The Tasman Sea pounds on the beach way at the northernmost tip of New Zealand. It’s constant, unceasing, inexorable and insistent. A white noise that’s present enough to force me to raise my voice to be heard, while at the same time, a soothing balm guiding my footsteps as I discover what it means to be a full time pedestrian.
I’m alison young. And this is the The Pee Rag, Unfiltered Adventures of the Blissful Hiker. I am the Blissful Hiker, sometime-professional flutist, sometime-voice artist and full-time pedestrian.
Every week, I share with you what it’s like on the trail, why anyone would want to walk that far, and, while it may not be a glamorous life, why it’s one of the most fulfilling. A big shout out to Leki trekking poles for supporting The Pee Rag podcast. Leki supports my body, holds me upright, holds my tent upright, and gives me the strength to walk the length of two countries. If you want to be a blissful hiker, Lekis should be in your hands
Don’t laugh, but it was only a few days before I left Saint Paul for New Zealand, when I learned what a pee rag is. I found out right around the same time I met Irene on Facebook. I had booked a flight to get me as close to the start of the trail as I could, the furthest city north. A place named KeriKeri, pronounced Kitty-Kitty by the locals. It’s still 200 kilometers to the start of the trail at Cape Reinga.
I followed the Te Araroa page for tips, information, trail closures, etc. I don’t always like to post on these pages “looking for a ride! Mainly because I want to ensure I’ve done my research first and not look like a desperate newbie, even if, in reality, I was desperate newbie. They did offer lots of advice on how to get to the start, including hitchhiking, definitely not hitchhiking, arranging a ride or joining a tour group.
But the group was a bit heavy on drama with a side of fear mongering for the thru-hiker newbie, so I tried my luck with a private group just for female hikers. It might have been the same day that I learned about the pee rag – more on that in a bit – and met Irene. She’s a Kiwi from Hamilton, planning to walk the TA in sections. She planned to start from Cape Reinga on October 29.
Well, that’s my start date, or at least, that’s the day my plane would land in New Zealand. We start messaging and I experience my first encounter with genuine Kiwi hospitality, a kind of trail magic that’s ingrained in the culture. Irene not only suggests we start together, she arranges to meet me at the airport with her family, and drive to the Cape together.
It was magic. And only required that I start walking the very same day I arrive.
What does anyone remember about their flight to get to the other side of the world – or in my case – flights? Richard calculates I would be nineteen hours ahead, or he would be five hours ahead, yesterday. I sleep, eat, watch movie after movie and think about all the kind, generous pearls of wisdom sent my way before I left.
Every so often, I lift the shade to look out over the vast, empty expanse of the Pacific. A waning gibbous moon chases me all the way until Aotearoa – New Zealand – appears, the land of the long white cloud. We bank over the water, flying low before touching down in a drizzly paradise. It’s a sprint of a half mile in my brand new La Sportivas to customs, where I surrender my tent and stakes – or “tint” and “pigs” – to a friendly Auckland biosecurity agent, who ensures it’s clean and free of any predators, flora or fauna.
To get to the domestic terminal, I drag a throwaway suitcase filled with my backpack, gear and bounce boxes along a painted walkway, feeling the humidity like a second skin and, even here, smelling a loamy freshness that foreshadows things to come. There’s only enough time to snag a new SIM card for my phone before I board a tiny prop plane for the short flight to the Bay of Islands. It reminds me of a ski race in Northern Wisconsin, where I was taken by bus from the finish to start and watched thirty miles of hilly forest pass by, knowing I’d soon be skiing all of that.
Here, I’m suspended in puffy clouds above crystalline bays abutting sandy beaches fed by winding streams and estuaries. Hilly bright green pastures and dark bush see rain falling in the distance, and the ocean beyond that to infinity.
It’s a lot further than thirty miles. If all goes as planned, to walk back to Auckland, will take me a month.
It’s raining when we land, our small group disembarks outside before rushing to meet friends and family at the tiny terminal. Only international flights require security. People crowd in and that’s when I spot Irene. Half Italian, she wears her long black hair with bangs, and is already dressed for hiking.
I’ve arrived alone in so many places, and often where people spoke languages I only managed to understand a little after cramming with language tapes. I am so touched that she comes inside to wait for me, waving as though we are already friends.
I’m out of my comfort zone, having reckoned with what really matters in my life and putting to the test risking security for something intangible. Helen Keller wrote “Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.” Security is an illusion and bravery, courage, get-up-and-go, embracing adventure, is simply a way of accepting that we can’t hang on tightly and expect we’ll be safe. You have to risk a bit of adventure – daring or not – to really live.
Irene’s relaxed nature gives me little time to concern myself with maudlin questions. She introduces me to her father, Bryce and I take the back seat next to his partner Vern. Hugging the non-existent left shoulder on a wild, curvy, rollercoaster of road, we shove off, fast and furious.
Right around the time I met Irene on the Te Aroroa womens group on Facebook, something caught my eye on that page. An American hiker posted this question to the group, “Are any of you taking a pee rag?”
Not wanting to look clueless, I went to Dr. Google and plugged in “what is a pee rag?” and up came an article written by Stacia Bennett for the Trek. She offers the most cogent reasons to tie a bandana to your pack and designate its use as a pee rag, a small accessory with a big job.
This part of the country is called Northland or the far, far, north. Vern and Bryce live in Kaeo where we stop for lunch, and I send forward my bounce box of things I might not be able to find in New Zealand, like the specific shoes and socks I like to wear. We pack my backpack and Vern offers to take the huge throwaway suitcase and clothes to a local charity shop.
Then we hop back in the car and continue north on Highway 1, pastureland giving way to drier, sandier scrubland. They chat the entire way in their charming, clipped, and nasal Kiwi accent, one that sounds as if every sentence were said with a toothy smile. It’s an accent, I pretty much can’t understand yet.
And then it begins to rain, then hail, then more rain, before clearing to bright sunshine nearly as fast it began. Dark clouds ahead tell me this sequence is pretty much on rinse and repeat.
I’m running on adrenaline and apprehension, not quite settling into the fact that we plan to start without so much as a moment for me to catch my breath. To be honest, this isn’t my first rodeo. When I hiked the spine of the Alps on the GR5, I also took three flights, landed in Geneva, then traveled by train and bus to a wee country road heading straight uphill towards Nice, 21 days away. It also rained that day as I huddled in a meadow high above Lake Geneva, slugs working their way into my sodden hiking boots.
Humor columnist Dave Barry writes, “It always rains on tents. Rainstorms will travel thousands of miles, against prevailing winds for the opportunity to rain on a tent.” All I could do as we sped further and further north is give into what’s to come – and trust my full suit of Columbia rain gear would keep me dry. But still, there’s nothing more disconcerting than starting a trail, the biggest of your life, in rain.
Of course, this is something I’ll soon learn about New Zealand. It’s called the land of the long white cloud for a reason. It rains – a lot. But the sun shines too and often at the same time it rains. Like most things, you can’t control the weather and if you want to be out in it, you gotta take the good with the bad.
All at once, we’re there. The end of the road, the northwestern-most tip of the Aupouri Peninsula, the northern end of the North Island of New Zealand, the Meeting Place, where the Tasman Sea meets the Pacific Ocean in a swirl of currents.
We have little time to dawdle, since it’ll be dark in only a few hours, and the first campsite, called Twilight, is eight miles away. Vern shoots video of the two of us walking to the lighthouse at the end of a long spit of land. A pole of myriad signs point in all directions and we stand on opposite sides, a hand on the post, and a leg kicked out. Tokyo, Sydney, Los Angeles, the South Pole – and Bluff, my destination, one I’ll reach in five months.
It’s time to say goodbye before retracing our steps from the lighthouse back up towards the Te Paki Coastal Track, another sign warning us the track is hard to follow at high tide, and that it’ll likely take us four-and-a-half hours to get to Twilight.
The sky clears above a wide track through flax and yucca, azure waves in long rows crashing beneath us as we rise up on high cliffs. Black clouds move along the shoreline; the sun in this ozone-free part of the world, baking hot. My feet sink into soft sand before we cross on sharp rock, timing the tides just right to pass over myriad tide pools.
The rain is back and Irene puts on an ultralight minimalist piece of gear, more a bag than a coat. We spot our first trail sign, a plastic orange triangle nailed onto a wooden post. It leads us away from the beach up onto a sandy bluff dotted with bright yellow lupine.
“I sure hope we’re not lost,” Irene says, just as I realize, we most surely are.
This can’t be a good sign.
Irene and I were never really lost, just misguided. Truth is, we were only about ten minutes out of our way, so we simply backtrack on sinky sand. Further up the beach, a large stream rushes towards breaking waves. Irene asks if I’ll take my shoes off to cross. My spirits dampened ever so much from our wrong turn, I say, “Heck no!” and plunge up to my thighs in cool, fresh water, certain this is not the first time I’ll be soaking wet.
Oyster Catchers peep at us as we pass, their eyes looking askance. Sponges, jellyfish and small piles of broken shells fan out at the water’s edge. A couple of German hikers help us across a tricky rock hop as waves push a little too close. Ahead is Herangi Hill, with stunning views through a wind tunnel that sends sand and small rocks at me like exfoliates. We’re moving fast and we see Twilight Camp – at least its notch – in a distant cliff, at the end of a horseshoe-shaped beach. It all seems a bit unreal, the route taking us under the curve of a rainbow towards another squall line and tonight’s destination.
Twilight is a beautifully manicured patch of grass on a cliff, up a set of wooden stairs from the beach. There’s an octagonal-shaped cabana, a water tank and a toilet, which I learn the Kiwis call a “long drop.” Two couples, French and Dutch greet us, overloaded with gear. An English woman named Amelia, strong and determined sets her tent close to Jean-Christophe a quiet Frenchman. Everyone changes into tights and down as the night turns cool, the wind relentless.
I set my “tint” in the lee of the cabana, not certain it will make much difference if the wind changes direction, then send a note home. “Night one! A whirlwind start! We’re safe, and happy!”
In the waning light, I think about the clarity of this part of the trail and my confusion about what’s to come. For four days, the trail notes are clear about where to camp, where to get water, and how to plan each day with the tides and distances. After here, things begin to muddle in my mind and no matter how many times I read the trail notes, or follow blogs of those who went before me, I can’t seem to wrap my head around what’s to come.
I’m pretty sure it’s due to inexperience – something I’m terrified to admit, especially after putting everything on the line to come here. The ocean is loud and unyielding broken by two or three downpours pattering on my tint’s taught taffeta-like roof. The waves calm, but at this lonely hour, even the Southern Cross is obliterated by the moon’s brightness. I feel taunted by it all. “We are here,” they seem to say. “And you are just passing through on your brief journey.”
Brief on the northern-most tip top of New Zealand, and brief on our spinning sphere.
But these are the musings of an insomniac. I’ll go back to sleep now because tomorrow I begin 90-mile beach, a long, exposed, blister-inducing, tide-timing stretch of concrete-hard sand.
But before I do, I pop out of my tint – find some bushes and inaugurate my first pee rag.
Comments: Laurie Wyland after Episode 1, “I am truly honored to be the one who bought your professional flute! I am having my own blissful adventures playing it!”
Michael Ynfante who tells me he was inspired not to “wonder anymore, but to take the chance to find out.”
Until next week when we’ll walk the Ninety Mile Beach, happy trails.