Clipped Wings

Jonathan Blake has lost who he is and has forgotten what happiness feels like so in an effort to find himself again he decides to take some time off and travel around New Zealand to go bird watching. This trip gives him a chance to relive the passion he had as a kid for nature and rekindle his love for wildlife but it also gives him the time and solitude he needs to battle his own internal demons and figure out how his life has got to this point. While on this introspective journey, out in the forest of Fiordland, he finds something unexpected and turns to the locals for guidance but can only find one other person, a teenager named Arana, to give him reassurance that what Jonathan found out in the forest was real and was in fact the extinct moa bird. Jonathan decides to spend the rest of his time in Fiordland to find this bird again and capture it in a photograph as he has not felt this alive in a long time and he welcomes the distraction from his thoughts. He soon realises that his stay in Fiordland isn’t about him finding the moa but is about him finding himself and through many internal revelations, flashbacks to the past and phone calls with his wife Sarah, the moa has come to represent the things he has been looking for and after finally getting that shot he has been wanting he is ready to stop putting the blame on others and finally takes responsibility for his life. Jonathan ends up going back home but he chooses not to share the experience he had with the moa to his wife. He instead focuses on the things he already has and to be more content with that.