outlaws and fishery officers

    I glanced over my shoulder to watch the ragged old sport utility vehicle swing a wide U turn and trundle back up the road creaking to a halt alongside me. The man behind the wheel of the ramshackle four by four was a bit rough looking himself, with long grey hair and a long unkempt beard.  I wasn’t in a place to judge. I had been on the road and in the wilderness for just shy of three months by this point. And I could count the number of nights I had spent indoors over this time on less than two hands. 

   The passenger seat of the vehicle was occupied by a stack of old newspapers.   “Where’ you headed?”   “Greymouth” I replied.   “I can take you to the next town up. You won’t catch many rides along here”.  ''great, thanks”.  The driver began clearing the passenger seat for me. Grabbing stacks of paper and tossing them randomly over his shoulder into the back of the vehicle.  Two good handfuls unearthed a 1911, the iconic semi-automatic pistol designed by John Moses Browning. I involuntarily took a step back from the window. Unsure what each of our next moves would be but instinctively wanting to make some space.

   “Trust your instincts”, several older, seasoned travelers had told me. “Always be willing to walk away from a ride if something doesn’t feel right”. Inherently good advice from guys who had covered thousands of miles with their packs, boots and thumbs.  But I’ve never found this to be practical. Perhaps I have bad instincts. But I’ve always assumed the ride you should pass up would feel very normal. 

  The driver glanced at the pistol and at me and then grabbed it with the same haphazard manner as he was handling the newspaper.  “Oh, don’t worry. This is just an air pistol” he tossed the alleged air gun over his shoulder where it bounced off the back seat and landed in the footwell. “It looks scary though” “really intimidating if you point it at someone”  “throw your bag in back”.    unsure if it was the right decision I slung my rucksack into the back and hopped in.

    We pulled back onto the road, cruising along at a leisurely pace. The driver was clearly not in a hurry, more interested in having a chat than getting anywhere or moving on with his day. 

He asked me what I was doing in New Zealand and listened while I told him some of where I had gone and seen. He then began to tell me about himself, casually informing me that he was an outlaw. 

                                          It was right at the beginning of my trip that someone had told me hitchhiking wasn’t safe. It was the driver of a fairly new station wagon.  He told me that a young male tourist had been murdered while hitching a month or so earlier.  Which is why he had picked me up, he was doing his part to save my life. To make sure I made it to my destination and to warn me off this means of travel. 

  The owner of the replica 1911 air pistol told me he grew marijuana.  He had a substantial number of plants growing in the bush out on public land.  He crowed while telling me that the feds were in the area trying to find his operation. They would send helicopter pilots from time to time on aerial survey missions looking for his crops. However, all these feds and helicopter pilots would reserve hotel rooms in advance in the nearby communities. They all needed a place to sleep at night after busy days of scouring the hillsides for the devil’s lettuce. The towns in this area were small with tight knit communities, the driver told me. As soon as people who smelled like feds started reserving hotel rooms, friends of his would give him a call. He’d head up into the hills and gather up brush from native plants and camouflage his crops. The helios would pass over none the wiser.  He would be getting the all clear once they had packed up and headed home. 

Motorists pick up hitchhikers for a variety of reasons. Some have hitched in their pasts and want to help along the next generation of vagabonds and relive their own adventures.  Others want a distraction while they drive. They want a passenger who can tell them stories or a captive audience to tell stories too. 

   I once got a ride from an expensive looking Mercedes two-seater. The driver spent the whole time on his cellphone making business deals. He wanted me to sort through his briefcase and find documents he needed while he talked. We passed a several hour drive this way while barreling down the one lane road at substantially faster than the speed limit

    I was leaving a wealthy ski town. It was summer in the southern hemisphere.  The town was the kind of place where all the patrons of the expensive but casual bars and restaurants wore crisp apre-sport attire.  Making sure you knew that they partook in some strenuous exercise activity whenever they weren’t having drinks on the patios overlooking the lake with their gorgeous friends and families.

     I'd been having bad luck. There was a pile up of hitchers trying to thumb a ride out of town. Etiquette dictated that I get to the back of the line. Set up farther out of town  then everyone else who was waiting.  But there was a long line and no cars were stopping 

      Hitchhiking takes mental fortitude. If you are having good luck, hitchhiking is easy. But if you spend enough time attempting to utilize this means of transport, you will experience a lot of failure. This will begin to wear you down. Standing on the side of the road with your thumb out being passed by a steady stream of vehicles, the occupants all refusing to make eye contact as they zip by, will eventually begin to feel like a personal failure. As though somehow all these people driving by can see some character defect in you as a person.  The reality of course is that it is all just a game of luck.

     After waiting for a few hours I decided to start walking.  A loophole in my mind. Walking doesn’t usually help you catch a lift. But it doesn’t break any hitcher etiquette either since it puts you farther down the road than people who have been waiting for a ride longer than you.  In some scenarios, however, drivers will pass a long line of waiting hitchhikers and later pick up the lone walker. 

   I figured it would be worth a try. Plus I like walking. Sometimes you find interesting things that you would have missed if you had sped by in some internal combustion powered conveyance. I had stumbled upon one of the best trails of the trip while walking between towns on a slow day. A path that eventually led me to be wading down river through a limestone canyon whose tall cliff faces were overgrown with thick green foliage. 

  Seasoned hitchhikers all have strategies, of course. Some that make sense on a psychological level and some that venture into the realm of superstition.  Try to appear as clean cut as possible. Have a nice expensive looking backpack. Through clothing and gear, try to identify yourself as a hiker looking for a lift as opposed to what you really are, a bum. 

   I walked for a few more hours. freshly waxed Mercedes Benzes and ubiquitous Renault rental cars zipping past without a second glance. 

   With exceedingly rare exceptions, wealthy people in deluxe automobiles don’t pick up hitchhikers.  Tourists in rentals are also unlikely to stop.  As a general rule of thumb, the older and jankier the vehicle, the more likely the driver will be to pick up a hitcher. 

     I started thinking about keeping an eye out for somewhere to bandit camp. It wasn’t too late in the afternoon yet. But if I was going to get stuck on the side of the road for a night it was better to find a place to hide before it got too late.  

   A rental bumped two wheels off the asphalt onto the shoulder. I jogged forward to the passenger window that rolled down. A middle aged woman was behind the wheel.  ‘you know how to drive?” she said in a Russian accent.  Somewhat taken aback I responded affirmative.  She told me to get in. I tossed my bag in the trunk and settled myself in the passenger seat.  We headed off up the road. No more than ten minutes later she turned to me and asked if I was willing to drive. We pulled over again and I took the helm. 

  “Where are you going?” she wanted to know. I told her I was heading to Invercargill and then to Bluff. I wanted to catch a boat to Stewart island to walk the track that circled the isle.  Following an adventure my dad had gone on in his twenties, to relive one of the staples of the adventure stories I had grown up listening to.

  “I’m going to drive the road through Milford Sound,” she told me. “Do you want to come?” “I can drop you in Bluff afterwards”.   “Yes, sounds good”  

   She was a doctor I learned.  A career path she had pursued owing to the ease at which doctors could get jobs and work visas most places in the world. She had been hopping country to country most of her adult life. She was in her early fifties and had just moved to New Zealand. Was going to be starting a new job at a new hospital in a few weeks and had decided to see some of the country before she started. 

   She told me that she had been in a car accident a few years ago and had lingering back pain that made it uncomfortable for her to drive for long stretches.  Which was her rationale for picking up a hitchhiker to act as chauffeur.  

     Ideally, you want to position yourself on the outskirts of a town, preferably at the end of a long straightaway.  Your goal is to both corner people and give them some time to react. You want them to feel the least number of justifications for not picking you up.  If you are trying to hitchhike through a town people won’t feel the need to give you a ride. After all, as far as you know they are just on a quick errand, not going far.  Being able to be seen for some distance is important. If they round a corner and see you they won’t have the time to take in the details, your hiking jacket, your nice backpack. And once they have passed by they are more likely to keep driving.  

    I didn’t have my thumb out when the DHL van rolled up alongside me. I had learned not to ask commercial drivers for a ride. They weren’t allowed to pick up hitchhikers.   So I wasn’t sure why this driver was stopping.  The passenger window of the van rolled down and a person stuck their head out the window.  “Need a ride?”  It was a young man, about my age, with long hair and a beard. He didn’t look to be a Dalsey, Hillblom and Lynn employee.  “Hop in the back”.  I opened the aft door of the van to find seven other hitchhikers sprawled around inside of the delivery vehicle  sitting on top of their backpacks or propped up against the walls. They were all packed in tightly between parcels and boxes enroute to their destinations.  The driver of the van who had all the markings of a legitimate DHL delivery man turned around in his seat and with a grin called back, “all set?”  we all mumbled a collective affirmative.  He turned back to the road and put the hammer down.  The van lurched forward, inertia sending hitchhikers, backpacks, and parcels alike sliding towards the back as we all were forced to catch up with the acceleration. 

    We careened along like this for a while. All of the occupants of the cargo hold sliding side to side as we rounded the winding roads.  Without warning the driver veered to jostle his way up a dirt driveway and slammed on the brakes. We all slid towards the front. He hopped out, opened the back door and grabbed a few parcels. One of the other occupants who must have known the drill, sprung out as well, helping to carry the packages the rest of the way to the house. 

  We continued on in this breakneck fashion stopping periodically to make deliveries. Until, again without warning we turned into the parking lot of a shopping center.  The driver bounded out of the cab and began to help the occupants of his vehicle unload their gear. “I’m heading back the way we came'' he said.  “If you wait about an hour my buddy who drives the route south of here will be passing through.”  “he likes to pick up hitchhikers as well”  the delivery man turned and taking his position at the helm sped off back the way we’d come.  

My ramble was nearing its end. I only had a few days left on my passport stamp. I had just walked a leisurely track through the hills north of Wellington. I had traversed this trail once before during this visit. But I wasn’t ready yet to re-enter civilization. The trail could easily be walked in one day but I had stretched it out to three.  However, it was finally time to find my way into town. I had slept in the woods next to the trailhead and was up looking to catch a lift early in the morning.  Commuters were paying me no mind as they hustled to their various jobs. 

  An old landrover pulled over. I climbed in. a man was driving the truck. I guessed he was in his early forties. We started chatting. I told him I had been all over the country hitchhiking for three months. He thought it all sounded great.  “What are your plans today in Wellington? He wanted to know.   I told him I didn’t have any, just hang around a couple of days until my flight.  “I’m a ministry of fisheries officer,” he told me. Their office was undergoing some changes to the chain of command.  “The gist is that I don’t have anything to do today.” “want to go on a patrol with me?” “we can take one of the trucks and head up into the hills”.  This sounded like a great plan.

    We got to the Wellington ministry of fisheries headquarters.   “If anyone asks,  tell them that you're one of Brad’s mates sons.”  “I’ll text him to let him know that’s the story” “he knows lots of folks from the states who are always visiting”  Unsure of what I was walking into, we entered the headquarters.   “Grab a towel and hit one of the showers if you want” “I’ll make us some coffee and breakfast and we’ll get on the road.   

    After taking a shower and part way through eating breakfast of coffee, toast and baked beans, a few men walked into the mess hall. One was clearly in charge of the operation. “Who’s this?”  the boss asked. “One of Brad’s mates son. From America” my new friend responded. “Where are you from?’’ asked the boss. I had no idea who Brad was or where his friends in the states generally were from. “New England” I said “Northeast corner”. “I'm going to take him on patrol,” said my friend. “ Show him around a bit,”   “sounds good” said the boss. “Get him an officer's hat” 

   A few minutes later we were driving out of the garage in a patrol truck. I was sporting a new  Ministry of fisheries ‘Honorary Officer’ cap.  We headed up into the mountains along the coast hammering the patrol truck up 4 wheel tracks cut into the side of the hills. Barely wide enough for the truck to pass and with steep drops to one side. 

“Me and my buddy rolled my old Land Rover off this track”  “ I lost a wheel into a pothole and we slid right off that cliff” “luckily we weren’t wearing seatbelts.”  “we fell 5 meters and when we hit the truck rolled.” “We were both thrown out and the Land Rover rolled 300 vertical meters down to that valley.”