The country outside my window jumbles and bumps along in a way that is distinctly the Tasmanian bush while simultaneously reminding me of a dozen other landscapes. Hard packed umber dirt sprouts bone white trees which reach their branchless arms skyward. A thousand, thousand cheerleaders waving faded green pom poms of leaves into the flat, blue sky. It’s captivating. Foreign and unique the landscape draws the eye to rest upon the details: a jaunty cropping of rocks, a haggard yet epic ridgeline, stepped flats above muddy waters. I want to stare, to understand and know the lands of this southern little island. I want to mash my face into the dirt and let it tell me its stories. I want to spend not just time, but intimacy with this new place. Which, is just as well seeing as Keith and I are making the four hour drive from Hobart to Queenstown Tasmanian via a stop-over at the long-defunct Waddamana Power Station—because that’s just the kind of engineering nerd Keith is.
Forced to slow down on the dirt roads of the bush, I have my time to sit and watch while a half-listened-to book plays in the background. It’s just enough input for my hummingbird mind to slow and allow me to observe my own thoughts. Fall, I love fall, I think. And I think, I might just be falling in love with this strange little island with its cool, crisp mornings and the feeling of being away from almost everything else. The unpaved, barely inhabited interior of the island is away from civilization, yes, but on a global scale the very location of Tasmanian feels isolated in a way that has called to me. We’re closer to the south pole than we are to Seattle and that sense of vastness, of geographic loneliness breeds a curiosity that verges on longing.
These thoughts, but others as well. I think about sitting on my couch in my tiny apartment, about riding my skateboard and joining a gym. About building a routine for myself—something I both resent and know I do better beneath. Part of me, perhaps a larger part, is ready for this trip to be over. And I sort of hate that. In my vision of myself I am the endless traveler who never tires of the road, whose curiosity is never quieted. But honesty, I’ve found, is so often battering when it forces us to confront the actual that we wish and the actual that we are. When I set out on this trip, I thought three and a half months would never be enough. The great New Zealand circus to which I was running away would never grow tiresome. And in so many of the ways that it matters, it hasn’t grown old. The wonder is still there, nestled in its home inside my heart. But I feel that I have grown weary, and in that found myself wanting, not to stop but to rest, at least for a little while.
Queenstown, interior Tasmanian. Because I absolutely forgot to take pictures today.
The Giant Sand Dunes south of Cape Reinga are a monumental wonder. Blown high by roaring winds whipping off the Tasman Sea they march inland like the shoulders of so many hulking soldiers in formation. As I watch Keith scurry towards the top of the tallest dune all I can think is: I really don’t give a fuck. To which I then immediately feel guilty because shouldn’t I like, give a fuck? To be here, in this moment, near this geographic anomaly. Isn’t this worthy of fuck giving? But the guilt fails to overpower my detached boredom and so I turn my back on the dunes and return to the car. Forgoing a sandy scramble for a snack and a nap.
I’m burning out. And the speed at which we’ve been moving across the North Island has become unsustainable.
We’ve been staying in more places for less time and packing in more social engagements so we can be sure to visit with everybody we want to see. And while it has been amazing, it’s hard to maintain the #stoke when you’re not getting enough rest. The small things, once easy to laugh off become an annoyance. It’s no longer cute finding a stranger’s hair in your underwear after using yet another poorly-maintained hostel dryer. Or having to carry around one muddy sock because it somehow didn’t make it into the wash. Or being confusingly misgendered for the thousandth time by a stranger with a lilting accent. As a result, the things that I really would like to give a fuck about lose some of their sparkle when viewed through tired eyes. Not only am I tried, I worry that I’m failing to travel the at the impeccable standard of constant engagement I feel I owe myself.
And here is where another lesson from my thru hike of the Pacific Crest Trail comes in. When you’re burning out on something, especially long-term travel, you have to acknowledge your desires even if they feel lame or embarrassing. And then you have to change what you’re doing in the sake of self and trip preservation. On the PCT that meant changing when we started hiking each morning, taking more rest days, and spending more time hiking alone so we could really decompress. And it worked, we finished the trail by finding ways to make wading through the bullshit and exhaustion more enjoyable so that we’d have more energy to enjoy the reasons we were on that trip in the first place.
Our time in New Zealand is almost over, and as we drive south to Auckland the plan is not to finish the trip with a bang but rather a bed in a nice hotel. We’re hitting the reset and reset button to avoid burnout after so much time on the road. Because while our time in New Zealand is over, the trip isn’t yet at an end. Next up: Australia.
“You definitely won’t be the only ones out there” the ranger says for perhaps the fifth time during the 15 minutes it takes for us to fill out the information for our parking permit. I know they’re trying to be reassuring, after all, most people get nervous in the backcountry, but in all truth, I could do with a fewer people and a little more solitude.
When Keith and I planned this trip we stuck to known routes, Great Walks, and trips with backcountry huts that we could easily book online. After all, we had no idea what difficult meant when it came to New Zealand. What did phrases like “for advanced trampers only” (tramping being the New Zealand phrase for backpacking) actually mean? Advanced like scrambling and route finding? Or like difficult river crossings and bushwhacking? Or was it just a reference to distance and elevation gain? Between trip reports and Department of Conservation (DOC) sites the word advanced seemed to mean any number of different things. Compounding on that, references to deaths and injuries were prevalent as were dire warnings around weather and flooding. What we learned upon arriving in country was that advanced largely referred to mileage and fitness while most resources were written under the assumption that the reader had little to no backcountry experience and apparently was incapable or unwilling to check the weather.
Which is not to say that our trip has been anything short of delightful. Having access to the hut system has made our hikes easier and packs lighter. While shorter milage days have allowed time for socializing, writing, and sleeping in. Still, some of my fondest backpacking trips have been ones in which I was miles away from the closest person. Solo backcountry trips are what made me fall in love with this activity and sleeping in huts with five to 20 of my closest friends has been a little draining. I find myself longing for time spent sleeping in my own personal patch of dirt far away from the snoring of the next closest human.
Day 2 – Waihohonu Hut to Oturere Hut
The wind and rain explode all around us and I have dreams of thunder and lightning; running from ridge tops as the sky ignites and fear boils in my gut with the certainty of doom. When the door blows open for the third time I finally awake in the dark hut surrounded by the gentle snores and rustling of strangers. I acquiesce to my body’s base needs and meander to the outdoor hut toilets, facing the lashing wind in service of a pee.
Outside the New Zealand rain billows in vertical waves, like a stage curtain tousseled by hands and bodies unseen. I have come to recognize this behavior as endemic of the rain here. Like a great jellyfish undulating its way across the sky with tentacles dripping down towards the ground. Even in my blurry sleepiness I pause to watch the wind and rain put on their mesmerizing dance knowing that tomorrow the skies will have cleared and the only evidence of this effervescence will be the puddles on the ground.
Day 3 Oturere Hut to roads end
The climb to the high point of the Tongariro Northern Circuit is a comically Sisyphean effort. Each upward step met with a sliding backwards as the dark, volcanic soil gives way under foot, like trodding across a vertical garden bed full of marbles. Distantly my mind tries to conjure up fear of a hypothetical fall, a slide with impotent fingers slicing without purchase, a body, my body, tumbling without recourse into the still-steaming volcanic crater and all the while a thousand million tourists in bright Nike trainers watch on. I keep staring at my feet, keep plodding upwards into the fog while below me the violently green chemical lakes of the volcano glow in the cloudy half-light. The ranger’s words from the start of this trip roll across my consciousness: “you definitely won’t be the only ones out there,” drawing a half-mad laugh from my lips as I swim up an unrelenting stream of other hikers. Amazing, how amid the otherworldly, barren scene that is the Tongariro crossing we are still hiking in a crowd. Suddenly the idea of life on Mars doesn’t feel so unlikely.
The sun never really rises. Never really arcs across the sky. Never really sets under the leaden grey clouds. The first tendrils of fall are working their way across New Zealand as we make the leap to the North Island.
The whole thing feels, honestly, improbable. Not necessarily that time has passed, but more so that we are here at all. This trip started with a declaration which had no intention behind it other than escape and desperation: I cannot spend another winter in Seattle. It had nothing to do with New Zealand or the southern hemisphere or traveling internationally. I just knew that the winters in Seattle were dangerously bad for my mental health and that I wasn’t willing to put myself in that situation again. I was looking for an exit and I didn’t much care what was on the other side of that door other than sun shine and someplace that wasn’t Seattle.
And now, as the world turns and pitches I can feel the passage of time in my mammalian skin as entirely as I can feel the forest around me as Keith and I follow the sinuous path of the Queen Charlotte track from ridge to ridge above the bays below shining in every shade of blue. It’s quiet today, another sign that the summer is coming to a close. We see barely a handful of hikers all day and will share our campground with only one other couple. And though I have more than a month left before I fly home I cannot help but wonder if I have accomplished what I set out to do here. It feels pretentious to talk about living in the moment, a coifed nod to the ever-popular yet never defined mindfulness trend. After all, one’s follies and insecurities don’t evaporate just because you’re in a different timezone. I’ve been on stunning hikes where I wished I could be anywhere else and lazy days in bed grateful that I had nowhere to be. I’ve felt guilt over my privilege that allows me to go on such a trip while simultaneously grateful to be living in a trans body in this country and not the pulverizing hellscape that is the United States at this moment. Maybe it all comes out in the wash, or maybe there is no wash. Maybe hiking through the trees on this early fall day is all there ever is or will be, maybe I have sprung into being just now and that is the only thing that really matters.
That night, at camp, there is a rainbow that bursts into fleeting life just as the sun begins to set. Keith and I stand next to our little tent in dirty clothes and sweaty hair and watch the show unfold. And all I can think is that I am so blindingly lucky to have whatever it is I have right now.
“You’ll want to move your foot off that first hold as quickly as possible,” I say down to Keith from my perch atop the muddy chimney, “it’s going to want to collapse from underneath you.”
“Gotcha,” comes his ever-stoic response as he begins to climb the near-vertical mud wall. Hauling himself up hand over hand, moving from root to rock before each perilous hold can slide from beneath him. I scoot aside so we can both share the small rocky bench above the first 10 foot pitch. With more than 700 feet left to climb to our hut I feel suddenly overwhelmed at how long this is going to take. The rest of the day had been on well groomed and even better maintained trail, courtesy of New Zealand’s Department of Conservation. The first 2000 feet of climbing passing in, if not easy, at least manageable grades. But this, a slippery, muddy, barely consolidated mess that could only be approached in a bear crawl of sorts, fingers reaching for every sturdy rock or well-planted rock, this too felt like something DOC would call a trail. In fact, over the course of this trip Keith and I had spent several days on designated trails that were only slightly less ridiculous than this.
I turn my face to the next pitch, huck my trekking poles up and into a bush so they won’t get in the way and begin to climb. Another 15 feet up on hands and feet gets me to another flat spot to rest, Keith coming up shortly behind me. This new perch reveals something else, another hiker walking, no, strolling along in jeans and a cheap school backpack. At first my brain has trouble comprehending what I am seeing. But Keith gets it, letting out a low “I am so sorry” before I bark a cackling laugh of absurdity and amusement. Our mud-covered micro expedition has been on the old trail, on the barely-there trail, on the this is a muddy disaster so let’s reroute trail. Our casual fellow hikers glance confusedly at us as I retrieve my poles from the bush. I might feel like an idiot were I not so relieved that we wouldn’t be scrambling up a vertical mud wall the rest of the way to the hut. Bemused and a little abashed we make our way the last mile, tired legs forgotten and grateful for the trail beneath our feet.
Angelus Hut day 1 Mt Robers car park to Bushline Hut
The trail descends away from the car park for a long while before beginning a gradual, almost gentle climb towards bush line. In the late afternoon sun I can move slowly without the agony of screaming muscles. It’s something I’ve almost forgotten I can do.
The last few years have been more painful than not. Certainly, in the shared global trauma that has beset us all, but more deeply in my personal life, my health, and all the little ways those pains worked their way into the things I loved. My chronically fluctuating thyroid made exercise feel impossible, fatigue constant or else the exertion made me feel like ripping my skin off, a vibrating tangle of loose wires. My mental health made everything else feel an insurmountable chore of drudgery, a darkened tunnel of medications and appointments and days spent inert on the couch, unable to even sleep away the torment and stupor.
I learned that in the midst of crisis no stone is left unturned as pain stole the light from everything I was and wanted. Why did my legs sear on every uphill, why did my ski boots cause my feet to cramp and go numb before my weakened muscles could even have their say. Why did my knees hurt when I ran. Why did my body collect side effects like medals. Why was nothing helping, why wasn’t it getting any easier. A thousand unanswerable questions so often invisible and churning to rancid fear in my gut. For all the times someone said I sounded better I died a little inside, felt a little further away from the rest of the world though all I could ever say was “thank you.” I feared I would fracture apart so completely that I would lose everything, person, and joy I had ever known, every desire I ever cherished.
And now comes the part where I offer a lesson, serve a platitude. Tell you that on this late summer’s day I have turned my face to resounding optimism and hope, liberated, as it were, from darkness by the brilliant New Zealand sun. But that would be a lie—a nasty habit I’m trying to do less of. Because the truth is this: the scar on my neck from where they cut out my thyroid still aches when I work too hard, my medications are still a ham-fisted juggernaut keeping the darkness at bay, yes, but bringing with it a slew of side effects as well—all this piled into a body that has never felt more and less like my own. But I can say this, on this late summer day under the brilliant New Zealand sun, that today is a good day, that the sun is warm and long in the way only early fall can do. And that is not enough, because I want so much more for myself than good enough; but it’s good enough, if only for today.
Angelus Hut day 2 – Bushline Hut to Angelus Hut
The morning comes on slowly, doused in thin clouds wrapped softly around the hut. We play out our morning chores with little haste, waiting until the clouds and our lethargy burn away revealing a brilliant blue sky shining gleefully upon golden grasses.
The climb, though moderate, feels unfairly difficult in the wake of yesterday’s relative ease. My previously piano wire calves feel okay so long as I tread carefully, but my low back burns with exertion and strain and I wondered how long I can keep going, if I’ll be forced to turn around and retreat to the car. But I have grown so entirely sick of my body’s many betrayals that I simply force my way forward, hoping that with time the pressure will ease.
Across grey rock speckled through with sun-tanned grass the trail rises and falls, an ungainly dragon’s spine. And then, almost without me noticing, my back eases and my body begins to churn slowly through the literal steps I have taken so many times before. A treasure wrapped in a mystery. Maybe it only takes me two hours and a snack break to finally warm up. Maybe, it simply takes me this long for the sedation from the meds that keep my brain in order to release me from their hold. I wish to know as much as I don’t care to think about it now because the best part of this entire route is below my feet, right now.
The dragon’s spine narrows in on itself until we are sliding sinuously across steep scree fields that required my entire attention to avoid slipping and falling. Hand over hand climbing along mellow holds just perilous enough to make it fun and which drag my mind away from anything more than that exact moment and the handhold that comes next. The endorphin rush, to be in the sun and the wind on high, my body working as I demand of it. Burning from exertion and only little bits of pain sparkling to life here and there. This mellow class 2 climbing has become my favorite way to travel through the mountains, slow and methodical as it is. Through exposure and panic attacks and learning how to breathe while crying at altitude I have transformed a terror into a delight. This space between trail and cliff no longer frightens me but instead fills me with the sort of quiet exultation that I have only ever found in the mountains.
Eventually, after hours of careful footwork the trail decides it is time to go down towards the sparkling blue lakes of Angelus Hut. Nestled in a protective bowl the hut greets us with just a few other hikers, a sign as good as any that summer is coming to an end in the southern hemisphere.
Day 3 — Angelus Hut to Mt Roberts car park
The morning starts with the crinkle of synthetic fabrics wrapped around warm beverages as our fellow hikers and us postpone venturing out into the cold rainy morning. Modern though Angelus Hut is, it creaks under the strain of the pulverizing wind which seemingly emanates from everywhere and nowhere at once, protected as we are inside our snow globe inside a cloud inside the storm. Eventually, finally, reluctantly it’s time to go.
The morning starts with a quick scramble up to the ridge, fog dense and wind ripping. My gloved hands are soaked through before we reach the trail junction but at least they’re warm. A theme for the day: soaked but at least I’m warm.
We make our way down the valley which will lead us back to the car park. A stream springs to life out of nowhere, a collection of drops of water slid from blades of grass all coming together to create a bubbling little torrent slicing through the base of an ever-widening valley. At first we can simply step over the stream, but soon the waters have grown until we are wading through knee-deep waters that require careful planning before each crossing.
Progress feels slow, progress is slow as we navigate through shoe-sucking mud and only barely there trail. The rain puts on its many faces and we begin to know each one intimately as we walk. Misting rain. Barely there rain. Torrential rain. Soaking rain. Rain that might actually be heavy fog or the other way round. A cloud of rain inside the storm inside my wet but warm bubble of clothing. And so it goes: across the river, into the trees, navigating up over rocks and tree roots and mud slides only to come back down again. Again. Again and again and walking until finally there is no more up and down only the firm grip of the road and the last few meters to our car.
Just as we reach the car the snow begins and I do a little dance in celebration, cheering: snow! Snow! I adore the snow, the magic and light upon the sky. Through, in this moment I am more than grateful to be off the trail as the flakes begin to thicken and the heat in the car merrily whirls around my chilled hands.
The bubble of our car slides out of the bubble of clouds within the storm and soon we are whisking across dry roads on our way to Nelson. The sun cracks the sky and slips across the land in warm, late-summer’s glow. Rolling green hills like something out of a fairy tale remind me of the best parts of rural Colorado where the mountains give way to the plains and forests give way to pastures give way to cities and then all at once we’re in Nelson, unloading our damp things in the car park of our hostel.
At the front desk Keith pays for the room in wet bills that he has to wipe dry before handing them to the cheerful attendant. Once inside our room our bags explode and wet clothes and coats and sleeping bags are hung over every available surface. A ritual we are only too familiar with after winter and fall camping trips in Washington. It strikes me that this is what fall looks like off the trail, that our endless summer may in fact be approaching an end.
It’s a damp, greying kind of day, all low clouds and drizzle. It’s a bickering over nothing, irritated at everything kinda day. It’s the kind of day, in truth, that I am always tempted to omit from travelogs and stories told. Filled not so much with painful sweeping truths as grimy little realities of life on the road.
The first hours of the morning are full of Fine. Sure. Whatever you want. Fine.
And then we’re on the road, driving north from little Franz Josef, not so much a town as a dot on the map serving one thing: helicopter tours of the Fox and Franz Josef glaciers. When we stopped there the night before not even the two restaurants in town were open. This morning the streets are empty, as an impending rain storm has shuttered any chance of a helicopter ride. The same storm has also forced us to cancel two additional backpacking trips because of the danger of flooding and becoming trapped in the backcountry; grinding our trip to a halt and leaving both of us frustrated.
But when you’re on the road things don’t stop, they only change direction. So we putter our tiny car into the oncoming rain and begin our drive up the coast. The forecast calls for near-biblical amounts of rain along the West Coast but the storm is late in its arrival and we drive through a landscape ever-changing. One minute windshield wipers flailing against the torrent the next minute the roads are nearly dry and one could be forgiven for describing the sky as just the littlest bit blue. A familiar refrain presses against my lips against the obvious unreality: “what a beautiful day.” But it is, it is a remarkably beautiful day even with the mountains hidden by clouds, the sea blockaded by shrubby green-brown trees. Because bad days happen wherever you are and I’d rather be in a small car on the road than in my small apartment back in Seattle. The joy of being somewhere new, even on the bad days, so entirely eclipses the mundanity of the familiar that I cannot help but say it: “what a beautiful day.”
— We shut off the car in the small town of Greymouth, a former mining town stuck somewhere in the middle of reinventing itself into a tourist town. Too bad there’s nothing to do here.
That night Keith and I lay in bed and watch as the lightning illuminates the sky, bright as a cosmic spotlight but without the accompanying thunder; the melodramatics without the danger. The storm is here but we are safe in our little rented bed for two. A nest of home within each other, not so much us against the world, more like us within the world, a center, a home from which the road doesn’t feel so chaotic.
The irony of what I am looking at is not lost on me as I watch the ink bleed across the small strip of paper. Not ten minutes before Keith and I had argued about whether we needed to keep carrying around the bulky covid test kits we’d picked up on a whim in the Christchurch airport. I was in favor of ditching them having grown irritated at their constant presence in our luggage, seemingly always in the way and taking up more space than I felt they were worth. Keith, on the other side of the issue, thought they were worth it and that my current cold warranted me performing the nasal-swab hokey-pokey.
The astute of you will have no doubt surmised by now what that little strip of paper read. Still, I let Keith look over the test for himself, standing a long moment staring down at the desk before he turned to me. “Well, you have covid.” “Again,” I agreed.
After Keith performed his own partial lobotomy his test came up negative and we sat on the bed of our hostel, all rush to pack for an early departure the next morning forgotten. The four day backpacking circuit we were supposed to leave on abandoned. I had already been toying with the idea of skipping out given my current cold, but now both of us had to come up with new plans. The reliance on backcountry huts in New Zealand made it irresponsible for either of us to attempt the track. I was disappointed for Keith but only a little upset for myself
It’s like the coin flip trick. The one where you flip a coin not so much to make the choice for you but because it forces to the front any unresolved feelings about the decision. I had been waffling about heading out on this trail and now that my little covid coin flip told me I couldn’t I actually felt relieved. Relieved that I could just be tired without letting anyone down, relieved at all the effort I wouldn’t have to expend from a well that I worried was running increasingly empty. And besides, what could I do? Be angry at the proverbial universe? No, better to rest, replan and try again, just as soon as our self-isolation ended.
The rock beneath my fingers is smooth to the touch, worn away in places by myriad feet and hands as they have climbed their way to the top of Conical Hill. To say I can feel the rock would be like saying you can watch a sunset, true enough, though anyone who has done either knows there’s more to it. Up here, on the rock, in the mud, in the air I can feel the rock as I can breathe. Capturing something external and making it part of myself, holding it within my chest before pushing it away and on to the next thing. The next foothold. The next gritty patch of earth to which I can cling and by extension move myself closer to the same summit so many feet have stood upon before me. Not that it makes it any less personal, the ground down presence of others. Right now this is my bit of rock, my balancing ledge. These are my tussocks swaying intoxicatingly in the wind, their jutting grasses dyed golden by the summer; this is my conical hill, not just the Conical Hill.
Below my feet the earth pitches away down to an alpine lake, deep and cold and mysterious. Around the bend and the trail seems to bound off a cliff to the valley floor some thousand feet below us. But looking down is far from the best part of going up and soon, in the way that time contracts when one is consumed by their actions, I reach the top of this, my conical hill and around me an eon of mountains erupt into being from outside my narrowed view. Quickly my brain attempts to categorize and classify, to fit what I am seeing into what I have seen before. That range looks like the Sierras, but with shoulders like the Rockies. Over there, the Alps or maybe the Pyrenees. But of course, as anyone who has looked at a mountain can tell you, there’s more to it than that. The view stirs memories of vistas seen before and yet is unlike anything else at all. Far away and yet holding me in their presence a giddiness subsumes me. Under the cheerful blue sky I stare across the horizon, out to the very ocean itself and across the face of every mountain I hope I will see again. I look out in the same way we love, cherishing yet knowing there could never be enough time stood right there.
A gravelly shore against a dark forest. In the distance a small boat carrying a collection of early-morning hikers grumbles its way across a massive, still lake. As the boat bumps its nose onto the shore a variety of hikers disassemble, me at the front. Then, one after another, packs are hoisted, straps tightened and folks begin wandering up the trail, me at the back. Slipping noiselessly into the beech forest it is cool, quiet and damp. Trees drooping under hanging clumps of Spanish moss like wispy strands of an old man’s hair. Leaden skies threaten but never quite deliver on the promised rain.
Today is our first day on the Kepler Track, a four-day trek and one of New Zealand’s famed Great Walks. The Kepler promises an epic ridge traverse, camping on the shores of an enormous glacially-carved lake, and the chance to swim in crystal clear mountain rivers. But, first we have to get there. So we climb, all we will do today is climb along a manicured trail of undulating switchbacks. Immediately my legs begin to protest. Tired with achilles tendons like straining piano wires, like any moment they might snap and rupture through the skin of my lower leg. Equally fragile is my ego. Hence, the back of the pack start. As my fellow hikers steadily pull away ahead of me I stop frequently to stretch, or even just to pause and let the strain in my legs ease the smallest amount. But soon, too soon to feel good about it another wave of hikers pass me, the bird chatter and silence cut by the sounds of hard breathing and trekking poles against stone. It seems like everybody and their mom passes me on this ascent. As I step to the side of the trail for the hundredth time I try and rather fail to not let this discourage me. “This is just going to be hard until it’s not,” I tell myself like I have so often on this trip. And then I just keep walking, because what else is there to do?
Suddenly, the beech trees give up their dominance over the mountain and we are popped out above tree line into a snow globe of dense cloud and golden grass. And at the edge of this snow globe I see the most beautiful thing I have seen all day: it’s a sign. Not a metaphorical or spiritual sign but literal sign in the cheery yellow and green of the Department of Conservation. It reads: 45 mins. to Luxmore Hut. I could weep with joy, I almost do. But it is very difficult to hike uphill when you are crying so I restrain myself to bodily hugging said sign and walking on into the clouds.
Luxmore hut reveals itself around a bend in a shallow bowl. Though well designed and utilitarian in aesthetic the hut still manages to blend into the hillside and I realize upon our arrival that I have made it here within the time estimate that the DOC gives for all hikes. So then, perhaps I am getting faster, even if it’s only just a little.
Day 2
Keith and I are only 50 meters above the hut when the first helicopter thump-thump-thumps its way into view. With clearly practiced precision it touches down on the pad, disgorges its few passengers and plummets down off the ridge before another helicopter rumbles its way over the ridge. We watch as the same routine repeats itself again and again until all the day hiker tourists are huddled on the porch of the hut, rotor was whipping their hair. Then, as soon as it all started the hills fall silent to the sound of the fierce mental birds and Keith and I are left to begin our first climb of the day.
The climbing is hard today, of course it is. But the route is exceptional, the views even more so, and that makes the whole thing easier. From any given high point one can see the trail snaking into the distance along ridge top and through scooping bowl. A little slice of brown dirt dancing across the sky. The scene is almost too grand to comprehend the scale of what we are seeing. That is, until a little human backpacker on the ridge brings bearing on perspective and we realize how far there still is to go. So go we must. And in the later half of the day I actually manage to pass someone! It’s such a minor and ultimately meaningless accomplishment but I am more than happy to revel in those moments like the finisher of some epic race.
And then it’s all down hill. Literally. Keith and I pass a couple more people before the descent begins and then we are racing down the switchbacks as fast as we can if for no other reason than to feel our bodies work without the required dependency on our lungs. The beech trees return, treeline dropping like a final curtain call beneath which we’ll spend the rest of the day and the rest of the trek.
Day 3
Keith and I are wading through hip deep water in one of our classic shortcuts that will invariably take much longer than if we had just stayed on the trail. Still, after hours spent walking the rolling hills and deep forests of the Kepler Track the flat sands of Shallow Cove were too enticing to ignore. From the short beach we can see our third and final hut, Moturau. It looks so close, we’ll just follow the beach along. Well, that is until we find a massive fallen tree blocking our path and a forest too deep and dense to cut through. So it’s into the mercifully warm waters of lake Manapouri as we cut around the large tree. I can hear Keith behind me laughing as I half-sing my anxieties about the deepening water and mushy lake bottom. And once we’re around the tree we keep walking through the water because why not. Sometimes hiking is boring and sometimes it’s full of strange moments and laughing at nothing much at all.
The first thing I want to do when we arrive at the hut is get back in the water. It’s a rare thing to find a mountain lake that’s actually warm enough to enjoy swimming in. And, as an alternative to sitting on the humid shore with the biting sandflies, there’s really no contest. We stow our bags and strip down to our boxers, leaving damp shorts and sun shirts to dry. Then it’s in to the water where I stand for a long, long time. Letting the sun nuzzle against the bare skin of my chest while inside I do backflips of joy around the simple fact that I will never have to wear a damp bra ever again, never ever ever again. I keep my back to the shore because I don’t want to think about the people standing there and what they are or aren’t thinking about me. I just want to stay in this one for a while longer, until I can feel my skin start to redden and I am forced to once again don clothes and return to the land and the realm of my fellow hikers.
Day 4
I wake in the middle of the night and reflexively slap my foot against the bite of a sandfly. Or, at least I think it’s a sandfly, hard to tell in the dark, maybe it’s just one of my existing bites itching me. Everything is itching me so I do what I can, pull my tights on and my sleeping bag around me and fall back into a fitful sleep.
When I awake again it’s morning and half the bunks around us have already cleared out. Today is the last day on the Kepler Track for most of us and it would seem that folks are ready to be up and done. I can hardly blame them. Four days of hiking and three nights sleeping in communal bunk rooms will have most hikers ready for a town day. Keith and I forgo breakfast, holding on to our hunger for a few more hours and a proper meal in town. Today we only have a handful of miles to the bridge at Rainbow Reach and our waiting car. The track is mostly flat except when it climbs in and out of river drainages—which are more frequent than my tired legs would prefer. But when I stop the biting sandflies find me and so I push on and on. Keith drops back to read a sign with Simon and a pointless flare of competitiveness strikes up inside me; I want to be the first one back to the parking lot. Or, said another way, I’m bored of hiking through the trees and I want the reward of real food. So I press on and my knees protest. Every small climb becomes an obstacle, every steep downhill a mincing dance on sore knees. I’m checking my maps almost as often as I check over my shoulder for Keith. At last, finally at last I see the Rainbow Reach bridge over the Waiau River and the parking lot beyond, just as I’m sure I hear Keith’s voice behind me on the trail. I hit the bridge at a pace that would make an Olympic speed walker proud and quickly discover that the bridge feels far sketchier under foot than I would really prefer. But at this point it’s irrelevant, the car is on the far side of this bridge and soon so am I. I fling my bag onto the ground and strike a relaxed pose on a bench just as Keith hits the far side of the bridge. My feigned nonchalance is betrayed by my racing heart but in this moment it doesn’t matter at all. Because I, dear reader, I am the fucking winner of a race against no one.
At last, finally at last I see the Rainbow Reach bridge over the Waiau River and the parking lot beyond, just as I’m sure I hear Keith’s voice behind me on the trail. I hit the bridge at a pace that would make an Olympic speed walker proud and quickly discover that the bridge feels far sketchier under foot than I would really prefer. But at this point it’s irrelevant, the car is on the far side of this bridge and soon so am I. I fling my bag onto the ground and strike a relaxed pose on a bench just as Keith hits the far side of the bridge. My feigned nonchalance is betrayed by my racing heart but in this moment it doesn’t matter at all. Because I, dear reader, I am the fucking winner of a race against no one.
