ON HOLIDAY

New Zealand Listener, Volume 1, Issue 8, 18 August 1939, Page 10

ON HOLIDAY

"Get Away From Yourself"

Has anyone ever said to you, " You need to get away"? And you do. You know it. But where and from what? Usually the answer is, " from yourself." I know places in New Zealand where solitude-even in the midst of rare beautycan be wretched, depressing and at last even terrifying. These places need not be far from cities either. A range or two of our hills and no conveyance can isolate you as effectively, in some respects, as a thousand miles of ocean. You long for your "kind." But you can also, and as much as any Garbo, long "to be alone." It was a country woman, and one of the friendliest creatures in the world, who surprised me, and herself, into realisation of it the other day. Her life is busy with simple things in a simple community, woven inextricably into the lives of half a hundred others. She had just returned frgm_ her monthly day jaunt to town, a jaunt I knew meant a lot. I came down the path towards her and took the bundles out of her hands. I said, " Well? Have you had a good day?" She answered, "Yes, marvellous! I didn’t see a soul I knew!" Then we both leaned against the fenceposts and laughed. We both knew so well what that meant and that, once in a while, it was good. She had been jostled in a crowd of human beings to whom she had meant nothing. And so, just for an hour or two, she had escaped herself. She had been no longer a wife, a mother with a hundred responsibilities and urgent duties. She had been just a woman in a crowd, And it was holiday.