Still backfilling old posts. Scroll down for current. 

Cheers,    Genevieve

 

Oddly enough the North Island of New Zealand, though with over 75% of NZ’s population, has been less populated with wireless internet access. I’ve written blog entires on my lap top, but have no wireless access. Will try and edit and upload from Auckland when I arrive there and can get access via a friend’s computer.

I have a mobile phone here, and have found myself in the middle of the woods not seeing a soul for over 24 hours, but with mobile access. But I find myself in the centre of a city with no wireless access, which I had all over the South Island. Contradictions.

I have had sun since I landed in Wellington. Too much sun. But Ruby and I, though dusty with the fine pale grit of 100s of kilometres of dirt roads coating us both, have been content to wander and explore and disappear into the green everywhere. Some days have me wishing I could just find a dark dank cave in which to hide, and only traveling at faster than 50km/h gets a strong enough breeze through Ruby’s windows to sooth me. But in with the breeze comes the dust.

No complaints, contentment mostly.

Best wishes for a good holiday season to all and sundry around the world.

This is old news, but it’s the first time I’ve been able to see it online. Good to see him looking so damn handsome and cheerful.

Jake Speed Interviewed by TVNZ.

My biggest question: Did they have him in MAKE-UP?

Jake is a Polie non pareil. He did 6 winters at Pole, and numerous summers too. His story during our winter had an immense impact on all of us there. Many of us, even those who didn’t know him from Adam, kept an ear open for any news of his survival, and his progress after being found. The biggest smiles on all our faces this last winter, was the day we were sent this photo.

Typical Jake, mere weeks after being fitted for his new prostheses he’s out surfing.

He’s back here in Karamea, NZ (on the West Coast)right now and if it weren’t raining so damn hard I imagine he’d already be out on the waves.

He’s the Polie we all aspire to be.

I never got their names, just dropped them off at the first available cross point.

I’ve been the hitchhiker, the one yearning for a ride with the smile on my face as I walk backwards, thumb out, trying to meet the eyes of the drivers. So I feel obligated when I pass a hitcher, to pick them up and pay down my debt from years past. I’ll pick up one, maybe a couple, but never more than that, and never two men. I also prefer to pick up the hitchers who are walking, not just sitting there on their bags waiting passively.

I used to hear from the drivers who stopped for me that they chose me over the other hitchers in the string of hitchers leading out of town because I was the only one moving forward, thumb out, making headway in the direction I wanted to go.

This couple weren’t walking, but they caught my eyes, smiled and looked pleasant just outside of Hokitika. So I stopped.

The second I put my foot on the brakes to slow down I regretted it.

It had nothing to do with them, nothing whatsoever. Both young and tall and fit, an appealing pair. She blonde and very attractive and outdoorsy. He was also tall with a full reddish brown beard and good bone structure, like you would imagine Jesus to be if you thought he were actually caucasian.

And I felt too much guilt to pass them in a van with plenty of space, even though my stuff was strewn all over that space. There was no reason not to stop. So I put on my left indicator and pulled over just past them.

I got out as they opened my door, saying I had to move my gear around. She spoke with an accent I did not catch, he did not speak, just smiled sweetly nd hung back as she negotiated. That’s right. Well done. Female driver, let the woman do the talking, reduce the threat. Or he simply didn’t speak English as well as she did.

But the second I made the decision to stop for them I regretted my decision. I didn’t take off like some asshole teasing the hitchers and making them run. I re-arranged the back seat and moved my random stuff into the way back, cleared off the front seat, and let them in. Backpacks and guy in back, woman in front.

Then started the inquisition. Okay, not really, but to my retreat from civilization and get the hell away mindset post-Ice, the tiny simple questions she asked of me were too much, and too challenging: “Where are you from? Are you travelling? Where are you going? How far are you going?” Not shot at me like that seems, but she was obviously searching.

Argh! I do not like to drop the A bomb into conversations, nor do I like explaining why I am travelling around NZ nor how, let alone where I am from. Even that is too much. What is FROM anyway? Is it where you were born? Brought up? Lived most recently? Have your stuff stored? Spent most of your time in the last 5 years even though no one is ever FROM there?

I am clearly not capable of having a civil conversation with other travelers. I’ll stick to strangers in retail and friends who don’t need to ask. I can’t handle the inquisition, the inquisitive nature of the common grounding conversations people seek out with each other. I am needing to be alone, detached, unidentified by nation, accent, origin, home or job choice.

So it was my mistake to pick up this nice young couple. She was from Montreal. I don’t know about him. He never spoke.

I know her queries were not intended to be invasive. It is what hitchers do: try to find out what the driver expects of them–Entertainment? Silence? Tall tales? Intrigue? Keep them awake? Pass the time in a long boring trip? A captive audience? A debating partner?

I wanted none of that, not even silence. In my efforts to not answer her questions, but not be completely rude, I had to drop the A bomb: I work in Antarctica, that explains why I am in NZ. And that always generates more questions. Couldn’t I have lied? Yes, but every lie, if you answer a question, requires more lies. I was obviously uncomfortable with her questions, with a silence of often 30 seconds or so passing after she’d asked the simplest of questions. She would smile and gaze at me as the silence became awkward and I’d half figured out how to answer it.

Indeed, her very first question was “Where are you going?” and I knew I needed an out so I answered “The next town down.” If I didn’t give myself that out, I would end up taking them all 4 hours or whatever, without freedom, trapped in my own van, all the way to their next destination: probably one of the Glaciers, Fox or Franz Joseph.

I had no idea what the name of the next town down was. Not prepared for that lie, was I?

But come the next town, Ruapehu, and her next question of “Aren’t you stopping here?” and I was prepared with a lie about a friend off the main road whose town I didn’t know until I came to the next sign and said “This is it.”

I left them there on the side of the road on this rainy day and headed off up Woodstock-Rimu Road. Where I parked for an hour until I knew they’d have been picked up by someone else and I did not have to continue on my way accompanied when I just couldn’t bear it.

I couldn’t have borne anyone at that point. I am travelling solo because I need to be alone. I need the freedom to just choose any road, dirt or asphalt, no matter the destination, and just go up it exploring. I need to be able to stop anytime I want, to pee, to take a picture, to take a nap, or a break to read. I just need to be totally unobligated, irresponsible, carefree and careless, on my own making decisions about what to do and where to go and how long to spend completely unrequired to adjust myself to anyone else’s expectations.

I desperately need that. That is how I am healing from this last season. I could not do this while I was sick, nor while my mother was in NZ, nor while I was trapped in Christchurch doing all my appointment for my PQ (Physical Qualifications) with the van in the shop from Monday through Friday.

I need the complete opposite of my season now. I need what makes me heal: solo time. I need to recognize who I am and how I am when I am not in a state of reacting to other people.

And it seems, even perfectly pleasant hitchhikers are too much for me to handle just yet, now that I have my privacy and freedom back.

I can’t do another winter until I have truly stopped reacting to this last one. Just now, even though I do not think much of it, I must still be feeling it.

I find myself driving along, or walking under some honey-scented beech forest canopy, or sifting through the bazillions of stones on a West Coast beach in the rain and sea-mist blown across me by the wind, and I realize that not only am I frowning, but my fists are clenched at my sides. Clenched tight. Even when I sleep. I sleep with a frown and wake with clenched fists, numb from the clenching.

I still have some work to do, and that work doesn’t include even the casual temporary company of hitch hikers whose names I’ll never know.

*”A sentence should be like a serpent
Quick with a sting in its tail”

Bauhaus “Small Talk Stinks”

Yes, it does rain in New Zealand all the time. I used to think it rained on the West Coast all the time, then I thought, OK, maybe it rains on the East Coast sometimes, after all they do need it for crops and greenery and such, right? So it must do. Sometimes.

But no, it rains All The Time All Over NZ. Does too. I’ll show you the photos.

Really, I’m okay with that. I have a vehicle to protect me from the rain when I want to hide from it, and I’ve spend good chunks of time hiding very happily, engaged in a book while the rain spits and stutters and slops all over the van roof, windows and sides.

However, sometimes, I get a bit tired of what the rain hides from me. Not so much the rain, as the clouds.

Much of my driving and exploring is spent winding in and out and up and down the vertical folds and crevices of mountainsides near the sea. Last night, and the night before, I spent perched on cliff sides, on ridges, high up above views reputed to be spectacular and mind boggling, over valleys, reservoirs, rivers, plains, seas, peninsulas, islands, bays, and such like. Unfortunately, each time I perched there with glimpses of the spectacular far far below me, the clouds soon moved in to engulf me, or were there from the get go. Regardless of whether it was raining inside the clouds high on the mountain top where I parked the van, and frequently it was, or as good as with its mist and fine wet drops, it served to obscure the views I deserved to see by choosing such high places to spend my night.

Each evening I rested my head on the pillows in the back of the van, thinking This Too Shall Pass and the rain would cease, the clouds lift or dissipate, and I would have revealed beneath me the magnitude of the amazing coastline or mountain ranges beyond the nose of the van, or the edge of the cliff.

It hasn’t happened yet. I wake high in clouds, I descend low into fog, I drive with views from 100m to 10m ahead of me on the narrow road I creep around. I’m seeing a lot of narrow roads, overhung with glorious greenery, fronds of giant ferns, mosses and epiphytes and flowers and tree limbs dangling upon the vertical cliff face above me–hiding the rocks that must surely be there because so many have found their way to the road ahead of me, or simply clinging to and holding in place the earth.

Somehow it is more disconcerting to drive these roads when the cloud surrounds me. I look to my side where the view should be and beyond the fringe of trees that would frame or disguise it, I see no blue, not of sky, not of sea. There is nothing there but white. Not knowing what I drive beside–how far it is to fall if I go off the road, how hard the landing, be it sea or rocks or raging river–gives me the willies. As if nothingness has crept up just a little too near to me for me to feel comfortable driving beside it.

Odd that after 13 months at the South Pole, so many of which were spent in an obscuring blanketing darkness with no horizon or way to escape the tiny station island we were marooned upon, I should find fog or cloud upon a cliff to be so unnerving. The erasure of the height, the removal of the view by the nothingness of it, is more terrifying than darkness and isolation and extreme cold.

I have forsaken a few adventures and further explorations these last few days due to the rain. Intentions to go to the very end of the road past Okiwi Bay on one of the cluster of indented and folded peninsular fingers of the Marlborough Sounds have been abandoned for future days less rainy and cloudy and foggy. I want to be stunned and paralysed by the views there, the ones I know are around every corner, through every gap in the trees flanking the cliff edge drives I am pursuing. I want the thrill of discovery and astonishment, personal and wondrous revelations that have me finding a wide spot on the road to stop and breathe in again, so I can get out and take a photo of the millionth inevitably spectacular view.

I will do it again another day, another year. I see the possibilities every now and then, and it urges me on to see what I can so I can tell myself I will be back in better weather.

But tonight, I have parked by the sea in a small bay the name of which I do not know, a mere 5 metres from the high tide line. I have company on this tiny stone beach front: a pair of Paradise Shelducks and their brood of stripey fluffy young, 7 strong, a trio of oystercatchers, a snarky red-billed gull, and wind to buffet me every now and then even in this sheltered spot. And rain, horizontal rain to pound and splatter and tickety tockety along the sides in waves and watery gusts. I can see the sea here, bluey-green and rippled with waves, white caps coming and going. I will be rocked to sleep with no rhyme or reason to the swaying caused by the uneven blasts of wind slamming into me.

I will dream the sea has risen and taken the van with it.

When I am cliff side I dream the van has slipped its moorings and slid off into bushes or is about to do so.

I will sleep in with the rain, the never ending rain, and upon waking will roll over, grab my book and delay the start of yet another day. And I’m fine with that.

The drumbeats of heavy rain on the van roof made me smile. I was sleeping in. Rain means sleeping late, the light is dimmer outside the windows and the reason for getting up early is less appealing and immediate.

The rain eased in and out of drumming to pitta patta to delicate tapping, the wind having died in the night. Thankfully. If the wind had still been up I would not have returned to Wharariki. Regardless of its many mystical magical charms, the combination of another high tide at 8am-ish and those winds would have had me driving away from Wharariki toward Takaka Hill again.

Takaka Hill is more cliff than hill. The climb up from the Motueka side is steep and extreme, and for a two-laned highway, the speed at which the tailgaters (locals in speedy little cars) expect a foreign-steered van to climb and maneuver is way beyond my comfort level, regardless of which side of the road I may be driving on.

On my climb up yesterday I passed a young man on a bicycle, several times, as I was stopping at every green DOC (Dept of Conservation, referred to as “dock”) sign that said “Lookout 400m on Left” and “Hawkes Lookout” and “Caves” and their dozen other interesting signage brethren. I was slow, but he was slower in the climb. So we hopscotched each other up this road, with me frequently having the opportunity to admire not only his great effort and strength, but his marvelous backside. Dressed in those tight black bicycle shorts with yellow swoopy racing stripes down the thighs that outline every straining muscle of his buttocks and thighs, he looked…wellllll…very capable of this feat of endurance and strength. Though also necessarily insane enough to do this on a twisty winding blind-curved narrow road up which most folks in cars speed like demons with a death wish. I couldn’t quite tell that from his backside, but I assumed it from his presence on such a steep climb.

It was not until we had crested the hill, almost simultaneously, and were on our way down that I got it, truly got it. This bicyclist approached in my rear view window as I crept hesitantly down the switchback road on the other side descending into Takaka Valley. This side was more extreme, all switchbacks and hairpins, and there came this bicyclist, maniacal grin on his face, though even so, very careful to keep his lips down over his teeth when he whipped past me (I pulled over so he could pass, much like I had for most of the ascending cars tailgating my ass on the other side) at 120km per hour (easily) downhill. I watched him shoot past me without peddling or brakes, crouched low over his handlebars, taking the hairpin (no exaggeration) curves at angles that could have scraped his patellas off had he leaned any further over, without slowing At All. He must have made it down that side in 5 minutes flat without pausing or hesitating, just leaning into those curves, exhilaratingly shooting the hill downward.

I got it. I saw the reward, the thrill, the danger, the speed, the insects in his teeth if he opened his mouth, or even on his tonsils, so fast was he going. By the time I reached the bottom, crawling down at about 50km he was just zipping onto the flat and away, still at speed, gained from the downward momentum of his ride.

If I had been ahead of him, I would have stopped and thrown a parade for this young man. This may be something he does every weekend, or several times a week, in training for something, or just for the sheer heart-stopping thundering WOW! of the ride down hill, a just reward for the effort of climbing it in the first place. I was impressed.

But I have my own ways of getting my jollies, and this morning’s rain made it more possible than sun. I rolled over in my makeshift bed in the back of the van and fell in and out of sleep as the rain tumbled and tapped and sluiced off the roof of the van, louder and softer, waking me or lulling me back to sleep, until almost 10am. At ten I started stirring, begrudgingly realising that I should probably start my day.

By 11:30am, after rolling up my bed and eating three Wheetbix with soymilk, washing my face and brushing my teeth, I was back at Wharariki Beach, head to ankle in rain gear. It was pouring when I got out of the van dressed in black and waterproofed. I wore my Tevas initially: the parking area and initial sheep path before the beach is a bit rougher on my tender feet than I wanted to deal with. At the verge of the dunes, under the last tree and bush, I hid them and went the rest of the way barefoot.

I didn’t care if my feet got wet, just the rest of me.

Besides, walking barefoot in the sand is like a free pedicure, the sand wears off the dead white calluses of 13 months in boots at the South Pole. My feet always feel great after a day spent walking in the sand.

The tide was already going out when I crested the last dune in the heavy rain, revealing access to more caves and stone bridges and tide pools and islands than the previous afternoon had. I started very methodically on the north end near where I’d emerged and moved south as far as I could go. The rain moved in and out, with an occasional wind coming up and angling the rain at my backside, but mostly it was very light or wind-free.

I saw seals sleeping, oyster catchers arguing and mating and eating, baby seals protected by fierce mother seals, and the cliffs of stone and native bush brightly coloured in a multitude of rich greens with the rain. The water was surprisingly warm, and I had to spend quite a bit of time in it, almost knee deep at times as I clambered in and out and under and around and over the stones and sand and tidepools and caves and cut throughs and caverns and arches and stone bridges. Some bridges were like something you’d see in Utah, but at their feet sand and the tide swishing and smashing at the downbeach end. Others were darker stone, embedded like a mosaic cemented with multicoloured red and orange and white and green and striped and spotted beach stones and clam shells from eons past when this was ocean floor. The vast majority of the cliffs and stones were like this, with the occasional pure sandstone area worn away faster, or the harder lava flows that had split some areas.

I walked this beach all the way to the southern cliff. I explored every cave available, walking through stones the size of apartment buildings on paths of grey sand draining rain and sea water from higher on the beach, the surf thundering at one end, or just smooth wet sand stretching all the way through. I waded knee deep through sandy tidepools of greeny blue. I crouched to crawl under rock outcroppings usually under water covered with bright red fleshy creatures like huge soft barnacles the diameter of quarters and silver dollars. I hooted and barked back at the mama seal who was warning me away from her baby, and by her behaviour making me suspicious enough to look carefully enough to find the disguised youngster. I walked in the edge of the surf photographing the off shore stone creatures, revealed or hidden and constantly changing according to the view, back always to the rain and the wind to protect my camera. I stumbled into holes in the sand filled with water easily knee deep whilst doing so backwards.

I was overjoyed. I had this marvellous playground of sand and sea and cliff and stone completely to myself as the tide went out.If it had been sunny there would have been many people there with me. If it had been sunny I would not have ventured forth onto the beach in the middle of the day. Sun and sand oppress people like me, light-skinned easily burned redheads. With no place to hide, no cover, the open brightness of a sandy shore contrive to make me feel vulnerable and exposed and intensely unhappy. Out of place.

Only the rain made it possible. Without the cover of the rain, the clouds, the wet, the beach would not have been available to me and I would have fled long before I explored the entirety of it. I did not leave until 4 hours later, with the advent of a few other brave souls who barged right up to the seals to photograph and harass them, and the rumbling of my tummy, and the slight bluing of my chilled bare toes, only visible due to their extreme paleness after so long in boots.

So, I woke up smiling at the sound of rain on the van roof, and rolled back over to sleep until I felt like getting up to have this adventure that awaited the intrepid rain-loving redhead that I am. But it could wait.

If I could have disrobed without losing all my clothes to the wind, I would have. The sand was blowing past me so hard and fast and steadily that I knew I could save myself heaps of money by this Do It Yourself Full Body Exfoliation.

But alas, I had company on Wharariki Beach by Cape Farewell, and the sand was not just blowing fit enough to exfoliate, but it was grinding, sanding, scouring, carving and gouging anything that stood in its way. I stood in its way. Well, leaned up against it in an effort to maintain verticality.

I had fantasized that I would watch the sunset over the ocean, between the cliffs and odd islands of striped and sanded sandstone and whatnot, capped with greenery like a green smurf with a military haircut. I would sit there in the dunes with a good book, and read carelessly, easily distracted by the changing view in front of me, as the sun sank lower and lower.

Fat bloody chance. I survived an hour at best, half of which was spend facing into the wind, leaning like I was climbing a steep hill, hair blown straight out behind me (Wind In My Hair! Yay! Missed that.) walking south on the beach, the rest was being pushed staggering back downwind, hair whipping around my face. No rest to be found anywhere, but for a 5 minute duck into a cave in the cliff, quickly ended as the rising tide approached across the flat sands swiftly enough that getting cut off and swamped by it was a strong possibility.

The incoming waves breaking around the huge beasts of rocks, cliffed and caverned islands in the centre of the beach surrounded by the ocean at high tide, could not stand up to the wind and the white tops as they broke were swiftly blown off into shooting horizontal mist and foam.

I had missed low tide, arriving late in the afternoon but with yet hours to go to sunset. Low tide was at 1:45pm, high tide would be around 8pm. As would the sunset, around 9pm. If not the wind, then my timing would have caused me to beat a retreat.

I had spent a night at Wharariki Beach several years ago during my first adventure with Ruby. I had arrived late in the evening, when late was only about 5;30pm and sunset over the ocean about 6pm, if that late. There had been no wind, and the tide was low. I had spent an hour or more exploring the caves and the tunnels and the labyrinthine routes scoured in the rock-encrusted sandstone, and had walked within and beneath and around and over the great boulders at the south end of the beach. Boulders does not explain the size, nor the eruption of striped stone from the fine sand of the beach. It was a wonderland of tide pools in the sand, collected down beach of the giant stone playground, sea water running back to the sea digging furrows and shaping the sand in many odd sculptures, tiny sand lava flows accumulating in layers.

I had watched the sun go down, framed at the last moment by a bridge, a hole through the western cliffs edging the beach. Then as the few other souls on the beach, one photographer and two surfers, retreated with the descending darkness, I stayed to watch the sky change from day to dusk to twilight to night and the stars came out, and the beach changed colours with it.

It was late when I returned to Ruby in the car park. Late and dark, and I trotted home barefoot over the dunes then through the grassy sheep pasture along the sides of the steep hills following the path glowing just a little lighter in the darkness.

I slept in Ruby at the car park. Peacefully but for the constant honking of the pair of Paradise Shelducks in the pasture behind me, and the plaintive bleats of a few young sheep, and the sonic grunts and bellows of the unhappy cattle in the neighbouring pasture. I slept there illicitly, as car camping, or camping of any sort, is not allowed there. I felt incredibly obvious in the daylight parked there, Ruby being true to her name, a bright red colour one can’t exactly blend into the bush in.

I woke early, very early. The sun had not yet broken over the hills in the east, but the ducks and the cattle and the sheep had started waking loudly, if indeed they had even slept. I didn’t think so. It was misty and there was no wind at all, one of those grey quiet pre-dawns that are so lovely on the seas. So I grabbed an apple and headed back to the beach, to encounter another low tide and private sea view.

The mist hung low on the cliffs and islands, clinging to the sea, even as the sun rose and revealed a clear blue sky above it. I wandered along the beach again, but this time, the tide being even further out, though still roiled with surf, I got closer to the islands. Inshore of one island was a large tide pool, deep enough in the sand to be blue. In that tide pool, much to my delight, were three baby seals frolicking and playing and swimming about. I stood right at the edge of that pool watching them play, sleek and black and trim like sea otters, experimenting with their games and abilities, paying hide and seek, tag and chase my tail. All the while I was watched myself. The official Recess Monitor seal, high up in a cliff overlooking the pool, barked at me to let me know she was there, and to let her charges know to beware. I stayed still the entire time, barefoot toes on the edge of the pool, grinning to myself at their antics; wishing I were a seal and could move through water like that.

Eventually they moved on to a tide pool where the surf was breaking into it and then advanced from there into the surf on the beach and disappeared easily into the sea with a few adults at hand.

Wharariki Beach gave me an astonishing and precious experience my first time around, and I had wanted to return for several years. When the opportunity presented itself this year, I shot right up here as soon as possible after I had both my health, my independence and Brad’s van lined up.

Only to be defeated by the wind. I lie now in the van, somewhere in a layby off the 6km dirt road leading out to Cape Farewell (where last time I was stung by a native wasp when I stepped on it as I climbed one of the grassy cliffs above the cape, barefoot of course) and Wharariki Beach. Not the car park there, it is still not allowed, and a new house is being built within spitting distance, already the garage shows occupation. But close enough and out of the wind enough that I will not be rocked to sleep by the buffeting of the wind gusting and banging into me.

I found as I climbed in to the van after my stint being sand blasted, that I have fine sand in every pore of my being. My ears were full, my scalp is plastered with it, the back of my neck is crusted with grit, my skin itself is plastered with sand, my fingernails are full of sand, my eyebrows are gritty with it, and I am shedding it from everywhere. I expect my bed will be full of fine sand like white pepper when I wake in the morning.

If the wind has died I will return to Wharariki, to experience another high tide. My timing is off this year. I do not want to spend an entire day there if it is windy, waiting for the 2pm low tide. Indeed, even if it isn’t windy the sun on the beach on the sand will quickly overwhelm me and cause me to retreat. I cannot bear a sandy shore at high noon. I’m afraid I will go up in smoke like flash paper with that much sun on me.

We’ll see.

I am surrounded and serenaded by Tuis, that bird of many voices after whom the terrible New Zealand beer is named. The sun has gone down on Lake Rotaroa, I am parked, and trapped inside Brad’s van by a very firm hissing from a swan, defending her two young fuzzies. They are not tiny, they are each the size of a hen, but have no feathers, so they are all grey-silver and fuzzy and stay within feet of Mama Swan, who is much larger. Much. Larger.

When I arrived I parked my van by the side of the lake, with a great view across it into the mountains, still just touched with a few zebra-stripes of snow. I climbed in back to fetch my jacket and use the sliding egress outside. I had noticed her as I pulled up, but thought nothing of it, besides the fact that that was the closest I’d come to an Australian Black Swan in ever, and how not shy she was about my vehicle.

Shoulda thought something of it. She was not about to let me out of the van. I opened the door, she turned toward me and started marching, silver mini-mes in tight tow, right at me, hissing, black head cocked to one side to make sure she could also give me the hairy eyeball over her red beak, slashed with a stripe of white like tape across the bottom.

OK, no problems. The second I opened the door I also noticed the sandflies. Unbelievable I had forgotten to get insect repellent so I didn’t leave the van until several hours later when the sun had dropped behind the hill to my side.

In the silence of the van I read, but was easily distracted by the profusion of birds about me. Like some kind of great silver windowed bird hide, the avian life around me took no mind of my presence: the first Tui to show up landed right outside the driver’s side door on a beech stump surrounded by manuka. Initially I thought, “Just another blackbird” until I saw the distinctive white feather cravat they sport. Then the sun hit it and I saw all its many watered iridescent silk colours beneath the black, like oil on night water a rainbow of hues rolled across its feathers brilliantly. I nearly broke my neck craning forward from the back seat into the front seat following its progress on the ground.

Once the swans calmed down and took to the water–surprisingly the young ones (can you tell I have no freakin’ idea what the young of a swan are called right now?) waddled right off into the water along with Mama, imitating every honk and neck snake move and waddle. Yup, sans feathers they float like lobster buoys. Somehow my mind is still with penguins, who cannot swim until they have feathers fully grown, either as young or after their yearly molt. Papa hovered distantly along the shore throughout–I emerged and went to the toilet, walking slowly head craned backward dangerously watching all the activity in the trees, accompanied by the raucous noises of a forest alive with birds. So many TUIS! I’ve never seen so many, let alone so easily. Always before it was a quick glimpse of a shy fast-flying bird that maybe just maybe paused on a limb near enough for me to spot just the white poof on its throat to ID it before it flew off and away.

You should see the young swans…oh oh oh…CYGNETS…yeah, brain back… as they imitate the stretch winged drying off of their mother. Hilarious to see these tiny inelegant black skinned buffalo wing sized leather things reach up from the silvery fuzz. I laughed out loud. Mama Swan looked at me hard when she heard that. Something in her gaze told me her children were PERFECT and to back the hell off and shut up if I knew what was healthy for me.

So I have. Stayed in the car watching, enchanted, as nature took place right outside my windows in full throat, in full colour, scented of honey sweet in the air from the beech forest and its blackened trunks, trunks thick with the black fungus that grows on the sap the honeydew beetles extrude on thin silver threads. These threads each contain one tiny drop of dew at the end, and what bees and wasps do not collect falls on the trunk to nourish this black fungus. It is largely through the black trunks, where they would usually be white, that I recognize a NZ beech forest, that and the smell, so warm and sweet I imagine it makes wasps and honeybees twitch with lust.

My favourite honey is from honeydew. The beetles burrow inside the bark to where the sap runs and live there, releasing excess digested sap through the tiny thread left hanging outside in the air. The honeybee comes along, collects it like the nectar from a flower and taking it back to its hive develops it into honey: honeydew honey. It is by far the most delicious honey I have ever tasted. It tastes like maple syrup, you can taste the origins of the forest and the sap in it, the trees it comes from. Never mind that it is a product that has been through the digestive tracts of two insects, it is simply heavenly. A dark rich amber, it suits chai, and other spiced teas, to a T.

It has grown dark and now silent and my laptop screen glows incongruously within my darkened van, and it is time to go to sleep. The summer days are longer than I’m used to in NZ, in the mountains the sun still did not go down until about 8pm. All my previous travels have been in autumn and winter when the need for a place to stop and sleep in Ruby has started about 4:30pm for a sundown of 6pm or earlier in the mountains.

I am finally under way, on my own, solo drifting down roads with tempting names or wondrous horizons or magical secrets just around the bend. I am happy and relieved to be out of Christchurch. Though my week there, spent, ostensibly, waiting for the van to be repaired again, was what I had sought immediately after getting off the Ice. But alas, it was two weeks before my mother left and I was a little healthier such that I could feel some relief in just stopping and being irresponsible, and learn how to sleep again, how to read again, and how to cook for myself again.

Today I left Christchurch in the morning without a firm idea of what I wanted to do or where I wanted to go. I got a lovely happy-making phone call on my new mobile phone, and on the heels of the call sailed happily, iPod plugged in and playing love songs (or perhaps every song is of love when one is happy), up toward Lewis Pass and beyond. In the rain. No matter. In and out of rain showers I drove, the green around me blazing and delicious, richly deserving of the low clouds and mist hanging on the hills and mountains through which I drove. Greens can be dumbfounding after a year at the South Pole. Dark watery greens like pine and wakame seaweed, bright new spring greens like rice shoots puffing out all over the trees on the rivers, delicate fawn greens, pale icing on the sides of steep hills topped by dark navy green shrubs. So many greens, so many hundreds of shades and depths and wallowings of green in this wet countryside through which I drove.

I am so damn lucky.

Does anyone actually care what I do once I leave the Ice? Give me a reason why I should write once I leave.

Yesterday was a wonderful, sunny, warm day.

I woke up sounding like a deep sea diver breathing through water, then coughed and hacked up some more cheese curdish stuff from my tired lungs.

I lay abed wheezing like this until several hours later, showered and then went out, long after my mother’s own solo departure from the room. She went to wander the city and use up some of the gift certificates I have. She spent the afternoon doing the
Lyttleton Wildlife Cruise, checked out Cathedral Square and had an eggs benedict with smoked salmon at Le Cafe for breakfast.

When I did emerge I wandered out short-sleeved into a gorgeous day with a lovely breeze, slathered in so much sunscreen I could have slid down the street. I intended only to change money, and buy proper tissues before the three day weekend (Canterbury’s Cup & Show weekend is on, everything shut for Fri, Sat & Sun) and pick up my Green Spot whiskey from Whisky Galore but I walked past a little vintage shop (Two Squirrels) on Hereford on my way to Colombo St and got sucked in by a beautiful 50s cotton dress with blue and green flowers on a white background on a mannequin in the window. Gorgeous dress, with such fine details and darts and pleats, for a shaped figure requiring boobs a la Genevieve and an ass a la Jennifer Lopez. One out of two attributes ain’t bad. The kind of vintage to make my heart sing, and perfectly suited to a summer’s celebration of release from 13 months of winter incarceration.

Wheezed and sniffled and coughed up the short flight of stairs in the old wooden building stuffed with a variety of antique shops selling jewelry, tchotchkes, furniture, decorations, and clothing. I mentioned it to the woman there, who addressed me as “sweet” about as many times as her chatter required commas. A charming verbal tick in a nice Kiwi accent, delivered with enthusiasm and a love of vintage wear. I tried it on. Too big, it hung on me like a sackcloth, none of the darts and shaping hanging on me where it should to give that hourglass silhouette the 50s and 60s styles deliver. I was disappointed.

But I spotted another lovely vintage 50s dress on the rack, a pale silvery blue silk, like moonlight on snow, with teal blue embroidered flowers on it, a brocade silk, with a waist line and a scooped neck to die for. The bodice is lovely, fitted mostly to the waist, where it flows out with oodles of fabric hanging heavy and cool against the skin to mid-calf. It swings divinely. THAT fit. I bought it. $100NZ. An impulse, a splurge and a reward for myself on a sunny warm day of freedom. I intend this cocktail dress for a Christmas party in Auckland with a posh friend. I will also bring it to Pole for next winter for one of the dinners. It’s a stunning dress and I look awesome in it. I want to dance in it.

Except my boobs weren’t anywhere near the darts. Them crazy 50s bra lines. I needed about 2 inches of lift to get mine near where they needed to be. I tried the dress on sceptically, believing my boobs would never achieve the heights they once did for maybe a year as a teenager, but I reached in and hauled up my bra straps, and thereby my boobs, to see what I would look like in it with the proper chest positioning. Size good, droopage not so good.

The owner of the shop recommended I go for a fitting at Ballentynes, just up the street and around the corner, for a proper bra to get them up there. Expensive bloody department store, reeks of money. But without hesitation I walked into the lingerie dept in my torn and saggy jeans (yet another pair of Levi’s only just over a year old giving up the ghost on me, WTF?) in my pale and bulbous body with a daypack on my back hanging fleece and water bottles on it, and asked for a bra. For a dress.

After spending NZ$100 on a dress, was I going to balk at the price of a bra to put my boobs in it right? Not likely. Was I going to accept the stigma implied in the slightly airy tone of the place that shrieked You Do Not Belong But We Will Be Polite To You Anyhow? Nope. Walked up to the first clerk available and said I needed a bra. For a dress.

She led me into the dressing room.

I removed my t-shirt and she measured me, not once indicating to me that she was appalled at the hairy armpits or the saggy boobs. Once around the ribcage (I’m small of chest in that regard) and once around the boobs. Then she asked me a few basic questions like did I mind the colour or without lace or what? I pulled out the dress and showed her what I was trying to get my boobs into. She held it up, tilted her head, and left the dressing room. A few minutes later she came back with two bras, same one in two different sizes. Commenting on the discrepancy between the size of my chest and the size of my “chest”.

I dislodged my boobs in front of her, from my black lace bra, and she slid my arms into the new bra, then walked around back as I leaned over to place my breasts in the cups, and did me up in the back. An odd way to enter a bra, for me. She adjusted the straps and I stood up, yanking bits of stray boobage into place.

Holy cow. Me grandma. Yup, a granny bra. A lovely soft cream lace, not itchy at all, a hefty pair of straps and cups that covered the entirety of each boob sans bulge. Very comfortable, actually. A bra with DARTS, and suddenly my chest was anchored firmly to my front somewhere closer to my clavicles than they have been for decades, and they were not going to BUDGE from that position. No bouncing, no shifting, all sorts of frontage going on. Perfect for the dress. I tried the dress on and it was divine. Boobs exactly where the darts were. I could probably do handstands in this bra and nothing would shift, they would continue pointing right out there.

But then I noticed the unsightly bulges on my hips/waist where my panties cut into the fat I’d accumulated there over the winter. She went and found some granny panties to cover that up, and I was set to dance, to twirl, to move about in a comfortable, gorgeous dress at a fancy party.

Except for the hairy legs and the knotty toes boot-clad far too long. Oh, and no I won’t shave the armpit hair. I have so little I can hardly even make a proper feminist statement by not doing so.

Bra NZ$60. Panties NZ$25.

Need shoes. Perhaps ballet flats in silver or white or teal?

Before I left the dressing room the clerk adjusted my own black lace bra for me, tsking just a little, bringing the boobs up at least an inch in them. A bit of a revelation, that.

From there I sailed down Colombo St to Whisky Galore, stopped in at Toff’s (used clothing) on Gloucester and bought a purple cotton sarong (NZ$6.50) with a nice print and a three quarter sleeve white cotton eyelet top with gentle
green vines and purple flowers, button up, slightly fitted. (NZ$6.50) Summer clothes, summer weather, summer freedom. Looked for shoes. Everything has heels and I will not be wearing heels of any sort for a very long time at this point. No luck.

It was a longer walk than I expected to Whisky Galore, out past Valentinos. Picked up my two bottles of Green Spot, had a “wee dram” of another very expensive fine whisky which cleared up my lungs IMMEDIATELY, but made me lightheaded. Whereupon I sailed back down the sidewalk to Thomas’s, fell into bed and slept until Mum came back from her adventures. Mum had a marvelous day, saw a few Hector’s dolphins, the harbour and bought a scrunchy cream cotton knit hat with an adjustable wire brim at the market in Cathedral Square. She’s having fun and being very independent.

Then I cooked dinner. What fucking bliss. I made basmati rice (GOOD RICE!!!!!!!) and did a quick stir fry in olive oil of zucchini, carrots, onions, garlic, fresh ginger, and a chopped tomato added in at the last moment. Salt, pepper, soy sauce for flavour and sauce and pillowed by a mound of this lovely delicate white rice that stuck together in these delicate long grains. Colours on my plate orange, red, green and white like a flag of freedom, half an avocado on the side. Mum had wine. I had water. Consumed the whole plate. Moaning the whole time. FRESH vegetables, good rice, the flavours were divine and clean and
each bite had the taste of the slightly crisp vegetable and a tinge of ginger and garlic, and the rice as the simple comfort and fragrant bed upon which I delivered it.

But I have not really budged much yet. Next year I will get off the Ice, get a room for a week paid in advance, and just stutter to a halt. No visitors arriving right on the heels of my redeployment, and I bloody hope no lung issues again or broken foot. Just stop and roll over in bed looking out the window at the wind ruffling the tree leaves and the blue sky brocaded and water-coloured with clouds. Cook a little, shop a little, sleep a shit tonne of hours, willfully spend time being profligate with water in showers.

I’ll admit having my mother here is lovely and fun and I’m excited to unfurl with her and show her NZ, but I am so exhausted I can only feel guilt at being unable to perform the simplest function like getting Brad’s (of Brad and Me and Ruby Make Three) van WOFed and registered so we can actually get on the road and visit NZ. She’s seeing Christchurch and the airport. I can barely organize my shower things, let alone make calls and make appointments and make inquiries about schedules and such. I am still sick and dragging.

Similarly stunned winterover Polies wander solo and in occasional random clusters around Christchurch, barely able to get it together enough to leave the city and start their vacations. And most of them having got off a week or more before me. And they healthy. I seem to be the only one felled by every germ that winked at me off the first
plane to Pole. NO immune system. Ass kicked on so many levels.

But nonetheless, yesterday was a lovely day.

**Caveat: this post was written several days ago, early in my arrival, and is perhaps influenced by a steroid-induced moodiness and not necessarily indicative of current emotions***

My arrival in Christchurch is not what I expected, but at this point I don’t know what I expected. Perhaps some repeat of sensations from seasons past: a fascination with bugs and trees and grass. But stepping off the plane into the moist night air with 12 other winterover Polies, all I wanted to do was get away. From them. From my whole winter. I landed stunned and numb and paralysed from the neck up, if not completely stuffed with snot and in some pain from the airplane pressure changes, and unable to hear properly. I took 5 minutes to return my ECW Gear to the CDC (Clothing Distribution Centre) and then I ran as fast as my bum foot and the airport luggage trolley could take me to the Sudima Hotel next door.

Some of that could have been the vicodin I took for the flight on the doctor’s recommendation, to still the coughing jags I am having, to alleviate the feeling of being in a large nutcracker with every cough. Now with head cold. And I also got the mean cramps and heavy period 10 days earlier than scheduled. My body has come undone. Whence my brain?

I dream not of Christchurch and the food varieties in its many restaurants, but of a small yurt somewhere in the forested hills, no responsibilities to anyone but myself and sleep for a month.

I am exhausted. I woke my first morning in NZ with every ache and moan of my season sitting on me. From the roots of my hair to my belly to my arms and shoulders and back and hands and feet and face all throbbed with protest when the alarm went off. I felt sat on by heavy expectations and responsibilities, not freedom and humidity.

Where was my release? My freedom at last achieved? If this is it I have no energy for it.

I still cough, my sinuses ache, my ears hurt and I go in and out of hearing like I have water in my ears, I resent having to pay for things, and paying so damn much with the exchange rate just catching up with the extra cost of everything in NZ to make it as expensive as the US.

I am disgruntled. Angry. Restless and unable to stop my mind, yet saddled with having to get up in the morning and deal with shit. I would dearly love to just find some space somewhere off a river and park Ruby there for a week and stop doing anything but being, unthinking, undoing, undoing. Yes, undoing the season in my mind, unbundling, unclenching, undoing and disentangling the knotted leftover emotions, the horrible constants of 9 months of being treated as if I were incompetent, stupid, lazy and not worthy of the very basic respect and honesty. Not by the vast majority of the crew. they were caught in much the same syndrome as I was, many of them.

I am so damn tired. Screw birds and greenery and humidity, screw the charming garden city of Christchurch, screw the glorious Botanical Gardens, screw Two Fat Indians and Sala Sala (Japanese), I just want to sleep for a week unthinking, looking out the tent door at the sky and then rolling back over with a muttered “fuck it”. I just don’t have the energy for anything.

I try to sort the different strains of “fuck its” going through my mind, I try to figure out how much is being so fucking sick, how much is the hangover of a winter, how much of it is the aftermath of this particularly difficult winter (and how can I differentiate there when this is my only winter?) and how much the culture shock of being back in the world with all the daily choices and responsibilities of choosing food from menus and finding a place to stay for the night, let alone the larger responsibilities of getting a van roadworthy and hosting my mother’s first trip to NZ. Has it been too long I have lived the simple life of the same small dorm room, the same 42 other people, the same meal times, the same unforgiving cold? Is this shock? Too much change too soon too quick?

Because this is not the simple life anymore. May I abdicate? May I shrug these burdens for awhile, finish out my antibiotics, stop taking the steroids? May I have my health and mobility back so I can go out there and enjoy the things I missed at Pole so much I almost hallucinated them?

Can you make the noisy fuckers 10 strong and drunk at the restaurant table behind me shut the hell up? Someone please, turn down the volume on the world for a bit. I am overwhelmed and just can’t handle it right now.