looking to the future

It was a clear October day, and I was sitting in a waffle shop in Queenstown, eyeing the apple cinnamon pastries sitting in front of me. Just down the street, Lake Wakitipu was a dazzling blue in the afternoon sun, and the snow-capped tips of The Remarkable Mountains were reflected in its calm surface. Across the table from me sat a smiling Vic and Raewyn, each digging into their own plate of warm waffles. Vic and Raewyn were in Queenstown, New Zealand’s “adventure capital” on the South Island, with their October Fellowship, and I was travelling through the south with friends. It just so happened that we were all in Queenstown on the same day, and so Vic and Raewyn invited me to lunch and one last bit of Red Carpet bonding time before I would return to Ohio.

“How is Daniel enjoying the tour?” I asked. “Are the girls behaving?” I was referring to calligrapher Daniel Reeve, who joined the all-female October Fellowship for a special Sketching Tour of New Zealand. It was the same Red Carpet tour as usual, except that Daniel gave special tutorials on sketching and calligraphy along the way.

“Oh, I think he’s loving it,” Raewyn said. “He’s having a laugh with the girls.”

“Do you think you’ll do another special tour like this again?” I asked.

“We’d like to,” Raewyn said. “But it all depends on availability of the celebrity.”

“We’re calling him a celebrity now?” Vic chimed in, chuckling. “I’m sure he’ll love that.” Raewyn ignored her husband’s comment.

“What we’re really working on now are plans for ‘The Hobbit,’” she said. “We’ve already got a large number of people signed up for the premiere tour. So we need to start planning it!” I told her to add my name to the list, trying to picture where I might be in three more years when the film would premiere. I decided that wherever I was before or after, I wanted to find myself in New Zealand in December 2011 for another dose of Middle-Earth. Hopefully it wouldn’t be my last.

“What will you do after that?” I asked her once we had cleared our plates. “What comes after ‘The Hobbit?’”

“Oh, we’ll be around,” Vic said, smiling. “The fans will still be wanting to come. Interest spans across the ages, you know, from children right through to people in their 70s.”

“Yes, and no tour is exactly the same,” Raewyn added. “We may get stuck in the snow and have to band together to put snow chains on the van tires one month, we may have dinner with a hobbit the next, and we may have a marriage proposal another month. There’s always something new to see; someone new to meet.”

“We’re flexible,” Vic said, “and we’re always on the lookout for things the fans may want or enjoy.”

“And we have fun too, don’t we?” Raewyn asked, nudging Vic. “We love to get away from home and travel with new people – and sometimes not-so-new – every month. We like discovering little hidden gems in places we thought we knew. That’s the great thing – we’re constantly being surprised by New Zealand, and we want to pass that feeling along to the fans.”

“Sometimes, it’s fun to be a tourist in your own country,” Vic offered.

“Especially when your country doubles as Middle-Earth,” I said.

“Yes,” Vic smiled, that familiar glint in his eye, “that always helps.”