The girls departed early on Tuesday morning. Bowls of oats and honey, tea cooked on the hood of the car, and adios to the brown beach-babies. We will meet again. A couple of weeks down the road, and on the road to join forces for the holidays upcoming.
As for Chester and I it was back to the rocks. Down to Pohara to pull our way up the overhanging dampness of the Bo-peep slabs. Climbing above the bay, the salt spray on our backs. Paradise. Paradise. The Golden Bay Way. Until it is too hot to climb and we decide to take off. Off of this island of comfort. A split second decision. Start the engine and run. There is purity in movement. Get out, get out, before getting sucked in. In to the hippie-dream: of life by the river, of life on the seashore where the liquid logic of Jerry Garcia guitar riffs always and undying prevails. "It's all good, dude." Get out while you can.
So we take a last quick dip in New Zealand's most praised swimming hole and head back to camp in the late afternoon. Break it down, get out of town. And as we swerve out of our secret spot there are sheep on Rameka Creek road. Escaped from their fenced pastures. We start a slow-moving stampede in front of the sheep-dog Toyota Corolla. Down the dirt road, the sheep like enormous wind-up toys, let loose from beneath a bed: filthy: covered in dusty debris, wool matted into dread clumps as if they are in cahoots with the White Rastas running this town.
We take a shortcut to Highway 60 down another gravel track. And now there are quails in road and quails in the grass beside the road. Like plump pears in brown plumage, that greaser curlicue hanging down in front of their eyes. Cocky. Trailing miniatures behind, chick-lets in a line as if connected with a string.
We are stirring up the fauna on our way out of town. The running of the sheep. The quick-step-fluttering of the quail. A cloud of dust behind tires drifting over the loose stones scattered. And we are gone. Golden Bay Goodbye.
I’m in the passenger side seat. I’m a tourist sight-seeing through the T.V. screens of the car windows. And my tour guide: the sniffling snuffling Chester Boyes. The sneezing snap-dragon, wearing a straw hat that he found on his tramp through Abel Tasmin. He has had hay fever since we set off from Rotorua. The beautiful blooming spring infecting his sinuses. And I’ve run out of “bless yous.”
We hit “Mackers” (McDonald’s) in Motueaka, and I’ve now eaten at this iconic fast-food establishment two too many times since arriving in the land of the long white cloud.
On toward Murcheson. Through the bug land. A fog of flying insects. Moth. Mosquito. Gnat. The windshield is a harvester of sorrow, a stone-cold killing machine. It is the sickle of death, translucent, and we are loosing sight of the road through the corpse-covered glass.
In the distance the sky is pale over the hill-tops, the trees like paper cut-outs, pine needle silhouettes. Flick the headlights. ON. And they act as tractor beams to the air-born insects. Still collecting, still collecting in a suicidal colony upon the windshield.
The only station that comes through clear on the radio is apparently playing an entire Nickel Back album. Christ! (No, not Chad Kroeger—lead singer of Nickel Back) “Look at this photograph. Every time I do it makes me laugh.” Every time you do it makes me want to rip my ears off of my fucking head. And how I wish I was an insect slamming into the happy-glass of sweet relief. Flick the radio. OFF.
Too dark to read or write as we ascend into the hill country, the pen scribbling blind across the page. A stratified sunset as we crest the hill, the colors separated by cloud sediment. Blue, orange, and pink, deep purple stratus between. The brights shine around the twists and turns of the road, and the road signs reflect the high beams. Too well. Too well. Around every corner we squint into the light, each sign a diamond-shaped sun staked to the earth. Who wears sunglasses at night? I’ll tell you. Cool cats headed toward Christchurch.
Heavy eyelids and we pull over past Murcheson. The hill country spread below the Mountains. I stuff a sleeping bag into my bivvy sack and conk out beside the car. Chester sprawls inside across three of the Corolla’s four seats. A Toyota suite off the shoulder of Highway 60. Running water in the river and the southern corss overhead. Big Rigs scream occasionally through the black, leaving a trail of exhausted silence. Goodnight. Goodnight.
Wake up at 5:15, everything pale and cold in the naked light. The road is empty of everything but birds. Birds each and every one in a mad-dash to get out of the way of our Japanese land-rocket. A flurry of feathers and already we’re gone. Birds and the occasional Big Rig. The drivers slumping through the loneliness of an all-night slog, down from the mountain pass steady, eyes focused. They soaring down, and we rising up.
Mountains on every side of us, and all of a sudden we are within them. Over Lewis pass with cold feet on the floor board. The clouds hang down in the valley like the breath of God. Glaciated valleys, U-shaped, flat-bottomed valleys, carved by the slow flow of ice rivers.
Cruise. Cold drizzle on the windshield washing away the bug holocaust of last night.
As the roads flatten on the other side of the pass, as they straighten into lines, I drift to sleep. Spat out of the mountains onto the Canterbury Plains. The rain falls harder on the tape-sealed moon roof.
When I awake we are entering into Christchurch the round-about way. We are tracing the arcs of concentric asphalt circles—inching closer and closer to the center of the city.
And then we are here.
We arrive at Chester’s old flat around nine o’clock and wake the whole house as we charge in the door. Greetings, Greetings, only to lapse back into the laziness. The internet waste-away, reading and writing, napping until late in the afternoon, the sky gray outside and seeming to last forever.
We have arrived.
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