"Have you been to T-M- park?" asked my farm owner on Monday.
"No. Where's that?"
"It's this end of the high street, a lovely big place. Open." Pauses. "There's another park at the far end, past the council buildings. But it's not nice. It's native bush, fern trees, all closed in and gloomy. I wouldn't go there - I never go there if I can help it."
Me: *puzzled* but saying nothing. Does she not like native bush? I love native bush ares, but I wouldn't go to a park - I hang out on the mountains and in the isolated areas.
"T-M- park is much better," she continues. "Lots of wide open grass, big trees, a duck pond. You can sit on the swings there if you like."
And I smile and think that I'm a bit big to be allowed on the swings, and wonder if she likes it because she took her children there - it doesn't sound like my sort of place at all.
And then I remember that this 'safe' place - because I've realised that is the difference between the two parks for her, one is 'safe' and one isn't, because it's closed bush and evil people could follow or ambush or lurk unseen - sounds just like the park where I used to go Saturday lunchtimes from work, as a schoolkid, and where I'd been warned time and time again not to go because of the 'strange' people who might hang out there.
It's relative. The park she feels is a 'safe' place is that way not only because of its physical features, but because of the country it is in and the attitude of the people who frequent it.
And this is what it means to be female. To be warned away from the type of place you love. To be scared to walk alone. To be forbidden to go certain places. To find yourself unwelcome in certain places, because there is no precedent of females being present in them; and with the rarity of being female, to be the target for harassment that re-inforces the reasoning - do not go there, do not do this, do not try to break the mould in which a females ropes are set, her steps restricted, her wings clipped.
This is the way we live, with invisible boundaries that mustn't be crossed. The unwritten laws of being female.
As a female, I shouldn't have been at all confused at the implication behind the 'liked' place and the 'disliked' place: 'this place is safe, this one isn't'. In logic, the relative safety of the two places as opposed to anywhere else isn't that simple. Does that matter? There is no logic to the invisible boundaries.
I was confused because that particular boundary I have set out to deliberately break, over and over again in spite of punishment (from worried females) or actual harassment (from males). It's not so much a boundary in my reality as one of the things that upsets the people around me so much that it becomes a boundary again, forcing me to lie or to curtail my wanderings until these people are pacified.
Some battles against the invisible boundaries remain just that - they are battles. They will never be won. With what seems like several centuries experience long-distance walking among hills and mountains, I can be content there, but I can never tell anyone where I'm going or where I've been and not expect them to react with shock or fear, or try to talk me out of any and all such future excursions.
I can be in the hills and meet other walkers, and often they ask about my companions and react with shock or awe if they learn I have none (another invisible rule is that if you suspect anyone is trying to establish your defences, you tell lies. I plead guilty. I do follow that rule.)
I have to accept this will never change. I can break the rules, but I can't force a world to change with me.
After the first time I climbed a nearby hill, one of my bosses insisted that I always leave my route and call him on return after that. I did, a few times. By then the whole district knew I was crazy, and I'd become well aware that he worried from the moment I left the farm until I phoned him on my return.
I stopped telling him where I wqas going, rather than have him out of his mind with worry every time I went walking. A couple of times I used another friend to leave route details with and check back, but after that I gave up on the whole hassle and went without the back-up.
With the experience of several years, instead of following safety directions I will now
only ever leave my route information and expected return time when DOC has the official forms and procedure in place - and even then I've had women officials forbid me to do walks that I was fully fit, equipped and experienced enough to do.
It's only one of a hundred thousand invisible boundaries, the restriction on where a woman can walk, and where she can walk alone.
Who is going to claim that no such restriction exists? I have seen that claim recently, that we hysterical women imagine our restrictions or are foolishly fearful.
Did I imagine it when I was shouted at every time I came home, for having sneaked out without permission?
Did I imagine it when the school ordered me to go home every lunch-time, so that they at least knew where I was? Is it my imagination, or was my choice offered between that, or sitting in a room with a teacher watching me?
Did I imagine the soft-spoken women I worked for when I was young, earnestly entreating me to stay with them for all my breaks and not go out walking?
Have I forgotten how I used to clean up all evidence of having been wandering in the great outdoors?
Did I imagine the shocked pause and the barrage of questions when I told my mum I was going walking 'with friends' and realised an instant after I'd supplied her with the names of two random friends that they were the
wrong names because they weren't obviously female?
