We Came, We Saw, We Left

by Charles Wheelan

  CJ and Sophie found a brochure for a recreation area that offered trapshooting. I was designated as their chaperone. For a nominal amount, a guide drove us in an ATV up a mountain path to a rickety plywood shooting shack. CJ and Sophie each got ten shots with an over-under twelve-gauge shotgun. The clay pigeons were fired away from us from beneath the shooting platform: straight, right, or left. CJ eventually got the hang of it and hit two. Sophie, on the other hand, was alarmingly good. By the end, she had hit five clays in a row: left, left, right, center, right. She looked like a natural as she blasted away with the shotgun. I was both impressed and slightly afraid.

  The things that made New Zealand familiar also made it less culturally interesting. Katrina said at one point without irony: “New Zealand is cute. Like Vermont without snow.” The rental car gave us great flexibility, but we missed wandering on foot. The places where we were staying felt more cut off than the urban neighborhoods we had become accustomed to. Our mission remained moving quickly to the South Island. We drove the final leg to Wellington, which sits at the southern tip of the North Island. Along the way, the terrain changed repeatedly: rolling green hills; snow-covered mountains; a high, steep volcano; brown scrub grass (site of an army training facility); and finally the city of Wellington, nestled on the rocky coast. Wellington stirred two powerful emotions. First, our one night in a hostel cured me of any lingering regret that we were not staying in more hostels. We had reserved a “family room,” but no such private room was available at check-in. Instead, our family was spread all over the hostel. Leah and I shared a four-person room with a young European couple who had claimed the two bottom bunks. I suspect our roommates were no more excited to be sharing a room with a fifty-year-old couple than I was to be climbing up the ladder to the top bunk. I shall not describe the sounds of gastrointestinal distress that I heard in the communal bathroom as I queued up to brush my teeth the next morning.

  Second, Wellington was where I decided that one of my life goals was to see a kiwi. I will admit that when we arrived in New Zealand, I thought kiwis were extinct. Once I learned that spotting a kiwi is a rare and exciting event, however, I was all in for the kiwi hunt. The rest of the family did not share my newfound passion, so the next morning I awoke early and drove alone to Zealandia, a giant conservation area known for its kiwi population and other indigenous bird life. As I entered Zealandia, an officious woman searched my camera bag, not for alcohol or weapons or drugs, but to make sure that a ravenous rodent was not lurking inside. New Zealand has no indigenous ground-dwelling mammals. Over millions of years, many of New Zealand’s birds lost their ability to fly. This was Darwinism at work: Why exert the energy to fly when it is easier to walk, eat, and sleep on the ground? Alas, predators eventually found their way to New Zealand. More Darwinism: the newly introduced mammals, the fiercest of which is a weasel-like animal called a stoat, began devouring the flightless birds, including kiwis. My bag was searched at Zealandia to keep it as a “predator-free” forest. I walked for hours as a light rain grew into a steady downpour: many interesting and colorful birds, but, alas, no kiwis.

  A ferry carried us across the Cook Strait to the South Island, where we picked up a new rental car and made our way to Nelson, a sleepy town with lovely ocean views and some of New Zealand’s best wine country. (Nelson is adjacent to the world-famous Marlborough Region.) In Nelson, we had our only modestly creepy Airbnb experience. We rented an apartment overlooking the ocean from a man who lived in a separate unit just below ours. He was gracious and helpful but also tended to linger awkwardly. One evening he knocked on our door and invited us to visit his home. “I’m not going down there,” Sophie declared after he left.

  “It’ll be fine,” I assured her. “He seems nice enough.”

  “I’ll be the designated survivor,” Sophie said. “When you don’t come back, I’ll alert the authorities.” As the rest of us were walking out of the apartment, she said dramatically, “I love you all.”

  Our host welcomed us at the door and ushered us into a darkened living room. As our eyes adjusted, he pointed out the room’s most prominent feature: a piano-sized hole in the floor covered by plexiglass. “There’s a hole in the floor?” CJ asked.

  “Go take a look,” our host invited. We peered through the plastic: There was a skeleton lying in a four-foot hole on a bed of sand. We stared uncomfortably at the bones, which I assumed—though could not be certain—were plastic.

  “A skeleton,” CJ said, capturing the full essence of the moment.

  “Yep,” our host said proudly.

  “Oh my,” Leah added, which in Leah-speak means, “Oh my fucking God!”

  I looked across the room and noticed a woman sitting silently in a dark corner. Our host had not mentioned her, nor had he introduced us. This woman was alive but unmoving, staring back at me with a vacant expression. “Hello,” I said instinctively as we made eye contact. She blinked but did not reply. Our host still did not acknowledge her. “Would you like to see the bathroom?” he asked. “I’ve just fixed it up.”

  “I know that Sophie is anxious for us to get back,” I said.

  “She stayed behind,” Katrina said.

  “She’s our sister,” CJ said.

  “Who’s waiting for us to get back,” Katrina repeated.

  We bade our host farewell and walked briskly back to our apartment. Sophie nodded knowingly as we described the visit. “Just what I thought,” she said. “You’re alive because of me.”

  “He’s just a quirky guy,” I said.

  “Was there room in the hole for four more skeletons?” Sophie asked.

  “It was a pretty big hole,” CJ answered.

  “You’re welcome,” Sophie declared.

  Leah, Katrina, and I decided to go wine tasting, mostly as a way to explore. Leah opened the “wine map” and chose two vineyards on a scenic peninsula. The tasting at our first stop was ten dollars, or free with the purchase of a bottle of wine. Not a hard decision. An older woman was the only person looking after the place. She explained the history of the vineyard while we sampled wine and ate a picnic lunch on a deck overlooking the sloping vineyards. The second stop was another family-owned vineyard, again with an outdoor deck that looked out over a field of grapes and the shimmering blue sea. We were the only ones tasting; the proprietress told us the story of the property, which had originally been an apple orchard. In both places, we felt like we had stopped by someone’s beautiful home to have a glass of wine.

  Left behind, Sophie and CJ walked into town to get lunch. “Are you guys wagging?” a young clerk at a sandwich shop asked them. The two kids looked at her blankly. “You know, skipping school,” she said.

  CJ and Sophie exchanged a glance. “Yeah,” CJ answered. “We are.”

  “Totally,” Sophie agreed. “We don’t go to school.”

  “Cool,” the clerk replied.

  Sophie’s behavior was improving steadily. In fact, she had become downright pleasant. Some of that was sleep; one semi-intended benefit of the trip was that we could all sleep as much as we needed. The family meltdowns tended to come when we deviated from that. Some of it was due to VLACS; we had figured out a system of weekly deadlines that was causing less anguish for all of us. But much of the newfound sweetness was strategic. Sophie was angling for our permission to get a tattoo in Christchurch, which would be our final stop on the South Island.

  Back in the U.S., Sophie had expressed vague interest in getting a tattoo, but it was a nonstarter. She needed to be eighteen or have parental consent; she was not eighteen and no parental consent was forthcoming. Once we made our travel plans, however, Sophie discovered that the legal age for getting a tattoo in some parts of the world is sixteen. New Zealand is one of those places. How ironic: Sophie would be able to get a tattoo legally because we had taken her to a place she did not want to go. Neither Leah nor I were keen on the tattoo; on the other hand, what Sophie had in mind was a pea-sized semicolon, the symbol for mental health awareness,
just below her rib cage. She had us over a barrel: in Christchurch, where there are lots of tattoo parlors, she would be able to get in a taxi and have it done without our permission. To her credit, she was acting excessively kind and polite to get us on board with the idea. Leah and I considered that a step forward: The mere fact that she was acting with forethought—trying to make us happy in order to get what she wanted—was a sign of maturity. Christchurch was about ten days away; we had some parenting decisions to make before then.

  At the one-third point in the trip, I offered reflections in my journal while drinking our New Zealand wine outdoors on a warm, sunny evening. There were no great life epiphanies. I felt no urge to quit my job or sell my possessions. If anything, I was looking forward to returning to Dartmouth and teaching. I missed my regular nonfiction writing; the novel-in-progress was helping to fill that void.

  I had been keeping a tally in the back of my journal:

  Countries: 8

  Bus trips: 28

  Flights: 13

  Boat rides: 6

  Jeep rides: 7

  Horse rides: 2

  Incidents of motion sickness: 7

  Search parties looking for us: 2

  Family meltdowns: 5

  Books read (by me): 25.

  Our drive grew progressively more beautiful as we made it farther south. We were also getting better at the road-trip mindset. We took turns picking music playlists (with general agreement). One evening, as we approached a campground where we had a reservation for the night, the song playing as we drove down the final hill was “Hallelujah.” I turned up the volume. It was about eight o’clock in the evening; the late spring day was still bright and beautiful. The kids spontaneously began to sing along: three heartfelt but off-key renditions of the refrain. It made for a magical finish to the drive—one of those great, unscripted travel moments: Hallelujah . . . Hallelujah . . .

  As we made our way toward Queenstown, the hub for outdoor activities near the south end of the South Island, the road snaked around huge lakes with snowy peaks jutting up behind them. We passed fields of white, purple, and pink wildflowers. I pulled to the side of the road periodically to take photos. The family yelled at me each time, which, I will admit, incited me to pull over more often. I was the guy with the camera. More important, I was the guy with the steering wheel. It was on the last stretch to Queenstown that I got my “album cover photo.”

  We had been driving for five hours, all three kids wedged in the backseat. We were approaching the longest day of the year in the southern hemisphere. The terrain was lovely, but the drive was beginning to feel long. The collective mood in our small SUV was cranky. And then we hit what I can only describe as one of the most visually stunning stretches of road I have ever seen: an open field with snowy mountains in the distance and no signs of development anywhere. The evening sun bathed everything in a gentle light. This photo opportunity was too good to pass up. I swerved onto the shoulder and pleaded for a picture. The family dutifully complied, lining up against the white rental car, each of them displaying a bit of attitude in their own way.

  What I was seeing through the lens was gold. I mean it was literally golden, in that the soft evening light was casting a golden glow on the four of them and everything in the background. Sophie was wearing sunglasses. Katrina had her arms crossed, as if she would rather be anywhere other than on the side of a remote road in New Zealand posing for a family picture. Leah and CJ were standing patiently, waiting for the photo to be over. What I was seeing through the viewfinder—the collective family attitude with the soft light and the stunning mountainous background—was a moment. I did not want smiles and giggles; I wanted exactly what I was seeing. “Okay, make it look like an album cover,” I said.

  I snapped my photo. We got back in the car and drove on.

  Queenstown was our point of departure for the Routeburn Track, a three-day hike. We would stay in huts along the way—the spots Leah had reserved for us while watching Modern Family in our living room nearly a year earlier. We slept late on the day of departure, parked at the trailhead, and set off on a gentle four-hour uphill hike to our first hut. Some of the most beautiful things were the subtlest: the moss, the little waterfalls, the intriguing rock formations. Our “hut” for the evening was perched on a scenic overlook—a flat river plain with mountains in the background. “Hut” is a misnomer; these cabins along the trail are large comfortable buildings with huge kitchens, cozy common areas, and communal bunk rooms. We cooked pasta and sauce, played cards, read, and chatted with the other hikers. After dark, we climbed into our sleeping bags as the temperature plunged.

  In the morning, Leah made pancakes using the pans she was able to find in the communal kitchen. One of the pancakes happened to burn just as CJ strolled into the kitchen. “Did you burn them all?” he asked loudly. His question was so rude and obnoxious as to be immediately funny. One of our ongoing tasks was dealing with thirteen-year-old boy behavior. Every day presented teachable moments: no interrupting; no talking with your mouth full; no farting loudly in the presence of others; and no saying ridiculously insensitive things to people who have just cooked your breakfast while you were sleeping. It was a slog.‡

  On day two, we crossed an alpine meadow surrounded by mountains. We climbed steadily to a mountain pass and then down along a river valley toward our hut on the edge of a beautiful mountain lake. The final half hour of the hike took us through an enchanted forest. Every surface was covered by green moss of different hues: dark green, light green, emerald, lime. It was eerie and beautiful at the same time, as if a set designer had built a forest path for the next Avatar film.

  That evening an Australian school group showed up at the hut: thirty high school students. For Sophie and Katrina, this was manna from heaven. They were suddenly surrounded by scores of English-speaking teens. Better yet, as Americans on a global adventure, they were a curiosity. The Aussies were keen to hear about the American high school experience and how it compared to what they had seen in movies like High School Musical and Mean Girls. Katrina and Sophie parked themselves at a table with the Aussie students for much of the evening.

  On our final morning, we stood on the porch of the hut looking out at the sheets of rain blowing sideways. The weather report was posted on the front door of the hut. It showed rain (and snow at high altitudes) for the next five days. We covered our packs as best we could and set out. In places the path was covered with inches of water, forcing us to step along on rocks. We reached a point where the trail was blocked by a flood; water was spilling down the mountain and across the path with such force that anyone trying to pass might be swept over a steep embankment on the other side. A sign pointed us to an alternate route through the woods. As we began the detour, a distraught young woman came running up the trail. “My boyfriend is missing!” she exclaimed. “He tried to go that way,” she said, pointing to the waterfall crashing down on the trail. “Now I can’t find him!”

  “I’ll go look for him,” I said.

  Was I concerned for my life? Perhaps. Was I a hero? That’s not for me to judge. The woman described her boyfriend’s rain jacket, and I set off. The water was shin-deep in places. There was a deafening roar as the waterfall pounded me from above. More ominously, the current from the water rushing over the side of the trail made it hard to keep my footing. Visibility was terrible, but I did not see any bright rain jacket. I moved carefully to the side of the trail to see if perhaps the guy had been washed onto the rocks below. Nothing.

  I made my way back to the detour to tell the woman that she might need a new boyfriend, perhaps a smarter one. I would explain—with great sensitivity, of course—how evolution weeds out those whose genes may not be best suited for the long-term survival of the species. “Never mind,” the woman said when I reached her. “I found him. It turns out he did take the bypass.”

  After four hours of hiking through the steady rain, we arrived at our finishing point and drove to a motor lodge with good Int
ernet and a coin-operated washer and dryer. In ninety minutes, we were able to satisfy what we now recognized as our basic travel needs: good food, hot tea, clean clothes, and dependable Wi-Fi.

  The next day we continued on to Invercargill—the south end of the South Island. The road trip was effectively done; we’d made it as far as we could drive. I had yet to see a kiwi. The rest of the family did not seem to have the same burning desire as I did to see the national bird of New Zealand. Only Katrina and I had any interest in continuing on to Stewart Island. The two of us took an early morning ferry across the Foveaux Strait and checked into a hostel in the tiny but picturesque town of Oban. I immediately signed up for a guided kiwi safari, a multi-hour night walk with naturalists through areas where one is most likely to spot a kiwi.

  The safari departed at sunset, leaving Katrina and me the day to explore Ulva Island, a predator-free nature sanctuary. We took a small boat to the island. Once again our bags were searched for mammals; the boat driver pointed out an electric cable running through the water to zap any rat that might try to swim from Stewart Island to Ulva Island—more than a mile. The birdlife along the scenic trails was extraordinary. We saw keas, the colorful parrots indigenous to New Zealand, and a host of other interesting creatures. And then, as we were strolling along on the trail, two kiwis ran out of the bush.