Kiwi Tracks (13 page)

He’s in the minority with his opinions in New Zealand as far as I can tell, although all of us murmur agreement.

It is addictive, this silent plodding in rainforests. There’s an unmistakable feeling of contentment. Hours after I have started the track, it begins to pour with rain, just as I reach Perry Saddle Hut. Inside is a Kiwi family, a man named Wayne, his son and daughter, and also two Kiwi women, Myra and Linda. The latter, who are a delightful couple when they can be bothered to speak to us, spend most of the time unabashedly huddled together on a communal bunk. Their lustful indulgences are ineffectively disguised by sleeping-bags pulled carelessly over their bodies.

Wayne cooks up thick slabs of fresh beef each the size of an encyclopedia volume. Tired of packaged pasta and soup, I bought something different for this trip in one of the health stores in Takaka: dehydrated split peas with ham. I cook them the standard five minutes prescribed for any dried food but the meal is almost unpalatably salty, the peas hard like tiny pebbles. Hungry, I devour it anyway. Then, feeling incredibly thirsty, I drink a litre of water. I feel bloated, as if the vegetables are re-hydrating in my stomach. Wondering if I have done something wrong, I retrieve the plastic package from my litterbag. The split-pea and ham soup mix did include dehydrated ham, but the kilo of split peas requires soaking overnight, prior to cooking for some hours. I had soaked them no time at all and boiled them a scant five minutes, barely enough to put a dent in them. Now they are immersed in a litre of water like they are supposed to, except they are in my stomach. My intestines bubble as I sit and read the visitor’s book, trying to ignore what I have done to myself.

My bloated abdomen becomes painfully distended. I toss and turn all night in agony as fermenting peas detonate, the implosions muffled by my trustworthy triple-layer sleeping-bag. Myra and Linda, my two bunkmates, are too absorbed in their nocturnal bawdiness to be bothered with my gastronomic problems. Occasionally an ankle, hand or fleshy protuberance appears from
an angle I would least expect. I pull my sleeping-bag up to my nose, secretly observing their frantic ribaldry.

It rained, snowed and hailed during the night. Several times I was awakened by the howling of the wind, sure the roof would be ripped off the hut. Now it is calm again, snow dripping off the corrugated roof in wet lumps. My stomach is still sensitive and I attempt to keep my flatulence discreet, but as I roll my sleeping-bag from the bottom up, the lingering gas is expelled.

Catching up with Wayne and his family at Saxon Hut, I find him already cooking up an evening meal of sausages and chops, while his two kids play cards. Afterwards Wayne clears up; he seems to do everything. Although the ‘kids’ are at university, they are living at home and I gather the same routine exists there too: he does the work, they relax.

‘Want to play caads?’ the son asks.

‘What?’ I reply, busy scouring pots and pans with Wayne.

‘Caads. You want to play caads?’

I shake my head. ‘Say it one more time.’

Wayne interrupts. ‘Cards. He wants to know if you want to play cards.’ He repeats it in an accent I can understand.

‘Oh, caards,’ I reply. ‘Sure.’

‘Good as,’ the son responds.

They teach me to play Last Card, and Assholes and Kings. Outside, a torrent of water inundates the forest. Technically, we are on the West Coast, where the rainfall is the heaviest in New Zealand. ‘Pissing with rain,’ the son says, looking out the window.

‘Persisting,’ his father corrects.

‘What do you do for fun besides play cards?’ I ask, sorting out my hand.

‘Go hunting,’ Polly the daughter replies, without batting an eye.

Myra and Linda arrive, dripping wet. Within minutes they are warmly huddled together on a bunk bed, their lusty embraces
ignored as we try to resolve who is the Asshole and who is the King. There is nothing to remind us that it is almost Christmas. No radio, no television, no Christmas lights in the bush.

Wayne has got into the habit of serving me a cup of tea in the mornings.

I walk the entire day on my own. It is definitely addictive, this walk into the depths of a rainforest. I feel my body must crave the oxygen, the ambience, something …

When I arrive at the next hut, the two kids are already playing cards and Wayne is busy frying up the remaining side of beef. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a whole steer in his pack. He asks: ‘Did you see Linda and Myra?’

‘They were still in bed when I left the hut this morning. I don’t know how they do it.’ I quickly add, so that he doesn’t misunderstand me: ‘I mean, leaving it so late yet getting from one hut to another so quickly.’

‘Flat out like a lizard drinking,’ Wayne replies, removing another chunk of beef from the iron frying pan. His kids wait expectantly with mouths open.

A couple of hours later Linda and Myra arrive. Immediately after unfurling their sleeping-bags, they go at it hammer and tongs.

I do not feel alone in the rainforest. After looking about to see if anyone is watching, I try hugging a tree, my face pressed against the mossy solid trunk, arms wrapped around it. I do this for several minutes before letting go. It does not feel as strange as I thought it might: it feels good. Trees make good friends. I take another look around before trying it a second time – and see Linda and Myra standing hand in hand. Embarrassed, I smile at them. They theatrically shake their heads and happily continue
tramping down the track on muscular legs I’d kill to exchange my own for.

The walk to Heaphy Hut includes a couple of crossings on swaying suspension bridges, skirting limestone cliffs and caves on one side, and the Heaphy River on the other. The rocks are so overgrown with vegetation that it is difficult to distinguish, in the subdued light of the dense rainforest, what is rock and what is plant matter. The roots of a huge tree drip over the limestone, like the dribblings of a melted wax candle over a wine bottle. I am not sure whether the cliffs are supporting the trees, or vice versa. The trees in turn are covered in parasitic plants, which extract nutrients from humus collected in the branches high above. Rocky clumps and vines, tentacles and roots, all are intermingled in a seething, silent mound of vegetation and rock. It does not take much imagination to see all kinds of terrifying creatures in their shapes and shadows.

Through a gap in the nikau palms, I catch sight of the wide Heaphy River opening out to the Tasman Sea. When I get to Heaphy Hut itself, I find it has a view over river and sea, protected from the offshore winds by the forest. Because the hut is shielded from the breeze, it is infested by sandflies so vicious I wouldn’t be surprised if they could actually bark as well as bite. I walk along the river to the seashore, where huge breakers crash along endless kilometres of empty beach. Driftwood, probably from trees that have fallen into the river and been carried down to the sea, litters the beach, especially at the mouth of the river.

To avoid sleeping in the hut, I spend the best part of the afternoon building a windbreak on the spit of beach, where the river curls before it flows out to sea. Heaps of fantastically shaped driftwood provide ample construction material. The completed shelter is both useful against the burning rays of the sun and as a windbreak from the strong westerly wind.

An athletic Kiwi jogs across the sand, negotiating the tangle of driftwood to admire my handiwork. ‘Choice,’ he says. ‘Cool. Wicked. Love it. Awesome, amazing, sweet as.’ He is stoked, full on, rapt, to use the colloquial expressions. ‘Cool’ is a word he
uses often, even when I introduce myself. I never thought there was anything inherently cool about my name.

‘Rad shelter,’ he says in conclusion.

‘Crisp,’ I say. I might as well coin a new exclamation, having given up on my ability to say ‘cool’ in a way that sounds remotely cool. I don’t have the right emphasis on the ‘kuh’ part of the cool, I reckon.

‘Crisp?’ he repeats.

‘Yeah, crisp. Means cool, but better than cool.’

‘Crisp.’ He repeats it several times, listening to its sound, the effect. ‘Cool,’ he concludes.

He jogs off through the wreckage of tree trunks, heading back to the hut. I set up my home for the night. The sun sets in a red ball over the Tasman Sea, just as an orange full moon rises over the river lagoon on the other side of the spit. I cook dinner in the middle of this celestial performance, then stretch out beside my shelter. I think about what my family and friends are doing over Christmas, as I lie on this remote beach on an empty coastline, so far, far away.

The roar of waves collapsing on the beach awakens me. It’s the day before Christmas. The sun shines and already it is warm. White-breasted shags nearby dry their wings in the sunlight. I slept exceptionally well, lying on a soft cushion of sand with a comfortable sea breeze keeping the insects away.

I shake the sandy grains from the sleeping-bag, roll it up, pack my backpack and walk to the hut. Most of the resident trampers, including Wayne and his kids, have already gone. Despite the pesky insects, Linda and Myra are still affectionately locked in a wrestler’s embrace. I debate whether I should wait for them to disengage before I say goodbye, or just leave. I decide to continue down the track, knowing they will catch me up.

At the park entrance Wayne’s wife waits for her husband and children. They offer me a ride to Karamea, the nearest settlement,
where as a special Christmas treat I have already booked myself into something more up-market than a regular backpackers lodge. After passing up their invitation to continue with them to Westport, further south, I check in at the motel reception. With nothing better to do, I amble through the isolated village past a small wooden church and notice that Christmas Day service is at ten in the morning. There is not a lot to explore besides the church; Karamea is a straight road with a caf� and a grocery store. The woman who owns the caf� serves me a coffee, insists I try her cakes and will not let me pay for them. Two of her tousled-headed sons distract her: one rides his bike as fast as he can down the middle of the road, pulling the other on a skateboard, like a water skier on a rope behind a jet boat. The skateboarder careers recklessly between both sides of the deserted street; if he wipes out, he is going to cover himself with gravel rash.