After two weeks' helping with research on dolphins and seabirds in the relative isolation of the Marlborough Sounds I returned to Nelson, then Palmerston North and at last to the Pohangina Valley to find that little had changed—except me.  On my way home I stopped at the Countdown in Palmerston North, where I walked the aisles and found it an effort to think about things like "where's the jam?" or "what sort of bread should I buy?" and "do I have any spuds at home?"  The worst was the moment of mild terror when I whipped out my credit card and realised that after a fortnight of not spending anything, I couldn't recall my PIN number.  Fortunately, years of habit kicked in, and the lapse of memory proved only momentary.  But the odd feeling persisted.  I felt strangely dislocated, as if I were jet lagged.  Actually, it was more likely to have been car lag, but you'll get the idea.  My own kitchen seemed slightly unfamiliar—instead of automatically opening the cutlery drawer I had to pause to remember where it was.  I picked up the jug to make a brew and began filling it through the spout instead of opening the top; I powered up the computer and looked in horror at the password prompt.

By the afternoon of the next day, the dislocation or lag had relocated or caught up.  Perhaps it was because I'd become absorbed in trying to work out why I couldn't transfer 4 CDs' worth of photos to the hard drive, and after deciding that the DVD drive was knackered, I'd hurriedly taken it in to be replaced.  Picking up a couple of photos from the framing shop helped, too.  The assistant brought them out and put them on the counter. 
   "Is this yours?" she asked, pointing to the photo of Te Awaoteatua Stream.
   "Yes," I said.
   "It's gorgeous," she said, thereby replacing any remaining sense of dislocation in my head with an excess of egotism.  She began wrapping the photo, presumably so I could enjoy unwrapping it when I got home.
   "Are you an environmentalist?" she asked. How do you respond to a question like that?

So, what caused that odd sense of being somewhere else, of being simultaneously at French Pass and Pohangina, and maybe other places as well?  The main reason, I think, is because I learned so much and it takes time to assimilate that new knowledge; during the assimilation your brain has not only to process the new knowledge but it must deal with what's happening now—decisions about jam, bread and potatoes; stuffed computers and whether you like the tag "environmentalist".  Eventually, you grow.  I know so much more now—"know" in the broad, vague sense.  I know what it's like to sit in a gently swaying boat on a fluid, reflective sea, listening through hydrophones to the life and sounds beneath me.  I know what it's like to race over chaotic water, the sea boiling up and pouring outwards, mounded up by immense subsurface pressure; to speed past and stare into a deep, empty hole surrounded by whirling, sucking sea—the stuff of nightmares.  Water as smooth as oil meeting foaming, churning water in a distinct line and disappearing the way continents slide under and over each other: the two contrasting surfaces at different levels.  I know what king shags [1] look like; a tiny bit about how they act; how wary and apprehensive they are; the fact that there are only about 500 still surviving and they're found nowhere but in the Marlborough Sounds.  I know the colour of light reflected from the ocean as pastel orange and pink fades from the clouds at dusk; the way the headlands stretch and taper until finally there's nothing but sea, sky, clouds...  The silhouettes of small, upright islands on the horizon, almost as distant as memories of things that might have been...

This is knowledge you can't articulate, only describe.  Inadequately.  To ask what these things mean is to miss not just the point, but the plane of knowledge, the sphere of understanding; what you utter, when you see these things, is no more than an expression of emotion—and it needs to be no more than that.

But the most profound response is silence.

...

Looking down from Clayface Point, we watched a pied shag [2] struggle with and finally swallow a leatherjacket.  Afterwards, it ruffled the sea through its feathers, shaking a spray of sparkling drops before taking flight. Earlier, we'd watched hundreds of fluttering shearwaters [3] fishing with the dusky dolphins [4], interspersed with white-fronted terns.  Gannets [5] cruised and circled Admiralty Bay; occasionally one would jink, partly fold its wings and plummet into the ocean.  For a long time afterwards you could see the column of foaming bubbles, white in the grey-blue sea.  Cloud shadows drifted across brown, chiaroscuroed hills; the shadow of the wind moved across the water as fast-moving, wrinkled shapes on an otherwise shining sea.  If there were no dolphins here, what would this place feel like?  If there were no dolphins, what would this world be?  Can you miss what you've never known?  I think you can.  But I also wonder—perhaps, you can't truly know what you've never missed.