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.
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.
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.
