Ashleigh Young on disasters, moments of truth and locating yourself
A dog has a special kind of run when it's about to get you. Its head and torso barely move but its legs are like four little tornados tearing up the earth. I was thinking about that as a dog streaked towards me. The owner, in shorts and jandals, was weed-whacking nonchalantly in the backyard.
The dog looked aggrieved as it ran, like a parent rushing towards a child about to break something. Probably it wasn't used to seeing people walk past its house, because sensible people drove. I froze and said, "Hello!" to the dog, because I only have one way of talking to dogs and that is to greet them, over and over. Maybe I, too, would attack a person if they kept saying "hello" to me over and over. The dog bared its teeth as I greeted it again and I thought, "Why am I in this situation?"
I asked myself the question again a few moments later when I was walking along the edge of a busy highway. I was going to a small literary festival in Māpua. I'd decided to do a Will Self – the novelist who walks everywhere, including, once, from Kennedy Airport into Manhattan – and walk the few kilometres into town from where I was staying in the countryside.
My walk had felt good for a while. I felt carefree, with the steady pace of the old millennial. But then, as traffic rushed past at 100 km/h and I broke into a sweat on the narrow roadside, I started to wonder what I was doing. A car pulled over and the writer Paula Morris stuck her head out the window. "Ashleigh ... what are you doing?"