Catlins, Part 1 & 2, and the Last Couple Days on the Farm

Catlins, Part 1

Ron and Gay tell Simon and I that they have to go to Queenstown for the day, and that instead of leaving us on our own on the farm, they’ve arranged for us to spend the day counting penguins, instead. I tell her that this sounds utterly fantastic, and yes, I will count as many penguins as I can, but that somewhere above fifty I tend to skip to “a lot” and then above that is “a billion,” so she may not want to rely on my math skills. She tells me this probably won’t be a problem.

                Gay tells me this on my very first day, the day she took me to the rubbish heap turned park with John and Rusty, the dog.  One of the women on the hike with us, Chris, is actually the woman who will be part of this penguin counting venture.  Chris tells me to wear layers, as it can get quite cold just sitting there, on the beach, in the wind. I tell her I brought long johns with me. She nods, but in hindsight I’m not sure if the word “long johns” translates to kiwi.

                And in any case it doesn’t matter because I didn’t pack any long johns.

                But that doesn’t matter either because I didn’t need them; the day was warm.

                We get up early. That’s a problem because I don’t like early mornings. But I sleep in the car, so ok. We’re shuttled an hour’s drive over to an area of south New Zealand called The Catlins, which basically means:

                 “HERE IS NEW ZEALAND RAINFOREST RIGHT ALONG THE COAST WHERE THERE ARE LOTS OF WATERFALLS AND OTHER COOL THINGS; YOU SHOULD ALL COME BUT MAYBE NOT A LOT OF YOU ALL AT ONCE.”

                Also there are sheep farms. There are always sheep farms.

                In our car are two people who I don’t have a lot of contact with, Sammy and Gordon, and one person I DO have a lot of contact with, Geoff. Geoff is great. Geoff is British, first of all, and has been in NZ for maybe six years now. He works in IT services for a hospital. He says it’s the job he’s always deserved. Good for Geoff. I don’t know much about IT services for hospitals, and I don’t ask him too many questions about it.

                I DO ask him a lot of questions about plants, because Geoff knows a lot about NZ plants. He and I go traipsing off immediately to set up to go count penguins, and he starts telling me all about the flora of New Zealand. This is how it goes.

                “Ah, and this is Flax, a very handy plant, Flax...a thousand different uses for it, the settlers used it for thread and—“ at this point Geoff turns around and because of the brush and bramble I can’t hear a word he’s saying. I follow behind him, catching every third word. I keep up, happy that I’ve got the name of the plant, at least.

                He turns back around.  “Ah, and this is Fuschia, a very neat shrub type plant, one of New Zealand’s only deciduous trees.” Then he moves on.

                “WAIT. STOP.”

                Geoff turns around.

                “You can’t just do that. You can’t just say, ‘this is the only deciduous tree,’ you can’t just drop a bomb on me like that and walk away. Explain. Why. How.”

                “Well, I don’t really know, I guess, except that it depends on energy expenditures, and how much work the plant is doing—” He continues on in that vein. 

                But really, after several weeks spent here, and after talking to several other people (not that I doubted Geoff, of course), most of the island is covered in pines or in other types of evergreens. Even the trees called “Beeches” are evergreens.  The island separated from the super continent and evolved into an evergreen dominant environment.  

                Anyway, Geoff and I are walking down the path, Geoff in front, talking (probably about evergreens versus deciduous trees), when Geoff suddenly stops. He gestures in front of him. I’m still talking. He gestures again and I see a little green butt. A little green wiggling butt. I walk further and I realize.

                Oh. It’s a penguin. That’s a penguin whose nest is probably not far from where we are, heard the noise, and came up to see what the commotion was about. And now we are standing three feet away from a yellow eyed penguin. The same ones we are here to count. Wild animal penguin.

                I get out my camera. The penguin is just standing there. I can see it’s (now apparently more blackish than green—it looked green under the light of the leaves) tail feathers and feet just ahead of me. I turn my camera on, which cheerfully shouts, “HELLO! I AM HERE AWAKE AND HAPPY TO SEE YOU!” with a sprinkle of fairy dust and a whirl of excited motors. The Penguin moves a couple steps. I think, “I can only see its butt,” so I try to crouch down.

                Then the penguin is gone.

Geoff was not so keen to pose for this photo. 

                Geoff takes me along the path to our designated Penguin counting spot. It’s basically just a hill looking at another hill, and our spot is a little crevice in between the brush where humans can see out but hopefully not be seen. It’s not steep enough to fall off of, but it’s too steep to be comfortable.

                Geoff has brought his latest Terry Pratchett novel, so once he’s explained what to do in the event of a penguin sighting (mark down the time, where the penguin came from and went to, what the penguin did, whether it was an adult or juvenile, etc) and once he’s given me the low down on all the plants in our immediate vicinity (fern bush bush fern bush), he starts reading Terry Pratchett, looking up every twenty seconds or so, and I start drawing.

                He spots the only penguin we see that morning, coming out of the sea and up the creek. It’s so far away that I have no idea how he saw it. It shoots up out of the creek, spreads its wings on the rock to air dry, stays there for maybe ten minutes, and then waddles up into the brush.

                Then it’s gone.

               

                Around mid day Simon comes looking for me because I’ve got our lunches. We have a very exciting time divvying up of lunch materials (“do you want this?” “no, you have that,” “you sure?” “positive,” “Well, fine, then have the orange,” “if you insist,” “Wow, she bought us chocolates,” “are they any good?” “have one,” “mm, they’ve got coconut,” “oh, do you want more of those?” “I’ll have a couple extra, sure”), which makes me feel like part of a team, somehow, like we’re on an expedition, or like we’re a group, like we’re sharing on purpose and not just because Gay gave me all the lunch materials. It’s a nice feeling, and somehow I could have stayed, divvying up lunch, all day.

                After that Geoff and I go to the other lookout penguin watching point, and other group members take over our spot. This new lookout point is windier, and colder, than the other one, and Geoff somehow moves off to shepherd antsy youngsters back and forth from a waterfall site, and then goes back to our original spot, while I stay at the new place. 

second lookout point

                Simon is here, too, but he’s growing tired of just looking out to sea without seeing anything. Also he’s tired of sitting still. Simon is a mover. He’s a mover (not, probably, a shaker, but definitely a mover!) And I can understand. At our old spot there was a clear spot to look—there was one embankment the penguins would run up. But at this new spot I’m not exactly sure where to look for the penguins. Someone tells me where to look for the penguins, and they point at it, too, but there’s a lot of stuff happening in the general direction of their finger, rocks and sea and more rocks and lots of plateaus—so I am probably looking in the wrong area. And also I forget to actually look for penguins and am just content to look at the sea. I am content to look at how the seaweed is moving, at how the waves are breaking, at how the shadows are deeper here versus there. I’m trying to draw it, too.

                I’m trying to draw it and it’s not working out so well, the picture is a little skewed, it’s too long in one part and doesn’t capture the basin or cove quality of the whole area. “Oh, well, I’ll just like, fudge it a little. The distance isn’t right but I’ll fill in the cove of rocks down here, the sort of curve of boulders and rocks down this way. Ah yes. That’s looking much better. See, that’s a whole picture. That’s a whole, nice, basin/cove picture. That’s a wet, slimy back that’s moving in the rocks. That’s a—what? Oh my god.”

                “IT’S A PENGUIN!”

                That’s what I shouted out loud.

                It was a young, juvenile penguin, just coming out of the bushes and walking down the rocks below where we were positioned, hopping from rock to rock, taking its time, not rushing, just meandering. Some of the other people we were with decided that it was the same juvenile they’d seen earlier, so they weren’t going to count it.

                CURSE YE GODS, IT’S A PENGUIN, IT SHOULD BE COUNTED.

                Simon spends a great deal of time lining up his camera with the binoculars and taking pictures through both lenses, because his zoom is crappy. My zoom is crappy too. It’s pretty funny, watching him line up the binoculars, but it works out all right; he manages.

                We didn’t see any more penguins after that. At my old spot apparently they saw one more penguin and a seal (!)

                On the car ride back, before I fall asleep, Geoff gives me several more plants to put in my journal and to take pictures of. This is a good thing, and I stop the car several times to rush out. I’m very excited, and Geoff says things like, “There’s a whole world of botany out there,” which makes me very happy, because the things Geoff says I recognize from my various biology and botany classes from undergrad—like evergreens and deciduous trees spending their energy differently, which I actually wrote a paper on, but the details escape me, something about evergreens spending a little energy throughout the year and deciduous trees spending it all at once, etc—and so even though these plants are completely foreign, I feel competent because I recognize the basic principles, the basic language.

                 Simon, later, is going through my SD card and says, “plant, plant, plant, plant, flower, flower, plant. Your pictures are all plants. “

                And I say, “Oh well, —oh no, there. There’s one penguin. I’ve got one penguin in there.”

                He sort of side glances me. “Yes. One penguin. How nice. Plant, plant, plant, plant—”

                Where’s Geoff when you need him.

Catlins, part 2.

Ron and Gay announce that the day after the Penultimate shearing we’ll all go on a drive to the Catlins. Simon and I have been to the Catlins before, but we only went to a small part of it, so now we’re going to get the full tour. The Catlins is a rainforest, filled with ferns and mosses and lichens and waterfalls. It ends up looking very prehistoric and lush—you’re pretty sure a triceratops is going to lumber out from behind one of these trees one of these times, and you won’t be surprised at all, you’ll just snap a picture.

                I have a headache because I’m so exhausted from the day before, the penultimate shearing. I’m drained, dehydrated and exhausted, so I spend the day straggling along behind everyone else, taking pictures of trees and plants while Simon bounds along ahead, along with Ron and Gay.

                We visit the ocean first, but unlike trips with my family, we only stay at the ocean for approximately five seconds (during which time I manage to get fully drenched up to my mid thigh, never fear!).  Then we’re back on the grass, near the car, having lunch. We discuss New Zealand traditions during desert, including the infamous “Hokey Pokey,” a type of candy that is made from—they can’t explain it. Ron starts to get into the technical details, like, first they take the machine and they heat it up to so many degrees Celsius—and I wave him on. That does me no good. They tell me it tastes like toffee, but isn’t. Well, great. They tell me it’s a New Zealand specialty and that it’s uniquely New Zealand made.

                “It’s candy?”

                “Yes,” Gay says, “Candy.”

                I resolve to find this infamous candy and bring it home by the pound.

                Then we’re back in the car (eating toast and apricots) on our way to one of several waterfalls that are on our agenda for the day. We’ve been eating preserved apricots every morning for breakfast, with our porridge or our wheaties; we’ve been eating preserved apricots sometimes with dessert—with ice cream and tapioca, and now apricot season is right around the corner and Grandy (Ron’s father) gave him a box of ripe apricots for Christmas. I think I will always associate apricots with the sheep farm.

                On our walks, Gay points at plants over and over again. “This is Miro,” “This is Kahakitea, our white pine,” and “Ah, you’ll know this, Corrie, we have this on the farm, Manuka. See the white flowers?” “These are all part of the Podocarp family.”

                I take pictures of all of them. These references, again and again, are invaluable. When I go to Fiordlands, when I go on my kayaking trip, I’ll see these same trees, these same plants, and I’ll know them all because of Gay.

                One of the walks we go on has interactive features—not just  names of plants--lichens, mosses, trees, as well as cycles of swamps and lakes, but also bars you can swing on, or ropes you hold onto while you close your eyes and walk through, experiencing the forest with your other senses. There are paths you crawl on, or sections with “unnatural objects” to find, hidden in the bracken, to test your observation skills: a pot, a spoon, an outlet—things that blend in just enough to be difficult. None of these things, the rope, the swinging bars, or the unnatural objects are overly colorful or oriented towards children, either.  In America this type of nature walk would be accompanied by signs with bright circus animals and worded for a three year old. “Can YOU find the HIDDEN OBJECTS? Use your EYES!” Instead, adults are asked to let loose just a little, and children are asked to be a little more responsible.

                Simon likes this type of walk, and so do I.

                On our drives in between waterfalls everyone in the car sings the national anthem of their country. This starts because someone (not me) starts singing the star spangled banner, and then I continue singing it, but I get stuck half way through, so I go back to the beginning, at which point I start forgetting every other verse or so. “Oh say can you see!  Through the dawn’s early light! What so proudly we hail something...The twilight’s last gleaming! Whose bright stripes and bright stars! Through the perilous night! What so Proudly we hail—something something something something! And the rockets’ red glare! The twilights last gleaming! Whose broad stripes—wait, hold on. What so proudly we hail—what so proudly we hail the mail? Something something something AND THE HOME OF THE BRAAAAVE.”

                Simon is not jumbled about the German national anthem at all, of course. Ron IS jumbled about the New Zealand national anthem, but he’s got Gay in the car singing with him, and she’s not jumbled, so she saves him.

                Gay and Ron also know the British national anthem. Simon knows the French and Italien national anthem. I attempt to sing the Canadian  national anthem, but I can’t get the tune right, and the problem is that you have to start the song off right from the get go for that one, or you’ll be wrong the whole way.

                American Fail.

                This starts off some sort of singing escapade—or maybe we had been singing all along. In any case, on another car ride, we all spontaneously burst into snippets of songs about “home.” We start with “Home on the Range” but we soon get into “Take me Home, Country Roads,” and then get into “Sweet Home, Alabama,” and then, “House of the Rising Sun,” makes an appearance (Sarah & Pat Burke & Megan White, I almost started laughing for you, but I reigned myself in), and then, “Our House,” comes in, but there are TWO “our house” songs by different artists.  I start singing Crosby, Stills & Nash, “Our House, is a very very very nice house, with two cats in the yard, life used to be so hard, now everything is easy cause of you,” but Simon is dead set on “Our House, doo doo doo in the middle of the street, Our House, dum dum dum—”  well, I don’t know the rest. Anyway. Things don’t end well in paradise, and Gay calls a halt to the festivities because my favorite song and Simon’s favorite song are bashing heads.  

                In the afternoon we go on the “Confidence Course,” which is a tame version of those summer camp high ropes courses they put us on when we were ten and had us strapped in with carabeaners and other safety measures, except this time there are no safety measures.  Simon flies through; I am a little more cautious. I am mostly worried about the high up things where you hang onto one wire while you shuffle along another wire. I take one look at that and say, “Oh, you know what, I’m sorry—I’ll wait for you on the other side.”

                But there are other things. Balance beams that wobble and fireman’s poles and rope ladders and things that are generally put there for people like Simon, who take the opportunity to not only do whatever is put in front of them, but then climb the up rope too, and swing on it, and then land in the tree, shimmy down, and then say, “well, that was not so hard,” as they rearrange whatever clothing has been torn asunder or ripped off from their journey.

                My head is really thumping by this point, I am not doing so well, so I make it through with minimal effort expended. It’s not a pretty picture. At the end there’s a chance to swing on a rope and land in a giant rope netting, and all I can think of is the giant rope swing over Beaver Dam (a quarry in Baltimore, and probably a 100 foot drop) and how terrified I was of that. I see the possibility of being jarred in the head as I drop from even a small distance, and I politely decline.  Gay does the rope swing and makes a terrible mess of it; she looks like she should have broken several bones. I make many jokes about my sister’s travel insurance money, and repatriation, etc. I think the rest of everyone is a little bemused by my non-participation. I haven’t told them about the headache because it is a small thing.

                We wind up the day looking for dinner.  Ron and Gay intend to go to a small cafe near “Niagara Falls, NZ,” which has hard wood floors and looks really classy. It is the only cafe around and is basically an old school house in the middle of a sheep paddock, but the last time I did a thorough showering was BEFORE the penultimate day of shearing, so we step into the cafe restaurant and I panic almost instantaneously. Also, I haven’t been off the farm in three weeks.  I hiss, very loudly, “THIS PLACE IS FANCY, ARE YOU SURE WE SHOULD GO HERE?” but they are all full and we can’t go there anyway. So be it. Fate/God/The world understands me.   Instead, we end up going to a campground and getting frozen meat pies that they heat up in the microwave. Much better. Plus, cheaper.

                We wait for our meat pies, and Gay says, “Oh, we should get ice cream!”

                I think, “Oh, ice cream. Not my favorite. I don’t even know what flavor I would get. I probably shouldn’t get anything.”

                I stare at the words on the board, the flavors they offer, for a while, not even seeing them.

                And then the words form into possibilities. Boysenberry. Dutch Chocolate. Meh.

                And then two other words form in my very tired brain. I am so surprised and excited that I shout, “HOKEY POKEY!” into the dead silent and yet very full campground convenience shop.

                Everyone looks at me.  

                I turn to Ron and Gay. “Hey,” I say, “They have Hokey Pokey.”

                Gay says, “I guess that’s what you’re getting.”

                And I think, “well, I hadn’t really made up my mind,” but somehow everyone is amused, and I feel like maybe this might be my one opportunity, and I should probably go with it.

                It turns out, curious onlooker, that hokey pokey is like honey that’s been put into a small ball that’s hard on the outside and gooey on the inside. Boom. That’s what hokey pokey is. You have just been educated.       

                When I tell this to Ron he says, “Do you want to go back and tell the whole store?”

                So begins several days of Hokey Pokey jokes.

view from the campsite pie and ice cream shop

                Simon really loves saying, “Hokey Pokey: that was really legendary—what else was legendary—Oh! When we were at The Hobbit, in the previews, and she says, ‘I am not going to that.’ Really Loudly! So Loud! Really Loud; it was so loud. And ok, sure, after that preview I was thinking, ‘ok, bull-shit,’ but I did not say it! Those women next to us were like ‘Oh My Got!’ they were horrified. They were! You didn’t see them! They were. Horrified.”  He goes on and on about how I made faces and gestures and talked through the whole movie. What else was I supposed to do, I ask you. The previews are the least of anyone’s worries. The previews are THERE to be judged. That’s the POINT of previews. And the movie is THERE so that you can throw yourself into it! Just because the one we went to wasn’t 3D because the only screen they had with 3D capabilities was playing Wreck It Ralph for the evening toddler crowd doesn’t mean you can sit back and relax. NO. I was just as invested as EVER. He’s the one who kept smacking ME. I’M the one who should be COMPLAINING.

                Ron generally takes this moment to shout, “HOKEY POKEY!” He does it in a Kiwi accent.

                So we eat dinner of microwaved meat pies, and desert of ice cream cones, while looking out to a cove and beach where we could just see hector’s dolphins playing in the surf. Not too many, because it’s cloudy and cold. I generally prefer that kind of dinner to a fancy cafe anyway.  

                And then afterwards we drive a little ways down to the Petrified Forest that that is now just rock that leads down to the ocean, and is also the nesting ground of seven pairs of yellow eyed penguins. When we get there a crowd of people are clustered ten meters around one penguin who has her wings out, head back, clearly just come back from a day in the ocean, drying out. Simon and I rush down the beach, but neither of our cameras can zoom even ten meters successfully. Ron’s camera, though, Ron’s camera has a brilliant zoom.

                After the female dries off, she waddles up the beach, and makes a series of chirps and whistles. The male comes out of the bushes to greet her. When he comes out he flings his head back at her in a lovely arched position. She ignores him, and keeps hopping up the beach towards the bushes, clearly exhausted. He’s talking and chatting, filling her in on everything that’s happened, and she, after spending the day fishing and gathering food for the babies, is ready to collapse. Eventually he hops after her and they both go into the bushes, trilling all the way.

                By this point it’s started to rain, so we head back to the car. We have one more stop, a lighthouse, to see. Apparently, 131 people died off the coast in the late 1800’s. The ship stalled out and shored up on a reef off the coast.  They sent a boat to DunEEdin for help, but it became evident that rescue would be several days away. The seas were calm and they could have gotten everyone off the boat then, but they chose to wait for rescue. A couple days later the seas got rougher and it became evident that the boat would break up in the rougher waves. They sent everyone out in the boats, but lost almost half the passengers on the way into shore.

                The way down to the beach is steep, and I have my camera bag half open so I’m thinking about that and not about my footing. Inevitably I slip, fall sideways, bang my thigh on a rock, and my camera gets intermingled with sand. It’s not a devastating blow—nothing breaks, and the sand doesn’t get inside the camera, but it doesn’t help anything.

                On the beach we see two sea lions sleeping. They are very asleep.

                I also collect lots of rocks.

               

                I collect rocks at every beach or lagoon we go to. Gay takes Simon and I to Waituna Lagoon a couple days later, to further our education of the area, and there are stones there that I pick through and find the best ones. Simon and Gay skip rocks across the water while I look for stones, while I watch. I film them, trying to capture their banter, their movements. Simon says, “What a boring film. Are you filming us? Why would you do that? So boring.”  I don’t answer.

                I don’t really think he understands. I catch his eyes—sort of a stony blue against his very tan skin. Sometimes I can read him and other times he’s a brick wall I can’t figure out in the slightest. I think he thinks of me the same way; when I introduce everyone to the word “discombobulate” over dinner he says, “so that describes you?” and I am tempted to say, “No, Simon, that describes the appearance of me—I’m clearly a very put together person to do the things I do in the manner in which I do them,” but I let it slide. Instead, on the night that I introduce everyone to the word, “discombobulate,” I let them open up their ancient ass dictionary (which miraculously has the words “id” and “yoga” in it, but doesn’t have “happenstance,” “jalopy” or “discombobulate”), let them pour through it, and announce, like I knew they would, that the word isn’t in there and therefore not part of their official lexicon. 

          And when they pull out Rummikens, that numbers game which makes my brain hurt because the numbers just won’t work for me, I groan and complain, and then they groan and complain about how good I am at Quiddler, a word game where you use letter cards to make words (much like bananagrams), and then Gay brings dessert out—tapioca pudding tonight, homemade, from scratch, with ice cream, and it doesn’t taste like those stupid little yogurt tubs you get at the store, so I eat it and enjoy it—and Ron and Simon eat giant bowls of it and then have toast afterwards, and then Simon brings out his SD card and puts it into the TV and he has pictures from our Catlins’ trip, and we all have opinions about each picture, the frame, the coloring, the contrast, the lighting, the sunspots, even though none of us has taken a photography course in our life, and Simon's camera probably cost a thousand dollars and he's taking shots you could get with an Instamatic (although sometimes he plays around with long exposure times to get waterfalls to look milky and soft; we all "ooh" and "ahh" at those, but then admit we like the normal exposures, the sharp and unaltered versions, better), but at least he's trying, he's learning, at least he's going through and weeding out the duds, which is what half of photography is--and his eye for photos is better than some people's, to give him his due.  

          I wish I could film all of this, too. It feels like Mother, Father, Sister, Brother. It feels like what family is supposed to be like. It feels like what being wanted and needed is like, when members of the group enjoy everyone else for the cards they bring to the table, don’t put anyone up on a pedestal even if they have an especially good card, don’t neglect anyone, and let individuals hang back, too, if they need to hang back.

                It feels like air and water and apricots and tapioca pudding and the fatty smell of lamb, like sheep and peacocks and flax trees.  It feels like a stolen season, and I hate that, because this being wanted and needed and accepted should be normal. I should not have to cling to this; I should be able to rely on this for always. I have this in the MFA program, but this feels more intimate, this feels more like family, more like something I forgot I wanted or could have.

                I have two days left.

               

                I spread out all the rocks I collected—rocks from the rivers in the Catlins, rocks from the Catlins beach, rocks from Waituna beach.  I spread them all out and I arrange them into piles. Then I put them into baggies. I have bought baggies at the store so that when I travel on my own I can make sandwiches for lunch and can take them with me on day trips. Also, I need another baggie for my camera, since the old baggie got sand in it. So I have a whole box of baggies, and I am currently using them to make baggies of Rocks!!!

                It’s very exciting.

                Simon sits with me, because he puts his SD chip into my computer and goes through his pictures there, since it’s faster than on Ron and Gay’s computer. He’s been doing this since the beginning. I have my rocks spread out on the same table, right there, and I frequently reach over his arms to get to new rocks, or to rearrange old ones.

                At the end he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a green and red, smooth stone. It’s pitted and there’s a striation along one side. It’s darker than any of my others.

                “You can have this one,” he says.

                “I couldn’t possibly take your stone,” I say. The Hawaiians believe that some stones have Gods in them. I know this. That’s why stones are so wonderful, and that’s why you have to choose carefully.  If this is his stone—

                “I don’t collect them,” he says. “I just found this in the yard, here, on the farm. Really. You should take it.”

                I take the stone from him, and briefly run it down his palm. I don’t let it linger long enough to be awkward. We don’t always understand each other—verbally, mentally, whatever—but we’ve been playing, recently; we’ve been wordlessly communicating, since the shearing. We’ve been teasing and laughing. His silence has meant a lot to me, as well as “two each?” This stone came from the yard, from Ron and Gay, too, from the sheep and the land. I would not have picked it myself.

                I look at it, and him. I think about him, just picking up a random stone in the yard, something not special at all. Some rocks have Gods in them.

                I smooth it with my thumb. “Thank you,” I say. He shifts against me.  

                This stone is not going in a baggie.

               

                On the last day Gay takes me to see the Merino sheep, and she takes me to see the bog. I haven’t seen it properly, yet.

                It’s raining and we pull on waders and rain gear: special pants that go over our overalls, and rain coats. They have a road that goes through the bog that goes right to a lookout tower. We don’t have time for a full hike; I really just need to take a picture of sphagnum moss, which is really fascinating stuff, and basically holds the bog together. It can hold six times its weight in water—it’s really amazing. There used to be a business for it—people would sell their sphagnum moss when the market for lambs got too poor, but then the market for sphagnum moss fell out in the 80’s.

                The bog is surrounded not by fences, which are expensive to put up and maintain, but by moats, which help keep the water table at appropriate levels and also provide habitat for birds. Ron, of course, built all the moats himself when they divvyed off the land for the bog thirty years ago.

                Now, as the rain falls, the bog soaks up water. When we walk on it, it’s springy and sloshy underfoot, like a moon bounce that’s covered in a thick covering of plants and water.  We’ve taken Kelly with us, and she immediately rolls around, gets furiously wet, and bounds and leaps into every bush she can get into. There bog is layered first with sphagnum moss, then rush reed grass, then other plants on top of them: Manuka and other bushes that need a firmer hold. Even some orchids.

                It’s quiet, except for the seagulls, which are circling around not too far away. Gay says they’d like to be rid of the sea gulls but can’t quite think how to do it. Ron’s tried to shoot them or crack their eggs, but so far, no dice.

                We get back in the Jalopy to another part of the bog, a more solid part, where the merinos live. The domesticated sheep are only allowed to lamb at certain times of the year, so the rams are kept separate from the ewes, but not so for the merinos. They’re allowed to do whatever they want, so there are lambs of every age mixed in.

                When they hear us coming they run, and we follow them until we get to a patch of manuka where Gay says they’ll stop and turn to look at us.         

                They do, for just a moment. They are darker in coloring, with horns, and they seem to move with more purpose and intent than the domesticated sheep. I don’t know anything about them, but from my five seconds of observation, they seem smarter. Who knows if that’s true.

                We circle around and on our way back we see another clump with three domestic sheep and three Merinos along a road. We drive behind them until they get to the gate, at which point they’ll have to charge past us. The domestic sheep just stand there, unfazed, but the black Merino Ram and his two dames aren’t having any of it. He turns and charges past, nose forward, neck outstretched, and I think, “Yes, go for it—yes, yes— I understand—“ Even though no one is going to hurt him, there aren’t any guns or unchained dogs in sight; just him and fight or flight response, his heightened fear, his knowledge that humans bring bad things.  

                Sometimes the dream of running is better than actually running, and sometimes I feel like even though I’m on the other side of the world, it’s still not far enough; sometimes I feel like I could never be far enough, sometimes I feel like no matter how many people like Gay and Ron I meet I’ll never be able to just stay still, content, never be able to know all the plants around me like they do.

                The bog is sloshy underfoot, soaking up all the rain, all of these things, all of these things that I bury, all of these things that I try not to talk about.            

                That afternoon, Gay, Simon and Ron take me to the beach where Burt Monroe, Ron’s father’s cousin, set a world record for a certain type of motorcycle racing speed in the sixties. Anthony Hopkins starred in the movie, which we watched on New Years Eve, called “The World’s Fastest Indian.”  (Indian, in this case, refers to the motorcycle).

                I’m asleep until we get to the beach, at which point Ron slows the car and then does a series of hard, jerky brakes to wake me up. Nothing terribly dangerous or jarring, just enough to make everyone sit a little straighter.  I look out the window.

                “The sea!” I open the door and take off running.

                “And there she goes, she’s off,” I hear Gay say, behind me, as if she had expected it. She’s been to a couple beaches with me by this point, so I guess she did expect it.

                The beach is flat and covered in debris. I pick up two sea shells. It’s hard to imagine someone trying to practice racing a motorbike on a beach, but there it is. Just beyond the sea I can see raising hills from a curving around part of the island. A driftwood tree raises out of the sand and I lean back on it; it won’t budge.  I chase Simon around with a dead squishy sea creature, until he strong-arms me into dropping it.

                Then we get back in the car and take me to the bus station.

                At the bus station Simon takes a series of unflattering photos of me, all in a row. “Why did you take those pictures?” I ask. “Those were horrible.”  He doesn’t answer.  I don’t understand. Sometimes I think that he’s a brick wall that I can’t figure out in the slightest.  I shift my bags as I step over to him to see what he’s done, and I step on a rock.

                “That was my foot,” Simon says.

                “Oh, sorry. I thought you were a rock.”

                “I am a rock,” he says.

                Gay picks it up, and we all sing with her, “I am an Iiiiiiisland!”

                Some friends of Gay and Ron’s happen by, and chat for five minutes. By the time they leave, my bus is ready to go. I’ve already hugged everyone.

                Gay says, “We’ll see you again.”

                I say, “If any of you are in the states—”

                And then I’m boarding, and I’m very upset. She’s wrong. I probably won’t see them again. Why did I plan to travel around the island for so long? I could have stayed on the sheep farm for another eleven days.  I should have. Who cares about fiords? Who cares about beaches? Who cares about any of it? I could have helped with the weaning. I could have spent more time with them and played that stupid rummikens game again and teased Simon more and asked Gay more questions about plants and learned more about hammering and birds from Ron. Instead I’m going to be alone, and talking to strangers, and traveling without purpose for no reason except to “see.” Being alone is difficult and wrong.

                When I hugged Ron he held onto me very tightly, much longer than I wanted to hold on. He knew that Gay was wrong. He knew we wouldn’t see each other again.

                I know that as a traveler in a foreign place I attach my feelings much more strongly than I normally would to people. I latch on. It’s a new, scary situation, filled with new things that have jostled me a bit, and I found people who I can trust to help me through it, who will not make fun, who will hold my hand but let me be independent, too. So it’s natural for me to feel so strongly towards them.  But they get volunteers all the time. They can’t feel the way I do towards every volunteer they get; it’d be too much to handle.  I have no idea to what degree they enjoyed my company as much as I did theirs. I have no idea how much reciprocity there was. I’m not so much bothered by that; I understand how that works. I would expect to be just one of many volunteers they’ve had, although it would be nice to find out that I wasn’t. I was there for such a short time, so it’s ridiculous to think I left as much of an impression on them as they did on me. 

                As the bus pulls away I can see Simon walking to the car, already walking to the car, and I try to motion to Gay and Ron through the window, ‘oh, that’s Simon for you,’ but I don’t think they understand what I’m trying to say. They’re meandering behind him, slower, and I see them on the other side of the bus, inspecting a metal sculpture of a tuatara, a lizard, and then the bus is pulling away.

                I’ll never see them again.