Kiwi Tracks (15 page)

Angelus has an auspicious ring to it and I decide to stay rather than move on. Just in case anything should happen to me, I leave a note in the hut, stating my intentions of climbing Mount Angelus. There is no marked path up to the summit. I follow bright yellow alpine buttercups growing along mountain streams, which empty into icy emerald lakes. Alpine daisies and New Zealand edelweiss flourish in the waterlogged areas.

It takes a couple of hours to reach the top of the mountain, which is 2075 metres high. Jagged peaks and lines of mountain ranges fade into the background and clouds hug the valley towards Nelson. The long curve of Golden Bay is visible in the distance, with snow-covered mountains looming in the foreground. Descending the same route, I slide down snowfields, using my hiking boots as impromptu skis. I happily shout and scream like a kid until I reach the rocky, boulder-strewn scree and the confines of the hut.

I search through my backpack for a suitable dinner. There are several packages of dried pasta, each with a misleading portrayal of a delectable meal on a plate: macaroni and cheese, fettuccine verdi, sour cream and chives, sour cream and mushrooms, cheese and black pepper, bacon carbonara, creamy mushrooms and bacon. Despite the fanciful names, each of these instant meals tastes and looks exactly the same. I should know; I’ve been eating them daily for the last two months. I take out the second of the split-pea and ham soups I bought in Takaka, the same meal that had given me severe abdominal problems on the Heaphy Track. This time I read the instructions carefully: ‘Soak overnight or simmer for a minimum of two hours’. I haven’t soaked it overnight, so I’ll have to cook it for two hours. While the package of soup cost only a couple of dollars, the portable gas canisters cost eight. By the time I finish boiling these split peas until they are
edible, this dinner will be the most expensive meal I have consumed on the trip.

Just as I get the water boiling, other trampers arrive. As they prepare their own dehydrated dinners, they can’t help but notice that there is one portable gas stove burning for an inordinate length of time, unattended. Even after they have all finished cooking and eating, and even cleaned up after themselves, my solitary stove, lit long before their arrival, is still aflame.

I put the book down that I have been studiously reading and stir the gooey mush of peas.

‘You’ve been cooking your soup for a couple of hours?’ someone says, with the distinctive Kiwi inflection that renders a statement more of a question.

‘I know.’ I continue reading, as if cooking soup for hours on a portable gas canister is perfectly normal behaviour. ‘Heaps of gas canisters in my pack. Trying to use them all up,’ I say in explanation, without taking my eyes off the pages of my book. ‘Lightens the load,’ I add, trying not to appear any odder than I already am.

I decide to spend yet another lazy day and night at Angelus Hut. Everyone else packs and heads off in different directions, leaving me behind. It is the last day of the year, New Year’s Eve. I climb the cirque’s knife-sharp ridge, which encircles the half-frozen sapphire lake. Strands of mist rise vertically from the valley bottom, caught in invisible thermals. On the steepest and highest point on the rim, as I step on a large boulder, it gives way and lodges against the back of my calf, pinning me against the snow. Too frightened to move, I stand there carefully balancing the rock with my leg. Finally I manoeuvre out of its embrace, and once released it rolls, crashing down through the steep field of snow and ice. At first it careers like a sled, then cartwheels and bounces down, leaving a curious pattern in the snowfield, beginning like a snail’s trail and ending up like a giant’s leaping footprints. Curious, I time the descent. Thirty long seconds pass before the
boulder crashes into the lake with a spectacular splash, the noise amplified by the sound chamber of the cirque. Ripples spreading out on the lake are absorbed by the remnants of soggy ice. Sometimes I scare myself when I realise how accident-prone I can be, although this was only a close call.

It is an anti-climax to return to the hut and find it still empty. Now that I’m getting to the point where I actually want to meet people, there aren’t any around. It wouldn’t be the first time I spent New Year’s Eve in a cabin out in the wilderness; in fact, it’s my preferred way of passing this particular night. But wonderful as it is here, in this setting, it would also be nice to share the evening with others; I mean, I feel a bit of a loser spending New Year’s Eve all alone. I lie on a bunk bed and try unsuccessfully to read. Late in the afternoon, the first tramper arrives, entering the hut and dropping her pack heavily on the floor. She is covered in perspiration; her fair hair is wet around the temples and the back of her neck. She stands on a leg and stretches her quadriceps; despite the perspiration, she does not breathe hard and is clearly very fit. She’s also pretty. I can’t believe my luck, and introduce myself: ‘Hi, I’m Andrew and I’m in this hut all by myself, with nowhere better to go on New Year’s Eve.’ I don’t actually say anything other than my name, as she can probably figure the rest out for herself.

She tells me her name. ‘Tania.’

I ask where she is from. She hesitates.

I have seen that equivocation before. ‘Don’t tell me, I know where you are from. Auckland,’ I say, with the smugness of a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat.

‘How’d you know?’ she asks, humouring me.

‘Because any time a Kiwi hesitates to say where they come from, at least on the Mainland, then I know they come from Auckland.’ People in rural New Zealand seem to view Aucklanders as if they come from a separate country.

‘The Mainland?’ She looks at me as if I am stupid, then balances on the other leg and stretches. ‘Where’s the Mainland?’ she asks indulgently, as if dealing with someone mentally challenged.

‘You know, the South Island,’ I reply.

‘Who told you the South Island’s called the Mainland?’ she asks, bending over and almost touching the wooden floorboards with her nose.

‘All the Kiwis I meet.’ I smile at her when she looks sideways at me from her upside-down perspective.

‘And you’ve only been on the South Island, right?’ She holds the position, blood rushing to her head.

‘Right.’

‘Figures.’

She unpacks, pulling her food and stove from the bottom of her pack. I ask her: ‘It’s New Year’s Eve. Why aren’t you with friends at a barbie?’ As a Kiwi, she must have plenty of friends; it seems strange that she is here all by herself. If I were a cool Kiwi I’d invite her out for sure.

‘The men stand around the barbie pretending to cook but all they really do is talk rugby or cricket. The women stand together in the kitchen and gossip. For a change, sometimes I go to a pub on New Year’s Eve. It’s such a pain in the arse, though. Guys won’t take no for an answer. Last New Year’s Eve I had to hit one over the head with a beer bottle.’

I take a step back to give her some more personal space. No point getting clobbered because of a cross-cultural misunderstanding.

‘Sometimes you have to physically fight them off.’

I take another step backwards as a precautionary measure.

‘I thought it was the Aussies who acted like that?’

‘Ah yeah? You haven’t seen a Kiwi in action, mate. You know what an Aussie bloke thinks is foreplay?’

‘No.’ I shrug my shoulders.

‘Hey sheila, you awake?’ She raises her eyebrows with contempt.

I laugh to demonstrate that I clearly know this is the most graceless form of foreplay.

She studies me. ‘At least the Aussie asks if you’re awake,’ she adds, without a trace of irony.

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WELLINGTON
   
NATIONAL PARK
   
TONGARIRO NORTHERN CIRCUIT
   
RUAPEHU
   
WHANGANUI NATIONAL PARK
   
NATIONAL PARK – TAUPO – ROTORUA

The ferry leaving Picton and the South Island slips through Marlborough Sounds, its bow slicing through splotches of krill red as bloodstains. Little blue penguins bob on their stomachs before diving out of harm’s way. The ship’s crewmen daintily dab paint at streaks of corrosion, talking to each other more than working. The deck of the ship throbs with the brute power of its engines and propellers.

I love ships, I love that feeling of going somewhere. My dad was a foreign correspondent. When we were kids we moved from one country and continent to another: Hong Kong to India, East Africa to London, Singapore to Canada. My father would put us and our mother aboard Norwegian cargo ships, with all our belongings, while he flew ahead to arrange accommodation and schooling. We children had the run of the cargo ships and the Norwegian crew spoiled us. The childhood memories remain: the red, white and blue Norwegian flag flapping at the stern while my brother and I fished in vain, or more successfully tied fishing lines to our flip-flops and let them surf in the ship’s wake.

Nostalgically I am also reminded of the last time I was on a ferry, when I left Norway three months ago. I lean on the railings and feel the lurch in my emotions as I remember the scene. My eyes blur with the unexpected emotional charge. Just as I think I am getting better, a memory will suddenly resurface.

Then, just as now, the deck of the ship shuddered as the ferry gained momentum through the glassy water. I stood at the back of the boat and waved bravely until Kirsten became an indistinct image, and then only a memory. I watched as Nordmarka, the forested hills overlooking Oslo, receded into the distance. As we cruised down the fiord, the ship passed Sandvika and I caught a glimpse of the hundred-year-old wooden house we had rented. In the summer, we lived outside rather than inside, but in the dark winters the old wooden house had seemed a cosy haven, a refuge lit by candles and a fireplace. Our dog followed me everywhere and even when I worked at my desk in front of the window overlooking the fiord, alive with boats in the summer and skaters during the frozen winter, he would sit at my feet. I miss him. I miss her. Seeing our house again was my last contact with Kirsten. As the ship picked up speed, heading towards Denmark, I imagined her back there surrounded by the last remnants of our life together.

The ship continued down the coast, Nordmarka disappeared, and it was as if another tenuous connection had been cut, as if a page, another chapter, had been ripped out of my life. Except it was more than a page or a chapter. It felt as if the very book of my existence had fallen apart, the binding unglued, the pages loose, fluttering in the wind before settling in the churning wake of the ship and disappearing into the silent depths. My heart contracted and shrivelled, painfully buried in a body that seemed to me empty of life.

Kirsten had said I was like a sailor, always travelling, always about to leave as soon as I had arrived. Now I was gone for good.

To distract myself from these poignant memories, I focus my thoughts on this New Zealand ferry, crossing the Cook Strait between South and North Island. Also leaning against the rails is a young German and I engage him in conversation. We talk about our respective trips. After two months of exploring New Zealand, he doesn’t want to return to Germany.

I ask him: ‘What was the best and worst of New Zealand for you?’

He thinks for a long while. ‘The worst, is how an unspoiled environment can be destroyed so much and so quickly.’ He turns to look at me, as if to make sure that I am not offended. ‘Of course, we did the same thing in Europe, and you did the same in North America, so perhaps we shouldn’t criticise. But here it happened so recently, within only some generations, so it is more obvious.’

He has been so positive in describing his trip around New Zealand that I am surprised by his response, even though I had set him up with the negative question. ‘And the best?’

He thinks even longer, before laughing. ‘The best is that New Zealand is still so incredibly beautiful.’ The ferry leans to port as it turns against the strong tide, negotiating a narrow passage through Marlborough Sounds. He continues, more positively: ‘I would like to emigrate here. New Zealanders are lucky; there is so much space here, so few problems. It is the land of the future.’

I look forward to the North Island and meeting some of New Zealand’s Maori. Apart from the Maori who returned my groceries in Te Anau, I have met none and seen few. Docking in Wellington is like entering another country. In contrast to the peacefulness of the little community of Picton, my introduction to the North Island is the hum of cars and the thumping of steel-belted tyres on a nearby flyover. Tall buildings cluster around the downtown core; residential suburbs are cantilevered out of the surrounding hills.

In the kitchen at the backpackers lodge, there is no excited chatter of international destinations or exchange of useful information. Everyone concentrates intently on cooking his or her own meals. The place has the depressing feel of a rooming house. A sign pinned to a door states: ‘If you ask the obvious at reception you will pay a ten cent fine’. I finger a dollar in my pocket, tempted to demand a discount for a dozen quick dumb questions. The entourage of apparently unemployable poms lounging around the reception desk dissuades me, saving us all the hassle.

As the city winds down for the weekend, the bars fill with exhausted yuppies ready to blow off a week’s steam. I do not want to head back to the depressing backpackers lodge, nor wander
around Wellington on my own. It would be nice to meet some people, talk. Bracing myself, I walk into a smoke-filled bar with a deliberate if inexpert cool manner, but the smartly dressed men in pinstriped suits and women in skirts, lipstick and high heels are far too intimidating. No one says hello; I look out of place in my torn shorts, creased shirt and smelly sandals. In many places on the South Island I had worn the same grungy outfit and felt overdressed. Here, I feel not only underdressed but patently shabby.

I skulk out of the bar within minutes of walking in and timidly amble down city streets, trying to find something useful to do. The noise, traffic, buildings and general bustle are overwhelming; being out of the bush, I am suffering withdrawal symptoms. Buzzing sounds at traffic lights signal when to cross, and the intrusion of being ordered like a robot, when to walk and when to stop, seems far from the serene, meditative isolation of a walk in the forest. I am sure, though, I would adjust to all these assaults on the senses if I were back in the city for any length of time. It’s amazing how adaptable human beings can be.

On Manners Mall, a pedestrian walkway, I sit on a bench outside a music shop, psychologically exhausted. With nothing better to do, I watch the parade of characters. Popular tunes, mostly sentimental love songs, drift out of the record store, pummelling my bruised heart again. Maori kids in homeboy-style jeans with the crotches drooping around the knees and sweatshirts with hoods pulled over their heads sit opposite me. They are bunched together beside a solitary tree, its trunk surrounded by concrete and enclosed by a wrought-iron cage.

Return to beginning of chapter

I don’t have the energy or the inclination to hitchhike out of the city, so I take the train instead. A smartly dressed father boards the train with his four kids. He looks like an accountant or a lawyer and the kids wear identical wraparound mirrored sunglasses.

The kids all say ‘cool’ as they enter the compartment. I sit and surreptitiously practise saying the word under my breath. Still can’t get it right. The narrow-gauge train jolts forward and we wiggle our way out of Wellington.

The conductor sees me reading the newspaper. ‘Mate, the only thing interesting you’ll find in there is the cricket story,’ he informs me.

Actually, I’m not reading at all. I’m thinking, and still practising how to say ‘cool’. ‘Which cricket game was that?’ I ask, jolted out of my solipsistic world and trying not to appear eternally thankful that someone is talking to me, making my solitary plight less obvious.

He looks at me incredulously. ‘Between Pakistan and Australia.’ He then proceeds to tell me all about it. He is capable of recounting every over, every bowler, every batsman, every shot, where it went, and who caught it, going into such excruciating detail that, when he finishes, I do not even know who actually won the game.

I get up and twitch down the aisle of the jostling train like an erratic ball in a pinball machine. There is an observation deck at the back, which looks as if the rear section of the carriage has been removed, with just a plate-glass window remaining. It is a bit like gazing out of the end of a long goldfish tank. A sofa shaped like a horseshoe allows passengers to sit and view the scenery. Here the father and his wraparound-sunglasses family have ensconced themselves, with playing cards, cans of soft drink and potato-chip packets strewn across the central table. Two of the four kids squabble. I squeeze in beside the father. He asks: ‘Where you from?’

‘Canada,’ I answer.

‘Kuh-ool,’ the daughter observes. She is only ten or eleven, but she’s sussed me out, I can tell by the look of disdain on her face.

‘Where are you from?’ I ask in return.

‘Auckland,’ she replies, and without giving me a chance to say kuh-ool back, she asks, ‘Where are you from in Canada?’

‘Ottawa,’ I say. But that was ten years ago; I’m leaving out the last few years from the biography. I’m not going to explain the intimate details of why I emigrated to Norway and then fled to this bratty little smart-ass.

‘Where’s that?’ the daughter asks her father, peering at him through her sunglasses.

‘It’s the capital, like Wellington.’

‘Know why Wellington is the capital of New Zealand?’ the daughter asks, turning to me. My twinned reflections peer back from the two mirrored convex sunglass lenses, my double bulbous noses protruding out of proportion to my distorted faces.

‘No,’ I reply, waiting for her punch line.

‘Because Auckland lets it,’ she says smiling.

‘Crisp,’ I reply.

‘Crisp?’

‘Yeah, crisp. It means cool, except if you’re really cool, you say crisp instead of cool,’ I tell her, to keep her off-balance. She too can spread the gospel according to Saint Andrew.

Her father looks over as if to warn her that I’m pulling her leg, but she has taken the bait, hook, line and sinker. ‘Crisp,’ she enunciates, trying the word out for size and liking the sound of it. ‘Crisp,’ she repeats, clearly dying to try it out on her friends. Coining a new word for cool gives me a cachet, contradicting her assessment of me as being totally uncool.

The conductor interrupts over the speaker: ‘… Bridge is 281 metres in length and 79 metres high.’ We stare out the glass of the back window as the train clatters over the yawning chasm beneath. One of these bridges collapsed some years ago. I cross my fingers and trust the wooden trestles supporting us hold out.

The girl sees me. ‘Why are you crossing your fingers?’ she asks.

Why are kids so observant?

‘I just hope the guys who built the wooden bridge used the right glue,’ I reply.

The train stops at a station called National Park, an isolated community which will be my base for the next couple of weeks.
The platform is full of four-wheel ATVs and trail bikes. It is odd, in my view, to arrive at a railway station called National Park and discover wilderness-intrusive vehicles. Hand-painted signs advertise how much it costs to hire them. Another large sign says:

Attention railway passengers. This railway station, bikes, animals, and property are all PRIVATELY OWNED. This is a four-wheeler and trail-bike business, and we live here. This is a private home and not a railway station. Please refrain from smoking and dropping your butts and we will refrain from dropping our butts on your porch.

I am the only person to disembark and the conductor, who doubles as a baggage handler, shoves my backpack to the door of the baggage wagon.

‘Strewth,’ he says. ‘What have you got in there, your grandmother?’

‘Uh-uh. My computer.’ I grab the pack. ‘Do you mind helping me hoist this on my back?’

I must have several kilos worth of maps, books, magazines and brochures stuffed into the bottom of the plastic lining bag. By the time I finish this trip, with the ballast the pack is gaining and the weight I am losing, I will weigh considerably less than the pack will. The conductor manoeuvres the pack to the edge of the carriage, holding it upright while I slip my arms into the shoulder straps. I take the weight and stagger reluctantly off, barely able to remain upright.

Despite the ponderous clouds above, the evening sky to the west is clear, lighting up the volcanic slopes with its sharp evening light. While the South Island’s mountains were pushed up gradually by shifting plates in the earth’s crust, those in the North Island were formed by violent and dramatic volcanic explosions caused by earthquakes and subterranean upheavals along a huge, central plateau.