A Tale of Two Seas

It had plunged into a pool of air. All sound around me had been drowned out by the wind. It took all my courage just to step out of the car, but I couldn't stand another second inside it.
We had spent weeks living out of that camper van. Traveling through Northland. It seems so tiny on a map. Most of New Zealand does. Yet there is always so much to see, and smell. So much to take in. So many vast expanses of nothing. We had finally reached the edge. The edge of nothing. Where two oceans meet.
I was initially unimpressed at the wall of dunes that surrounded the car park, with the gushing wind that pushed my door closed. Nothing about Cape Reinga seemed welcoming. But having two mates shoving me out of the car, I didn't feel like I had much of a choice. Little did I know that I was about to step into my own Lewis Carroll novel and that the archway that led to the cliff was my own personal looking glass.
The taupe surroundings gave way to a green, blue and white that had never before been so vibrant. The pathway down was it's own suspense. I was too scared to run and the wind would barely even let me walk, but the lighthouse hypnotized me. It was my own personal rabbit in a top hat, pleading me to follow it.
I have never understood what people mean when they say they felt like one with their surroundings. At least not until that very day. The wind took over my lungs and I no longer needed to breathe. My feet, who often despise the very though of standing still, were never more deeply rooted in their place.
I always imagined that the ocean was the same colour throughout. But the deep green and blue that struggled with each other at the cliff's edge struck down my presumptions.
Then it was over. My life didn't change and neither did I. We got back int he van and we drove away. Yet I can hardly recall the rest of that trip.
I think that's why we travel. So that we can experience something uniquely our own. Something we know no one else will ever experience in the same way. We push ourselves to discover new places so that we can better discover ourselves.