An island of warmth, inner peace in New Zealand

Seeking rest after writing her last book, author finds a restorative escape

When I landed on Aotea Great Barrier Island, an off-the-grid, mostly solar-powered island in the Hauraki Gulf, off the coast of New Zealand’s North Island, it was a proper coup de foudre. The locals’ kindly welcome nearly had me in tears, and the island itself seemed like paradise to a sun-starved soul who’d travelled all the way from the U.K. After labouring over the writing of “Wanderland,” a book that had taken me on a journey to connect with the magical landscapes across Britain, I was in need of a rest.

On my first day, I spotted a pod of orca whales in Puriri Bay, close to the lodge where I was staying. “You’re lucky — we only see them once or twice a year!” Jo, one of the owners, said to me. She pointed out the Pohutukawa tree, known as the Christmas tree for its fiery crimson flowers, and the fern trees with new fronds coiled into tight spirals.

Before I’d come, I did the private ritual I often do before setting off anywhere: I sent a silent message to the ancestors, telling them of my intention to honour their lands. The practice has always yielded little moments of joyous synchronicity, and the orca sighting felt like one.

One day I walked to the Kaitoke Hot Springs along a track that skirted a wetland, accompanied by a chirpy fantail bird, so named for its gorgeous tail feathers. The local Maori call the springs Wai Te Puia, or waters of healing. With the light streaming through the trees, the warmth of the water and the sense of peace, I felt my fatigue melt away. At night, from the lodge garden, I could see the Milky Way. Eight hundred or so years earlier, those stars had guided the Maori people on their great waka, or migration canoes, from the South Pacific to the Land of the Long White Cloud, or Aotearoa, as they call New Zealand.

In Hokianga, on the North Island, the past felt both far off and very near. Here, I met Merepaea, a guide from the Ngapuhi tribe. In the Waipoua Forest, we wandered past the magnificent, ancient kauri. These towering tree deities had wide girths befitting gods.

When we slowly approached Te Matua Ngahere, the Father of the Forest, my guide began to sing softly. “Such a being demands our respect,” she said. One of the largest and oldest living kauri in the country — it is thought to be more than 2,000 years old, though estimates vary — the tree had a presence like no other I’d encountered.

Later, in Rotorua, a landscape of lakes and bubbling geysers, I visited Ohinemutu, a marae (Maori meeting ground). Here I had my first experience of the hongi, the traditional Maori greeting. Nose to nose, forehead to forehead, the exchange of the breath of life with a young man whose face was covered with tribal tattoos, was initiated with utmost gentleness.

Ohinemutu was also the ancestral home of Wikitoria Oman, a Maori healer I was introduced to. “It’s popular with visiting royalty — even Harry and Meghan have visited,” she said. Later, she took me for a medicine walk to the Okere Falls on the shores of Lake Rotoiti. “The Maori believe that everything has a life essence, or mauri — plants are all brothers and sisters,” she said, as we sniffed and tasted our way through the bush.

When I left Aotearoa, I felt exhilarated, my own beliefs in a sentient Earth affirmed by those I’d met. I was now crystal clear in the knowledge that honouring these ancient ways of seeing and perceiving are a way of deepening our connection to life — all life — and no one was going to tell me otherwise.

Jini Reddy is a Montreal-raised writer