Sweeping in an arc upwards from the ice continent of Antarctica a Southerly has caged Chester and I in the city of Christchurch. We attempted a getaway, an outing to Mount Sommers, but we were foiled by the deep-purple clouds, by the dastardly rain, by the rip-raging winds.
“Well, we can try the Port Hills.” So we raced the Southerly. North. Back to Christchurch and into the hills above the city. Jogged to the climbing site. Dropped our packs in the dirt, exploded the gear on the ground, and got ready to go. But the storm caught up, the clouds at our heels all along, and the rain begins to lash the rock before we can even begin.
So Chester and I return to the car, heads hanging, retrieve our would-be food stores for Mount Sommers—a bag of chips, a tub of hummus, a sprawling piece of “pizza bread” covered in sauce and cheese—and sit in the Toyota Corolla like two fat kids on a rampage, stuffing handfuls of food into our mouths as the rain speckles the windshield, as the wind whistles through the hills.
A return to the flat five hours after departure. Beaten. But at least here we have good company:
There is Mark, home from a day of building houses, and happy that we’re getting more rest before our weeklong adventure with him to Castle Hill. “You’re going to need it,” he says, laughing, rolling a cigarette in his massive paws, his fingers like hot-dogs, honed on the rock.
There is Luke, a large and loping man with a mop of black hair, who reminds me for some reason of Oscar Wilde. Theatric and funny, he took all of our money on Poker Night with a straight face and a hearty laugh.
And then there is the hippie couple Simon and Anna. The two who have done more than anyone to host our stay here in the University Town. Simon and Anna who constantly bake bread, and pick vegetables from their backyard garden, who dumpster dive for produce and have a secret supplier of fresh milk. Simon skinny as a beanpole with a main of dreadlocks hanging about his bony face. Anna with short hair and one long-dreaded rat-tail dangling from behind an ear. Both climbers and both in graduate school at the University working on masters.
Just before the Southerly showed up on the radar, when it was only a rumor of wind and rain in the ice-land down south, Chester and I took a trip with Simon and Anna to the coast.
On the way to the beach:
An angry youth on a bike screaming. Patchy beard, ratty hair falling lank and greasy out of a baseball cap two sizes too small. Headphones engaged in what must be some sort of Death Metal, but silent to all but the boy on the bike. The bike—like the hat—too small, a relic of glory days long gone, and he’s standing on the pedals now, head-banging, screaming as he swerves between automobiles.
Then, at a red light:
A man with half his hair dyed orange approaches from the sidewalk and offers us a bike. “You want a bike,” he says, bent over and peering through the open window. And, observing our hesitation, “Seventeen dollars.” Simon glances to the back seat, shrugs. “Nah. We’re alright,” he says, finally. And away we go.
Chester leaning out the window with a plastic cutlass in his mouth, preparing to board another auto-ship. Brandishing a fist, a pirate with a gleam in his eye, a piece of plastic in his mouth.
Then up through the Port Hills, teetering along the Cliffside to Godley Head, the gateway to Littleton Harbor. Zip Zap park the car and zigzag down the trail. Down down down the trail. Past bomb bunkers built into the hill. Abandoned and stripped bare. A T-shirt in one, a used rubber, a puddle on the floor. All of the interior walls now covered in spray paint. Sub-par graffiti: the artwork of the disaffected youth. Down down down the trail to a Danger! Do Not Enter sign. But this is the way to go.
Scoot around the metal barrier and into a tunnel. An escape route? Blasted cylindrical by the hand of man. Down down down. Slouch through the demi-dark, feet invisible and the light at the end like a moon in the ground. Creeping toward the lunar landing, creeping toward the other side.
There are port-holes periodically, side tunnels drilled into the main shaft to let in the light. We sidestep into one of these for a break. That’s how long this tunnel is. We need a break, and we emerge onto a fenced earth balcony. Like prisoners let loose for a moment in the sun. On the other side of the metal bars we see below us a pod of dolphins splashing through the blue.
They are Hectors, the dorsal fin tells the tale. More round than the traditional dolphin dorsal. Round and dark, as if a crew of Mickey Mouse clones was submerged down there in the deep. Drowned? Heads lolling from one side to the other, ears slicing through the swells. They are among “the smallest and rarest cetaceans in the world,” according to an article in the July 2010 edition of Water and Atmosphere. “There are thought to be fewer than 8,000 today.”
But the team frolicking down there at the mouth of the bay seems jovial enough. Ten? Twelve? The sea-swimming mammals, the Jesters of the Ocean’s court and down they dive together.
We, too, have diving to do. Back-track down the porthole portal, back to the dark, aiming for the headlight at the far end. Until, finally, we emerge unscathed onto a crumbling track that leads down to the rock-jumbled sea shore.
The waves smash white and angry against the black boulders, and as we scramble down to the water’s edge—as we navigate through the basalt scree—I can’t help but compare the shoreline to the rotten mouth of some rabid beast. The teeth black and crumbling away, the foam slathered in great waves of insanity and: Good God! She looks ready to bite. Ready to tear apart and pull away. Ready to hold down and drag out. To deposit each and every one of us in a wet grave: out there in the saltiness alongside the collection of cartoon corpses.
Simon strips to his skivvies and re-adorns himself in the black spandex security of a wet suit. Flippers and a mask and he plops into the sea. While we sit perched atop the sharp decay of the basalt boulder molars like hungry gulls. Waiting with sharp eyes. Waiting for our deep-diving hunter gatherer to do the catching for us.
He is looking for Pawa, or what is more commonly known as abalone. The shelled Mollusca. The fat sea snails inching along the rock-bottom of the ocean floor. And as Simon disappears face first, the flippers trailing his body in languid lime-green undulations, we get pounded by the waves. The cold smack of the foam against the rocks. Against the rocks and we the creatures clinging to them.
After a couple of preliminary dives to get his bearings, Simon emerges like a masked superhero, a Pawa held bravely aloft. Treading water, he chucks it into the bag that Anna holds open. Score. But the sea is too rough and we retreat, Anna the only one sporting battle wounds. Abrasions across her legs. Incurred on her expedition trip to the waters edge upon our arrival. She had a mind to test the temperature of the ocean…when all of a sudden a wave fell like a liquid curtain and she pulled the old Harry Houdini. The disappearing act. Only to emerge a moment later soaked to the bone and bleeding. “The water is warm,” she said. Not so.
With our meager catch confined to a mesh-bag cage, we hike back up the steep scree pile, shivering, through the tunnel and into the sun on the other side. Switch-backs to the car. The car parked high over the harbor, and then back down the road to Christchurch.
At the flat it is Pawa veggie stir fry over sticky rice. And one Mollusca does the trick for a house full of hungry lip-lickers.
Get ready for the rain.
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