Trampers

What Goes Around Comes Around

“You know what I miss about the United States? Being able to get anything you want, anytime you want it.”

Outside, the storm we'd been waiting for all day had finally arrived. The wind was whipping the trees sideways. It was a perfect time to be inside the hut, grabbing arranging foam mattresses and arranging them on the open floor of the loft.

Mary greeted us as fellow Americans: “Like the way they come around with the pitcher of iced tea, and you can have as much as you want, without paying extra. Where're you from?” she wanted to know.

“California.”

“We lived in Portland for seventeen years before we came back here. My husband's from here. I'm originally from Milwaukee.”

“Yeah, I spent part of my teen years there. Lived near Riverside High School.”

“Oh, the east side! I grew up near 90th and Center.”

“Wauwatosa.”

“No, still in Milwaukee, but right near the border. That's how I used to describe it.”

She left us alone while we examined our feet for blisters. I had a little one on the second toe of my right foot.

Today's hike was more up and down than we anticipated, and had ended with a 3,000-foot descent. Jennifer and I had never seen anything quite like those windy, exposed mountain ridges, the views down into the lake fjords, or the grassy, mossy wild gardens along the trails. And we wouldn't see them again, not for a long time, maybe never.

It takes a lot of time and money to get to New Zealand's Fjordland National Park. It takes some planning to get reservations at the huts. It takes some effort to make the climb up above treeline. And it takes dumb luck to get a day like today, a day that started with the sun angling in from the southeast, illuminating blue skies above and clouds down in the fjord below the white-capped mountains.

The Luxmoore hut had emptied at 7am, and the exiting trampers charged en masse up Mt. Luxmoore. We were told the hurry used to be worse. Before the Department of Conservation started the reservation system, it was a race to get to the next hut in time before they ran out of beds. Now everyone was sure of a place to sleep. However, last night, at the hut safety talk, the ranger had told us the forecast called for “ 95 kph winds” by this afternoon. That gave everyone in the group plenty of reason to be on the trail early.

When it was relatively calm at 2 pm, I began to think Peter Jackson had been pulling our leg. (Maybe he wanted the hut to himself this fine morning.) But now, a little after 3, the rain was starting in earnest and we were glad to have finished the ten miles already.

Not that we'd put it past Peter Jackson. He'd proven himself capable of a good practical joke—or more than one—on the nature walk. Tearing grass stems from a tussock, he handed them out and challenged us to taste their bitter root. Then he smiled. “You see it's a toxin, which will gradually leave you paralyzed,” he said.

“Oh, but you'll probably be all right. Eventually.”

That night, after dinner, Jennifer and I were reading in the Luxmoore hut's common room and enjoying the evening light reflected on glaciers visible from its soaring windows when Peter came around to chat us up. Or maybe to pick a fight.

“Don't ask us to explain,” I begged.

“The media's all controlled, in'nit?” he said.

Yeah, it's been shown that the more time people spend watching Fox News—the most popular TV “news” channel in the U.S.—the more likely they are to be seriously misinformed about world events. But that doesn't really explain it.

“The other party's not really much better, eh?”

“Well, they both work for the same small group of people. But it's really more that average Americans are just scared stupid. It comes from the whole history of a country that was built on conquest and racist violence.”

“Yeah, I've read about what they did to the Indians. Disgusting.”

After an hour, we parted with smiles and handshakes. If he wanted to argue with some Americans, it wasn't going to be with us.

Now, after another day's walk, our platoon of trampers was getting ready to turn in early. The entire group up there in the loft—some 20 people, including kids—was dead quiet until morning.

Even as it winds through the rain forest, the Kepler track is, as hiking trails go, impressively engineered. Forget the U.S. Forest Service ban on machines in wilderness areas: This track is maintained with powered diggers that re-excavate the trailside ditches ("water tables") and build up and compact the walking surface. Chicken wire (for boot traction) is carefully stapled down over hundreds of steps and bridges, which are regularly inspected.

Our next day's walk was a pleasant downhill run alongside a stream, ending with a cold swim in Lake Manapouri. In the hut there, we ended up sharing a table with Mary and her family.

“I go back home three or four times a year,” she said, picking up from our earlier conversation. “Wherever I go, I go to Costco and stock up on all the things I miss. Honey-Nut Cheerios. Jif.”

And what did we like best about New Zealand?

“Well, the scenery, of course, but also the people,” Jennifer offered. “The society seems so healthy.”

“What do you mean?”

“Your own children are so well-behaved,” Jennifer said truthfully. “We haven't heard anyone yell at their kids, or put them down. In a group camping situation like this back home, it seems like you're always surrounded by family dysfunction.”

“Oh,” said Mary. “You see that sort of thing much more among the Islanders. Don't you think that's true, honey?”

She was talking to the oldest of her four kids, a high schooler.

“No,” the kid said, a little bluntly. “I haven't seen that.”

Interesting, I thought. I remembered that even the Catholic schools in New Zealand would be fully integrated between Maoris and Pakehas, along with the more recent influx of Asians and other ethnicities.

Mary tried the next kid.

“Don't you think the Islanders are more likely to abuse their children?”

He hadn't seen that either. She tried the next two kids with the same result.

Her husband came over from where he'd been cooking on one of the propane stoves. He began dishing something into the kids' bowls.

“Dear, don't you think the Islanders are more likely to abuse their children?”

He paused. “I think that sort of thing is more a function of socioeconomic problems than of race,” he said quietly.

Mary changed the subject.

“I keep telling my American friends, ‘you should move down here,’ ” she said enthusiastically. “I mean in our community, we have playgrounds, and it's safe, and everybody's lot goes right down to the beach. How great is that?” “You could never get that—or most people couldn't—back home.”

 

 

 

 

 

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