Native Son (s and Daughters)

I called the Avis office in Auckland. No answer. So I called the one in Rotorua and they told me to bring the car with the cracked windshield in and they'd give me another one. I drove to a tiny airport and picked up a new car and headed out to Te Puia, a geothermal/Maori cultural site with a famous geyser.

"More steaming ground?" you are probably thinking. Well, yes. It is fascinating, this place we inhabit, the one we are destroying at a demonic rate. People claim that George Bernard Shaw renounced atheism when he visited the Hell's Gate site. Well, I am not going to start worshiping an invisible sky genie after seeing these sites, but I was damn well reminded that the Earth, not human beings, is the one running things.

I entered the site thinking it was a mistake, that this was a tourist trap, a kind of Maori Disneyland. You could excuse me for thinking that as I made my way through giant tour buses, exorbitant entrance fees, the massive gift shop, and the entrance building itself. Even inside, the replicas of traditional Maori buildings seemed pretty cheesy, and the busloads of selfie-obsessed Chinese tour groups made me think I had should have gone elsewhere.

Te Puia's entrance area

Honestly reminded me of a Girl Scout camp I once attended

There was no sign explaining what this was for, but it reminds me of the Native American museum displays we grew up with in Ohio

I was wrong, fortunately.

I wanted to see the Maori cultural show so forked over the excessive amount of money to add the show to my entrance fee. I was quite interested in Maori culture, as I knew absolutely nothing about it beyond the fact that they came to New Zealand from Polynesia. What I learned from the Te Puia site is that the Maori arrived to New Zealand a mere 200 years before Europeans, they grew a lot of sweet potatoes (kamara), and their creation mythology is basically the same as every other ancient religion - a sea being and an earth being mated to start the world. From these religions come the religions people currently fight wars over, including the US and its evangelical crack force that sets our foreign policy and thinks liberals are "baby killers." ROLLS EYE EMOJI

The Maori left Polynesia because they were fighting wars with other Polynesian tribes over land and resources. Mai Mekatu to Tongariro is a proverb about how the tribe, the Arawa, colonized the North Island from the Mekatu to the Tongariro areas. Then Europeans - especially the British (oh, big surprise) came and it all culminated in a civil war from 1845 to 1872. Nobody was innocent. It was all about land "ownership," as if that fiery Earth weren't the true Queen of us all.

The cultural show was based on a ceremony for greeting strangers. It started outside before we all moved indoors.

Then I set off to explore the steaming grounds, including the Te Puia geyser.

Te Puia geyser

Let me tell you something...you cannot accurately communicate what the site was like with photos. You had to be there to feel the heat of the place. The ground was hot. The air was hot. You could feel the heat beneath your feet and on your skin. It reminded you that Earth, not human beings, not sky genies, is in control. That a New Zealand volcano took lives this week is testament to that. We are standing on a rock whose core is molten, certain death, and we keep asking for it.

This is why human beings created the Hell myth. Ancient people knew the inside of the Earth was hot from sites like this. Christianity took it and ran with it, with the Church using the concept as a way to control the people. Hell became political propaganda. And it still is.

Ruaumoko, God of Volcanoes and Earthquakes