Over time and over my travels, I’ve had people ask me the question: what is the most beautiful place that you’ve been to?
Now that I have been to a few places (not many, and I’m sure my list is not nearly as extensive as others, but I have been to a few more places than I had been to when I started), I have to say the place I’ve enjoyed the most, the place I’ve gotten the most peace from, has been New Zealand.
I can’t explain it. Even as a small child—maybe 10, 11, or 12—I was always drawn towards New Zealand and Australia. I had no idea anything about them. I didn’t know anyone from there. I just knew there was a pull I couldn’t explain.
This past year, when the opportunity arose for me to travel and housesit, the last thing on my radar was either of those places. I had opportunities that came up that I truly thought I was going to be selected for—Italy, France, Costa Rica, Greece—but for whatever reason, they didn’t work out. I was ready to put it all to the side for the summer.
In fact, I was on my way to the Great Lakes and Ontario with my freshly purchased inflatable kayak when I got a text from a woman I had reached out to two months earlier and had completely forgotten about. She asked, “Are you still interested in coming to Australia?”
I said, “Why yes, yes I am.”
Within two days I had my visa. Within four days I had my airline ticket. Less than a month later, I was sitting at her mother’s kitchen table having coffee. That was the beginning of something I never planned—totally unexpected, totally unplanned.
Australia became the unexpected doorway. I’ll share more of that story in its own chapter, because it deserves its own space. But it was there that something in me started to shift again—quietly, without me fully understanding it at the time.
From there, New Zealand came into focus.
I arranged house sits across both islands for eight months, and now here I am—moving through places like Christchurch, New Plymouth, Napier, Queenstown, and beyond. Staying in homes through pet sitting, anchoring for a time, then moving again when it feels right. I even bought a van here so I could move with more freedom and stay closer to the land itself.
And somewhere in all of that, something started to open back up in me.
So many of my dreams as a younger person came and went—some remembered, some forgotten entirely, tucked away for years, sometimes decades. I didn’t realize how much of that was still inside me until I started moving again.
Now I find myself walking trails, stopping to swim where I want, standing in water so clear it feels almost unreal, and realizing I am holding back tears that are not sadness exactly—but something closer to recognition.
New Zealand has given me more than beauty. It has given me space.
Space to breathe. Space to remember. Space to let things fall away that I didn’t realize I was still carrying—loss, disappointment, health fears, financial pressure, heartbreak, and long-held weight I had simply learned to live with.
The deeper I go into this place, the more I realize something simple and hard to explain:
It feels like my soul is remembering.
Not in a dramatic way. More like something returning to its original shape.
And I am so grateful to be remembering who I am, and what brings me the ability to live “in joy.”
I’ve seen many beautiful places—Alaska, Mexico, Costa Rica, Nova Scotia, both sides of Niagara Falls, Toronto, Ireland, the Canadian Rockies, the major national parks across the United States, both the Eastern Seaboard and the Pacific Coast Highway—but none has resonated with me like this.
Not just the landscape. Not just the travel.
It’s the people. The kindness. The culture. The authenticity of how life is lived here.
And when someone asks me now where the most beautiful place I’ve been is, I can finally say with confidence: New Zealand is the most beautiful place I have yet to experience.
And I’m realizing it’s not about where I’ve been—but where I’m going next, with the next RightTurn.
