Traveling 2

Recap: No one can get in and out of Hokitika because the bus does not go down the west coast that far, because of the washed out bridge just to the south. I was south of the washed out bridge, but then I took a plane OVER it. But now I am in Hokitika, and unable to get OUT of Hokitika, because the bus doesn’t go down that far.  There are no cars, the shuttle and taxis all cost a hundred dollars. The manager of the hostel is very upset because the lack of a bus coming down means he has no customers. There, all caught up.

                The hostel at Hokitika is pretty much empty.

                I’ll find out, later, that there’s a large group of men staying there, as well as a young kiwi family (with a small, shrieking child that the parents do nothing to train or curtail in any way shape or form), and an older German couple, but when I trudge into the hostel it all seems very quiet and very very empty. When a hostel is supposed to hold two or three times that number of people, when the room I’m staying in has eight beds and I’m the only one in there—well, I thought it was kind of nice. It means I have the whole room to myself (yes, I will lay out my jeans all over that spare bed. And my keys can go just there, on the windowsill, and I don’t mind if I DO put my shoes by the door, , and I’m going to turn the lights on and off when I decide they need to go on and off! So take THAT!).

                The hostel is similar to other hostels in that they’ve tried to inject a youthful vibe with bizarre decoration schemes that sort of work: the walls in the kitchen and hallways are painted in various broad cartoon illustrations of birds flipping eggs, or a cadre of animal friends driving caravans, and going to the showers with bath caps and towels slung over their shoulders. In my room, an illustration of a cat in a cross legged yoga position takes up one full wall, its face squniched into some sort of half stoned, half sleepy caricature of “cat at yoga rest.” The main room, the living room, with couches, TV and a large table where you can play cards, has a sliding door to a balcony, and one wall is completely glass paned, and actually allows you to see down below into the store that we’re perched above: the Jade factory.

                Hokitika’s main “thing” is jade. The Jade factory, where you can watch women actually grinding Jade to make fancy jade necklaces in traditional Maori shapes and spirals and fish hooks and whale tails, etc, is right below us. All the other stores here in Hokitika sell Jade in much greater numbers than I’ve seen throughout the rest of the country. I mean, yes, I’ve seen Jade being sold—it’s like the country’s main souvenir, main item of note. When I was in Invercargill one of the first items I bought, for my very good friend, was a Jade Necklace, because it was clearly a very special item in a special store with special Maori meanings and everything.  They have a lot of Jade rock, and it’s beautiful. But here in Hokitika it’s an obsession. You can’t really go anywhere (read: Hokitika is basically four blocks long and four blocks wide) without smacking into Jade this or Jade that.

                I will discover all this in the course of time. I cursorily look around the hostel, peer into the Jade factory from the top floor, and move on.  It’s midday, so the manager is just starting to clean the kitchen. I tell him to keep an eye out for people with cars, but he tells me the last chap with a car left this morning.

                But five minutes later, or maybe ten minutes, after I’ve put on my bathing suit, BOUND AND DETERMINED TO GO TO THE BEACH, he knocks on my door, and tells me I might be in luck.  Someone with a car has just come in, and is looking to go to Greymouth, north, exactly where I want to go!

                I figure out later that the chap who left earlier that morning is this guy, who is now here, because he didn’t realize that the bridge was washed out quite THAT bad. He was hoping to go south, to some town where he would take some fabulous three hundred dollar helicopter ride, but because of the bridge, he could not get where he needed to go, and so came back to Hokitika within the hour.

                His name is Marcus, and he’s—you guessed it—he’s German. Of course he’s German. EVERYONE IN NEW ZEALAND IS GERMAN.

                I ask him if he would be willing to take me to Greymouth (while he’s changing his pants. His door is open, I barge in, he’s in his underwear, I ask him, somehow not noticing the underwear situation, and he’s like, “sure, that’s fine,” and then ten minutes later I’m like, “Oh, shorts—you’re now in shorts, shorts are your normal attire, not underpants. Oh. Ok. I should have maybe waited for you to not be in underwear. Sorry about that. Sorry.”) And he says that’s fine, he says yes, he will take me to Greymouth. He’s going up that way anyway, we’re both traveling solo, and this is the perfect situation.

                When gas is ten dollars a liter (that’s forty dollars a gallon, folks), I am amenable to spending five dollars for a half hour of driving with another traveler who’s close to my age.  

                Anyway, he says he’s not going to Greymouth until tomorrow because tomorrow he’ll go on a short alpine plane ride (in lieu of his originally planned helicopter ride), then we’ll drive a half hour to Greymouth, and I’ll pick up my bus to get to Nelson, the place I wanted to get to in the first place.

                So everything is fine, and we have a day to kill. I am keen on the beach.

                Marcus wants to go on a walk to some lake. He shows me a map. The map is green, and the lake is blue, and the area with the beach is orange. I do some hasty deductions. I think, well, probably the green means trees. That’s good, but not as good as orange, which means probably means sand.

                “I’m not as interested in a hike as I’m interested in the beach,” I say.

                “Yah, but I think this beach is not so good, there is a lot of—how do you say—the dead wood, there.”  Marcus has slightly curly brown hair and a little spot of beard hair right under his lower lip.

                I frown. “Dead wood? You mean Drift wood? But that’s perfect. That’s exactly what I want.”

                Marcus looks skeptical. I look skeptical about Marcus’s beach choosing skills. We try to make a time to meet back up but eventually he says that he will just meet me on the beach. I think that probably it will not happen, because the beach is a big place. But whatever. We part ways.

                I wander around town a little bit. I find an arts and crafts market (they sell jade necklaces, succulents, baby clothes, donuts, and organic candles). I find an entire store that sells nothing but possum fur. Possum fur hats, gloves, scarves, coats—you name it. Even possum fur nipple warmers. Yes. You read that correctly. Possums are a problem in New Zealand because they strip the trees really quickly—they eat the leaves and bark and the trees can’t recover, plus a host of other problems. One of New Zealand’s greatest challenges is simply killing all the animals—rats, stoats, possums, rabbits—that aren’t supposed to be there, because they throw off the delicate balance of the island. So if you really want a fur coat but feel bad about hurting a poor animal to get that fur coat, order a possum coat from New Zealand. That possum was living on borrowed time and borrowed soil anyway. Don’t worry; they’re just as expensive (and just as soft).

                I eventually get to the beach.

                Oh, AND THIS BEACH IS SENT BY GOD AND LORD KRISHNA AND DOUGLAS ADAMS AND PROBABLY MY MOTHER AS WELL (even though she is alive and well, but she really loves looking for stones on beaches). So Much Drift Wood! So Many Stones! So Few People! So Much Sun!

                So I am feeling Excellent. This morning I took an ALPINE FLIGHT, and now I am HERE.

                I put my backpack down behind a large driftwood log, and set to work, because this is serious business. All of these stones! I leapfrog from one to the other. And here’s one! And this one!

                Eventually I realize that I am collecting the wrong stones. The stones I am collecting are nice, but the nicer stones are all GREEN. There are GREEN stones—brilliantly deeply GREEN stones, that glimmer and shine against the dark black sand, green stones with black lines or spots, green stones with white lines or spots, solid green stones, half and half green stones, square green stones, round green stones, plain green stones, interesting green stones—the list goes on and on.

                I take the stones over to the driftwood log where my backpack is, high above the surf. I put them in piles. This is so very very satisfying. I am so so happy. I am trotting back and forth. I have piles of stones in my pockets and piles on the log. Some piles are rejects but that I’ve kept there because I still like them and I might make another pile, later, and will need more stones and will have to draw from a reserve pile. So I have my reserve pile, and I have my currently working on piles, and I’m searching for new stones, and the sea is bringing in new stones with every wave. It’s wonderful. Truly truly wonderful.

                At some point I realize something horrific. The green color disappears when the stones dry out. And I’m not going to be taking the stones back to the states wet—that would be too much extra weight. They have to be dry. But when they’re dry they get white looking.

                CURSE YE GODS!

                So then I have to make MORE piles, drying OUT piles, I have to line all the rocks up, and I have to make ELIMINATIONS, I have to think about which rocks will look best both dry AND wet. But I’m not going to risk going back to the sea with a handful of rocks to get them all wet again—some of these rocks are small. What if I lost one and it tumbled into the surf? The obvious solution is just to lick each stone so that I remember what the original green color looked like, and so I can compare the dry color and the wet color, and make an educated decision because of it.

                This is how Marcus finds me, on the beach, licking each stone, considering it, and then carefully putting it back into specific piles on an old piece of driftwood.

                He says, “How does a stone taste?” He is trying to be nice.

                I say, “Salty! I think I got some sand in that last one—but look!” I pull out of my pockets the DEFINITE groupings of rocks that I’ve already made. He dutifully looks the groupings of rocks.

                I am making one last group of rocks. I am a little sad that he is here (although happy to have company) because I really could make piles of rocks all afternoon, and I can tell that he wants to move onto something else. I ask for his opinion about the group of rocks—he tells me his opinion and I promptly ignore all of it.

                Marcus asks if I want to swim, and I say, “yes, but I didn’t want to swim without a partner.” He nods. I had thought about diving in earlier, the waves are waves I’ve seen off the coast of North Carolina, before, where once you’re past the breakers you’re fine, you can manage. There are a group of boys in wet suits and boogey boards swimming—well, they swim, get pulled down the beach by the current, get out before they hit a wall of large rocks a little ways down, get out, run up the beach, and repeat the process. But it’s a new beach, a beach I don’t know, and I don’t know where the drop off point is, and I don’t know what the coast guard rules are here. So it’s good that Marcus is here.

                He says the water’s cold. I’ve been wading around in the surf all afternoon and my feet and shins have gotten used to it—it’s not so bad. I tell him this. I tell him that once our faces are wet the temperature regulators in our bodies will adjust accordingly.

                We stride into the waves, into the breakers—not terribly rough—and HOLY FRITADAS, it’s FREAKING FREEZING.

                I’ve been in my share of cold water. I’ve swum in Quarries in Maine, in the Ocean in Maine. I got half and half wet in the ocean in California, too. But this is like, so much colder—I don’t even know how it stands up to those cold levels. With the other bodies of water I got used to them. It was cold but it was doable. You move around a little, you get your head wet and all of a sudden you realize you’ve been in the water for three hours and it’s time for dinner.

                 This is not doable. I have no idea why.

                MAYBE IT’S BECAUSE NEW ZEALAND IS NEXT TO ANTARCTICA.

                Anyway. We get out right quick.

                Then we spend the next several hours spread out on the beach, recovering, getting warm again. He tells me he doesn’t like the Lord of the Rings. I give him hell for that. Etc.

                At six o’clock the sun is only half way down the sky, and we have to walk a little way down the beach to get back to town. It’s so warm, and Marcus is talking. It’s difficult to concentrate, though, because Marcus is talking about gun control in the U.S, but we’re on the beach with all those rocks. I do not know why he wants to talk about gun control when there are ROCKS around, when I could be looking for more ROCKS—

                He asks whether the media’s representation of gun control in America is accurate—do I feel safe going to school, to the mall? The media in Europe convinces him that, no, I do not. What do I think?

The Beach at Hokitika at Sunset--note the driftwood!

                But I’m like, Look! A Rock! Oh and this one has red in it! Do I have enough red and white rocks to go with all the green ones—Red and Green are on opposite sides of the color wheel, sometimes that’s a good thing, and sometimes a bad thing. Will it be a good thing? I should pick this one up. “Oh—um, maybe I feel safe. Sure. No, wait. I DO feel safe. Lots of places in America are like Hokitika—you feel safe here, right? It’s like that. Except when a shooter comes to somewhere like here. Then everyone freaks out. Haha, DID YOU HEAR, DICK CHENEY SHOT HIS FRIENDS FACE OFF, THE DICK.”

                “What?

                “Dick Cheney shot his friends face off. Oh! And another rock! Do you like this one?”

                “I think you have too many rocks. Does that happen often?”

                “How could I have too many rocks? My bag does not feel too heavy when I wear it on my hips.”

                “Does it happen often?”

                “What?”

                “Shooting people in the face?”

                “Oh! No. I don’t think so. Most people—unless they’re stupid or insane, keep a hold of their guns and are responsible. But guns are an identity---we have whole stores—“oh I am bored and frustrated with this conversation already. Is it my job to illuminate America’s problem with violence and assault weapons for everyone I meet? “Is this a rock?” I pick up something round and hard, but also with a hole at the top.

                “No, it is a seaweed pod.”

                “Maybe I should keep it anyway.”

                “Whole stores?”

                “Yes.”

                “Do you own a gun?”

                “Excuse me?”

                “It’s a question.”

                “I will have you know that my class is Middle Class White Liberal Intellectual. We do not own Guns. My Mother is from New York City.” I am haughty about this.  I tell him that it’s an issue of poverty level—that the rich keep the regulations loose, pay to keep the regulations loose, and then that allows every crazy person in the joint to go nuts whenever they want. Blah Blah Blah.

                He nods, but I think he’s a little overwhelmed. When we get back to the hostel we both cook dinner (he chops up a quarter of a cabbage, cooks it down with salt and pepper, and then eats it. I have a curry vegetable stir fry with coconut cream, curry powder and thai spice, brown rice, and a melange of vegetables from a farmer’s stand. He looks at my cutting board and says, “You have so many vegetables.” I tried to ask if he wanted to do a combo thing for dinner, but he didn’t,) and then afterwards we read each other’s fortunes. He is going to come into some money and have an epiphany. I am going to live out Charlotte Bronte’s Wuthering Heights. The Lover. The Enemy. The War between the Lover and Enemy. The Falseness. The Big House. The Illness. The Baby. The Widower. Etc.

                I discover that today, in the process of searching for stones and ribbing Marcus about his distaste for Lord of the Rings, I got a huge sunburn, right across my shoulders and arms. I forgot Sunblock, and New Zealand has less ozone in their atmosphere than we do. The burn is worst on my left shoulder. I can already see the tan line, and it’s already hot, even though it hasn’t been a full day yet. I don’t have any aloe vera. 

               

                The next morning I meet two more Germans, in the hostel kitchen. They ask me, as everyone seems to ask me, “Why Rocks?” 

                It is difficult to answer that question. What do you mean, why rocks. WHAT ELSE IS THERE? Eventually I tell them about my mother and how she and my sister and father and I would search for clear quartz during our beach vacations along the east coast. And that seems to make sense, but it is not really the reason that I am picking up much larger stones, grouping them in baggies, labeling them and bringing them home. We never did that. I can’t really explain my current behavior. 

                The Germans say, “Oh, but this beach is not so good, I think, it is covered in the dead wood. You know New Zealand has some fonderful beaches, fonderful white sand with de shells, lofely shells, but this beach is not so nice, I tink.”

                And I’m like, “What is wrong with you guys? This beach was CLEARLY the best beach.”

                Anyway, I tell them about how I flew over the washed out bridge so that I could get to the ocean, because I missed it, because I came to New Zealand for the proximity to the Ocean (OCEAN).

                The man asks me—well, he MEANS to ask me if I work with the ocean in my line of work, but his actual words are, “Is the ocean vital for your life?” 

                I look at him and I say, “Yes. Yes it is.” And he looks at me like that's some sort of crazy hippy answer. Maybe it is. But I feel constantly parched, in Iowa, like the bones in my arms are crumbling from the inside out. Megan White says this is a thing to do with Negative Ions. 

                In any case; I bid them farewell. Crazy Germans. 

                Marcus drives me to Greymouth. We have a pleasant time, except that my sunburn and the rather active day I had yesterday means that I’m a little groggier today. He drops me off at the bus depot, and we say goodbye, and he takes off for his hostel. It was fun, but I’m not sad to see him go.

                I travel by bus for five hours to Nelson, at the top of the South Island. Nelson is supposed to be one of the sunniest areas of New Zealand. I am hoping for more beach time. But on the bus my sunburn starts getting painful, and I’m tired and groggy, and I have food but on the bus there’s a no eating rule.

                So when I get into Nelson I am on a fast track to bads-ville. I’m grumpy and tired and I can’t hardly think in a straight line. I give the lady at the desk the print out of my bus tickets and she says that actually, I haven’t booked enough nights to get me from one bus ticket to the next—I have gotten days mixed up. But she is nice and fixes things for me.

                The problem with traveling is that days get confusing. Dates get confusing, too. The first things to go are days of the week—Saturday means nothing when every day is Saturday. The next things to go are actual dates, which don’t mean anything when you have no deadlines to reach for (some people are better at this than others. If you don’t book or plan ahead of time, the dates break down much faster than otherwise).  So I vaguely knew that I had four or three colored blocks in my head that I would spend in Nelson, before another colored block that I would spend in Kaikora, before another colored block that would mean I would fly home, but I could really not tell you what those colored blocks meant in dates or times or anything that corresponded to the real world.

                But the lady fixes everything for me, and the world is good.

                When I get to my room I find that it’s a mixed room—not a big deal—but that means that somehow a family of Koreans is there. It’s rare to see older people in the hostels, and I’m a little bit tense. Not because I think they’re going to harm me, but because I don’t know how they’re going to act.

                The next morning I wake up feeling tired and gross and ill. I had gone to the grocery store and gotten aloe vera lotion the night before, for my burn, but that didn’t help so much as just short term soothe the skin. Still, I am determined to make the most of the time in Nelson.

                So I put on short sleeves, to cover my shoulders, and I strike out. I will find the beach. I will look for more stones, since I had such luck with it in Hokitika.

                But Nelson is like, a posh beach town. There are women in cute dresses. This is my first indication that things are going to go badly. The ladies are wearing strappy sandals and dresses that require either no bras or complicated bra configurations, generally unknown to me. The men are in chinos and flashy watches. Oh dear.

                The main street, I soon find out, is all high end fashion stores. Not a souvenir shop in sight. I use the map in my head (which has been thrown off kilter because I generally operate around Canada = north, Mexico= south, Atlantic=East, Pacific =West, but here that is not a scheme to operate on, since New Zealand is tilted, The Pacific is on the East, and people point to South America, which seems an awful long way away) to guide me to where I think the sea is, but I never make it. Instead, I make it to the travel guide place, where I tell them I want to go to the beach, they put me on the bus, the bus takes me fifteen minutes away to a nearby town, deposits me next to a small beach which is all smooth white sand, clear green and blue water, and no rocks or driftwood in sight.

                The Germans would have been absolutely delighted.

                But I am so bored.

                I bob around for a little while. This water is warm, even. I can see my feet.

                But I am so bored.

                When the wind picks up I get out, dry off, and figure out how to catch the bus back to Nelson.

                I just want to take a shower and a nap, but when I get to the room, the Korean family is there. Did they go out at all today? They were here this morning, before I left, putzing around. Normally, young people are in the hostel rooms as little as possible. But here they are. It's their room too, but it means that I have no privacy, no room or place to myself, no place where I don't have to be on guard, or at least polite. I have no place to just stop and relax. Around younger people I maybe wouldn't have worried about it, but they're older, and it's a strange, different dynamic. I am not comfortable at all. I feel like I have interrupted them in their personal hotel room. It doesn't feel right to interrupt their mid afternoon nap.
                 I pause for a moment and then leave.
                The rest of the day is generally a bad day.

                The next day I feel infinitely better. I have more energy! I now realize that Nelson is not the beach hotspot that I wanted for myself. Fine. I will do other things. Instead I go to a giant church (no, I do not sleep in it), a couple mediocre art galleries, and am generally searching for souvenir shops. Nelson has no souvenir shops. It is utterly devoid of souvenir shops.

                Instead I end up at a museum. I am hesitant. But I pay seven dollars and go into the first floor.

                The museum is supposed to be about the Taranaki wars, the wars between the Maori people and the first white settlers. But the first floor is like some sort of flashing, schizophrenic, denial wonderland. There are a couple amped up panels with Maori stories about how their gods brought fishing nets back to the village, but right next to those panels are panels about how white settlers mined for various types of rocks, and across from that is information on glow worms. And I’m like, this is not all from the same time period, nor even the same genre of information, and there are no wars mentioned anywhere. Eventually any mention of Maori anything disappears almost completely, and the museum devolves into a display of settler’s first christening gowns, and the types of sewing machines they used in the early years.

                That was not worth seven dollars.

                I go back out to the main hallway and I’m just about to leave when the lady at the desk asks if I’ve been upstairs—there’s another portion. I race up there, and that’s where everything good is.

                The upstairs starts off with a series of questions about how the Taranaki Wars started—with the government? With greedy land sellers? With this misunderstanding? With this figure? This series of questions allows a murky beginning, a more complex beginning—rather than “And then the first shot was fire and the war was on!” which is the inclination of many historians. I appreciate the murkiness, and the levels of intricacy.

                The story continues on in this matter—describing the Maori’s initial contact with white settlers as positive; the maori wanted to trade and coexist, as long as the white settlers stayed in designated areas. Some of the Maori were more willing than others to allow the white settlers on more land. Especially when they realized that the British Government was keen to run them over they tried many different ways of communicating and establishing themselves as a formidable opponent—simply occupying the land they wished not to have the whites occupy, signing treaties (the Maori versions gave them sovereignty over most of NZ, whereas the English version did not give them sovereignty), and even appointing a King to communicate directly with the British Crown.

                Some of the white settlers and traders did good, honest business with the Maoris, and the museum does a good job of presenting both early Maoris and early white settlers/trades people who were early influences on peaceful relations between the two cultures.

                The first Taranaki War went from 1860 to 1861, and then there was a cease fire on March 18th, 1861 that held for two years before the Second Taranaki War, by far the bloodier of the two, that went from 1863 to 1866. There had been issues with land—where could the whites settle, what blocks where they allowed to be in, etc. There had been a block of disputed land that the Government was supposed to do an inquiry about—who had sold the land, was it rightfully sold, etc. They found that actually, it had been rightfully sold and that they didn’t need to give the land back. They neglected to tell the Maori about their findings.

                So they marched into the land in question. In so doing they had to pass through other areas that were unquestionably Maori, which was seen as trespassing. The Maori then ambushed a British military patrol group, killing nine.

                This is where things get confusing (as in every war, things are confusing). Ultimately, the British hired some pretty ruthless individuals to pretty much slaughter and destroy the Maori’s in any and every way possible. For instance, before the war, the Maori had tools and buildings set up to process grains, but the British destroyed those, even though there was no real gain to be had from it on their end.

                So after the war the Maori had little viable land and little remaining technology; they had very little to support themselves with. Their communities and structures had fallen apart.

                On the plane, on the way home, I heard an American saying that the Maori had been treated “fairly well.” And I wanted to scream at him, “I only went to this one museum, I know absolutely nothing, I know so little, and I know this. I know that you are wrong.”

                The museum highlighted the efforts of various Maori and British leaders who tried peaceful solutions, particularly the efforts of Titokowaru, who led his people on a campaign peace march and encouraged compromise. But the British kept taking more and more land, so much land that the Maori couldn’t raise enough crops to feed themselves, so Titokowaru started encouraging active resistance; instead, eventually conceding that war was necessary. He eventually led his followers to not only successfully attack a British military stronghold, but also successfully defended his own people’s base camp against a major commander (Mcdonald) three times—the third time killing and injuring many british troops, and getting McDonald fired for incompetence. McDonald wormed his way back into the army so he could extract revenge, hit Titokowaru’s stronghold again, was defeated again, and this time resigned  (Much cheering!! Woooop!!!!). Still though, ultimately the Maori were trounced.

                The last part of the museum talked about how after the war the white settlers “forgot,” or at least, didn’t talk about, the war for about forty years. The Maori never forgot. Then the whites started memorializing in typically racist ways—showing pictures of spic and span white soldiers standing tall above glum looking Maori. But the caption of the picture explains precisely this dynamic, pointing out the obvious racism of the photo, and of the settler’s mindsets. It’s interesting and great because very seldom in the united states, even now, do you get museums where racism is pointed out so that you can see it and mark it for yourself, so that even if you’ve never taken a class you can start to understand it when you see it again. It’s more likely that they just hope you learn by example, but even then, most of the Native American Museums are more like the museum downstairs, on the first floor, with the blinking lights and the bizarre lack of story line, than what I’m walking through right now.

                This section talks about how the Maori consider the Taranaki wars to be continuous, ongoing, even now, and that their community is not healed from the problems created at that time. It has a chart with the differences between western culture and Maori culture—how in Maori culture family is everything, you are your family, and in western culture your individual hopes and dreams are more important. At the very end they have bios of several community leaders of the Maori—professors, artists, communicators, health organizers, who are trying to improve the lives of Maori and New Zealanders. 

                When I leave the museum I’m exhausted.

                It’s interesting and a little bizarre that the bottom floor, the more accessible part of the museum, the first section you are supposed to go into—is so horrible. The upstairs, on the other hand, the less accessible section, is so good.  Clearly, two different people curated the different parts of the museum, and did not communicate at all.

                They give me a little sheet to fill out afterwards.

                Don’t worry; I leave comments.

               

The One Ring. Twice. 

                Almost directly after leaving the Museum I find the makers of The One Ring.

  

Rings For Cate And Vigo. These pictures are large because they are more important.  

                But that’s my last day in Nelson. The next morning I get a bus to Kaikora. “Kaikora” literally means “eat-crayfish,” because crayfish are the predominant seafood around here for the indigenous people. When I say “crayfish,” I don’t want you to picture those little shelled creatures under stones that you find in streams on the east coast or in the south of the United States. I want you to picture Maine Lobsters without front claws. Those are the types of Crayfish that I want you to picture.

                I ask the woman at the front desk where to get cheap seafood and she brings out a map which has a seal reserve clearly labeled. She also shows me where the seafood barbeque food truck is set up.

                It’s a nice walk, by the ocean. I can see the mountains in the distance, and the water is so blue, so green, and the rocks are sometimes white and square, sometimes pummiced, and some of the larger base rocks are wonderfully striated, and I’ve got Gimli’s voice in my head when he says, “And then we’ll go through Emmens-weil, a maze of Razor-Sharp-Rocks!” and I’m like, “Gimli, You are so right! If these were taller, and a little sharper, that’s what this would be!”

                I find the barbeque seafood truck, and after much deliberation I get a paua patty. Paua is New Zealand Abalone. But this is like, a frozen patty that’s been unfrozen, and is now greasy and breaded and in between two pieces of white bread that have been coated in butter. It’s mushy and not terribly good.

                I walk on.

                The Seal Colony is a parking lot that looks out at a round jut of rock into the ocean, where the Seals have decided they will go to sun themselves. In fact, they like this area so much that they don’t mind that there are humans all over the freaking place. There is one seal right in the middle of the parking lot, taking advantage of the hot asphalt. When I pass by this seal the first time I assume it’s dead, because it has a pink nose and is lying daigonally across a parking space. When I pass by it the second time it snuffles and coughs and wiggles around, rearranged himself more comfortably, and goes back to sleep. People are taking pictures quite close. This seal has no problems with that.

                Most of the seals are on a raise of rocks a little way out—i.e. not in the parking lot. They don’t move much, just sleeping in the late afternoon light, the warm, glowing, summer light.

                When I go back to my room there’s a German girl in the room. She’s crying, I think, but before I can tell her that it’s ok, I can leave, she hastily exits, and I’ve got the room to myself.  

               

                My Seal Swim starts at 9:30 the next morning. I walk into town with my entire pack, all a hundred million pounds of pack. The Seal Swim has told me I can keep all my bags there during the swim, even after the swim, until my bus comes to take me to Christchurch, where I will get my plane to fly back to the states.

                This morning I forget to eat breakfast.

                They put us in wetsuits. Some of the thirteen year olds complain about this, so I pull out some of the stories of various times at Synchro camp where the really thin girls got borderline hypothermia from the outdoor swimming pool. I’m like, “That pool was warmer than this ocean, and you’re about her size, so I would put it on, if I were you!”

                BAM. Horror story = End of whining.

                We see some dolphins when we are in the boat on the way to the spot where we will watch the seals; the dolphins swim quite close to the boat. It is exciting and lovely. They are maybe two feet from us.

                And then they take us to a large boil of rock, just sticking out of the water maybe two or three stories, with seals all over it. Some of the seals are playing the water below. They go deep sea fishing for three days at a time, so when they come back up on land they’re utterly exhausted. Like, totally done. So they just sleep for a million hours a day. But they get overheated because their fur is really thick, to protect them from the cold water at such depths, so they have to go into the water and cool down. And they have to be in the water for a while, because their fur is so thick that the water doesn’t actually penetrate and get to their skin for a while. That’s when we can swim with them.

                It’s started raining, but it doesn’t bother us that much. We’re in the water, and it’s not that cold, with our wetsuits on. Every once in a while a bubble of water will slip under the suit—up my arm or under my chin or shins, but my general body heat disperses those jewels of cold quickly enough so that I don’t notice them too much.

                There are a couple seals there with us, mostly playing with each other. We’ve been warned ahead of time that they may not interact with us—they may ignore us completely.  These guys are champion ignorers—they’re tusseling and could care less that several blobbey humans in bright yellow fins are staring at them.

                I feel a little weird, actually, because it’s not so much “swimming” with the seals, as it is “floating and watching the seals swim in close proximity.” I’m glad that they don’t seem to care, but I feel awkward. If I were playing outside, I would not want a group of creatures gathering to stare at me. Undoubtedly cool, but again—oh god, my geek is showing—after the initial oooh and ahh of an up close seal wears off, I am almost more excited and mystified by the seaweed and by the very tiny, almost invisible creatures floating around in groups that I can see with my snorkel mask (so clear!!!).

                The seaweed is thick, and long, a dull green and yellow, and it moves with the water in sinuous shapes, bellowing in and out. It has a sort of handsome sentience, a sort of power to it. I don’t think that it will wrap me up if I get close, but I do feel like it will wrap me up. And I’m not sure if that’s a bad thing. I’m not sure if I wouldn’t, actually, totally enjoy that. When I snorkel through the seaweed that floats at the surface it’s surprisingly stiff, like walking through those plastic hanging curtains in factory situations. It doesn’t look stiff. It looks like ribbons, like bedsheets, like a down comforter.

                The seals are flipping and playing and have their mouths locked on each other, whirling around and around. Their eyes are big, sort of square ish, and milky white looking, underwater. I’ve heard that seal eyes—in fact, most undersea creature’s eyes—are flat, and most land creature’s eyes are round. Something to do with the light.

                 Here’s where I rant about the other people on the trip. Not the gorgeous German family with their six foot two son who looks like he has just stepped out of a Ralph Loren Summer Sports Ad, who is also in my group and who I have no problem swimming with—but the more portly gentleman who can’t quite maneuver himself in the water and keeps bashing me in the head with his flippers, and keeps getting too close to the rock (which we are supposed to keep away from, in order to give the seals their space) and in general is a blunderbus.

                But not all of us can be awesome-sauce synchronized swimmers, so I’ll move on.

                When I get back into the boat it’s sunny, and warm, and I peel off my top layer of wetsuit so that my arms are showing, and I notice that my left shoulder is beginning to peel. Despite the Ralph Loren Model sitting opposite me, this shoulder peeling occupies my attention for the entire trip back to the Seal Swim head quarters.

                I am just so not capable of continuing my own species, it’s not even funny.

               

                I shower and change at the Seal Swim headquarters, and then I get my official big extravagant New Zealand Meal in town. I get a seafood salad—it has a quarter of a crayfish, some mussels and some calamari. I also get a dish of mashed potatoes because I am cold and need something starchy. (Sarah Burke! I thought of you!)

                It is delicious, but I had forgotten to bring my camera. I am sorry. The Crayfish tasted similar to lobster, but maybe not as sweet. So. There you go. Now you know. Also, the Mashed Potatoes are amazing.  

                Kaikora is my last stop. That afternoon I board the bus to Christchurch, and then from Christchurch I get another bus to the airport.

                In the airport I attempt a fancy maneuver wherein I stay up all night so that I will then sleep soundly for the entire trans-pacific flight. I spend the time writing stuff for my blog and peeling the skin on my shoulder, which has blossomed into a massive bubbling, roiling mass of flaking skin. It’s utterly disgusting and I’m glad that most of the people here in the airport are asleep so I don’t gross them out too much.

                The not-sleeping attempt doesn’t work. What happens is that by the time morning rolls around, I am so tired, and so queasy, that I am worried about barfing all over my flight from Christchurch to Sydney, so I sleep on that flight, instead.

                So when I get on my flight trans-pacific, I have had enough sleep to keep me awake, but not enough to keep me awake permanently, so I continue to drift in and out every other hour or so. I do have pills in my bag that are supposed to make me drowsy, but they are all the way up in the overhead bin, and the two people next to me are large, bald (shaved bald) Australians. I do not know if these two men knew each other before the flight, but they are two peas in a pod, and get along famously. The one closest to me jiggles his leg a great deal. They make large hand gestures. For some reason I cannot ask them to move so I can get to my bag, even though I am screaming, in my head, to just ask them to move.

                We land in LA at around 7AM their time, which is I don’t know even what it is my time. But I’ve been up for about thirty six hours, by this point, with only a couple hours of plane sleep. I go through customs. Again, I tell them about everything. I don’t tell them about my collection of rocks. I don’t think they need to know about those. But I DO tell them about the dirt I’ve found in the treads of my hiking boots. They should know about that in case there are bacteria they don’t want getting into the US.

                They send me all the way through to the agricultural people with their special scanners, but when I show them my boots, with my special tired anxious face, they look at me like, “bitch, why are you wasting our time.”   

                And then they say, “Just be sure to wash them whenever you get to where you’re going.”

                And I’m like, “THIS IS HOW THE WOOD BORER BEETLE GOT INTO THE COUNTRY. WE’RE ALL DOOMED.” But then I’m also worried about them scanning my bags and finding those rocks.

                And then there’s another couple hours of waiting in LA. We board the plane in LA at noon. It’s a three hour flight. We land in Minneapolis at six PM, and it’s dark.

                HOW DID THAT HAPPEN. I DON’T UNDERSTAND. Literally. Where did the sun go? And the hours?

                It’s a complete mystery to me—especially since the first time I took this trip, from Minneapolis to LA, the flight was like, FIVE HOURS LONG. And now it’s only three? And somehow time is cut in half?

                HOW.

                Very very confused.

                When I get out of the airport and pick up my bag, the cold of winter bitch-slaps me in the face, and it’s only 40 degrees out. I’m still peeling my sunburn.

                Logan Adams, from the MFA program, picks me up. He lives in Minneapolis because he’s all cool and hip and urban. He used to have dreads. Then he used to have a faux mohawk. Now he has a really cool wife and makes really good food and writes really good fiction. Also they have a shower with two shower heads (What. That’s an important detail. How many of you have that?). 

                So Logan picks me up from the light-rail and I’m basically like, “Thanks so much, I really appreciate—“and then I burst into tears.

                But Logan is great. He’s like, “Here is this awesome food I made that you will eat. Amelia. Here is my shower. Here is this inflatable mattress. Whatever’s Clever. Here is your own space with a closeable door and a significant lack of Germans. Marxism. Here is breakfast the next morning with eggs and bacon that I’ve just like, whipped up together. Reddit. Here’s twelve hours of sleep just handed to you on a freaking platter.”

                After twelve hours of sleep I can once again understand the concept of time zones.

                I catch a bus to Ames. Megan White picks me up at the bus stop and looks at all my rocks!

                My cats welcome me home too. They are Beautiful. Haroun is the exact color gray of a paua shell.  Suri is a super snuggler. Why did I leave them?  Oh yes. Sheep. Sun. Sea.

                Sarah Burke asked me, during a welcome back everyone breakfast at the Grove (a diner place in Ames) if it was surreal to be back in Ames. How can I answer that question? It may be a good one. I think I felt surreal after coming back from France. But now it feels different.  I was there. New Zealand was real. Now I am here. This place is real too. Gay and Ron have been emailing me, which makes me feel very good. I like that.  Simon emailed once, as well, but he’s backpacking around and doesn’t have consistent internet. I miss them.

                People have been saying things like, “How was New Zealand?” and “So, tell me all about it!” and “So, what was the best part!?”

                I cannot answer any of those questions.  I mean, this blog alone has been ten posts of about 12- 15 pages each. That’s 120-150 pages of material. I am sorry, but I cannot tell you “all about New Zealand” in a ten minute conversation. I feel as though I have explained. I have told. I do not need to tell or explain again.  I don’t really want to talk about it. It is a special thing; It is a rock, it is a stone, it is a glowing place that I keep it in my pocket, and I do not necessarily want to keep sharing it, even though the sharing of it has helped make it the glowing place it is. It has been a little strange, finding out that so many people have been reading (or not reading) the blog. I don’t mind that people read—I intended for them to read. But it makes me want to either never talk to anyone again, or demand that everyone read the blog right now, so that we’re all on the same page and they don’t ask me such ridiculous questions. 

                When I was in New Zealand I felt like I was so alone and that this was the only way to communicate, but now I feel like everyone knows everything and that’s a little overwhelming. I guess that’s the point of writing. But that’s also the wonderful thing about fiction. When you write fiction, people read but they still don’t know anything. It’s still a mystery, there’s that element of removal.

                Anyway. I imagine I’ll get over it.

               

                The next post will be pictures and descriptions of the flora and fauna of New Zealand. I have to do some last bits of research so I get all my ducks in order for it. Then I’ll post, and then that will be it.