In 1998, I found myself in New Zealand, a world away from coastal Maine where I had been living. Glaciers extending to the road, fjords and mountains and deserts, sandy beaches where I could dig a hole and they would fill with hot water to soak in, thermal activity like Iceland, the Bay of Islands with its green hills, the pancake rocks, the glow worm tunnels, kiwi birds and kakapos, Stewart Island with the surprise of the Aurora Australis, the Otego peninsula with those round boulders, but also with those tiny sapphire blue penguins that are only a foot tall (where did they come from?) and down somewhere near Bluff, the world's 8th largest aluminium smelter where I could take a free tour and walk across a magnetic field that not only made all the nails I was holding in my hands stand up on their metal points, but which probably changed my body forever...