’ worth of luggage from the bus stop to the Parehua Resort about one mile away from the city center. I arrived and managed more than well enough on foot for the next few days.
But my early morning train back to Wellington, before the sun would even be up, was giving me fits. I tried Uber. I called every cab in the region. Nothing. At a loss for what to do, I reached out to the Parehua Resort, and a very friendly front desk clerk took pity on me. Even though her shift wasn’t due to start for another four hours that day, she agreed to get up early and drive me to the train.
We chatted the whole way to Featherston Station about my favorite topic on earth – travel. She was young and just starting out. She had never left New Zealand and asked one enthusiastic question after the other. Where had I been? What were my favorites? But the question she asked that stuck out the most was, “What’s the one piece of advice you’d give a first-time traveler?”
Since I’d only just finished Tessera 53 the night before, a reflection on the challenges of traveling New Zealand and staying true to our own calling and compass, I felt like I had been primed by the universe for the answer. “Listen to where and what calls you. Your vacation is your time. There’s always a list or an authority ready to tell you what you should do. You do you.”
As the words came out of my mouth, they hung curiously in the air. I had just spent, after all, the last several weeks wrestling to find them for myself. Now, here I was sharing them with newfound confidence and conviction in an effort to pay this stranger’s kindness forward.
A collision within a collision.
It’s amazing how the people we meet when we travel play a supporting role in our lives simply by listening, seeing and encouraging us.
Kaylan may have thought all she was doing that morning was driving me the eleven miles between towns and, best of all, saving me from walking country roads in the dark, but she was keeping me on course.
And I hope, in some small way, I had set her off on hers.
