5:15pm:
I throw my laptop bag and heavy files into the overhead compartment and settle into deliberately chosen window side seat near the aircraft’s right wing.
“Look out to your right,” the captain had announced during my last flight back to Auckland, “for gorgeous views of Mt. Taranaki.” The mental note was made, right there and then, to catch the iconic New Zealand volcano and frequent cinematic substitute for Mt. Fuji, mid-flight. It was going to happen today.
5:20pm:
The dramatic horseshoe of Wellington Harbour spread out before me as the plane ascends and makes its familiar 90 degree turn. The city grows smaller with each passing second and the hum of the engine. Rays of the late summer sun drench the water and light up my seat.
5:30pm:
The wine and cheese finally arrive. Weary and exhausted from the week, I ask for a cool glass of white and feel the familiar alcohol-induced haze spread across my brain like a mist – clouding thoughts of work and stress and things in adult life I just didn’t know what to do with. But like condensation on the car window so easily wiped away with a the touch of a finger, it was only temporary.
5:35pm:
Anthony Doerr’s All the Light We Cannot See was the reading of choice today. When I first heard the premise of a blind French girl falling in love with a deaf German boy during World War II, I wasn’t impressed. Something about the ill-fated, war-torn lovers had landed on the cynical side of my heart. Today, however, its language won me over – “inside her chest pulses something huge, something full of longing, something unafraid.”
5:50pm:
Lake Taupo emerges like an ocean, vast and never ending. Foamy waves and black sand.
6:13pm:
I look out and realise we are near. Piecemeal farms near Auckland look like Pixar animation, artificially green and bare. When I first came to New Zealand, these farms were my definition of nature. Now all I can see from their trimmed pastures is the absence of native bush.
6:20pm:
The engine roars as the plane unsteadily trembles into descent. All around, men and women in suits wait in anxious silence for the landing, and the prospect of home. With the expected thud and speeding runway, I am transported back to reality, the metallic taste of wine still in my mouth.
“Welcome to Auckland,” the captain says, “welcome home.”
Musings of a Leaf 