Ever since she was strong enough to open her bedroom window, she would leave the safety of home on solitary nightime walks. Being a suburban kid, she could wander in relative safety, assured that neither man nor beast was lurking. That she was the surprise in a landscape vacated by respectable people, the only one illuminated by a streetlamp, if anyone had bothered to look outside. Sometimes she would attract the notice of dogs; most of the time she slipped past unnoticed. Back in her bedroom, she would nurse a sense of giddiness that came from exploring a world ignored.
There was that one time she walked across town overnight to see a boyfriend. Along the back-alleys that doubled as horse trails, through quiet parks and empty playgrounds, behind the shuttered shops. She passed the closed pharmacy where in daytime she would take her bike and a pocket of nickles and dimes to buy Jolly Ranchers and Now n’ Laters. Strolling slowly across arterials she wouldn’t dare cross without a signal just six hours later. Into another eerily quiet subdivision, and below the second story window of her beloved. “Join me,” her little rocks seemed to say. But alas, the boy was a heavy sleeper, and there were no apps at the time. She padded back home as the white noise started to gather on the distant freeway and radiate over the greying suburbia.
In middle age, she was prone to tack these walks onto other circumstances. She was arriving home late from work, exhausted but refueling throught the night air. Or perhaps the windup of some parents commitee meeting, where wine had made everyone jovial. Let’s just check the park - did the caretaker remember to lock the gates? What are the tides doing down at the beach? Have I got the energy to walk up a maunga? It’s nine-thirty and her equally sleepy new suburban environment was already deserted. The first chilly breaths of winter were making paradise just a little uncomfortable for most people, who sensibly wrapped themselves in blankets on a thousand separate couches. Nearly all of the oversized beach cottages facing Cheltenham were dark. Out at sea, the waxing moon illuminated Rangitoto’s dark obtuse triangle on the horizon and gave a sheen to the calm gulf. Both Orion and Matariki were visible in spite of the moonlight, as were blinking channel markers, lighthouses, and the odd light of one boat, hunkered down near an unseen island. Maungauika rose dark on one side, and the headlands of Fort Takapuna on the other.
TBC
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