Wilderness team members share a favourite moment from their tramping adventures.

A surprising kiwi encounter

I was a couple of hours into the first day of the South Coast Track on Rakiura Stewart Island and had spent the walk down Mason Bay unsuccessfully searching for ambergris, the valuable whale fecal matter that is known to wash up here. A few minutes after leaving the beach, as I rounded a bend, a different type of taonga appeared: a Rakiura tokoeka foraging at the track edge. It was not even midday.

This was my first encounter with a kiwi outside of a zoo. I was transfixed and observed the bird for a few minutes as it gradually wandered along the track towards me. I made a noise to alert it to my presence and it immediately scampered away, dinosaur-like, at a terrific pace.
– Alistair Hall, Editor

Nature’s rival to William Morris

We were headed for the evocatively named Thousand Acres Plateau in Kahurangi, but decided to go off-route and scramble up Bay Creek before goingthrough the bluffs of the encircling plateau. The easy, gravelly travel soon ceased and we began clambering between limestone boulder debris flung from the cliffs above.

Among the dull grey boulders, one singular rock caught my eye. It was covered in circles of lichen, almost like floral wallpaper.

Lichens are the result of an extraordinary symbiotic relationship between a fungus and an algae. They are long-lived and have rock-dissolving super-powers. Here, in a remote valley in our second-largest national park, was what could have been a blueprint for the 19th- century English textile designer William Morris, whose vivid floral wallpaper designs are justly famous. Those surprising floral lichen whorls brought me joy. I’ve never seen another quite like it.
– Shaun Barnett, roving editor

Like father, like daughter

My first tramp was to Lake Daniels. I was about three years old, so Dad carried me in a backpack most of the way.

I wore red gumboots and loved to splash in the puddles. That was only the beginning. Now, 22 years later, tramping with Dad brings me the greatest joy. And there’s joy in all the little moments and the things he’s taught me about being a more experienced tramper and a better human. Stopping to fill our water bottles in a refreshing stream after a huge ascent: “Don’t forget to look back, because it’s always good to see just how far you’ve come,” Dad says.
– Samantha Mythen, Walkshorts editor