Waipoua Forest Terror

The guide said there was camping at the southern end of the park.  With this knowledge, I decided to push hard to the Waipoua Forest, camp there, and see the giant kauri trees early, when the park would still be empty.  As the sun sank to the horizon, I could see hills rising from the coast, and knew the driving would slow down before I reached my destination.

The twists and turns started, but my progress did not slow considerably until I found myself behind a camper van.  I have fantasized a little about extended travels in a van.  The van I fantasize about is a Volkswagen Transporter, a Mercedes/Freightliner/Dodge Sprinter, a Ford Transit Connect (it would be tight, but I think it could be a pretty good little van), or, if I am in a "dying in a car crash wouldn't be so bad" sort of mood, a classic VW camper.  Many others have this fantasy, and New Zealand is one of the countries that hosts the crazies who want to live out this dream.  The problem is that the vans that most people get to realize their fantasy make the classic VW appear stylish, comfortable, safe, nimble, and powerful.  I started the winding climb into the hills, and came up behind one of these campers in the starry darkness of an autumn night.  It was slow going from here on out.

Behind the slow moving van, I passed a sign proclaiming the next 18 kilometers as the Waipoua Forest.  The guide said the camping was "near the south entrance."  In my lexicon, all 18 kilometers could be "near."  In fact, Dargaville, 50 kilometers south of the park is probably also described as near.  I kept my eyes peeled for camping, and saw nothing except the back of that van for 23 kilometers.

I actually did see something else in the park.  I saw another van illegally camping on the side of the road.  Presumably, they also could not find the campground.  I decided to turn around.  If all else failed, I could pull off next to them, and sleep in the car.  It seemed reasonable to assume that there would be some safety in numbers when illegally camping on the side of the road.  Before I was going to resign myself to sleeping inside a Corolla hatchback, I decided to check every side road for signs indicating a campground.  I was in luck, the non-reflective sign for the visitor's center had an imperceptibly small symbol of a tent.

I drove down the rough, narrow, gravel road, annoyed that the guidebook did not say, "at the visitor's center."  The road became rougher, I kept going.  The road narrowed, I kept going.  I passed a sign for a swimming hole, I kept going.  I passed a building that might have been the visitor's center, I kept going.  I passed a sign that said campground at a fork in the road, and continued on the fork the sign seemed to label.  The road became unreasonably rough, and too narrow to turn a small hatchback around on.  I shifted into reverse, and backed up the rough, narrow road back to the campground sign (complicated by the fact that Kiwi cars have only one reverse light), and tried the other fork.

Success!  I had arrived at what could easily have been a depression era work camp in the Appalachians.  I pulled into a camp spot, illuminated by a motion detecting light on the restroom buildings.  I situated the car to block most of the light, and left just enough space for my tent to be nestled between trees and the car.  This gave me what little seclusion could be had on a gravel pad.  I paid the $15 (per person!), set up my tent, ate some dinner, and climbed into bed.  The gravel prevented me from staking the tent, so the vestibules hung flaccidly against the mosquito netting.  I drifted to sleep, in the muggy night air.

The motion detector light flashed on—
SSSCCRrreeeeeeeerreereerehehehe.


Instantly, I awoke.  What was that terrible sound?  I told myself it was a bird, and tried to relax back to sleep.

RRRRRRreeereereeeheheheh


The noise was closer the second time.  It happened again, closer. And again, this time between my spot, and the beat-up Mazada camper in the spot across the road from me.  The source of the noise was within 20 feet.

RRRRRrreerererrreeeeheheheh

It should be said that I do not recall the first time I slept in a tent.  Further, while I am sure I have been frightened in a tent, I do not recall this ever happening.  I have slept in bear country.  I have slept with coyotes howling, and with spiders, scorpions, and snakes looking for warmth to curl up near.  I have never, as an adult, been afraid in a tent.

RRRRRrreeerereeerrerehehehe


Another call in the distance answered the cry of the first.  Another, an intermediate distance away, chimed in.  Whatever creature was making that terrible noise was travelling through the campground in a pack.  I thought about what wild animals live in the forests of New Zealand, nothing large.  There are no large mammals on the island, but there are wild boar.  I wondered to myself, "how big does a boar really need to be?  Javalenas are not really large, but they can be vicious.  Javalenas travel in packs.  This could be a pack of wild boar"!

"Not to worry," I thought to myself, "the creatures will just wander through camp."  "It doesn't hurt to have a contingency plan," Zoe from Firefly said in my mind.  I took inventory of what I had in my tent that could work as a weapon.  I decided my best defense, should a pack of wild boar attack the tent, was a pair of Converse.  The odds did not seem in my favor.

I changed tactics.  I focused on thinking about the non-scary alternatives, "it could be birds, or maybe a possum, but probably birds."  Birds are not scary.  I started trying to calm down, thinking, "They're birds, they're birds, birds, birds"—

SSSccreeeeRREEErereeerreeeheheheheh


I was way beyond calming myself down.  I was freaking out, scared, for the first time, in my tent.  I could not calm down.  The fact that I was scared made me more scared.  The fact that I was more scared made me more scared that the demonic "birds" would be able to detect fear oozing from my tent.  I decided to take action.  These creatures probably did not realize that I am larger than they are, and that I claimed this territory by paying my $15 fee.  I decided that if they saw me, they would understand their mistake, and leave.

I put on my headlamp, unzipped my tent, and, in an act of absolute bravery, stuck out my head.  I saw...trees.  On the other side of my tent, I saw my car.  I went back to the trees.  My well protected tent spot was also without any defensible space.  "See, birds," I lied to myself as I laid back down.  It was quiet outside, I relaxed, and realized that even if I was to calm down, I had to pee.  The only way that I could possibly sleep at all was to get up, walk to the loo, and empty my bladder.

I laid in the quiet darkness, psyching myself up for the most harrowing urination ever attempted by humans.  The source of the noise seemed to have left, or had it?  I could hear... footsteps in the brush.  Whatever these creatures were, at least one was close enough so that I could hear it walking.  I ran through how to thwart the attack with a pair of purple Converse in my mind.  The soft rubber sole would arc delicately back as I swung it through the air.  The brilliant white toe cap would slap into the pink, fanged, toothy snout of the boar, like a hipster Indiana Jones' whip.  The pig would squeal, and run in terror of my fashion forward pummeling.  One thought stayed with me through all of this, with increasing urgency there was one truth to the situation.  I had to pee.

The cacophony of the devil-creature choir briefly resumed, then stopped.  I decided that if I was to be the first person killed by a wild animal while camping in New Zealand, I would die without wetting myself before hand (or at least while attempting to make it so I wouldn't wet myself).

I got dressed, turned on my headlamp, and climbed out of my tent.  I thought of the dude in the internet video who sat calmly while a gorilla checked his hair for insects.  I channeled that calm.  I looked around, and saw nothing.  I stepped from my alcove into the road, and looked again.  I saw eyes, eyes that were staring at me.

I looked directly into the eyes of an indignant possum.  I stared it down, uncomfortable that I let something the size of a house cat frighten me.  It, apparently, annoyed that I should be so bold as to have disrupted its mission of terrorizing campers.  Eventually, it turned, and sauntered on.  I used the restroom, climbed back into my sleeping bag, and drifted back to sleep, comfortably armed with my new found knowledge of possum calls, and my Converse sneakers.

The Pursuit of Madness: Running Ruapehu

Approximation of the Round the Mountain Track (blue line and elevation profile), and the southern part of the Northern Circuit (red line).  I began and ended at Whakapapa Village (red arrow), and went counter-clockwise. 

Before deciding to do the Round the Mountain Track in a day, I talked about it with a couple of coworkers.  One of them, at the end of the conversation, wished me luck in my "pursuit of madness."  This trip was my longest mountain run, and while there was a lot of doubt after a finishing a challenging marathon of trail, with another 20 miles to go, I am confident that more madness must be pursued.

I will start with the details.  The trail, according to the team I finished with, was 74.99 kilometers, or about 46.5 miles.  I had anticipated doing this distance in not more than 16 hours, owing to a small amount of physical difficult, and a great deal of mental instability, it took about 18 hours.  There was at least 6,500 feet of climbing (2,000 meters according to runningwildnz.com, 9,000 feet according to my highly inaccurate Google Earth track, above).  To put it in terms of marathons, it was six miles short of doing the Equinox, then doing the Equinox again, with the same amount of climbing.  The difference is that the Equinox is on smooth trail in comparison.

On Friday night, I got off the phone with Sarah at about 23:00, set my alarm for 03:00, and went to sleep.  When my alarm went off, I was slow to start, but I was out the door by about 04:30, heading for Tongariro National Park.  About an hour and fifteen minutes later, I was parked at the trail head, having scoped the end of the trail.  I used the restroom, and was on the trail at about 06:00.

The trail begins in the forest, which was slightly overgrown with ferns full of flies that had nested for the night.  In these sections, running through seemingly constant spiderwebs, there was endless buzzing from the flies that were disturbed by my running through their perches.  The flies' black bodies were invisible in my headlamp, buzzing around my ankles, and the experience was disquieting.  After the insect harassment in the forest, the trail emerges onto boardwalks through some alpine bogs.

The boardwalks sparkled with frost and dew in the predawn light, their turns and uneven surfaces a shimmery serpent through the landscape.  On sections of well built, dry boardwalk, the pace can be dialed to 11.  It was an essential part of the plan to make it to Waihohonu Hut before sunset.  Unfortunately, I found that on sections of frosty or wet boardwalk, I had to gingerly corner, and take stairs slowly, as the wood was slick enough that I felt each step slip as I pushed off.   There were moments of concern, even at this early hour, that if the boardwalks did not dry out soon, it might become a problem.  These were fleeting thoughts, as I could not be bothered with such concerns at this point, because every vista was a stunning interplay of light, shadow and alpenglow.

After crossing the Whakapapaiti River for the third time, I hit my first direct sun of the day.  Continuing across the valley, and climbing the far ridges, I was rewarded with views of Mt. Tongariro, Mt. Ngauruhoe, Mt. Ruapehu, and Mt. Taranaki.  These stunning views, combined with the rugged trail, kept the morning amazing, and my only thoughts were of the prospect of maybe having started out on another of my greatest runs.  Soon, I saw the Ohakune Mountain Road, and I was surprised and ecstatic.  Somehow, even with the slick boardwalks, I was way ahead of schedule, then the trail turned in the wrong direction.

Struggling over rough trail, I was starting to grump at the sinusoidal path that I was apparently starting to take to get not very far.  Even so, the views were incredibly, and my legs were feeling strong over what some have described as the most difficult section.  I, perhaps unwisely, even ran some of the steep ups just to see how it felt.

I lost the trail at the river crossing just before the second hut, and went too far upstream, before releasing my mistake.  I crossed, back tracked, then, back on the trail, back tracked again in the direction of my mistake on the other side of a stand of pines.  It did not matter at this point, as the view was constantly back dropped by Ruapehu towering ahead of me.  I had started to wonder when I would hit the infamous waterfall, and the moment I saw it, I knew I was heading for it.  At the base, I filled my water from the mineral-rich, but presumably parasite-free river, and scrambled up the outcrop.  After the waterfall, I had fun in the rough terrain, pondering if it was really better for DOC to not make a trail, and have people trail swarm.

Upon reaching Ohakune Mountain Road, I shook out my shoes and socks, had a snack, and started down the tarmac.  The steep hard surface was too much for my knees, so the steep downhill sections of road were as slow as the steep, trail-less climbs of the previous section.  I made decent time, but was not eating enough, so when I reached the trail again, I had to stop and eat about a thousand calories.

The calories sat in my gut, and I had to take it easy.  The groomed trail was a perfect place to digest, while maintaining a good pace.  I had decided to eat at Blyth Hut, but when I reached the turn off for the hut, I decided to push on, rather than take a side trip.  Now worried about water, I dialed back the food consumption, and struggled with this mistake over deeply eroded trail with the most poorly constructed boardwalk ever conceived by humans.

It was somewhere struggling over crappy boardwalk that I lost my breath.  I found that even the slightest incline put me at my cardiovascular limit.  I started walking even more, but I was not recovering my breath.  I arrived at the next hut, confused about my breathing, and worried about time.  I ate another 1500 calories, drank and refilled water, and talked a little bit with some backpackers.  They said that there was one big valley between this hut and Rangipo Hut, but other than that it was rolling.  I packed up, took a couple of out of breath strides, and slowed back to a walk to let my food digest.

I walked into the Rangipo "Desert."  I entered the first valley, then the second larger valley, then the third larger and steeper valley, then started to wonder if the backpacker's rolling was how a Sherpa may describe the Rockies.  My breath started to come back, but my motivation was lacking.  I was able to run on the flats and the down, but found that running the downs was nearly impossible when staring at the wall awaiting on the other side.  I was struggling with cooling temperatures, thickening clouds, wind, and accepting that whoever put the pickets out to mark the trail had decided to just get it done with the fewest pickets possible, the grade of the trail be damned.

I arrived at the Rangipo Hut feeling rejuvenated.  A hiker came out of the hut, talked to me for a while, called me, "some kind of crazy," and headed back inside to sit by the fire.  I jogged into the twilight worried about time.  Some amazing scenery coaxed me along, but it was more a fast walk than a run, then the sun went down, the temperature dropped, and I was alone, in the dark, with only thoughts of self-pity and doubt.

Like Alice down the rabbit hole, the bottom dropped out, and I wondered when I would hit the bottom.  The trail then turned northeast, away from my destination.  Though the stars were bright, the darkness of my own tired mind consumed me.  I walked, more and more slowly, partially owing to difficulty route finding, and partially owing to my mental wall.  I walked from picket to picket.  Ones with reflective markers at the top were easy to spot, and I would be lured forward to them.  Sometimes picket after picket would be lying on the ground, reflector gone, or facing into the ground, and I would hold a straight line, hoping that there were no turns.  On two occasions, I headed back to the previous picket to try a new line, and in doing this, I saw headlamps coming down the trail behind me.

For a moment I thought my eyes deceived me, then I thought I must have imagined it - lights from the hut, foreshortened in the darkness maybe?  I saw them the second time, and I knew someone was giving chase.  I felt a fleeting surge of energy, as a rabbit in the line of a sprinting carnivore, but it was over before it began.  I then wondered who would be out here.  Was it a SAR mission, and I was leading a team off track?  A ranger concerned about someone heading on into the darkness?  A hunter willing to take a sound shot in the dark?  I sang some Greg Brown, but not even that could bring me out of my stupor.

As the vegetation changed a very cold breeze came up.  The doldrums intensified, and I began to fantasize about building a miserable shelter to bivouac in until the morning light.  I stopped, on an incised section of trail, protected from the wind by scrub and erosion.  I forced myself to eat unwelcome calories, and layered up.  I walked on, and warmed up slightly.  I kicked the hopelessness, but was now accepting the idea of slogging through the night back to the car.

I heard voices.  I heard them again.  Then I saw the lights.  Then I heard the footsteps, they were...running!


The light split into three, a woman said, "hello," and three runners broke pace, and walked with me.  We chatted about our plans.  They had, apparently, been hearing reports throughout the day of an American running well ahead of them.  At Rangipo hut, they were told I was not far ahead, and now they had caught me.  They offered any assistance I needed, which I did not, but allowed me to chase them for a while.

They trotted on, at a comfortable pace, walking the hills and rough stuff.  A little slower than my initial pace, but a world faster than what I had fallen into.  At the brief stops, we talked a bit.  They had been taking the turns hitting the wall, taking turns setting pace, and keeping each other going.  They mostly talked, and I listened, uncomfortable to be adding myself to their group.  On the third stop, I asked if I was not intruding too much by joining, and they unanimously welcomed me into the crew.  We ran on.

For the rest of the night, I stuck to the back, enjoying the motivation of being in a group of people.  A group of people who were doing something as crazy as I.  Having many of the same problems that I was.  They would lament a climb, a stairway, and over-groomed trail.  They under estimated distances.  With each setback, one of the group spurred on to let another fall back.  Two of them were also constantly motivated to keep ahead of the one with gas.

Choosing to mostly stay at the back of the pace line, feeling welcomed, but not wholly part of the group, I suffered through his zesty off-gassing, fueled by whatever nightmare he must have been eating all day to keep his calories up.  When it got bad, I would fall back, then catch up when he shifted forward in the group.  Eventually I found myself in the middle of the group, and it was always happy to be ahead of the aromatic events that periodically interrupted thoughts, pace, and breathing.

Towards the end of the trail, they started dreaming of the showers and beds in their hotel room at the trail's end.  I started dreading the drive home.  We came over the rise above Taranaki Falls, to see the twinkling lights of Whakapapa Village, and cruised the last length of trail back into civilization.  We shook hands, congratulating each other on a run well done.  They went into their hotel wishing me a safe drive back to Taupo.  I plodded to the parking lot, finishing my 18 hour day at 00:00.  I changed out of my running clothes, into the delightful embrace of cotton, emailed people I was back at the car, and headed for Taupo.

I did not make it far.  The car was warm, the seat was comfortable, and the night was dark.  I pulled off the road and took a nap.  Ninety minutes or so later the car had gotten cold, and I was awake enough to carry on driving.  The drive was slow, and felt endless.  I got back to my house, took a sleepy shower, and went to bed, 24.5 hours after I had gotten out of it.

***
A week later, the events seems strangely distant, and almost dream like.  Much has happened in that week, including planning for some more runs (none that long on the horizon).  Even with the dreamy memories of vivid stars in the darkness, I have tried to point my thinking to lessons that I can learn to make the next run even better.

Sarah and I run with an ultralight bag from Cooks Custom Sewing.  The bags are light, and when packed well, reasonably comfortable.  I am not entirely sure what possessed them to design some of the straps as they did, and my lightly bruised collar bones assure me that there are improvements to be made to the design.  Regardless, it seems like it is one of the most innovative ultralight bags owing to its utter simplicity.  There is a roll top bag from OR that I am curious to try, as I think a roll top could solve some of the issues of the CCS bag.  All the same, running behind these three others, I could not help but notice that two of three of them had the Osprey Talon 22, the bag that dominated the field on the Tour Divide.  I am skeptical of this made-in-China, do-it-all bag, but as Pirsig points out that at some point, when you realize everyone is heading in the same direction, you start to wonder if you should go that way too.

I am not sure that doing this sort of trip is the something that everyone else is heading off to do, and the ones who do all using the same pack is not necessarily an indication of what is best.  I do not know if I will switch any gear because of what others are using, but one thing I did see in the other runners, as I have seen in other endurance events, is that with the exception of a few who are driven to win, a group of people who are all the same type of crazy is the best way to keep your body going, when it wants to stop.  I rarely find one other person to do these things with, so I feel like I need to maximize my time with those who will.  I have tried to tailor my life to the pursuit of many things, but after running Ruapehu, I think I need to fill my life with those people who will join me in the pursuit of madness.

Round the Mountain Track

Sunrise over the Emerald Lakes, Tongariro National Park.  Photo: N. Olsen

I am heading back to Tongariro National Park tomorrow.  The mission for tomorrow (weather dependent) is the Round the Mountain track.  It is purported to be a fairly rough 43.5 mile trail described on this website.  The start will be predawn, and the finish will be post sunset.  I reckon the sunrise will not be as dramatic as on the northern circuit (photo), but I am hopeful that sunset will be flanked by two volcanoes, which I look forward to.  You can follow my progress through my SPOT page.  Pictures should follow early next week.

New Zealand, The Final Numbers

New Zealand's roads are 7% more dangerous than US roads, and, in terms of violent crime, it is about as safe as Philadelphia.  Both, arguably, reflect negatively on New Zealand (Sorry fans of Philadelphia).  I will be the first to admit, that I am not a glass half full person.  Jason, perhaps, described my demeanor best when he said that I "thrive in negativity." Knowing this about myself, I acknowledge that I do often look for negatives.  I am good at finding what is wrong with a situation.  So, I wanted to find something that New Zealand was better at.  Unfortunately, every metric that I come across reflects poorly on New Zealand.  Though one analysis remains uncompleted, and if Edmund Hillary is correct, then New Zealand will trump the US in this aspect.

I will address Hillary's opinions towards the end, and instead begin with safety in the workplace.  I was recently nominated to the safety committee at work.  Without divulging any sensitive information, I was startled at some of the trends in the incidents, and was appointed to give a presentation about the importance of incident and near miss reporting.  One of the things I discovered while preparing this presentation was that New Zealand's workplaces are, well, shockingly dangerous when compared with US workplaces.  This might be related to the fact that construction workers work in trenches beneath heavy equipment without hard hats or safety glasses, or that scaffolding rarely has toe boards or railings.  It could also be the "New Zealand ingenuity," that makes Kiwis "make" things work.  Whatever it is, the safety comparison is best shown with a graph.

While that is not the most beautiful chart I have ever made, a given industry is in the same color, with US numbers presented with a black border.  In the categories of Total (all industries), Mining, and Construction, NZ workplaces have, approximately, three times the recordable incidents as US workplaces.  In Government, the categories are quite a bit different.  The US statistics include construction and healthcare (a surprisingly dangerous occupation), while NZ excludes these professions.  New Zealand does include "Defence" which sounds like it might be dangerous.  Either way, NZ government jobs are on par with the safety in the US, and everything else is more dangerous.  (Sources for US and NZ.)

While trying to think of another measure to return balance to the NZ side, I was listening to the radio when they reported on a recent paper in the Lancet.  Apparently, infectious disease rates are on the rise in New Zealand.  I might not have thought too much about this, but a Modern, Western nation should have a falling infectious disease rate, and a rising chronic disease rate.  I have not read the article in the Lancet, so I cannot verify either way, but it seems that there are two interesting parts to this.  First, that this is the first study of this kind.  I am not sure if this is the first study of this kind in New Zealand, or if it is the first anywhere.  I imagine it is the first in NZ, as this seems like the type of data that the CDC would tabulate annually.  That said, I have not been able to find these data on the CDC website (with only brief, late night searches).  Second, many sources allege that NZ is the only Modern, Western nation with this trend.  If this is true, one has to ask, does this preclude modernity?

The Edmund Hillary metric came from his autobiography, Nothing Venture, Nothing Win.  In his book, Hillary states that one of the things he did not like about the US was the lack of public land when compared to New Zealand.  This was incredible to me.  When I go to Delta, if I climb to a promontory, I can see public land in every direction I look.  In Socorro, the same was true.  Vegas was rimmed with public land, as the mountains rising out of the valley where the city resides are all public.  I have had similar experiences in Seattle, Phoenix, Tucson, Albuquerque, Santa Fe, and cities in California.  I have driven countless miles through public lands on interstates and back roads.  In New Zealand, or at least around Taupo, there is only one area that seems truly public that one can see from Taupo.  Part of this might be that the North Island is flat, so very little sticks above the horizon, but many of the forests are private (for logging), and most of the open country is private farms.  If Edmund Hillary was from a small town along the Western edge of the South Island, I might understand that Chicago would seem like it lacked public lands.  He wasn't.  Hillary is from near Auckland, where the public land situation seems similar to the Central North Island.  Maybe this has changed since 1975, but somehow I doubt that New Zealand's Great Enclosure occurred in the last forty years.  This seems like a fantastic numbers game, and a great test of how "outdoorsy" the country is.  Are Kiwis really adventurous?  Do they really value wilderness?  I think, contrary to what Hillary states, that public lands have never been that important to Kiwis, and that wilderness gets short shrift in this little island nation.

Obviously, in straight numbers the US dominates.  The US Forest service manages about 780,000 square kilometers of public land, or about 3 New Zealands.  Which, while highly unfair, it seems like Hillary could have found a little slice of nowhere somewhere in that vast stretch of forest.  To keep with the unfair numbers, 76% of Nevada is public land, of which 194,000 square kilometers are BLM land.  In the unit of New Zealands, Nevada has about 0.8 New Zealands managed by the BLM.  The US has about 435,000 square kilometers of Wilderness Area, about 1.6 New Zealands.  Nationwide, the BLM manages about 3.8 New Zealands, and the National Park Service manages 1.25 New Zealands.  These do not include lands managed by DOD (not always open to the public), Bureau of Reclamation, National Monuments (
Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument is 360,000 square kilometers of ocean, or 1.3 New Zealands), Department of Fish and Wildlife, state governments, or local governments.  Much of the Federal land falls under the auspices of the Department of Interior, which manages 2,050,000 square kilometers, or about 7.6 New Zealands!  Thus, the quantity of public land in the US is staggering, but to be fair, the US is a lot bigger than New Zealand.


The New Zealand Department of Conservation manages essentially all of the public land in New Zealand.  There are city parks, and some Maori trust land that is open to the public, but DOC is the big one.  DOC manages, according to Wikipedia, "almost a third of New Zealand's land area."  Rounding that up to one third, that is about 89,000 square kilometers.  In the US, about one third (on the order of 31%) of the land is administered by the BLM, Forest Service, National Park Service, Department of Fish and Wildlife, and the Army Corps of Engineers.  This does not include some land, like that managed by the Bureau of Reclamation, but it is surprisingly difficult to break out the land that is public, in the sense that it is open to people, and land owned by the federal government that would not be open to the public (e.g., military bases).  This problem exists in New Zealand as well.  While it is fairly easy to filter out military bases (I think), forestry land may be closed to the public, even though it is public lands.  While this does happen in the US as well, the scale seems larger here.  Regardless, with federal public lands, the US and New Zealand are neck and neck.  In the US, the states also control vast quantities of land.  I have not found a number for New Zealand, but it seems that district parks are often quite small.  It seems unlikely to me that New Zealand district councils hold 10% of the country, like the states do in the US.  Thus, it seems safe to say that public land in the US is closer to 40%, while it is closer to 33% in New Zealand.

If one sets out to prove Hillary correct, then perhaps total area of public land is not a good measure.  Maybe, percent of total land area is also not a good measure.  Maybe, the best measure would be public land per capita.  I think, in this measure, New Zealand has more public land than the US.  By my poorly thought out estimation, the US has about 79 people per square kilometer of public land (including state), while New Zealand has about 49 people per square kilometer of public land.  While I'm doubtful that this is what Hillary was talking about, it is a value worth noting.

However, it almost seems like a group of people who have to live in denser cities are giving up more, to preserve their public land.  It seems fair to argue that the people of Manhattan are giving up more than the people of Las Vegas.  Thus, in thinking about it, I might argue that New Yorkers value the knowledge of having public land more than the people of most Western States, and, accordingly, more than Kiwis.  Yet, to really delve into who values the wilderness more is a complex issue that does not really fit the scope of this post.  Yet, population density does seem to have an affect on an earlier item.  It seems, that infectious diseases would ravish places with high population densities more than those with low population density.  It seems that, if I am to concede that New Zealand has more public land on the grounds of population density, than it be only fair that New Zealand takes a double hit on the infectious disease front!

I may do another piece about New Zealand in, what looks to be, my last two months in this country.  I thought about covering debt, healthcare, and civil rights / racial tension.  I had thought about comparing New Zealand to Greece, as the country seems to have positioned itself for an economic meltdown.  Discussing the fact that while New Zealand does have public healthcare, the healthcare system still unfairly favors the rich (and is woefully behind other nations when it comes to things like hygiene and patient privacy).  Further, I thought about discussing the relationship between Europeans and Maori.  Yet, in reality, the last two are pretty convincingly covered by the paper published in the Lancet.  I may write these pieces, I may reflect on New Zealand after I have left.  Or, I may leave it.  Either way, my intention is that this will be the last piece about New Zealand when it comes to the numbers.

This is an impoverished little nation, with backwards policies, poor records on health and safety, and closed minded, arrogant people, which is okay.  For my money though, Hawaii is a nicer, safer tropical get away, and BC and Alaska have far superior mountains and coastlines.  New Zealand's splendor is something like Washington's Olympic Peninsula, it isn't that it is bad there, because it is pretty amazing, you just know there are better places.