THE VOICE THAT CALLS YOU
Crazy “I’m crazy,” my mind screamed as I tightened
STORY & PHOTO BY ANTHONY ISENSEE DESIGN BY STEPHANY FIGUEROA
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my grip on my steering wheel, my vehicle weaving down the unfamiliar gravel road. “I’m crazy,” I said out loud, as I made a right turn, leaving the woods and entering a gorgeous New Zealand valley with its rolling, green hills. “You’re crazy,” taunted the voice of caution, pounding its fists into the knot of anxiety in my stomach. “Turn back now,” it pleaded. “C’mon man, help me out and take yourself back to the land of the known.” Despite the knot of anxiety in my stomach, I registered the irony in my inner turmoil. While I was pressing forward into something scary and new, behind me lay over 750 miles through Te Waipounamu, the more beautiful of New Zealand’s two main islands. Everything behind me was new, adventurous, crazy, and outside of normal. The mountains made me dizzy with their size and grandeur. It was the trip of a lifetime. I was throwing myself outside of the comfortable yet again. I met Peter in an airport in Australia on the way to New Zealand. “Greymouth,” I thought out loud, sitting in my campervan, planning the next day’s itinerary. “Isn’t that where Peter said he lived?” I’d met this friendly character a week before, and while he’d been talkative, he hadn’t exactly invited me to come visit him. But the hand extended in friendship in a crowded airport terminal was firm in ways surpassing mere grip strength. “Go visit him,” some deep inner voice seemed to be saying. “Now, or you’ll regret it.”
2021 ISSUE 12 / ENVISION / 5
