It's only words
The mountain is so dangerous… never go on your own… woman died up there… Search and Rescue huge undertaking… cost
When the receiver of these words looks sufficiently unrepentant for having gone for a walk, resort to shaming. Remind them that they are abusing the tax-payer’s money because ‘something might happen’ and ‘you might need rescued’.
On top of the fact that I feel lied to – not for the first time – by DOC staff who told me the rivers were in flood and bridges washed away on the route I walked earlier this month, I was in no mood for the usual barrage of words from someone who would much rather I didn’t feel free to walk in the National Park areas that are provided for walkers.
Just listen to the wisdom of one’s elders:
Mum: Didn’t you see the way that man looked at you?
Sophie: what man?
Mum (to 9-yr old brother): Look after your big sister
You’ll freeze your boobs off./ You’ll be sorry when you get pneumonia./ You shouldn’t go there alone./ You shouldn’t go./ Girl of fifteen – just your age - … raped and murdered./ Attacked in that area… just your age./ Where were you? It’s dangerous out there in the dark!/ When you’re lying on the concrete with your head smashed in and only your eyes moving you’ll know we were right./ You’re too pretty to go out alone./ Who are you going with?/ You’re lucky to have got this far, the way you wander off./ Your teachers care about you. That’s why we don’t want you going off on your own./ Are you stupid or what? There was a girl disappeared up there./ Car ran her off the road… in the car… only found her shoe… she was jogging along the road, going home./ I care about you. I don’t want you hurt. That’s why I tell you these things – do you want to be like that girl?/ Sometimes I think you don’t *want* to live./ No. It’s too dangerous./ Don’t trust anyone./ How do you think I’ll feel when it’s your funeral?/ Anything could happen to you./ I tried to warn you – don’t blame me when someone drags you off and murders you./ The police have enough to do without trying to find out what happened to girls who go off alone./ Why do you do it? It’s so dangerous./ Don’t you care about your health? I don’t want to have to look after a kid with pneumonia./ You get colds more often when you walk off improperly dressed like that./ Didn’t you hear about that girl that got kidnapped?
I don’t want to know what more is in my memory – details of every teenage girl raped and murdered in the locality probably, warnings, threats, attempts to shame me into proper behaviour – ie, staying home. Never stepping outside without a duffel coat and a companion. Never going anywhere without lots of people around, never going out at night.
At around fourteen/fifteen I became aware that the majority of the adults around me didn’t expect me to survive to my sixteenth birthday.
At around the same age I was forbidden from leaving the school grounds except to go home.
Probably younger, I learned to leave quietly if I wanted to walk in the great outdoors, and get the tongue lashing when I got back. Because asking permission 100% of the time met refusal, with the result that I was trapped (and watched to ensure I didn’t try to go after denial of permission).
At around fifteen, I could no longer sneak out because there were no parents at home to take responsibility for the younger children. So I got trapped that way.
There was a sixteenth birthday. There’s been another sixteen birthdays since then. And I’m *still* hearing this stuff. Thankfully I don’t have nearly every adult I know predicting my painful death within the year – but there are still a lot of people very certain that when I get injured or die it’ll be my own fault. For having taken a walk. Alone.
PS... I know it seems like I'm harping on and on about the same subject *whine* why can't I go for a walk without being verbally harassed about it for the rest of my life? - but I'm effing pissed off.
Maybe tomorrow I'll be calm enough to rant about the guys who create the atmosphere of danger in the first place...
When the receiver of these words looks sufficiently unrepentant for having gone for a walk, resort to shaming. Remind them that they are abusing the tax-payer’s money because ‘something might happen’ and ‘you might need rescued’.
On top of the fact that I feel lied to – not for the first time – by DOC staff who told me the rivers were in flood and bridges washed away on the route I walked earlier this month, I was in no mood for the usual barrage of words from someone who would much rather I didn’t feel free to walk in the National Park areas that are provided for walkers.
Just listen to the wisdom of one’s elders:
Mum: Didn’t you see the way that man looked at you?
Sophie: what man?
Mum (to 9-yr old brother): Look after your big sister
You’ll freeze your boobs off./ You’ll be sorry when you get pneumonia./ You shouldn’t go there alone./ You shouldn’t go./ Girl of fifteen – just your age - … raped and murdered./ Attacked in that area… just your age./ Where were you? It’s dangerous out there in the dark!/ When you’re lying on the concrete with your head smashed in and only your eyes moving you’ll know we were right./ You’re too pretty to go out alone./ Who are you going with?/ You’re lucky to have got this far, the way you wander off./ Your teachers care about you. That’s why we don’t want you going off on your own./ Are you stupid or what? There was a girl disappeared up there./ Car ran her off the road… in the car… only found her shoe… she was jogging along the road, going home./ I care about you. I don’t want you hurt. That’s why I tell you these things – do you want to be like that girl?/ Sometimes I think you don’t *want* to live./ No. It’s too dangerous./ Don’t trust anyone./ How do you think I’ll feel when it’s your funeral?/ Anything could happen to you./ I tried to warn you – don’t blame me when someone drags you off and murders you./ The police have enough to do without trying to find out what happened to girls who go off alone./ Why do you do it? It’s so dangerous./ Don’t you care about your health? I don’t want to have to look after a kid with pneumonia./ You get colds more often when you walk off improperly dressed like that./ Didn’t you hear about that girl that got kidnapped?
I don’t want to know what more is in my memory – details of every teenage girl raped and murdered in the locality probably, warnings, threats, attempts to shame me into proper behaviour – ie, staying home. Never stepping outside without a duffel coat and a companion. Never going anywhere without lots of people around, never going out at night.
At around fourteen/fifteen I became aware that the majority of the adults around me didn’t expect me to survive to my sixteenth birthday.
At around the same age I was forbidden from leaving the school grounds except to go home.
Probably younger, I learned to leave quietly if I wanted to walk in the great outdoors, and get the tongue lashing when I got back. Because asking permission 100% of the time met refusal, with the result that I was trapped (and watched to ensure I didn’t try to go after denial of permission).
At around fifteen, I could no longer sneak out because there were no parents at home to take responsibility for the younger children. So I got trapped that way.
There was a sixteenth birthday. There’s been another sixteen birthdays since then. And I’m *still* hearing this stuff. Thankfully I don’t have nearly every adult I know predicting my painful death within the year – but there are still a lot of people very certain that when I get injured or die it’ll be my own fault. For having taken a walk. Alone.
PS... I know it seems like I'm harping on and on about the same subject *whine* why can't I go for a walk without being verbally harassed about it for the rest of my life? - but I'm effing pissed off.
Maybe tomorrow I'll be calm enough to rant about the guys who create the atmosphere of danger in the first place...
posted by sophie | 9:59 PM
8 Comments:
I really agree with your thought and desire to walk alone.. I just had this similar conversation with my partner because i've started going on 5 &10 kilometre walks in the bushland nearby.. unfortunately i've had to concede he's probably right because the bushland is in the middle of a city so there probably are many wierdos around.. still what's the point of living next to a national park if you can't walk there?
Anyway it sounds different where you are.. if you are in a regional area with much more bushland and surely the risks are not too much..
Regardless, you do make a great point in an earlier article that there are many more dangers for women from men they know..
the other possibility i suppose would be to take a dog?
A dog can be a great boon.
Most of the places I go, dogs aren't permitted (and you need all four limbs usable for climbing, so not really practical to take a leash). But I do know of people who go running in more isolated areas with a German Shepherd or the like - and it keeps their husband happy.
Sheesh - of course there are a few creeps just waiting for an opportunity, but I'd be interested to know how *their* presence (and hence, risk to women) balances out against the millions of women warned against walking alone. Why can't someone just deck all the creeps instead of keeping the women chained to their houses?
Anyway, I've refused to be chained and I've never met a creep in the bush, or cost the taxpayer any money for Search & Rescue. Long may it last...
Ask them if they ever go in a car. And then quote road accident statistics at them (far higher than the number of women murdered by strangers, I'll wager).
Hey, is that Isolde from Feminist International? Nice to see you--and sorry you never joined that board, Sophie. It had a friendly atmosphere, but unfortunately it's shut down now.
I think you're conflating natural danger and human danger. Any of us who go into the bush/woods/maountains are putting ourselves at risk, and that applies equally to women and men. If we go alone, so much the worse. The National Park authorities aren't wrong--they do have to rescue people occasionally, and even see the dead bodies of some. It certainly happens around here, once in a while. But they shouldn't be trying to keep people out by lying about what's passable, and let's hope they don't give women an extra dose of that. They should be making sure that everyone goes prepared, and things would have to be pretty dire to make it an unacceptable risk to go out alone.
There's probably a lot you could say about how fear is used to keep girls in line. Maybe mothers (who got the same when they were young) would like to pass it on to sons too, but the boys just won't have it? Come to think of it, my partner and I have had a few strained talks about risk--me, insanely reckless, her, making up things to worry over. Who's right?
No, no Kiwi here. I'm in the northeastern USA--we went skiing in the woods yesterday! I had a good friend a while ago who'd lived in NZ and told me a few things about it. The Polynesian name isn't related to NZ, just an old desire to run way to the South Seas!
I'm conflating natural danger and human danger because they can't be separated.
Hence the title of this post 'it's only words', because if someone is uneasy about what I'm planning to do, they'll use any argument in their attempt to dissuade. A short conversation can run the whole gamut from 'might slip and sprain ankle' to 'might get lost' to 'might get raped' to 'might get hypothermia or drown' to 'might make your friends worry' and when people start resorting to straight out lies that they know to be lies, then I get really pissed off.
In my experience, girls going into the bush alone get a very heavy dose of this - I think I mentioned in an earlier post that I had once met another lone female hiker. Once. I couldn't even begin to count how many lone males I meet on my walks.
I do appreciate that DOC officials can't look at me and assess my fitness and experience, so they tend to advise me as if I were some naive 18-yr old (I've been told constantly that I look a lot younger than I am). I can't blame them for being cautious.
The Ruapehu outing - I did that in February 2004, having planned to do those routes for at least a year and arranged the time off months before. Farmers will remember Feb 2004 - Manawatu flooded.
I arrived at the information centre and was basically turned away. So I went home, kicked my heels in frustration, phoned the metservice every day and as soon as there was a decent forecast pending I turned up again at the information centre for the local forecast and to leave my travel intentions. They tried to refuse to let me go again and I wouldn't have it.
I did the Ruapehu 'round the mountain' in four days and was out for the weekend, before the second dump of heavy rain started - it had been a pleasant walk, no issues with weather or track whatsoever.
I was lucky to get out of Taupo on the Sunday - the road was closed South due to flooding, but I was staying at a village only a few kilometers south of the road block. So they let me through, and the following morning I just turned out of the village south and continued carefully on my way. I'm not denying the weather was rough - I drove through floods, wipers on full, sometimes slowed down to 20kph because of the conditions. I arrived back at the information centre and *again* they told me no way. River crossings &c. I told them I had waterproofs, experience, common sense, I'd turn back if I came to a river I couldn't cross; they briefed me on escape routes and let me go.
Every single one of the streams was securely bridged, and none of the water courses under the bridges were impassable - nothing running over a foot deep. The rain cleared that day and I got some stunning photos the following day, arrived at the hut I'd intended to stay at in the early afternoon and found it busy - and then another group arrived so I picked up my gear and headed out, into a gathering thunderstorm.
The five hour walk back to the information centre and my car was along the same track as the first day of the round the mountain walk, and I got there before the thunderstorm broke. I passed several people on the way, heading for the hut, who wouldn't have been that lucky.
That was the Tongariro Northern Circuit - 2 days. I think both those walks are graded as challenging, for experienced walkers only. But for me they're not challenging - my work keeps me at an extreme level of fitness.
Going alone is a calculated risk. One of the essentials is correct information. This last walk I did (Tararua Range), I had great difficulty getting *any* information at all, and when I finally spoke to someone who knew the tracks I was told the rivers were in flood and bridges washed out. When I actually walked the tracks the following day there was no sign of flooding in the recent past, and they certainly weren't in flood at the time.
Sorry that's so long, but that's pretty much what my experience with DOC has been. If I'm heading for a route considered 'challenging' they'll try to dissuade me regardless of the actual conditions. The first time I did the Tongariro Crossing I was told I couldn't possibly go without ice axe and crampons (by two girls who had never done the walk themselves). I found someone willing to take me there, and reached the other side seven or eight hours later without so much as a speck of mud on my boots, and the only ice I'd seen was hanging off a shaded rock next to a stream.
You can ski in woods? (I've never been ski-ing, but I would have imagined you'd go a bit too fast for dodging trees)
It's all a judgment call, whether someone is exaggerating the risk in something, or if we're pretending that we can handle something we really can't. But adults make their own decisions.
Ruapehu and Tongariro were new to me, but they're both on Wikipedia. Apparently Ruapehu was used as Mt Doom in the Lord of the Rings movie, and it certainly looks forbidding. But lots of people go there, and presumably most of them survive.
The skiing we do is the cross-country (Nordic) variety, where you can just take off into the woods, though it's easier if the snow has been packed down and tracks set. Here's a picture from a trip a few years ago, not where we went on Friday; the people are strangers who helpfully demonstrated that little hill. It's a spot to test your adrenalin, as you need to control the speed and make a turn at the bottom, or you might land in a stream. I'm afraid the woman in the blue coat is just about to fall (but not into the water).
I did a quick web search, but it seems as though if you want to go cross-country skiing you'd have to go way down into the South Island fo it. Waiorau Snowfarm?
http://files.myopera.com/Tei%20Tetua/albums/286381/80wb_drop.jpg
It's crap that you have to deal with this everytime you want to go for a walk.
I don't go bushwalking (ever.), so I don't get similar comments from the people in my life. I do get the opposite though. Everytime I refuse to stop for petrol at 1am when I'm alone in the car, everytime I force someone to talk on the phone to me til I'm safely at my car when I'm alone at night, everytime I do ANYTHING that's part of my normal routine now in order to survive daily, I get lectures about being paranoid.
It's the same people lecturing me now that would victim blame me if/when something goes wrong.
you think other people will ever get it?
I'm glad you brought that aspect up too, Sigh...
No, they won't ever get it.
It does go both ways. I have a few things that I do for self-protection, but I conceal them as far as possible to avoid the eye-rolling, the lectures of how stupid that is or 'why can't you trust people?', to avoid being 'awkward'.
In the same way that so many people will believe x couldn't be a rapist because x is such a nice guy, they would be quite happy to criticise me for avoiding entering a room that contains a 'perfectly harmless guy' until others had arrived - if they knew the reason.
I'd rather ignore danger and break past those fear barriers, than be put into a situation of explaining why I prefer not to be alone in an enclosed space with a male.
So I don't have many anecdotes from the other extreme - just a couple of males who condemned such measures as 'out-dated' when they happened into the discussion. I'm sure others do.
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