Sometimes when the seas are calm, or even when the swells are big but there isn’t any wind to drive the crests into breakers, my mind goes on “walk about” – an Australian Aboriginal term which for me, seems to fit the division of the mind and the body. While the body is engaged and on auto-pilot, the mind wanders away, occasionally checking back in when a wave catches the eye, but then just as quickly drifting off again and finding what it needs to work on in its own way. It is a time when both the mind and the body are free to stretch and explore independent of the other. It can be a time of great physical and psychological release- the taut springs of both sides of me, slowly uncoiling, relaxing and working out the kinks in stiff muscles and the twists and turns of the mind. And sometimes something happens that brings the two worlds back together in a way that is as mysterious and unfathomable as the sea itself.

I was twenty miles north of Two Thumb Bay and paddling a mile off shore beneath the same clear blue skies that had escorted me for the past few days. The winds, for some blessed reason, hadn’t built as they typically had in the past so there weren’t any threats that my mind had to lock onto. My mind was off on its own- one minute registering the physical sensuousness of the sun and the slow rise and fall of the thick swells, and the next minute wandering off to a place of expanding thoughts of home, friends and emotions. The miles, the minutes, and the swells slipped past as the morning sun climbed higher and warmed the paddling shirt stretched across my shoulders. I was supremely happy, and quietly aware of how fortunate I was to be alive and to be exactly where I was- paddling along one of the more remote coastlines on earth and feeling completely at peace with the world. An albatross swooped by to check me out, and dozens of shearwaters flew circles around the boat while the mountains slowly changed shape as I crept past their masses.

Somewhere in the silent solitude of that inner and outer calm, a doubt slipped into my thoughts and for some strange but necessary reason, it began to grow. 

The very comfort and security that I felt on the edge of this wild and remote coast, focused an inner lens on the other side of my life- the one I would return to when the trip had come full circle. As I paddled along feeling so much a part of the ocean realm I was immersed in, it dawned on me- as it had many times before- how utterly fantastic my life was and at the same time how absolutely ill prepared I was for life. Here I was content, comfortable, and alive in the fullest sense of the word, yet when I thought of the end of the journey I realized how frightening that prospect was. The singular and absolute focus that my life on the trip depended upon was so very different than the fracturing multi-tasks that modern fast paced life demanded.

The more I allowed my mind to get wrapped into the worries of the future the more I got worked up by my own insecurities. I thought how I didn’t have a degree or even a resume that I could hand to a potential employer- I didn’t have any formal training, no piece of paper or proof of anything that I had accomplished in life. All that I had learned, was self-taught and though I could turn my hand to a number of skills I was the classic “Jack of all trades, Master of none”. If I were to write of my skills I could include the dubious value of being able to roll a fully loaded boat in ten foot surf, set up a tent in driving winds and rain, and survive on some pretty terrible tasting food for weeks on end. Yes, I could build a simple house, wire and plumb it, insulate and sheet rock it, but those were all skills that required a strong healthy body. With nothing to dislodge the arrow of my thoughts, it continued to burrow in deeper and closer to the real target of my worries- the time when my body would no longer allow me to travel and explore and to make a simple living with my hands and back. At age 65 or 70 where would I be and how in the world was I going to support myself? When friends and family would be collecting pensions and social security, what was I going to be doing? I had neither. The more I thought about it, the more distressed I became. It was insane to let my mind so completely take me away from the glory of the paddling moment- but that was what had happened. I was no longer in the boat with body and mind- I was split in two. My body doing what it needed to do in moving the boat forward, and my mind confronting something I had no answer for- the unknowns of the future. I was forgetting one of the most valuable lessons I had learned through 15,000 miles of paddling- don’t worry about what’s five miles ahead of the bow- stay focused on a ten yard circle around the boat and just move that circle forward one paddle stroke at a time. I was very good at applying that lesson on the oceans of the world, but not very good at applying it to the rest of my life. 

As if to refocus my attention and bring me back to the moment, something caught my eye on the surface of the sea twenty-yards in front and to the right of the bow. Whatever it was, disappeared behind a swell for several seconds, then bobbed back into view and again disappeared as its own weight pulled it just below the surface of the sea. By the time I spotted it for the third time I was already turning the boat sharply toward it when I saw another red shape bobbing up and down in the crystal clear, sun-pierced swells. 

APPLES, two apples- less than three feet apart, almost directly in line with my course a mile off shore? 

I coasted to within inches of the first one floating stem up and plucked it from the sea, glistening red and shiny. A half stoke on the left side of the boat brought me even with the second one that I scooped up and dropped beside the first one rolling gently across the neoprene spray deck. There wasn’t a boat within sight and none that I had seen since the “Commander,” deep in Doubtful Sound four or five days earlier. Nothing else floated on the sea, no debris, no flotsam, and no wreckage. There weren’t any hiking tracks at this end of the park and not even any jet contrails overhead. There couldn’t have been too many places in the world that were as empty as that corner of New Zealand washed and battered by the Tasman Sea. Yet I had just picked two red, perfectly shaped apples bobbing side by side out of its currents. Suddenly, my worries of the future were replaced by disbelief, and the rich aroma of the apples rolling around on the spray deck. After weeks of smelling nothing but the sea- seaweed covered rocks, the fish that I caught and filleted for my diner, and the smell of the ozone from broken waves- my sense of smell, my sense of sight, and every cell in my brain was suddenly registering APPLES! 

I was suddenly rich- at least for the moment. Now all I had to do was to decide what to do with my unexpected wealth- which one to bite into first and devour in a gluttonous, feeding frenzy. A swell rolled the boat over on its edge and both apples shot toward the rim of the cockpit. I let go of the paddle with one hand, jerked my right knee up under the deck of the boat to bring it level, and grabbed the apples before they dropped overboard. I hadn’t had fresh fruit in over three weeks and there was no way I was going to loose what had just been handed me from the ocean. Where they came from I didn’t know but where they were going I did. I popped the day hatch behind the cockpit and wedged one of the apples in beside the VHF and the soft bundle of the tent. For the nest five minutes I let the other one roll around as I got the boat underway and thought about whether I should eat it or save it for later. 

Every once in a while I would pick the apple up, polish it on my shirt and sniff the skin- drawing the sweet aroma deep into the bottom of my lungs then placing it back on the spray deck momentarily balanced on its knobby base. It was perfectly formed, not a blemish or bruise and the stem as straight as if it was just picked from a tree. I imagined how it must taste…mouth watering sweet and juicy, with just the right amount of tartness. 

For five minutes I fought the urge to just grab it and sink my teeth into its red roundness. And then it happened--the apple started to roll off the starboard side. I dropped the paddle and grabbed the apple as it hit the cockpit rim and bounced into the air. In one smooth twist of the wrist I spun the stem onto the inside of my thumb, raised it to my mouth and took a huge bite out of it.

The skin popped, and snapped as I bit in and tasted a mini explosion of white, crunchy, sweet fruit filled with juices that dribbled out of the corners of my mouth. I could hear my teeth crunching into every slow, purposeful precious bite as I chewed that first chunk until it was nothing but pulp. I was a mile offshore in six and eight foot swells, looking at three thousand foot mountain peaks and eating the world’s best apple plucked from the currents of the Tasman Sea. I raised the paddle in my left hand and the apple in my right and yelled YESSSS!!! I didn’t know where the apples had come from and I still wasn’t sure what I would be doing when and if I reached the age of seventy or eighty, but suddenly everything was back in balance. The apples were a gift, a certain sign that I was on the right course in life and that I would find what I needed along its path. I just had to have faith and follow my heart.

I ate the rest of that apple as slowly and thoroughly as any had ever been eaten- right down to where the seed pocket and the stem joined- then sucked the last hint of juice out of the core. When there was nothing left but seeds and woody stem, I launched the remains in a celebratory arc as high overhead as I could throw it, then watched as it plopped back into the sea. I licked my fingers clean, picked up the paddle and swung into the first strokes of getting the boat underway again. At that moment, I was as high as anybody on earth could have been. 

Finding the apples seemed to be an omen of good luck for the rest of the way north to Milford Sound. Each day dawned with a cool, deep blue clarity that slowly warmed as the sun crept over the jagged skyline and touched the sea. The sun was rising a full two hours later than it had at the summer solstice but it seemed the fall weather was far more stable than the summer weather that had never really developed. By mid-morning the chill was out of the air and there were two or three more hours of easy paddling before the winds started kicking up. Later in the afternoons, when the swells broke and overtook the boat in glaring rumblings, there still wasn’t the dread of the power and volume of earlier swells in the trip. Autumn seem to have mellowed both the sea and the winds. 

I explored several of the sounds along the way- tucking into George Sound, paddling the length of Bligh Sound, and poking into Sutherland Sound and Poison Bay. Gradually the outer coast scenery was changing from the heavily wooded green of the southern sounds to the more vertical- if that was possible- and angular rock that was visible above treeline. Ten miles south of Milford I could see for the first time a snow-capped peak reaching high above the rounded summits of the surrounding mountains. 

In the bliss of sunshine and following swells, towering mountains and glistening snow in the distance, I thought how the worst of the trip must now be over. I had weathered too many gales to bother trying to count, had gotten knocked over a half dozen times in the surf, and had been forced to paddle too often at close to my maximum limits. I was ready for a gentle, peaceful autumn to finish off the remaining six hundred miles of the trip. Perhaps, like the rest of life, it was a good thing that I could not see into the future- even the very near future of less than a week away.