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"Tides of Change"  is a quiet, powerful story that navigates the deeply human side of climate change — not through policy or data, but through lived experience, cultural wisdom, and personal transformation. It is a meditation on loss and connection, told through the lens of one person’s journey across oceans, only to realize the Earth’s pain — and resilience — is universal.

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Tides of Change

By Harry Arabian

It was work that brought me to New Zealand—or so I told myself—when the plane touched down in Auckland and a connecting flight carried me south toward a more remote destination. Yet, beneath that practical explanation lay the truth: I had come out of curiosity, and from a sense of responsibility that had grown too insistent to ignore.

In Boston, my life was orderly, my days shaped by the quiet predictability of a tree-lined suburb where the seasons still kept their rhythm, even as storms grew more violent and high tides crept further up the shore. I lived in a modest, hut-shaped home that seemed quaint by urban standards but modern by rural ones—solar panels, filtered air, and climate sensors in every room. Yet the same quiet sense of loss lingered there as it does here, halfway around the world.

The wilderness of New Zealand was humbling. Jagged mountains rose like sleeping gods, and forests exhaled air that felt older than memory. Here, I was a guest in every sense of the word. My temporary dwelling was a single-room hut built with timber and tradition, shared with a Māori family whose connection to this land stretched back for generations. They spoke in calm tones and generous gestures, teaching me more in silence than I could have learned from any textbook.

We ate by firelight, often in quiet, as the ocean whispered nearby, ever-present. They showed me the land: the sacred places now under threat, the graves slowly yielding to the encroaching tides, the native flora failing to bloom in unfamiliar weather. Their stories were woven with both grief and resilience.

I had come to observe, to document the effects of climate change on Indigenous lands and peoples. But soon I understood that I was not simply recording loss—I was witnessing the living memory of the earth, and the fierce love that sustained it.

One elder, Tāne, led me to a cliffside where the sea met the rocks in a relentless rhythm. “When the water rises,” he said, “it does not ask who you are, or where you are from. It simply comes.”

His words stayed with me. He was right—the rising water was indifferent to borders or distance. In Boston, I had watched neighbors raise their home foundations, dispute claims with insurance companies, and speculate about what the shoreline would look like in a decade. Here, the questions were older, deeper—not only about houses, but about identity, ancestry, and belonging.

One night, as the wind howled through the trees and rain drummed against the roof, I lay awake thinking of both places—the hut in Boston, the hut here—and how each stood on borrowed time. Yet in the morning, we gathered again, shared tea, repaired fishing nets, and retold stories.

The world is vast, but its pain is shared.

When I returned home, nothing appeared different. Yet everything had changed. Now, when I watched the tides inch higher, I saw not only Boston’s struggle but also New Zealand’s—and that of every coastal community between. I carried with me not just data and notes, but the memory of firelit evenings, weathered hands passing down wisdom, and a sea that connects us all.

We live far apart, yet the cause we face is the same.

And the tide is rising.