Grapefruit. Microwave. Textbook. Golf ball. All made of rock and strewn across the ground, rubbed free of grass under thousands of walking feet and called the trail. Rocks of all sizes pass beneath my feet, taking ten steps to navigate what would normally be three. I have come to recognize this braided, minimally maintained type of trail as iconic of hiking in Europe. And, used to my more groomed American trails I struggle along across the Kungsleden, marveling at how long it can take to walk a kilometer.
Today the Kungsleden rolls like a dragon’s back. Straight up and over hills, down the back side and repeat, repeat, repeat. Occasionally I am treated to fifty or a hundred feet of rock-free hiking and each time I savor the buttery smooth trail like I am falling into a perfectly made bed. All this rock hopping, all this concerted effort not to break an ankle means that there is precious little energy to greet my fellow hikers. With each one I share a monotone ‘hej’ (pronounced ‘hey’) and receive one in return before eyes are drawn back to the walking puzzle of a so-called trail. Though almost certainly nobody’s first language here is Swedish, we’re all just trying to get by and get along and one cordial greeting is as good as the next.
Below the sun but above the rocks I notice the knuckles on my hand are growing into their summer coats, building out their summer tan. Tan knuckles with a pale band where the straps of my trekking poles always sit. I’m proud of these little tan lines, a memento of my travels which fades each year only to be replaced the following summer.
That night we set our camp next to a rolling river and beneath a river of mosquitos.
I wake from a night that never was again and again, each time certain as the daylight outside my tent that it is time to start the day. When finally my watch reads 6:30am I abandon the effort to sleep and rise. Outside the tent a hoard of mosquitos have also taken note of the memo that it is finally daytime, their incessant whining accompanies me as I slowly much my way through my morning cereal. As eager as I am to start hiking I am less than enthused by the airborne nuisance that will greet me as soon as I unzip my tent door. And yet, nobody has ever made miles by sitting in their tent, so bug spray in hand I thrust myself through the door and frantically coat myself in picaridin before I can accumulate any further bites. I am only partially successful.
The day starts with a short but brutal climb, the creators of the Kungsleden having never heard of the magic that is switchbacks. A series of short falls cascade past, dropping from the basin of a long valley down a thousand feet to Lake Teusajaure waiting deep and silent below. It is this same valley that we will work our way through for the next two days. And what a valley it it, dear reader. Carved by eons of glaciers and kept verdant via a broad winding river. And on all sides are gargantuan sloping peaks. The scale of this region is enough not to just make one feel insignificant but invisible. The wildness, the remoteness. To put it into words is to do it a disservice, to capture it in images is to show but the slimmest glimpse of the scale. I am walking towards the top of the world, drawn north by nothing more than my own desires and tired legs.
The night train rumbles north from Stockholm under the lingering twilight of the Swedish summer sky. In my tiny railcar bunk I rock from side to side as the train winds from the city center, through dwindling suburbs and finally away from civilization entirely as telephone poles give way to endless rows of ramrod straight birch trees, their silver skin glowing in the pale light. Where we are headed the sun will never fully set, instead spinning in a lazy arc above us as it does every year during the highest days of summer.
We depart the train in early morning and climb aboard a bus heading north, always north, always towards the mountains. Keith and I are tackling the northernmost 60 something miles of the Kungsleden, Sweden’s oldest hiking trail which runs 290 miles through the Lapland from Hemavan to Abisko. The Lapland is the name given to the nearly-uninhabited land in the northernmost region of Finland, Denmark and Sweden. The Kungsleden could be likened to America’s John Muir Trail in that it is a highlight reel of some of the best nature in the country. After some hours of increasingly narrow roads the bus deposits us in a dirt pull-off and finally, finally it is time to hike. The trail is immediately unrelenting and my pack feels heavy and unwieldy beneath seven days worth of food. Whoever designed the Kungsleden was clearly unfamiliar with the concept of switchbacks. We climb straight up until all of a sudden the trees drop away, the horizon expands, and we are walking like water droplets rolling from the shoulders of giants.
The terrain here wears no mask but its own as I try to liken it to places I’ve been before. And I suppose in that unwillingness to be codified this land has begun to nestle its way into my heart. Throughout the afternoon we play leapfrog with stream crossings and fellow hikers until the evening where we find ourselves mercifully alone in a little campground near the rushing waters cascading down what we will climb up tomorrow. Turning to my familiar backcountry bed I am grateful to find myself held by the nature I know I can always return to.
Cradle Mountain to the right, before the clouds moved in.
The chain is cool beneath my fingers, rock damp beneath my feet, and my body is moving, if not powerfully, then at least competently up a rock face so steep I have to pull myself hand-over-hand up a dangling chain. “This is just going to be hard until it’s not,” filters up into the back of my brain, a refrain from the earliest days of this trip. Back when every hike felt brutally difficult and the only reason I finished some of them was because I refused to quit, no matter how slow or how long it required. It felt like my fitness was forever in the making, each hike so infinitesimally faster than the last I hardly sensed any progress at all. It seems a surprise miracle then that things have grown easier. Not easy; because hiking is never easy, you just go faster or further or steeper. But at least easier, and within my body I feel a sense of competence both familiar and elusive.
I pause, allowing Keith to scale the next pitch of rock while I take in the scenery around me. We are hiking a loop around Tasmania’s Cradle Mountain, a peak nestled in the interior of the state. Rising up from dirt roads, farms, and vast stretches of eucalyptus trees comes the brief ripple of foothills before the jagged summit fin juts into the sky. At its base and below me lays Dove lake, its waters dyed nearly black with tannins from the surrounding vegetation. Above me the sudden rock walls of Cradle Mountain are swaddled in an encapsulating batting of grey clouds. It means there will be no summit bid for us today, just a long and pleasantly challenging loop around its base.
Though rain threatens all day it never arrives. A mercy given the steep bare-rock nature of the trail that on more than one occasion forces me to sit on my butt and scooch myself down off a drop of some feet. The hike is fun challenging, not brutal challenging and I’m extremely grateful for it. It feels like finally there might be a way forward into a body that feels more like my own.
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.
I’m standing under the bright sun in the Hamilton gardens when I learn that my grandfather is dying. The stunted, somewhat unremarkable gardens take on a frustrating quality; the children too loud, the exhibits too basic, and the numerous dead ends of the garden layout endemic of the kind of anemic design only bureaucracy can produce. I hate it here in a way that has nothing to do with the actual gardens. So we finish our lap of the exhibits because I genuinely don’t know what else to do and head out to the car park. In the car I tell Keith what has happened and we pass a morose, subdued ride back to the hotel.
Even as I write this weeks later with my grandfather no longer alive I am struggling to put my feelings into words. Of course it is sad, and horrible, and tragic, but I feel so few of those sensations most acutely towards myself. My heart breaks at the tragedy of my grandmother losing her husband of more than 70 years. I feel disspondent when I think of the pain my father and his siblings must feel now that they have lost a parent. The scale of a life lost at 97 years old carries with it the weight of decades and generations. For the first 34 years of my life my grandfather was alive and that will never be true again. The span of his life was enormous and in its wake lays an enormous number of relationships and conversations and minutes spent together which, from this moment onward, will live inside my memories next to a person-shaped hole in my heart.
Besides, they say, it’s not exactly shocking when someone dies at 97. And I did know that, and I do know that. When Keith and I visited with my grandparents in November I knew there was a chance I would be seeing one or both of them for the last time. Though how dearly I wanted to be wrong. How I tried to tie myself back to them through letters and updates on our trip. At times feeling guilty that I didn’t write more, didn’t tie enough of those strings to each of us so that we may feel each other’s presence from half a world away. Because while some might say that a death at 97 isn’t shocking, I think I may also be forgiven for thinking that at 97, he might just have lived forever.
“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.
