Touching Grass in New Zealand

No sane person should travel 34 hours to go for a hike. At least, that’s what I’d been telling myself for the past 20-odd years. The idea of utter isolation hadn’t really appealed to this avowed city rat: I’m a loyal culture traveler. Nor did I relish flying eight hours from London to New York, then 18 hours to Auckland, then on to Christchurch, followed by a two-hour drive to a farm in the middle of nowhere. Never mind that this nowhere was declared to be the Spiritual Center of the Universe by none other than the Dalai Lama. Gazing at images online, I could sort of understand his point: those verdant valleys, those glacial outcroppings, those ice-blue rivers photographed so ethereally that one could be persuaded that Pangaea still existed, undiscovered and undisturbed by the traveling masses or the devastation of climate change. Nevertheless, I insisted, I could find similar landscapes in nearby Canada or Chile or Iceland — and, over the decades, I’d convinced myself that I had.

But it had been a rough fall. Between aging parents and nest-flying children, an intercontinental move and international chaos, I was in a vulnerable place. I viscerally desired to sit on a plane for more than a day with no Wi-Fi, to simply spend a week in what would feel like an escape to unspoiled Earth 2.0. I’d read about Flockhill Lodge, a two-year-old exclusive-use resort on a working sheep station on New Zealand’s South Island, and learned that — thanks to the addition of new villas — rooms were actually available. A windswept hike to a secret waterfall and morning runs in view of literally no one were surely the cure for my existential unease. Sign. Me. Up.

To be candid, I did harbor a few conscientious objections to this Kiwi outpost. What was once a humble sheep station, first established in 1857 and named for the rocks that do, in fact, look like a flock of woolly lambs, was purchased by a group of American centimillionaires in 2010. I imagined them to be the sort of people who were prepping for some version of the apocalypse (Climate? Nuclear? Civil war?). Their 36,000-acre bugout included braided rivers stocked with rare trout; 12,000 sheep; 700 head of cattle; an enviable wine cellar; and a chef recently decamped from Chiswick, Matt Moran’s award-winning vegetable-forward restaurant in Sydney. On a swath of the South Island that’s only a little smaller than Liechtenstein, they’d built a four-bedroom private “homestead” plus seven new villas comprising 14 suites. They left intact a century-old coal mine and the tourist-friendly TranzAlpine Railway, which still runs from Christchurch to Greymouth, on the coast. The hostel that Kiwi backpackers recall as charging $50 a night, however, remains a distant memory.

But but but…these unnamed American robber barons were also doing something we cynical plebes wouldn’t have predicted: sharing. They’ve opened their lair to paying guests and aren’t even charging a king’s ransom for the honor of staying there. For about $1,000 per person per night, up to eight people have the run of the homestead, including all meals and, yes, access to that cellar and that chef. The new villas run about $3,000 per night for two guests, all-inclusive, and while that’s not exactly cheap, it’s actually quite reasonable compared to many similar experiences in Utah or Montana or British Columbia. Their pitched roofs and marble baths and private terraces with gardens looked stunning online, and enhanced this concept of natural isolation I was hoping would soften my world-weary posture. I was willing to give these fictitious Silicon Valley foxymorons the benefit of the doubt.

When I arrived, Andrew Cullen, the lodge manager who comes with an Aman pedigree, alerted me that the villas weren’t quite ready for prime time — fully built but still unfurnished. No worries, mate! He’d hooked me up with a private room in the homestead, which meant I’d have less time to surgically dissect my internal insecurities (unhealthy) and instead join the group of four other guests on daily outings within the expansive property (chicken soup for the soul!). It also turns out I’m not very good at being alone for long stretches; morning coffee by the wood-burning fireplace in the common room and evenings in the Jacuzzi playing spin-the-record with strangers were more my speed than journaling and meditating and stargazing. Guess Andrew knew me better than I knew myself. He’s like that.

It didn’t take long to understand the owners’ desire to preserve this massive plot of land that stretches from from the Broken River ski area to tranquil Lake Pearson and from the frigid Waimakariri River to the rugged Craigieburn Range. They lease the land in the Southern Alps from the nearby University of Canterbury and have managed to deliver to the paying public the first luxury sheep station in two decades in the Land of the Long White Cloud. In exchange for a perpetual lease, the consortium maintains the acreage and allocates five percent of revenue to rewilding the vast valley shaped by glaciers, wind, and rain. Since this land was first inhabited by humans 800 years ago, the valley floor has morphed from a beech forest to mostly grasslands peppered with colorful but invasive species.

Today, farmers Richard and Anna Hill are ripping out the broom and gorse brought over by Scottish settlers and replacing them with native beech, pine, and flowering manuka. They cull deer and rabbit, which land on my plate at the newly opened Sugarloaf restaurant beside pickled fiddlehead fern and other foraged plants I’d never seen on a city menu. Chef Taylor (an award-winning chef who also happens to be Andrew’s son) thinks seasons ahead, pickling and fermenting literally anything the man can get his mitts on. Kombucha jars line the walls of the smoky, sexy, open-plan restaurant and bar. Any aquatic animals served have been spearfished by hand from the island’s West Coast that morning, then driven 80 miles to the station.

I’d envisioned an all-inclusive, tightly scheduled itinerary, with daily guided yoga followed by one-on-one cooking classes, but days were far more laid-back. Instead, Andrew created a bespoke schedule that epitomized slow travel — with a max of eight at the lodge, plus 28 in the villas, he can make this happen any week of the year, for everyone. One morning, I donned waders, marched down to Lake Pearson, and kayaked beneath a sky puffed up with cotton balls. Another day, I hiked to precisely the spot where the Great Battle of Narnia took place (I mean, on film, obviously), then climbed up the biggest rock around as if I was Aslan himself. On still another afternoon, we boarded a Range Rover with Heather Harrington, who minds the animals, to move a flock of sheep from one pasture to another. (I’m rather expert at dog whistles now, thank you very much.) Experience Guide Keith Riley took me and another guest on a tough hike through the Craigieburn Forest Park, switchbacking among the beech trees of the Luge Track. I hauled myself out of bed one dawn to run to a waterfall, though I was too chicken to submerge.

Within a few days, something in me shifted. That cynical city-girl shell was beginning to thaw. Who did I think I was, judging these rich folks who had given me the gift of wilderness and seclusion on a planet I mostly think of as burning to a husk? Why hadn’t I taken the time to escape to nature and literally touch grass instead of just reading about it on my infinite scroll? Who was this person I’d become, who had forgotten the joy of being outside, unconnected, embodying the true definition of freedom? Frankly, I was a little ashamed that I’d written off New Zealand, and painted the ungodly wealthy with such a broad, brutish brush. Some are actual preservationists. These some are, anyway.

It was the sound of my own laughter — shameless, childlike, erupting like a long-dormant volcano from deep within my soul — that permanently altered my vision of New Zealand. I heard it broadcast through my helicopter headset and didn’t even recognize it as my own. Andrew had surprised everyone, the entire kitchen staff included, with an unscheduled helicopter tour of the property. “It will really give you a sense of the scale,” he insisted, but I didn’t need any convincing. The only other time I’d been on a helicopter was into the Grand Canyon about 15 years ago, and I was just as giddy on this liftoff as I had been back then.

Tucked into the shotgun seat, I had unobstructed views of the single-story homestead and its adjacent pools and firepit; of Arthur’s Pass, dusted with snow from the night before; of sheep gaining their footing on the unsteady ground; of the Broken River and the Winding Stream and the Waimakariri River that knit into one milky-blue ribbon before snaking out to the horizon where Flockhill’s borders lie. The pilot guided our little insect onto the highest peak of the property, and out we poured to take photos in knee-high phragmites that rustled in a wind of our own making. My belly ached as I chortled my way back into my seat, alighting into nothing, a sheer plunge to the valley floor below. My stomach dropped, but my spirits floated as we surfed the air pockets and gasped at the boundless, boundless landscape below, beyond, beneath. But mostly, I giggled.

Still high from my flight, I rose early the next morning to find the hidden path Keith had told me about, the one that passes the newly planted pines that kiss the shores of Lake Pearson. An impromptu river had sprung up overnight and blocked my way, so I stripped off my shoes and waded into the current. It was crisp, my toes were tingly. I looked up to the scree and the sky and spun around like Maria in The Sound of Music. I joke to close friends that the least likely phrase to come out of my mouth is “I was wrong.” (I mean, they know this, but still.) But I was alone, so screw it, here we go: I was wrong! Massive ranges of wilderness are worth saving, even by secretive one-percenters. Barefoot solo mornings on far-flung islands are antidotes for the daily toxicity of modern living. Waterfalls and double rainbows and fresh sprinkles of snow and spear-caught trout and dancing with strangers beneath a waning gibbous moon by some obscenely indulgent Jacuzzi can make the world feel big and small and wondrous and known all at the same time.

I recognize that an experience like Flockhill is not available to everyone, but the feeling is, it really is. And now that I’ve immersed myself in it, I’m pretty sure I can conjure it again. On my last day, my jaded rock of a heart finally melted like molten lava as I snuggled an orphaned lamb, born only three weeks prior, her flailing hooves slackening while I rubbed her vulnerable little belly. “I know you,” I said to my newfound soulmate. She looked me right in the eyes as if she knew me, too.

Getting There Air New Zealand recently introduced nonstop flights from JFK to Auckland. After that 18-hour journey, travelers connect to Christchurch, which is about a 90-minute flight. Flockhill Lodge staff members pick guests up for the 90-minute drive to the station.

The Lodge A total buyout of the homestead starts at around $18,000 per night for up to eight guests, including all meals and beverages, car transfers, and a handful of activities, such as farm tours. The villas start at $3,000 per night for two guests, with all the same perks except for the private chef (who services the homestead only).

Heidi Mitchell is a freelance journalist covering trends, travel, technology, and interesting people, places, and things for the Wall Street Journal, Travel + Leisure, Vogue, the New York Times, Time, and other publications. A native New Yorker, Mitchell is presently based in London, where she is living out her fantasy of living in a Brutalist masterpiece.