The last few days have been spent at a beautiful permaculture backpackers called the Treehouse. There is a reason that this place has a history of being the best backpackers hostel in all of New Zealand and I think it makes plenty of sense. When you arrive the entire hostel is covered in native forest that has been regenerated from 20 years of permaculture work by the beautiful couple that owns this hostel and land. Essentially, when they first arrived it was old sheep grazing land with a few old natives trees around the land. As they tell their humble story to me about reclaiming the land by letting things grow more wild within the grazing land I look around and find myself taking a deep breath of fresh air. Permaculture is the way to go for sustainable food production folks. I know that now and I know that this is where i’m headed in my life. Full stop. It’s impressive to be here in a place that has turned a cleared native forest from a sheep feeding acreage back into a native forest again.

AND they have planted many native and non-native fruit / nut varieties throughout the forest (permaculture concept to have food placed throughout a forest). Some of the fruit I’ve noticed is gala apples, lime, macaroon nuts (oh yeah baby), pears, bananas, guava, grapes everywhere! I decided this might be a cool place to woof at (and save some cash) and have been spending today removing a dock from a swamp they have near one of the little huts you can sleep in. They put me up in a house bus for the time that I’m staying here which is pretty freakin’ rad cause I have a space to myself finally (no more snoring or people doing other things in the bed below me — ugg — ask me about that story later). But if you ever have the chance PLEASE come here and spend some time. This place is freakin magical and so are the people who own it.

Then yesterday I headed off to the magical Waipoua forest with a new Argentinian friend Guille and an Austrian friend Laurence. Throughout this forest are Kauri trees which are magical native trees that are indescribable when seen face to face. I gave one a huge hug and felt so much energy and life from it, and wondered how many people it had watched throughout it’s 1000+ years of life walk past it. Tane Mahuta is the largest Kauri tree in New Zealand and is 2000 years old and HUGE (Trunk Girth 13.77 m, Trunk Height 17.68 m, Total Height 51.2 m, Trunk Volume 244.5 m3). The tree that I am huggin there was the 7th largest tree so slightly smaller then Tane Mahuta but still quite large and old. It is crazy to think that at one point colonialists came to this country, cut down these trees, and built boats from them. It’s nice to know that today they are completely protected from any sort of logging and more regeneration work is taking place to replace the feld trees ( I came across this way to late but if you have time you should check out this project ).

Then after all this tree hugging we headed off to the beach on the west coast. It was truly beautiful, peaceful, and completely secluded. We sat with Guille who introduced us to mate a traditional Argentinian drink that is always shared with others. Kind of a beautiful concept isn’t it!

Sending lots of peace, love, and warmth your way!

PS – Go Kristin! You do it up girl!