How a Great Walk started a great love affair with New Zealand’s backcountry
My heart slammed to a stop as the adrenaline fizzed. I felt light-headed, giddy, synapses firing, every sensation in overdrive. Was I coming or going? What was the day, the month? Heck, did I even care? I was mesmerised, caught in a spell. All that mattered was drowning in the glorious moment. I’d worry about coming up for air later.
Falling in love does that to you. And I was falling. The dizzying, head-over-heels type of love that makes you feel alive.
It wasn’t a person that had caught my eye. It was a mountain range – a fantastically great and majestic one. The Kepler Mountains, as seen from the Kepler Track.
I wasn’t expecting to fall in love when, as a naïve tramping newbie, I donned a 25kg pack and headed into the mountains for my first multi-day tramp. Indeed, it wasn’t even love at first sight.
The boots were new. I had a blister after an hour. The pack was bulky, heavy, stuffed like a Christmas turkey with all the trimmings. My shoulders and hips protested. I laboured along the forested track, the luxuries of nearby Te Anau now a distant memory.
I should have trained, I thought after packing up the tent at Lake Te Anau’s Brod Bay campsite and starting the 750m incline up Mt Luxmore.
I definitely should have trained. My legs screamed and the layers of clothing came off despite the cool alpine air.
Why was I doing this?
Even after the forest thinned and I was walking above the treeline, I watched my feet and shunned the surrounding mountains that winked and flirted with me.
I sighed and bemoaned the luxuries as we bypassed Luxmore Hut. Lighting. Mattresses. Flushing toilets!
I glared at the tent and thin sliver of foam moonlighting as a sleeping mat strapped to my boyfriend’s backpack. Fourteen kilometres still to walk before the Iris Burn campsite. Love was far from my mind.
And then it happened. When I least expected it, my world and nature collided.
The trail stretched out as a thin groove of sandy dirt cutting through stubbled tussock, snaking and arching above mountain flanks that sloped steeply towards the treeline. The sun hovered above the horizon, turning the edges of the sky from blue to blonde, while the air shimmered with a hint of gold dust. We were alone, no other soul in sight; all sane trampers having already arrived at their lodgings.
My eyes travelled into the distance. Everywhere I looked, peak upon peak galloped into the sky. A crescendo of hardened pinnacles all jostling to be crowned king, yet all bejewelled with a golden halo.
The wind screamed loudly in my ears. Blood thumped through my veins. Thirteen hundred metres above the sea and I thought I could touch the sky. My feet were firmly on the trail but I might as well have been floating, for I was swept away. By the curves and grooves and chiselled backbone of the ranges. By the way the golden light danced across the sky leaching into the forests and turning patches of snow, like incense, into fabric. By the crisp freshness of the air that filled my lungs and made me giddy.
I was punch drunk in love and there was nothing I could do about it.
The torture of the climb, the pain, the blister. That was all worth it. For this.
I stumbled along the track, overwhelmed by it all. Not wanting the glorious moment to end.
A sharp cry rang out behind. I turned to see two kea whoop through the sky, green wings outstretched. They circled and soared, screeches snatched by the wind.
I stood there. In heaven. Humbled. Insignificant. Blessed.
We walked out the next day, a largely flat stroll through a valley of native forest with Iris Burn gurgling at our right shoulders. Lake Manapōuri glinted in the afternoon light as we passed Moturau Hut where walkers sunbathed.
I moved slowly through the undergrowth, more aware of the nature around me. The smell of damp, of earth and ferns. The curious company of pīwakawaka and toutouwai/South Island robins. The way the sunlight filtered through the green ceiling above.
My shoulders ached. My blister smarted. But it didn’t matter; my heart was on that ridgeline in the tawny evening sun, alone with the mountains.
I walked. I thought.
I need more mountains in my life.
And so began the great love affair with the outdoors. The Routeburn Track, the Tongariro Northern Circuit, the Pinchgut Track and Robert Ridge Route to Angelus Hut. There was a mountaineering club membership, a beginner’s rock-climbing course, the three tallest peaks in mainland Great Britain (Ben Nevis, Snowdon, Scafell Pike), and 20 volcanoes climbed. But the crowning glory – the ultimate tryst – went to the 3000km Te Araroa Trail.
For mine is a love story that endures – through rain and shine.
