A future that looks much like the past
I’m living in the future now.
Almost everyone I know is a day behind me.
My usual schedule is thrown out of sync as I try to coordinate with people still living in yesterday while I’m in today, or their morning when I’m already at night.
People separated not just by geography, but by time itself.
On the plus side, the future is warmer.
I flew out of winter in Vancouver and landed in the last clutches of summer in New Zealand. Days ago I was running in gloves. Now I’m running in a vest while covered in factor 50. I’m strolling around town in a pink sun hat instead of a grey down jacket.
I’m sitting outside overlooking the blue water of Queen Charlotte Sound, where my warm cup of tea is more of an accessory than a necessity.
Marlborough Sound is one of the few places in New Zealand accurately named.
Most of the country’s famous “sounds” are actually fjords.
Milford Sound? A fjord.
Doubtful Sound? A fjord.
The word sound here has become less a geological classification than a branding decision, chosen with the goal of not having to compete for tourism with Norway.
The difference? A fjord is carved by glaciers. A sound by rivers.
It’s a strange distinction to make. They look identical. Feel identical. Stand in one and you experience the same towering cliffs plunging straight into dark water. Both are carved by water, but one was much colder than the other.
I can’t think of many places in the world where landscapes are categorised by the temperature of the thing that created them.
Speaking of sounds, it’s noisy here.
As I run along the narrow dirt tracks beside the water, the sound of cicadas is almost deafening. A noise that is impossible to locate. Each tiny bug hides somewhere deep in the dense forest. Or is it the jungle?
The place feels like both.
At moments, the landscape reminds me of the woods of England. Twisting paths through the woods. Filtered light through the leaves.
At others it feels like a tropical paradise. Large ferns stretch toward the sky. Ancient cliffs rise above the roadsides. At any moment I expect to stumble into the plot of a Jurassic Park film.
Except New Zealand is one of the few places on Earth where almost nothing is trying to eat you.
The wildlife here is unusually gentle. Friendly robins hop closer and closer to you on the footpath. Cute Kiwi birds shuffle through the undergrowth at night. Even the local dolphins don’t harm the fish here. They’re barely more than a metre long, and spend most of their time vacuuming snails from the sea floor.
It’s only the bugs that bite here.
Unless you upset one of the local stingrays.
At least, that’s how it was, once.
Until humans came along and decided to play games with the ecosystem. Imported bird-devouring mammals. Rats. Possums. Rabbits. They sailed over on ships and spread across the island.
Now almost every local bird is under threat.
There were 80 million possums on the island at one time. Now the country is in a battle with itself to undo this great mistake. They’ve cut that number in half so far.
We took a boat to one protected island where visitors aren’t even allowed to bring a bag ashore. Just in case you were hiding a stowaway rat in its depths. It’s an oddly specific rule, considering you could just as easily smuggle a rodent inside a jacket pocket.
But the intent is clear: the ecosystem here is fragile, and they will do anything they can to protect it.
The downside of this work is that every trail you trudge is littered with traps. Small wooden boxes and metal cages every few metres. Evidence of pest control scattered throughout the forest. Or was it a jungle?
Here, on the roads, if you see a small mammal caught in your headlights at night, the locals say you should swerve.
Toward it.
They aren’t just murdering possums here. They’re destroying millions of trees too. Pines imported from the United States that grow too fast and acidify the soil beneath their boughs.
Undoing man’s impact on an island that evolved in isolation.
Without predators, many birds here never learned to fly. Or fear.
I try to capture photos of a Weka bird, but each time I lift my camera, it steps closer and closer until I’m certain it’s about to chip my lens with its beak.
Eventually I lowered the camera.
If you leave a door open, the Weka will wander inside your house and relieve itself on the floor without the slightest hint of shame.
Which would be unfortunate, because the houses we’ve stayed in here are beautiful.
Entire walls made of glass. Forest and ocean framed like paintings. Some are so small the bedrooms practically overlap. Others are large enough to host my entire extended family. But what they each have in common is that they look like something lifted directly from the pages of Architectural Digest.
I watch the birds through the glass.
Not all of them are friendly.
The penguins here are notorious for picking fights with dogs. An unfortunate behaviour, as ten times out of ten the penguins lose. According to one tour guide, New Zealand is also the best place in the world for a shag. There are twelve endemic species of them here.
Perhaps it’s not just me that’s out of sync. Perhaps it’s this whole place.
A place where birds never learned to fly.
Where predators never existed.
Where it’s summer when it should be winter.
This is what happens when a system grows in isolation.
Uninfluenced by the outside world.
Until something new arrives.
A possum.
A pine tree.
A person.
A man who accidentally flew into the future.
A future that feels more like a pre-historic past.
And suddenly the whole system has to rearrange itself around the newcomer.
Where nobody knows if it’s going to adapt in time to save itself.
9 March, 2026