Call of the mild
Despite his better judgment and bitter experience, our columnist sort of goes bush.
By the time you read this, I’ll be gone. Not “gone” gone – though I’m increasingly worried “gone” gone is a possibility – but gone bush.
Frankie, an old friend, and I, in a moment of madness, decided to relive past glories by signing up for a three-day private walk out on the Wairarapa coast.
The rush of blood happened way back in June. So, we’ve had months to get ourselves into the sort of tickety-boo shape one really ought to be in when one is a fiftysomething crock intending to walk about 40km through bush, over hills and across sand in just three days. Only neither of us seemed to have bothered with much of that exercise carry-on.
“I’m very worried I’m not fit enough,” I said to her this week.
“Well, I’m fat, and unfit, and my joints are incredibly stiff,” she retorted. “So, I’m expecting to take about 10 hours to do day one. You’ll be skipping far ahead of me, like a gambolling lamb.”
“Unlikely!” I parried. “My right ankle hurts. I now have a pacemaker. Also, my mother once told me I was born tired.”
“Pah,” she countered, “I can only waddle, and I groan every time I move. I wheeze and gasp walking up North Head. I’ll probably have to be rescued by the fellow who brings the luggage to the huts.”
Yes, that’s right, there will be a bloke, or sheila, transporting our gear from hut to hut. As well, we will be fed and watered, so we don’t carry food (apart from lunches), let alone cook it. Also, there will be beds with pillows, showers and flushing loos, and, I noted with approval, a cocktail hour, albeit BYO, at sundown. We will, of course, walk the track, but it’s a bit of stretch to call this sort of glamping real tramping. Perhaps we should ask them to lay on bathchairs, too.
It wasn’t always like this. There was a time when Frankie and I were the sort of hardy folk who carried their own food and cooking gear, and everything else, in giant packs, didn’t wash for days and slept alongside stinking strangers, sometimes on giant communal sleeping platforms, in cold, damp huts.
Since beginning tramping together some 20 years ago, we’ve completed most of the so-called great walks and a couple of others, from the Tongariro circuit and Lake Waikaremoana in the north, to the Rakiura Track on Stewart Island. And we’ve had some wild adventures.
On the Greenstone and Caples circuit, it rained so heavily on the day we crossed the saddle that streams turned to rivers, a very steep downhill section of the track became a terrifying mudslide and, at one point, we waded through waistdeep water. I remember crying like a baby.
On the alpine section of the Kepler Track – the point where you’re supposed to get unforgettable views of lakes Te Anau and Manapouri – it was so cloudy and cold and windy we thought we were going to be blown off the narrow ridgeline to our deaths. That wasn’t a great day, either.
On the Heaphy Track, we survived a former workmate who insisted on humming Christian rock songs for much of the 78km slog. We tried to lose him for a bit on the final day, but he found us all the same, arriving at a canter, sweating like a horse, humming madly and still wearing his, er, Rambo-style bandana. Sigh.
Since our last walk together, Frankie has done the challenging Rees-Dart rivers track and others, and I’ve heli-hiked in Canada, glamped on the Routeburn and slept under the stars on the Larapinta Trail in Australia.
But nothing has prepared us for our next adventure, basically because we haven’t prepared us for our next adventure. Which makes me think, what with my ankle, my pacemaker and my customary sense of doom, I might not make it back this time.
So, this could be goodbye. Or not. I – or possibly a death notice – will let you know.
A steep downhill section of the track became a terrifying mudslide – I cried like a baby.