The Blissful Hiker is back on New Zealand's Te Araroa walking through the Waikato Region in the center of the North Island. She learns to face her fear – as well as ambivalence and irritation – and muscle through the bad parts so she can be open to surprise.
In this episode:
MUSIC: Introduccion y allegro by Carlos Guastavino as played by Alison Young, flute and Vicki Seldon, piano
available on iTunes
KULA CLOTH "pee rag"! Intentionally designed for all the places you ‘go,’ the Kula Cloth is one of the most important pieces of gear a women should have attached to her pack.
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The Blissful Hiker is back on New Zealand's Te Araroa walking through the Waikato Region in the center of the North Island. She learns to face her fear – as well as ambivalence and irritation – and muscle through the bad parts so she can be open to surprise.
In this episode:
MUSIC: Introduccion y allegro by Carlos Guastavino as played by Alison Young, flute and Vicki Seldon, piano
available on iTunes
KULA CLOTH "pee rag"! Intentionally designed for all the places you ‘go,’ the Kula Cloth is one of the most important pieces of gear a women should have attached to her pack.
read review
order one for yourself
The sun is out this morning as I return to the trail alone working my way down the center of New Zealand’s North Island. The trail notes tell me it’s easy tramping for the coming days, mostly on a river walk, but it’s been raining so much, it’s more of a hellscape of overgrown grass soaking me to the skin, their tiny seeds clinging to my pants, slippery mud ascents and descents, and bogs up to my knees.
And look here, storm clouds are building. They’re huge, gray and white puffballs and beautiful in a certain kind of way, but my mind is totally focused on hard and slow walking.
I’m nervous getting back on the trail. I bought way too much food and the next section requires carrying water – which adds more than two pounds per liter. What makes me so nervous? The unknown, my abilities, getting lost or hurt?
It’s funny though, how anticipation builds the fear and moving focuses the mind.
I’ve entered a region called The Waikato, named for New Zealand’s longest river. Meaning “flowing water” for the early Māori inhabitants, this fertile land was a source of nourishment and life. They regarded the Waikato as an ancestor, one of “a hundred taniwha – those mythical creatures who live in the deep river pools – every bend a taniwha.”
I’ll walk to its source near Ruapehu in Tongariro National Park, but that’s still a few weeks away and right now, I’m in the thick of it, heading steeply up an overgrown hill to Whangamarino redoubt, high above the river. You can see why there was a major battle here due to the good sight lines.
But then it's all doubling back confusion because the TA signs are invariably placed after the turn. I walk under graffitied bridges, a homeless man sleeps in his car next to a rotting possum. I wonder about my sanity walking this trail. My GPS says I am on the route, but it’s a heinous overgrown shitshow next to the freeway. Do they even want people hiking in their country, I wonder. Feels like a nightmare of tall weeds and loud traffic.
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t mind hard hiking, but this area is overgrown, ugly and dangerous. Perhaps one day of weed whacking, or a reroute not on the central north-south freeway littered with garbage might be a thought. It’s actually insulting how awful this is.
I take a deep breath and stop muttering to myself, remembering how much fun I had in Auckland. I pop open my phone and look at the selfies I took with Sarah and Susie at the top of the Sky Tower, one smiling, the other sticking our tongues out for a haka.
Because of storm damage and kauri die-back, the Hunua Ranges Regional Park just north of where I am now – one of high ridge lines, waterfalls, and native forest – is closed. The TA trail has been rerouted through suburbs. When Susie offered to drive me past this 30-kilometer road-walk, I quickly agreed – even though I really wanted to walk every step of the Te Araroa.
I guess it’s not just fear, nervousness and irritation I’m managing this morning. It’s also ambivalence.
And then, just like that, a trail turns into the countryside – with terrific signage. I struggle to open a gate and give myself a shock. Dammit! No touching the fences. They’re electrified!
I spy a farmhouse just in case this storm building in front of me hits. And right on cue it begins to thunder. I see a minefield of electric fences one after another along my path. Some are so high, I throw my pack over and try not to roll in sheep poo while shimmying under. Some too low, I straddle them very carefully, missing the skin and not touching with my sticks.
At a sprawling tree, I make a wrap with meat and cheese, sitting against the trunk to keep my pack out of the cow pies. The trail is quiet, solitary, next to the Waikato River. A few raindrops hit me, but it’s mostly birds and sunshine now.
A Polish couple arrives just as I finish, so I share a ginger candy and give them the tree. The trail leaves cows and heads right to the grassy riverbank making me think of the cult film “Night of the Hunter” when the children escape Robert Mitchum down the Ohio River.
It’s back to uneven muddy walking, yellow irises above my head centimeters from another shock as I follow the fence-line. But the puffy cumulus sail by without letting go off their wet cargo, tiny lizards scurry out of the way from my foot fall.
A grassy area opens up and I walk without needing to look down at my feet. And suddenly, it’s sublime. I'm walking through the New Zealand Game Bird Habitat Trust Wetland Project. Bulky willows kiss the water’s edge; a shady cottonwood crackles with the breeze.
It’s still a long way but it’s easy on an empty road, an entire avenue of cottonwoods wave in the breeze, seeming to cheer me on. In no time, I’m in Rangariri with people I haven’t met yet – Dutch and Swiss– sitting around an octagonal picnic table at the local pub. The trail notes are a bit off in that there is no camping at the pub, so we order drinks and try to figure out next steps.
Another option is Cathy’s Pie Shop, but it’s closed. The solo Dutch tramper, Vera, hands me her phone I guess assuming my English is better – but maybe more so that I might talk our way into camping somewhere.
Cathy answers on the first ring, and it works. She invites us to set up on her lawn and will have pies ready for breakfast in the morning. The two Polish trampers join us and we’re an army of tents and drying clothes on the line.
My dinner choice is a total disaster. The vermicelli feels like nylon twine and the spices are extremely hot. We share a laugh and commiserate on the frustrations of today. I am surprised and delighted to be 'normal.'
The entire sky is pink and I put on my orange puffy just as Cathy offers me a glass of wine.
I slept well behind Cathy’s Pie Shop in Rangariri even though we shared nearly an entire bottle of chardonnay. She's a well off Kiwi who lost most of her wealth, but has found her own ‘trail’ after leaving a cheating husband and buying up property to rent.
And she is fascinated by us trail walkers, ones she describes as looking for answers as we walk day after day. What is it I’m seeking? I tell her mostly I feel nervous about the future – and ambivalence about walking every step.
Cathy has this way of making me feel like everything is going to work out and that – like Dorothy – the answers are probably already inside me.
Breakfast is steak pie with hot chocolate and steamed milk. The morning is cool, the fog lifting on the Waikato River. Rain is forecasted in this, the wettest region of the North Island. Irene told me to prepare my self for the upcoming forests, which make Raetea look like a walk in the park.
Right now, the trail is road walk, all the way to Huntly. I suppose I could walk in the fields but it’s really wet and bumpy. The Swiss catch up to me and pull me off the road into the wet grass and the proper trail, and I’m surprised it’s bliss for the feet. I whistle a little bit of the Saint Paul Suite by Gustav Holst and one of the boys joins in.
The other is silent in his Vikings cap, saying he likes the idea of football. And just like that, they stop telling me it’s 9 am, time for a Znünipause, time for a mid-morning pause – even if we’ve only gone a little over three kilometers.
Not really needing a Znünipause, I head on with Cyril telling me “The Te Araroa is not for fun. It is for the character.”
Ahead is beautiful grass and loads of camping under huge magnolia trees – I'm really beginning to think like a thru-hiker. No camping allowed here, though. This is a golf course. Up ahead are mountains, frothy cotton candy clouds pasted to the summits. Before them the massive twin towers of Huntly’s power station.
I told Cathy last night that the first month of this tramp pulled out all the emotions, the old gunk of the past that I needed to deal with. It feels now after some of the dark corners have been scoured of their cobweb, as if this second month is about discovering who I am and deciphering what exactly I’d like to bring into my space.
On the edge of town, I stop at a dairy, or convenience store, to purchase a Jolly soda. It tastes like hard candy. Maybe I'll take another for the road.
Huntly is busy with trucks hauling two separate quarry cargoes. Houses press in right up on the main drag; wild roses, junked cars and lawn ornaments commingling. Two friendly Kiwis stop to talk with me.
Everyone I shared camp with last night plans to cross the Tainui Bridge, a 7-span bowstring-arch over the Waikato River, and get some real food. But I’m finding my stride and feeling the nerves, the fear, even the ambivalence beginning to wane.
It’s funny how once I move, I care less about the unknown. I seem to reside in the present moment and allow the future to take care of itself. If I keep following this sidewalk, which soon turns into road, the future will include entering the Hakarimata Reserve. It’s easy at first, up stairs into the bush and I stop for lunch at a giant 1,000 year old kauri that somehow escaped the ax. I learn only redwoods have trunks this massive, that this tree is as old as the dinosaurs and its resin was prized for making jewelry, right as I back into it for a little a resin sample on my shirt.
About twenty raindrops hit me. If the weatherman says 60% chance of rain, did that count? A giant rimu peaks out from the Kauri grove, gnarly and shaggy, taller and more slender. Captain Cook made beer from the Rimu's bitter gum.
At the first lookout looking towards the river valley and rain in the distance, I leave the easy track behind for steeper-than-you-can-believe ups and down over roots and mud. I think of my friend Brenda when we hiked the Border Route wishing for ‘100 feet of joy.’ But I’m a professional at this now and move fast.
And it’s a wonderful feeling, almost out of body. My mind totally focused but my legs and arms floating over obstacles like someone else is pulling the strings to make me move.
I lose the GPS briefly likely due to the thick tree canopy and heavy clouds. It's weird not knowing where you are, though there is only one path and I’m all alone. And I do know where I am. I’m here.
It’s more up and down on thick roots through the bush to a second lookout and finally a sort of wide grassy spot where I pick up the GPS signal again. I can see it’s not far at all to the summit and its lookout tower, maybe an hour, but I decide I’ve gone far enough for today and I’ll camp right here.
Writer Judy Blume said “Each of us must confront our own fears, must come face to face with them. How we handle our fears will determine where we go with the rest of our lives. To experience adventure or to be limited by the fear of it.”
Yesterday, I cursed the boggy trail and then cried after getting shocked by the multitude of electric fences. Cathy, the Swiss boys and the camaraderie of our tent city in such contrast to sleeping here all by myself gave me strength and courage to press on and by curious rather than anxious. I learned that grass walking is more fun than road walking, that eating an entire bag of candy per day on a thru-hike is the normal thing to do, that falling in the mud is not a sign of weakness and that every step takes me to something new.
Maybe when everything isn’t absolute bliss, that’s ok, because it won’t last. I was afraid starting this next section, but it turns out I had it in me to figure things out and deal with the less pleasant portions of the trail.
And as I sit on my mat looking out on fields and hills, a few tree ferns framing the view, the sky turns orange-pink, the clouds a deep lilac, as a morepork sings me to sleep.