A DIFFERENT TUNE

OUR FIRST NIGHT in New Zealand, there was hooting in the darkest hours, from nearer and farther around the flowering gardens of suburban Auckland. Come dawn, more of a chorale than a chorus. I got up, leaving my 12-year-old son, Felix, sleeping the sleep of the jet-lagged preteen , and ran along streets of pastel-painted wooden houses, down through a park whose trees I couldn’t name, to the shore of the Pacific Ocean, which I was seeing for the first time.

I was making stops in Auckland and Wellington on a book tour, and had decided to slip a week’s vacation with Felix in between. We took the train 644 kilometres across the North Island , with a visit to Tongariro National Park along the way. There were some locals onboard the Northern Explorer—one couple attending a high school reunion and another, greeted by name by