We packed up and did some lazy morning stuff. We watched the video I took from the camcorder. We used up rolls of film by taking pictures of each other. We demonstrated to Brunnen-G what a real-life pigpile was and took a picture of that.

Lunch was Sbarro's, at the airport. Puck showed up a while later, and he said, "You better leave this time." During our goodbyes, though, he wished us well and welcomed us back for a future trip someday, whenever, ifever. "We'll have to do the South Island next time."

Darleen's last bird was a House Sparrow. Too bad it couldn't have been more interesting -- we have those here -- but it was INSIDE the airport, hopping around and eating crumbs.

Hugs went all around, and then we walked down the hallway into the gate, rounded a corner, and were gone.

The gate area, though, is a floor down from the level we were just on, and Brunnen-G and Puck could look down from a mezzanine and wave goodbye through the glass. So when we had filed through, we turned around and looked up and waved and forced smiles for each other's sake.

I've been to a number of places in the world. I've camped on the shores of remote Maine lakes, surrounded by tree-coated mountains. I learned to ski in the majestic Alps of Austria. I've been to the bonnie highlands of Scotland. Beauty is incomparable. It's a mistake to compare one beautiful place with another with a dispassionate ranking. Beauty isn't linear. There is a character to these beautiful places that is trivialized if it's assigned a number.

So let me say this. New Zealand is a place that, no matter where we went within it, no matter what we were doing at the time, has this profoundly inspiring, captivating emotional impact. For not one moment while we were there -- whether we were walking along deserted beaches, driving through mountain rainforests, gazing up at glow worms in otherwise total darkness, or falling asleep to the sound of cicadas and ocean waves -- did I not feel like we were in some sort of heaven on earth.

They tell me South Island is an even more beautiful paradise. I can't imagine how. I'd be afraid I'd lose myself if I went, and more afraid to find myself when I left it. For those two weeks, I had no other life. There were fleeting, elusive memories of this place called New Hampshire, where I had responsibilities, where money mattered, where we had a home. But it felt so very far away, not just in distance but in time as well. Nothing seemed real to me but the unreal things right in front of my eyes. For two weeks, which felt like both less and more, there was neither time nor cause to be anything but a child climbing up rocks, bumping around through caves, and letting the ocean waves rock me to sleep on the bow of the Spirit of Breaker Bay.

Now it's all backwards. Real life is real, and the paradise world 8000 miles away is the dream. The memories are priceless.