Once again it is move fast. Not to depart for a destination planned, but instead to get out of this pre-planned destination. Checkout is ten o’clock, and we rush to clean up . Beer cans and beer boxes, bagged trash and the everywhere scatter of belongings. To pack up to pack in to begin once again to put rubber to road and move fast.
Eva catches a bus at 10 that takes her to Picton where she will catch a ferry that will take her to Wellington.
The sisters and I are off to Christchurch after a series of blundering interactions between the batch owners and ourselves. All of the blundering mediated by the litigating Caroline over a scratchy cell phone…
As Eva boards the bus I speed back to the batch to drop off the other half of the money owed. Whoops. And when I return from filling full the Corolla gas tank I must take another trip to the batch to return a towel accidentally snatched and packed in the rush to get out and go. This time the owner waiting in the driveway with a hand on her hip. All right, Sassy. I’m sorry and I’ll be on my way.
Back to Christchurch. It is Highway 1 south, the Corolla keeping pace with the Mazda 323. And the radio searching—always searching—for a signal struggling through the static.
Spend the night in the homebase flat after returning Christmas flicks and picking up groceries in the city and the following day it is wake and shake loose the sleepy to shimmy the arrangement of the Mazda packed full. To Tetris the bags and boxes to allow for another backpack. The backpack sliding down the sunny screen from Corolla to Mazda. Packed full. And full proof as I slide behind the wheel, this an automatic transmission, and I am ready to drive. Away we go.
Highway 73 West toward Arthur’s Pass and aiming past the pass to the waiting West Coast. And toward the rain. The sun beating down as we swerve out the city. The sun beating down on the roof of the car, on arms exposed out of windows, on the windshield.
But already—through the sunglass shades—we can see the gray wall. The gray wall set solid into the approaching mountains. Built by a water god, this castle of clouds. But not the transient cloud castle of a sweet-dreaming child’s dream. But instead the kingdom above descended here to this world. And the gray wall set fast up above in the hills.
It is strange this suspended moment. Shirtless and shoeless behind the wheel of the car, the car in the sun and the sun beating down. It is strange in this moment to see so far ahead. To see the rain that will splatter the windshield. To see the clouds that will cover the sun. To see it all there, the gray wall in the hills, and to hold the course straight and steer on.
Past Sheffield and Springfield, the pie-stop shops, alluring even as we speed past. Push the Mazda up and over Porter’s pass, the highest road in the country, up and over Porter’s pass in low gear and sweep down the skirt on the other side. Into the gray and on and on to Castle Hill.
The sky spitting and we wander through the grass between the behemoth limestone sculptures. The boulders looming beneath the enormous cloud-covered sky and we beneath them: Lilliputian explorers holding cameras to eyes and now fro each one a flash and the snap snap snapping away.
This is a spiritual center of the universe, this. This is a tour for the girls, this. From a boy in the know. A boulderer’s bit as we weave between the stones. Walk through in figure eights, walk through in loop-dee-loops. Walk through in swooping patterns, through the Quantum Field and then back to the car.
Deeper and always deeper into the gray wall. Arthur’s Pass and the gray wall.
Into the flooding rain forest. Into the hills weeping silver. Into the liquid silver spilling down the dark green. A thousand waterfalls instant. Taps in the mountainside, the water spilling down. And down and down to the roadside where it rushes in river gutters. The tide swelling through the valley green. And swelling silver still.
When we arrive at the Franz Josef Glacier it is cats and dogs, the windshield awash and the tires in perpetual puddle. We cannot camp. We cannot camp so we wade into the town beside the glacier. Book the last room in a hostel and hunker down for the evening. Cats and dogs outside and VHS on the wall-mounted T.V.
The goodnights whispered between sharers of the Hostel bed. And the rain beating down on the roof.
No comments:
Post a Comment