Christmas on the island

As a parent, one of the joys of the holidays is recreating for my own children the traditions I enjoyed as a kid. Especially when it comes to Christmas. A cozy decorated tree, a month of playing Christmas music in the kitchen, oodles of cookies like my mom used to make, and cozy evenings spent reading Christmas picture books. It took half of December for me to realise I was going to have to throw a lot of those traditions out in favour of things that make more sense for, well, summertime. Wild rice and ham soup (a family tradition on Christmas Eve) just doesn’t sound that great when it’s 85 degrees with 100% humidity.

Add to this the fact that we don’t have any of our Christmas decorations with us – they’re still en route from California with the rest of our stuff. I decided to make do with what we had around, get crafty, and be creative. We decorated a driftwood tree with branches from around the property, pompoms, and spinifex on top as a star. My mother-in-law helped me find old fabric and coffee sacks to sew stockings for the kids (I used a wool sock for myself). A plant in the yard that had berries on it and doesn’t wilt easily became a makeshift mistletoe in the kitchen. We hung bunting and wreaths made from plants in the garden.

Makeshift mistletoe

I had dreamt of cutting a pine tree at the beginning of December, but when we realised it wouldn’t last more than a week indoors in the heat, we waited until just before Christmas to find one. Pine trees aren’t native here and it’s helpful to remove them. We pulled off the side of the road and chopped a spindly Monterey Pine for ourselves. It was warm despite the summer rain, and the kids splashed (one of them naked) in mud puddles while we loaded the tree on the car. It was nothing like cutting a tree in the snowy Oregon mountains when I was a kid, but we’re making our own traditions. Naked puddle splashing just might have to become one of them.

The food we made was also nothing like what I am used to. It was too hot to bake cookies, though I did manage some delicious brioche cinnamon buns for Christmas brunch and tried my hand at fruit cake. We had ham and potatoes planned for Christmas dinner, but at the last minute decided we couldn’t stand turning on the oven so we made quesadillas and guacamole for dinner.

It’s the season for stone fruit, watermelon, corn, and all those scrumptious summertime things, and our garden was bursting with beans, zucchini, and cucumbers. In the end we embraced these things and it all felt more like a Fourth of July BBQ to me than Christmas. But the warmth of family and good food never fails to elicit that holiday spirit, no matter what the season.

Garden treasures

Our garden is bursting this time of year

After presents and the usual Christmas morning excitement, we headed down to the beach for an afternoon at our favourite little bay. Another family was heading out for a surf together, and others picnicked and swam. The kids ran and splashed while Isaac and I took turns going for swims out in the clear water. The weather was splendid, the sea was warm, and we had slices of cold watermelon to snack on. It was all quite perfect in the end. As I tucked our toddler into bed that night he said, “Mama, I had a wonderful Christmas.” Which is all I really wanted for Christmas anyway.

A trip to the big city, and running out of water right before Christmas

Borders opened recently in New Zealand, and by that I mean domestic borders. In a country the size of California, it’s surprising to people when they hear that for the past four months we couldn’t leave the cities in which we lived. Or in our case, the island on which we live. We jumped at the chance to set foot in Auckland for a few days just before Christmas to visit Santa at the big department store, gawk at decorations, and play at some new playgrounds. Our three-year-old was thrilled, mostly about the Santa part. And Isaac and I were excited to see what it felt like to live an urban life for a few days after being off the grid for the past few months.

Within an hour of setting foot in the concrete jungle, I remembered how stressful parenting two energetic kids can be in a city. Watch out for that, don’t touch that, hold my hand a car is coming! But it was exhilarating to be in the bustle of things, with trucks and people everywhere. Our kids were giggling and running circles around our airbnb the first night. “I do miss the city sometimes,” Isaac and I said to each other as we loaded the dishwasher (!!) and tossed our clothes in the washer and then the dryer (!!).

Our gorgeous Airbnb

We stayed down by the aqueduct, which is a happening nighttime scene, and a calm yachter’s paradise by day. I popped the kids in the stroller and we walked the waterfront to the grocery store – I have missed being able to walk to the supermarket. We stopped for ice cream and explored the park, where other kids ran around and adults exercised. It all felt familiar, like visiting the best parts of a past life for a few days.

But our visit to Santa was overwhelming (the 30 minutes waiting in line didn’t help). It was impossible to find kid-friendly places to eat, so by the last night we had decided to cook for ourselves and sit on the balcony, which faced multiple other apartments and felt a little like a stage. I prayed no one had been looking when our supposedly potty-trained toddler dropped his pants on the balcony’s fake turf grass for a pee. “No, that’s not real grass, you can’t pee on it like at home!” I whisper-yelled as I swept him to the bathroom.

On the day we planned to leave, we were all so exhausted that we called the airline to get on an earlier flight. “I’m ready to go back to the island,” I said to Isaac, who agreed. Before we left, I put all the clothes we’d brought through the hot washer and dryer, making them fluffier than we’re used to now, and we set off for home.

Stepping back into life off the grid felt familiar and relaxing, even if it is so much more work. During the cooler months of the year, power is a problem as our solar panels struggle to get enough sun to keep up. But now that it’s summer, water is the issue. A few days after coming back, I woke up early with our youngest and went to the kitchen to make some tea. The faucet sputtered and dripped, but nothing came out.

Normally when this happens, it means the smaller pressurized tank which flows into our faucets is empty and just needs to be refilled from the massive rainwater collection tank on the property. But this time, even that massive tank was empty. We were really out of water. Isaac jumped in the car with one of the 7 litre jars I use for brewing kombucha and drove down the driveway to the creek to fill it up. “This should get us through the morning,” he said walking in and thunking it down on the counter. Did I mention our life is a little like camping?

It’s not unheard of to run out of water here in the summers. But it’s early for it to be happening. We just haven’t had a good rain in weeks, and there are still baths to be taken, laundry to wash, and a garden to water. Thankfully, we have access to the creek that runs down the valley behind our house. The watershed is big enough that it doesn’t run dry, and any farms or pastures are all downstream. We can run a generator to power a pump from there up to the tank (below).

We spent half a day troubleshooting the old pump when it didn’t work as expected. Isaac walked the line of piping from the house to the creek through the forest to see if there was a leak, which there was. He fixed the pipe and we pumped water up all day. When I turned on the tap and clear water gushed out, I was thrilled. (We should probably filter it but we don’t. No one has gotten sick to date, and Isaac’s family has used this system for decades.)

We aren’t the only ones in this position right now on the island. A big tank truck pulled up at the creek yesterday and pumped full from the bottom of our driveway, filling up to take it to other islanders who had also run dry. Everyone on the island is affected equally by the weather out here, rich or poor. The environment is an equalizer of sorts when you're off the grid.

Getting water ready for bath time

Having the water off all day while we filled the tank meant that there was none in our system for the solar power to heat. So, when bath time came around for our kids, who were salty and sandy from a day at the beach, I put both our tea kettles and some pots of water on the stove to boil. After three rounds of boiling and refilling, I had enough hot water in the tub to call the kids inside for bath time.

On days like this, Isaac and I often comment on how much like camping this is. Infrastructure creates an invisible ease in modern life. The romance of most of this has worn off, if there was any, but for some reason I still wouldn’t trade it for life in an apartment in a busy city. When we want to see Santa or walk to the grocery store, we can always go for a visit.

Happily back on the island

Riding the road less travelled

Try as I might, I just can’t get it to feel like Christmas around here. The air is muggy with summer’s heat and the days are long. We’re making popsicles instead of hot cocoa, and eating salads for dinner because it’s too hot to fire up the stove to bake anything. Besides the white blossoms on the manuka trees that blanket the valleys like snow this time of year, this is as far from a winter wonderland as you can get. I’m just not used to holidays in the Southern Hemisphere.

Manuka blossoms and stick insects – it's truly summer here

Nonetheless, Christmas came early for me when a cheap bike I’d ordered two months ago finally arrived on the island. With our old bikes from San Francisco due to arrive in early 2022 when our container of belongings gets here, I was desperate for some wheels of my own. Minutes after screwing on the pedals and handlebars, I was whizzing down the quiet country road to go meet Isaac and the kids at the cafe. Biking allows one to see things you miss when you’re in a car, like the queen anne’s lace flowering along the road and the blackberries turning to early fruit in the ditches. Insects buzzed, cows stuck to the shade. I crested the hill and looked down the east side of the island at the waves and mountains. It was one of many moments I have here where I pinch myself as I think, “I live here.”

I’ve had a lot of those moments lately. We took the kids camping for the first time this past weekend. Despite the campground being ten minutes drive from our house, the effort was monumental and the kids didn’t sleep well at all (so neither did I). It’s sand fly season and the minuscule buggers bite like nothing else, having evolved to tear into tough bird’s feet before humans arrived on these islands. I’d look over to see blood running down our kids’ legs or arms from bites they had scratched into wounds. But I walked out to the nearby beach in the morning with the kids, where dolphins were leaping and splashing in the distance. They sat on the sand whining, uninterested in the dolphins, while I dove into the clear and unseasonably warm water. For a few moments I floated in the water, delighted, and had that thought – this is where I live. Wow.

We were camping with several other families from the island that we’ve gotten to know in the past few months, and it was exciting to feel like we’re part of the community. There is a uniqueness to each family here, partly because everyone is living life on the road less travelled, so to speak. One family is fixing up a boat so they can move onto it full-time with their four kids. Another family is setting off to go sailing for a year with their 4-year-old, and another grows or forages nearly all their own food. A few families are in the midst of purchasing different plots of land to build off-the-grid homes or shelters, much like us.

Back in San Francisco, I read about families like these who were living unusual lives – digital nomads with kids, families who lived on boats or buses, and parents who built their own odd homes in strange places. Looking around the circle of parents and kids we were camping with, it hit me that I am surrounded by people like that now. And it hit me that we are like that ourselves now.

I’ve had a few moments in my life where I’ve paused and realized that I was exactly who I’d wanted to be. The last time I felt that way was when we were traveling in an RV for six weeks in 2020 with the kids. Riding my new bike down the valley through a summer wonderland this week was another of those moments. We have forged a strange path that is right for us, and I’m who and where I want to be.

That said… if I could magically transport myself to the Northern hemisphere for a week I would, just so I could sip mulled wine beside a cozy fire, bake cookies that wouldn’t melt immediately in the heat, and watch holiday movies featuring weather that felt relatable. So to all of you up there in that colder part of the globe, please do and enjoy all those festive things! Perhaps we’ll do a second Christmas in June here for the solstice, just to get a taste of that coziness I miss. And why not – life is a story to make up as you see fit.

Our driftwood tree covered in pohutukawa branches