I slept in a bit at the hostel today, not wanting to interrupt the awesome dreams happening inside my head. Around 10, I fix a breakfast of poached eggs and sausage, before starting the long traverse that would bring me back to this hostel later tonight.
I walk about 5km out of town before finding a good place to hitch hike. Within minutes of starting, the second car that passed me offered me a ride. Woohoo! Not a bad start. I open the car door, and am engulfed in some hip hop beats by the one and only Snoop Dog. The kind fella who picked me up was a local of the Maori culture. We had some interesting conversation along the 30km hitch to Bluff, where he dropped me off at the Southern terminus of the Te Araroa trail: Sterling Point.
I said cheers and bid him farewell, and began what would be one of the longest road walks of my hiking career.
The trail starts off on a nice trail along the oceanside, before turning and heading up and over the Bluff hill. Nice views all around from up there.
Then, down the hill and into the town, and finally, onto the highway where I would spend most of the day walking.
It didn’t help that there was a constant half-rain throughout the day, which made it hard to know when to put on the rain gear and when to take it off. Also, there was neither the time nor a place to take many breaks, so my legs and feet were pretty mad at me afterwards.
About halfway down the road, a woman stopped and asked me if I needed a ride. “I have to walk it, it’s part of the trail,” I said. She offered for me to stay at her place tonight, but I was already booked at the hostel, so I had to decline.
Then it got weird: “Have you noticed that the sky is closer here?”
Confused, I simply answered “Huh, I hadn’t noticed?”
Then she breaks into this astoundingly unreal chain of anti-logic.
“Yeah, it’s closer here because the Earth is flat, the sky is a dome, and we’re near the edge of it.”
Near the edge of the Earth? Interesting. I didn’t know I had fallen back into the year 1609.
I was thinking, man, my flight to San Francisco later is going to be quite the affair if she’s right! Hah! I really can’t understand how someone could be this out of touch with reality. I felt like, wow, how can anyone truly believe this? How was she so severely failed by the systems meant to educate people? I wonder how she would have countered the fact that I have flown around the world. I should have asked.
She goes on to say that it’s impossible that anyone landed on the moon because it’s “a lamp in the sky, the same diameter as the sun.”
I wish I was making this story up, but I was as shocked as you probably are. Darn, if she wasn’t so nice and halfway stopped on the side of a highway, I would’ve loved to change her mind about it, but I’m sure I wouldn’t have been the first to try, and it would’ve probably been a waste of energy. In any case, I hope she never pursues a career as a teacher.
She drove off down the road after thoroughly dumb-founding me, and I was left with the feeling that she had been severely let down by someone, anyone who must have been responsible for her education. But here she was, a woman in her 40s thinking the moon is a lamp and the sky is a dome over a flat Earth. I suppose she thought the engine powering her car was run by Elves, as well.
If you know me, you know how much I respect science, facts, and the undeniable and painfully gathered truths of our world. The scientific method is what led us out of the dark ages, and without it, we shall surely plunge right back into the depths of ignorance once more.
I hope one day she or someone like her gets to ride a rocket into orbital space and have everything they believe shattered by the reality of how things are. I’d pay to watch that.
In the meantime, I keep hiking down the road, eventually turning onto a bike trail that leads me the last 10km back into the city of Invercargill, with a lovely sunset ever-present to my left over the Pacific ocean.
I order a pizza which was picked up on the way to my hostel, to recharge with a zero day after 45km of walking on really rough roads and asphalt. My feet hate me! Okay, rest time. Goodnight!
I wonder how she explains blood moons, solar eclipses, “shooting stars”, etc. Very interesting.