Storyland

“There is nothing better than a friend unless it is a friend with chocolate”

-Linda Grayson

With our “survival chocolate” supply fully stocked, we set off packing along the river gorge, back-dropped with alpine peaks. We haven’t lived on the same continent for years, but Melanie and I have been friends since 1990. To certify this fact, we even have a hard copy, type writer-inked proof of this in the form of a letter her mum snail mailed to mine (and yes, you read that correctly, it had been written on a type writer). It was an introduction letter she had sent upon hearing that my family had decided to homeschool. Her family was somewhat of an unofficial hub to Silicon Valley homeschooling back in the nineties. After that, we quickly became friends, carefully dividing and equally sharing chocolate (whenever we got our grubby little hands on the stuff) and this trip would be no different.

Though I’ve never been anywhere like the Copland Track, I have the distinct sense that I’ve been here before. The books I’ve read and movies I’ve watched have taken me to a place like this before, and at every turn my favorite characters and scenes come alive.

Our Avatars might as well be soaring ahead over the cliff tops, barely clearing the Jurassic palm tree ferns and beech trees. We carefully tiptoe across the raging creek beds and I imagine that we are carrying KatnissEverdeen bows at the ready atop our quiet hunter’s feet. Around the corner, Elizabeth Gilbert’s Indonesian medicine man’s fern/tree-haired stone headed figurine stared back at us, larger than life.

But no, this is not like the Forbidden Forest. There are no giant finicky Aragog spiders (in fact there is only one rare poisonous spider in all of New Zealand), there are no snakes (READ: NO SNAKES), no deadly virus-carrying mosquitoes, no bears, mountain lions, or coyotes, no poison oak and they don’t even have scavenging raccoon. In fact, we note that the lack of peril is rather ominous. There are few land-dwelling mammals at all. Though there are the weka which are flightless birds that steal your socks when you hang them out to dry. Supposedly, there are no Centaurs either, but I have my suspicions.

And then the sky opens up, slowly at first. The rain continues as the sun lowers toward the mountainous silhouette. With each fatiguing kilometer, the temperature drops, eating away at our body heat like an Edward Cullen embrace. (I know, cheap shot making a Twilight reference, but I will slightly abashedly admit to actually liking those trashy offences to literature). Several go-rounds of “surely we must be twenty minutes away”, and a few blocks of carefully rationed survival chocolate later, we reach Welcome Flats. This valley is blessed with bubbling natural hot springs, a mountain vista’s answer to digital surround sound, and a well-placed tramper’s hut (tramping= trekking. I know what you’re thinking, but no. Sorry to disappoint). We pile into our hut like two scared little hobbits, relieved to have conquered Mount Doom. We protect against hypothermia onset with clumsily prepared hot chocolate and our best down-aided mummy impressions. Enlisting the help of Harry Potter to provide us with requisite fire-starting newspaper, we (eventually) get the potbellied stove going. To say that Harry Potter was our Hut Warden is a bit of a stretch, I suppose. But despite his de-spectacled state, I notice the resemblance (at least in my imagination). Come on, he is a brown-haired, blue-eyed British teenage boy and you can’t blame me for at least projecting this image onto him. (Though I will note that we later stay in a youth hostel that is literally called “Hogwartz” and I’m not making that up. It was fabulous). After two weeks of friend request and like notification withdrawals, he is glad to have our company, so we teach Harry Potter to play rummy with our rather soggy deck of cards.

We further thaw ourselves, dipping into the epic wilderness of the hot pools. Sandflies dive bombing our serenity like the full force of the Formic Fleet before Ender blew the Hive Queen’s home planet to bits. These buggers wage dermatological and psychological warfare only when one becomes still. I take a brief pause from my annoyance to note that these buggers could sell for big $$ on the American weight-loss market as a way to get fat people to move constantly. I develop a roll-face swipe-roll-face swipe technique which I use to try to enjoy the hot pools in a kinetic state of rest. But this too is ineffective and after a 20 km hike and this pesky distraction from natural beauty that could defibrillate a dead doornail, I find myself wanting to call by ansible to get ahold of the Little Doctor so I can blow these blood suckers out of the water (so to speak). As much as I despise them, they seem to love me, which leaves me wondering… If I spoil them with love and care, will they want to leave me, too? Recent events in my life would predict so, but anyways…

In the morning, we learn that reconstituted leftover couscous previously flavored with vegetable broth flavoring cubes from the previous night does not work well as a method of thickening up blueberry oatmeal packets. But still, we are happy here and we have the valley to ourselves for a few hours until the next batch of trampers arrive. Peering up at 1000 meter waterfall after 1000 meter waterfall spilling off the mountains after the rains, I think that if only we had a few more days here, I might just develop the ability to incarnate Orson Scott Card’s imagination to develop Rigg’s pathfinder abilities to see all paths ever traveled by humans in the form of colorful light beams that hover in place for all of time. This place certainly feels as old as time, mostly unchanged since the Maori first discovered the brilliant contrasts of the steamy waters and chilling glaciers of the area. If I just reach out and touch those beams of light, maybe I too, like Rigg can time travel to meet the people who took those routes. Here more than anywhere the continuity of times and places and people is staggering. If ever I were to look up and see 100 years into the past at the path of a brave mountain climber attempting a treacherous rock face with low tech gear, this would be the place.

Fortunately, we are greeted with sunshine on the way back as we prance across swinging rope bridges, quickly navigating the avalanche risk zones. We entertain ourselves with a series of ridiculous hypothetical assumptions to arrive at our inaccurate but reasonable estimate that there are four sheep per person in New Zealand. This later turns out to be wrong, as we wiki’d that there are in fact about ten sheep per Kiwi.

Motivated by our last chocolate morsels and by Harry Potter who catches up to us in the final few kilometers in his escape back to civilization, we are inspired to pick up the pace on the flats. We reach the final stretch, which is a knee-deep 50 meter wide river-crossing. Though our feet hurt and we are weary of our packs, we hesitate a moment before leaving Neverland. It seems that our pixie dust has all but run out and it’s time to leave this place to the lost boys.

Bioluminescence, Part III

"So to sum up, keep your mouth closed."

The roof of the cave was covered in glow worms, which lit up like thousands of tiny constellations. We may as well have been staring at the Milky Way. As stunning as it was, Andy (the guide) explained that (contrary to the marketing material), "glow worms" are actually bioluminescent maggots.They live near waterways and in the thousands of caves beneath the farm lands of remote Waitomo, 4 hours south of Auckland. These maggots eat by dangling spiderweb-like strands that catch bugs as the fly to what they think are the stars.Then, a chemical reaction in their stomachs creates the glow effect which can be seen as they relieve themselves. We laughed at ourselves, realizing that we'd paid money to wear soggy, mildew-smelly wet suits, harnesses, helmets, and boots and rappell 27 meters off the edge of the earth to slog through frigid cave waters to see illuminated maggot shit.

But wait-- it gets better: These maggots eventually hatch into the very appealing fungus gnat flies, which have no mouths or working stomachs. So they starve to death in about 2 days. (Oh life is so cruel, even to fungus gnat flies). But of course, stuck in a cave with 48 hours to live, these flies proceed to do what any of us would probably do in the same situation...Since there are no parents around the feed the resulting babies, the first eggs to hatch simply eat the unhatched younger siblings. So in maggot-terms, I (as a "third", for you Ender fans) I wouldn't exist. Anyways, the point is we actually came all that way to see the shit of cannibalistic maggots.

Besides, my new California friend whom I met at the hostel (and convinced to come on the tour with me) was also as thrilled as me to hear about the cave wetas (giant spiders that have the hopping ability of grass hoppers and who are supposedly startled by loud noises, such that they can jump into your mouth if you scream in terror at happening upon them). I'm not sure if the guide made up the part about them being attracted to loud noises, but I wasn't about to test it. So Again, the advice about keeping our mouths closed still held, even if the risk of maggots falling from the ceiling was minuscule.

(Taken at the Te Papa free national museum in Wellington...but this is highly representative of what they looked like when we saw them in the cave in silent horror)

By now, you might be wondering where you missed Bioluminescence Parts I & II. I'll get to those now:

As I crouched in an inner tube floating through the cave looking up at the glowing ceiling, it reminded me of the second time I'd seen bioluminescence. It was from the vantage point of a kayak floating along in Nick's Cove near Point Rayes just an our or two from San Francisco. A few girlfriends and I did this night kayaking tour and each time our paddles disturbed the water, it sparkled under the moonlight.

We pulled up to a rocky cave ledge for a cup of "hot sticky" (sort of like hot Gatorade which sounds gross until you're hiking/tubing/swimming through a chilly cave for a few hours). Memories of the luke-warm, not-so-hot chocolate we sipped on the kayak trip overlaid the hot sticky experience. 

That night on our way back from kayaking, the dust cover in the underbelly of my car came detached and started dragging along the road. Two of us got out of the car and bungee/zip-tied it back in place on the side of the road somewhere in Marin County around midnight. Wow, I never realized until now, but I sure seem to put myself in many situations that require janky quick fixes. Um, now that I think about it, mom and dad, I think those zip ties are still there on the car I left you...Ooops!

Anyways, on we trudged, back to the lush cave mouth where we were to rock climb back to the surface. With each step, I was reminded of my first encounter with bioluminescence. At first, I tried to omit these memories from the story, because they involve my first ex-boyfriend (who was an emotionally abusive/manipulative so-and-so). But not all memories associated with bad people are worth forgetting:

I was sixteen and had never been to a place that felt as remote as Kalaloch beach on the wild Olympic Peninnsula. (This was before Twilight, so it was less touristy back then). We set off from his family's camper after dark and wandered hand in hand with teenage giddiness onto a part of Washington's 26 mi of uninterrupted coast. Beneath our feet, bioluminescent plankton peppered the sand, coming alive like the natural, barefoot version of children's light-up shoes. Above us, the Milky Way was visible. Until then, I had never seen it, not even in a photograph. This got me wondering: what other wonderful memories have I cheated myself from enjoying just because they are associated with toxic people?

"Step your toes to the edge and lean back. You're in control now. Lower yourself down" said Andy the guide as I rappeled into the abyss.

Oh, the stories my shoes would tell

“Shoes Feel Funny?”

This is not the way my clients typically title their emails to me.

“There is one shoe sole on the floor of my office and it is shaped like a lady’s high heel. I think it’s yours”, Read the email.

This is the beginning of another work-related wardrobe malfunction story. (Let’s not get into the stapled skirt incident). A long-suppressed desire to travel, incubated by a massive breakup and subsequent couch surfing interlude sets the stage. Thus, my day started like any other waking up on a friend’s sofa pull-out.

Because I had a mid-day client meeting, I decided to work from “home” (using the term lightly). This was a good plan until the building fire alarms started blaring. I grabbed what I thought was a suitable outfit and laptop racing out the door in my ugliest pajamas. Buying myself time in the hopes that the alarm would soon subside, I went for coffee. Given that I was in San Francisco, I made the call that ratty pajamas would not elicit notice.  After all, was it not just last week that a guy got on the 21 bus was wearing a business suit and a full-fledged Stormtrooper mask? I could practically taste the disappointment emanating from his plastic mask when it became apparent that nobody on the bus seemed to be paying any attention to him. It was a good thing to be in San Francisco at that moment. I then proceeded to redecorate my pajamas with a giant coffee spill (let’s just call it “modern art” and move on). Post-coffee fiasco, it became apparent that the alarm was still going, so I ordered a Sidecar and headed to the gym to shower.

Unfortunately, as I stood there dripping in the locker room, I realized that I had in fact not packed a shirt or dress shoes…Fortunately, I did have a one piece swim suit in my locker! And yes, folks, I put that sucker on like it was a camisole under my blazer. Who is going to know? Next, I raced to the nearest consignment store and managed to stammer, “Business meeting, shoes, help”, pointing to my stinky gym shoes. 5 minutes, and only $10 later, I strutted out of there in a remarkably well fitted, but used pair of Ann Taylor pumps. I made it to the meeting fully clothed and on time. I almost got away with my aquatic wardrobe MacGyvering, except for…well, you already know the end of that story.

Fast-forward a few weeks and I am now fulfilling my dream of traveling around the world. Today is day 1 and my couch surfing “think on my feet” (lame pun intended) skills are already coming in handy:

I decided to bring my mountain bike here to New Zealand (pronounced “Nw Zlnd”…perhaps vowels haven’t made it to the southern hemisphere yet). But this is no ultra-light XC bike. This is a 30-35lb beefy enduro beauty which is a beast to carry in an awkward shipping box. Clearly, I need help as I attempt to board the airport bus into Auckland City with the bike plus my 70 Liter backpacker. A friendly British couple help me get the bike on-and-off-board. It becomes apparent standing there at the bus stop that a cab is not going to be flagged down given the very early morning hour. I can not carry the bike to the youth hostel in the box. So I pick the next best option. I build the bike on the spot, right there on the Auckland city street at the crack of dawn! An apartment alcove provides me with all the shelter and flat surfaces a girl could need to build a bike. I am pleased to discover that Aucklanders take about as much note of my weird bike building as SF’ers did of my coffee-stained PJs. I am even lucky enough to find a guy from the apartment building to recycle the giant box for me!

(Note the "no bikes" sign)

Not 5 hours later, I run into the same British couple while cresting the summit of Mount Victoria of Devonport overlooking the watery vista of the city. They are curious about how I got to my destination with such a large parcel. Upon hearing the story, they respond with a resounding, “You did what!?” I think I am going to get a lot of that on this trip.