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.
“This is going to be hard until it’s not” I remind myself as I plod up the steep hill leading us out of town and towards the trailhead. “What you are doing right now,” I remind myself, “is what is going to make this better.” But my legs, being that they are legs, cannot hear me and so they rudely continue to protest, aching with a soreness earned almost a week ago on the climb to Muller hut.
Today is a recovery hike, allegedly. Seven miles and 800 feet of gain into the North Arm hut, a large shed of a building sitting along an inland bay on the Rakiura Track on Stewart Island. “This should be easier than it is” I think to myself, “I should be in better shape than I am,” I think to myself as I reminisce about last summer, about the PCT four summers ago when this distance and gain would have been the work of a couple of hours, not half a day. Or more.
I feel sad and lonely in this body of mine which has lost so much of the fitness it once had. I want to chide myself for not trying harder, for not training more in the weeks and months before we left for New Zealand. But could I have done more? Or did I do exactly what I was capable of in the moments I had to do it? I suppose neither matter much now and thoughts like these make it no easier to walk uphill under the weight of a heavy pack. And besides, I am not alone, Keith is here with me, up ahead just a little. Walking stoically under his own pack and waiting for me when I stop.
The paved road becomes a dirt road becomes a wide gentle path leading through the rainforested trees. Above and around us chime a cacauphony of the most rediculous bird calls I have ever heard: some like squealing dog toys, others whistling near-human, while others still sound like they are programming the deck of the USS Enterprise in an early episode of Star Trek. All around us is a wall of verdant green, limbs positively dripping under the weight of their summer foliage. The ground below a speckled garden with ferns exploding upwards like a thousand thousand fountains of green. It’s magical here, in its own way, far from the stark high alpine which I am usually drawn to. Down here there are no sweeping vistas, no miles-long panorama. But instead, the beauty of the small things bursting into life, a curl of a new fern or the brightest green of moss upon a tree. My lungs feel brighter and more full just for being here.
Eventually it begins to rain, because rainforest. Then it stops, because summer. And finally the hike culminates in a series of what Appalachian Trail hikers call PUDs (pointless up and downs) before at last the hut is revealed, a green window shining and reflecting between the ferns. As I strip away my rain-sodden clothes and exchange them for the dry ones in my bag I resist the urge to calculate miles and times and distances. After all, the numbers won’t help and this is just going to be hard until it isn’t.
Day 2 –
The debate with myself lasts a solid 20 minutes as I watch the gentle lap of the water push the tide in and my fellow hikers come and go along the beach. Finally, after so long, finally I pull my shirt over my head and lay back along the rocks. The mid-day sun, cooled by the ocean breeze rests its warm head against the skin of my chest and I feel at home and alive and exposed all at once—I could almost cry at the sheer volume of emotions cascading through me. In my ears Spotify’s Transcend playlist brings the music of my community close and I feel held by their songs, by the rocks against my own body.
Amid the glare of the southern sun I have been wanting, no aching to strip away my shirt like all the other boys and bare my chest to the sky. To let the sun bake down upon my scars and bronze my pallid chest. My new chest, as I have been thinking of it for more than a year. A chest free of the binds of my sex, free of the constraints of a gender that never felt truly like my own. And in this moment I feel a kind of wholeness I have never known. Not freedom, per say, for in the back of my mind I am still keeping track of everyone on this little spit of land: the old Aussies bobbing in the water, the woman with her book in the shade of the trees. Do they notice me, can they see my scars, are they thinking of me in any way at all? Because when you are trans, safety can never be assumed, and when you are like me, trans without an easily pegged gender, you are always a threat and therefore threatened by the fragile egos of the cisgender. But right now the caress of the sky upon my body, the music of my people in my ears, I let my guard down just a little and let myself be held in this one, perfect moment.
Day 3 –
“It looks like that rain is going to blow in within the next hour,” I say, before realizing that I actually have no idea what I’m talking about, never having been to Stewart Island before much less New Zealand as a whole. My knowledge of mountainous weather patterns is based exclusively in the northern hemisphere and within that an even smaller collection of mountain ranges and ecosystems. Even the simple fact that the sun arcs through the northern sky instead of the southern is throwing me so far off that I often don’t know which direction I’m facing. I donate a moment of mental energy to marvel at my limitations and smallness atop this great blue rock before pointing my muddy shoes down the trail and beginning to walk.
Today the forest feels different. Somehow more open under the gentle light of an overcast sky. More full of bark and branches than the riotous green that comes with bright sun. My hamstrings and calves still burn on the uphills, still demand that I stop and stretch more often than my ego would like. But the PUDs feel more mellow going this way, shallower climbs with short, steep descents and much of the morning is spent leapfrogging other hikers who spent the night with us at North Arm hut. Pleasantries; greetings; encouragement; round and round we go until Keith and I find ourselves alone in a long stretch between hikers. The threat of rain looms as we inch towards town. I fantasize about the small warm room that Keith and I have reserved at the hostel there. The trail pitches down and I push my legs to churn faster, to ride them forward like I used to but can no longer do. In a turn of almost but not quite perfect timing the sky opens as we hit the outskirts of town and Keith and I rush forward into the arms of a simple hostel lobby, then into our small warm room where I no longer need to push my body forward. Tomorrow is a rest day, a driving day, heading north once again and into the mountains. It would seem, that’s the only thing I know how to do.
A crack splits the air and everybody’s head turns, eyes scouring the face of stone and ice looming high across the valley. But there is nothing to be seen. A false stillness beneath gliding clouds. Finally and only by training my eyes on the cliffs do I see an avalanche let loose, sending a shower of car-sized ice hunks and cascading loose snow free from the glacier. By the time the sound reaches the ears of the hikers milling around the Mueller hut and heads once again turn to face the noise the sudden, violent burst of icy activity has subsided. For now.
The Mueller hut is a basic backcountry cabin offering bunk beds, a cooking space, and water that you need to boil or filter before you can drink. This cabin’s claim to fame is the view it offers of Aoraki/Mt Cook and the fact that it was founded by Sir Edmund Hilary – climbing partner of Tenzing Norgay and co-first-summiter of Chomolungma/Mount Everest. The spartan interior is all but irrelevant because what lays outside, what all of us are here for, is the chance to see Aoraki. And in this, we are extremely lucky.
In this part of New Zealand rain, clouds, and general mountain-obscuring weather is the rule, not the exception to it. Sitting at 12,218ft (3,724 meters) the peak plummets dramatically 10,000ft straight down to the valley floor. Its shoulders a parade of razor-sharp ridges bedecked in flowing glaciers which transform in detail and color as the sun and clouds play across the sky. Closer to the hut sits Maukatua/Mount Sefton, and it is this peak which continues to roll great plumes of snow off its shoulders, like thunder boiling up from the rock itself.
As the sun arcs towards the horizon and begins to tuck itself neatly behind Maukatua’s jagged ridges the day hikers filter away from the cabin until there are only 20 or so of us overnighters left. The view towards Aoraki lays obscured by clouds so I turn my full attention to the ever-cascading face of Maukatua as it rumbles its way into darkness. Stillness. Then a cascade. Stillness. Then a cascade. Finally, the cold chases me inside while my little mammalian heart beats in time with a world so much larger than myself. And Maukutua rumbles and roars alone in the darkness, a restless giant, a fracturing cacophony of one.
I turn my face to the sun and wait for the chatter of the walk signal to usher me on. “My god,” I think “it’s perpetually fucking beautiful here.” Four days of travel just to get to the country followed by two days of walking through the endearing city of Christchurch have left my body aching and fatigued, yet my mind yearns to see and feel as much of the city as I can. The light turns, the crosswalk chatters and as I open my eyes to my surroundings an older person on a bicycle comes sliding past, singing cheerfully as they go, a musical of one.
Christchurch is proving to be an easily loveable city. Golden rolling hills extend to the south while the ocean to the east provides a cooling onshore breeze. New construction abounds as does street art and a seemingly endless supply of small coffee shops. I am both compelled on and struggling under drooping eyelids. And it is this drooping fatigue that I eventually pay heed to as I turn my feet back towards our hostel.
Our trip to New Zealand and Australia is ultimately unlike any other travel Keith and I have done. Previously, when traveling to another country our tactic has been to cram in as many things as humanly possible, relying on the return to home and employment to provide the rest forgone on the trip. A trajectory well suited to a trip on the span of days to a couple of weeks. Conversely, when we thru hiked the Pacific Crest Trail the whole endeavor was undertaken with a goal in mind: Canada, the finish line, the accomplishment of a completed hike. But neither of those ideologies seem to fit the ethos of the three and a half months that lay out before me. For on this trip, the end will be less of an accomplishment than a termination; while cramming each day to the fullest will almost certainly bring on burnout far ahead of our return flights. And in that burnout lays another danger, in the form of my tumultuous struggle with mental illness: a formidable danger both literally and metaphorically resting at the back of my mind.
So what then? Can a goal be as simple as living? To live through each day as both the point and the accomplishment of the trip? Can I push myself to adventure and see while simultaneously letting go of the frustration that will inevitably come when I cannot do everything I think I must? I suppose it’s far too early to tell and in the sunshine of this day I don’t feel the need to tackle such conundrums to their terminus. So I return to our small hostel room with my tired feet and mild sunburn, with the plan to begin this quest of living anew tomorrow, and, I figure, for every day after.
The heat and humidity wrap around my Seattle-chilled bones, welcoming to Nadi, Fiji like a heavy blanket of possibility. Choruses of “Bula!” from the staff greet us as we meander through customs while in my head my emotions back-flip over themselves; elated to be somewhere new, somewhere besides the bone-aching winter chill and permeating dark of Seattle. It’s like I’ve escaped, it’s like I’ve been set free. I’ve come across the world, across the dateline, down to the southern hemisphere and into the start of three and a half months spent in New Zealand and Australia. Only now, only upon setting my feet down on foreign soil does this trip feel real. Even during the months of planning and research this trip has felt like a mirage on the horizon. Visible, yet I dare not believe it real. The last years have taught me the debilitating disappointment of hope that fails to materialize and I’ve built walls around myself to keep that potential disappointment at bay.
Through flights booked, hotels reserved, and a plucky little rental car scheduled I fueled this dream through practicality instead of anticipation. But then things started to shift as trip-specific purchases accumulated, jobs were quit, and bags packed. Each one planting seeds in my pessimistic brain: “this is real, this is real, this is happening and this is real.” And now here we are in Fiji and the gravity of what Keith and I are doing is finally hitting home.
For the next three months we will live and travel across New Zealand. Starting on the southern island and working our way north through the northern island, through the end of the southern hemisphere’s summer before spending a whirlwind two weeks road tripping up the eastern coast of Australia. But today we will spend 24 hours on the island of Fiji. Baking our pale bodies under the tropic sun and eating whatever local food we can find. Tomorrow it’s on to Christchurch New Zealand and then, well then dear reader the adventure begins. I hope you’ll come along for the ride.
