thoughts

On Monday, EV6 and I stood peering into a display case of taxidermied animals. Mammals, mostly. They ranged in size from a tiny stoat to a massive antlered deer.

These animals had been introduced to New Zealand from afar. Some were brought here as game. Others were stowaways or escaped domestic companions. Many of them shared the same fate: overabundance that had to be put in check by rigorous extermination processes.

It’s not that they all bred as swiftly as rabbits. It also that there is no natural predator for these animals in New Zealand, a land mass whose only true native mammal is the bat. The bats could conveniently fly here, along with birds, which are plentiful. (There are also a handful of lizards, which presumably evolved from some other thing entirely.)

EV6 reminds me of this every time we visit Zealandia, a wildlife sanctuary near town. It is surrounded by miles of fence that extends down under the ground to protect the birds inside from burrowing predators and from a scooped top to prevent climbing animals from scaling it.

I reminded myself of this as I faced a shadowy trail just a few blocks from our house. It went from street level off-roading to a dense brush that left me humming tunes from Into The Woods just a minute later. As I navigated the steep decline, I considered how in Pennsylvania I would be wary of such a wooded area, concerned it might contain foxes, wolves, or bears herded there by development on all sides.

Or muggers. We have plenty of those in Pennsylvania, too.

As I checked my anxiety and set foot into the trail, I thought about recommending it to E, who might also enjoy the walk through nature. Then I chastised myself. I might have crossed off all my concerns with predators both human and otherwise, but a woman can’t ever do that in a place where there are also men present. The trail was close confines – you couldn’t even pass another person without brushing against them. Even without reports of a spate of rapes along an isolated trail, any man could initiate an assault.

I have that same mistrust of men, but not that same fear. In my younger years of being readily misgendered due to my willowy figure and long hair I endured catcalls and sexual assaults on the bus. Still later, I’ve winced past men yelling from their cars that I ought to get the switch out of my walk or stop wearing jeans so tight or they would beat it out of me.

Rightfully or not, in New Zealand I wasn’t concerned. I’m not still too afraid of those encounters to jog down a relatively isolated trail where I might meet one or two men. Yet, I still tense up when I pass by any assembled group of masculine-presenting men. There’s a reason I won’t play any sports or watch them in a bar. I’d never be able to turn off my anxiety.

It’s not just the actual presence of a predator that stops you from doing things. It’s the credible threat of being their prey.

I couldn’t help but reflect on how that relates to the current spate of reports of sexual harassment and assault across a wide array of professions, but focused in the media and politics. For every victim of assault, I wonder how many more were prevented by the culture from reaching the natural apex of their career, and how many beyond that simply never started.

I marvel at how much our culture has been shaped by the entertainment and law emerging from a population of men so disproportionately packed with predators. Around the world, predators are literally shaping the way we think about and interact with the world.

In New Zealand they do anything they can to reduce the alien animal populations that pose a threat to native flora and fauna. To a bird, it’s the only home they’ve known, and many have evolved past having natural defense mechanisms. Some don’t even fly! Why should they bother on an island where nothing roams the land to threaten them.

To a cat or a stoat, it’s an island full of prey. To a bulky red deer, there is nothing to threaten them. New Zealand builds fences to keep these animals out and has special hunting seasons to thin them out.

I continued on my way through the winding trail. It intermittently gave me breathtaking views of the harbor from a perch on the cliffs high above the highway. At its terminus, it deposited me so far below the elevation of our house that I could barely clamber back up the paved streets to return, let alone reverse and trace my path back up the trail.

I’d be in no shape to confront a fox, a wolf, or a bear, and probably not a mugger, either. I could barely put one foot in front of the other.

The journey was challenging enough without any predators along the way.

Tomorrow is American Thanksgiving, a holiday that I don’t have many positive feelings about that has no relevance here in Wellington, but which finds many family members free and willing to travel, which makes getting them to Wellington a lot more feasible.

To commemorate our first non-US non-Thanksgiving, E’s sister and brother-in-law have made the trans-Pacific trip to visit us here in Wellington. Their impending visit caused me to feel a lot of pressure.

Not just because they are sleeping in the room in which I shoot Crushing Comics, which meant I had to get a lot more of it unpacked and get ahead on episodes before they arrived.

And, not just because of typical hosting concerns about if we have enough snacks to keep them fed, either. This post could really easily be another 1,000 words about searching grocery stores for decent ricotta and any provolone at all in order to make my baked penne, but I think that logline probably tells you all you need to know about that particular misadventure.

No, the pressure has to do with my inherent, internal tour guide and his feelings of inadequacy.

That erstwhile guide is still left clanging around in my brain a whole sixteen years after I started giving tours of my college campus. He existed even before that. He has a need to keep any crowd educated and entertained as they move through a space that is new to them … and in Wellington he is grasping at straws.

This was never a concern for my siblings-in-law’s many visits to our home in the states. Both of them had lived in and near Philadelphia for long enough that they didn’t require much showing around. In some cases, they could tell me about places I had never seen as much as I could do the same for them. Their visits tended to focus on a lot of TV and movie marathons and, later, a lot of fussing of EV6 followed by much shorter TV and movie marathons.

Now they are visiting us in a place that is totally new to them. They had to fly almost three times as long to reach us! It cost a lot of money to do so! And they’re only here for six days! Plus, they love adventures like safaris and canyoning! All of the days need to be full of X-TREME adventure content!

Except, I don’t know very much about New Zealand, Wellington, really – and certainly very little about anything adventurous! It feels like the only things I’ve been doing for the past three months are unpacking, grocery shopping, and going to kid-friendly stuff with EV6 – plus driving between those endeavors.

As a result, I have a lot to say about traffic patterns. Not too much else, though. The sum total of my “adventuring” has been within the confines of Zealandia preserve and in walking up and down Cuba Street.

Today I picked J & B up from the airport and it felt like I unfurled every possible Wellington factoid on the drive back to our house. It’s a strange feeling that drives home how much otherness there is left to tackle in my life here, even if I have gotten comfortable finding my way around and knowing where to buy my must-have groceries. In Philadelphia I could (and have!) lead an eight-hour walking tour of neighborhoods full of fun facts and hidden gems. I had a story or a memory to go with almost every square block. I could recommend a fun activity to anyone of any age.

I don’t have that here and I’m not sure how long it will take me to get there. The paradox of my internal tour guide is that he wound up that way by happenstance. I’ve always been homebody at heart. It’s not the cool stuff that draws me out of the house, but the memories attached to it. I am less likely to go out and wander here because I don’t have a history and a social fabric to draw me out. There are no streets I derive comfort from walking the way I did from a wander down 4th street in Philly.

I might not know enough to keep my tour guide self monologuing for an eight-hour day, but this week I have a brief window of opportunity to create new New Zealand memories. That’s the fuel for my future tour guide and the memories that I can follow down the streets of Wellington.