Craters of the Moon

But Taupo reached too high -- it exploded, again and again, raining down fragments like memory throughout the landscape, which still boils and steams in the shadows of its history. The craters of the moon gurgle in the night, a few hours return from Huka falls if you can navigate the natural logic of the logging roads (now graded by cycle difficulty).

The land, like Cherry Island, is held privately. Cherry Island used to house a nature park on its flats, where small children would pet smaller birds while their parents drank tea, but now all one can do is read: keep out, private property, keep out, keep out, keep out. "'Nature Park' closed." A gang of youths cling to skateboards and sit in front of the barred bridge to the island, where an old woman looks warily from her house.

The craters have a different fate. Every day at quarter to six a great siren rises over the landscape and the paying tourists begin their migration back to cars and campers, and at six the cry is raised again and the landscape is utterly barren. Feign ignorance, or better yet, _be_ ignorant, and there remain old back doors from when the land was public. One just says, "No bicycles permitted", nothing against public entry, so you climb around the barbed wire there and tramp over the warm ground which crumbles under your feet to reach the boardwalk.

Then you are in and you haven't paid a red ten-cent piece.

There is little to commend to the place other than the pervasive smell of sulfur wafting into your hair and clothes and exploring that until your next wash. The field is large, but Yellowstone is larger. The features are unique but so is every place. The feeling creeps from below, through your feet, that you are not meant to be here, that neither land nor persons want you, and that generator purring in the distance belongs to some force which has you in its grasp.

So it is back around the barbed wire and the replanted woods, over the churning falls and through the unset, passing the hot springs where empty beer bottles congregate, and meandering through the darkened town. That is Taupo, where everything costs money but may not be for sale, and the tourists lust for adventure like caged animals.

I had to find my own way out.