Te Araroa: Thanksgiving

The Blissful Hiker is back on New Zealand's Te Araroa thru-hike, "slackpacking" through Auckland then celebrating Thanksgiving with her Kiwi hosts, discovering she has a lot to be grateful for. 

In this episode: 

1. "Slackpacking" means hiking on a thru-hike with only what's needed for the day, leaving overnight gear at a friend's where the hiker sleeps. 
2. Blissful hikes in rain and sunshine through parks, up blown out volcanoes, into museums and along busy roads. 
3. She learns about another hiker dying on the trail and considers how easy it is to make a dumb decision, wondering if risking everything to come on this hike was a good one.
4. And at a Thanksgiving meal she realizes she feels gratitude for her decision, dumb or not. 

MUSIC: Introduccion y allegro by Carlos Guastavino as played by Alison Young, flute and Vicki Seldon, piano
available on iTunes

Transcript

It’s raining.

A lot.

And expected to all day long – with a little lightning on the side.

But I have good rain gear – and I’m only slackpacking my way through Auckland, New Zealand’s largest city. 

Slackpacking has that word “slack” in it – as in slacking off. That’s just about right. I’m walking the Te Araroa “trail” but using far less energy because I left most of my things – my tent, my sleeping bag, stove and fuel – with my hosts. I’ll walk as far as I can over the next three days and then get to sleep in a bed at night, eating a proper meal sitting in a chair at a table.

In fact, it’s Thanksgiving and I’ll be celebrating in Kiwi style with my hosts. 

There’s a lot to be thankful for – their hospitality for one, but also all the lucky, serendipitous, accidents of fate that have happened in this first month of my first thru-hike. 

Come along now on my walk through Auckland, where for two solid days, it’s been pouring rain. It’s not cold as I enter Cornwall Park and duck into the Acacia cottage built by an influential settler. For a moment I feel like these people, happy to have a solid roof over my head against the elements. 

It’s definitely a full-on case of ‘because it is there’ as I summit the volcanic cone, of One Tree Hill, so named after a settler chopped down a sacred tree to the local Maori. I’m in almost complete whiteout, though not alone as a few runners and old folks with walking sticks touch the top before heading right back down.

There are more cottages to visit in Jellicoe Park, one a scavenger’s dream in piles of junk including five vintage vacuum cleaners, a collection of ‘cocks, taps and valves’ and an organ with sheet music for Christmas in New Zealand with no snow or wooly hats. I’m told the owner’s wife warned her collector husband if he brought home any more, they'd need a bigger house.

Through the tiny pocket of Taumanu reserve I meet two Americans also walking the trail in small bites, one of whom you’ll meet much later in the story. 

I stop at a fruit and vege though at this point all I want to eat is junk food. Two friends-of-friends, Paula and Mike meet me to cross Manukau Bay on a pedestrian walkway under the highway better known as “mugger’s alley.” Because the beautiful old Mangere Bridge is sinking into the estuary, we chance our luck on this alternative, moving fast toward Ambury Park, a wide grassy area dotted with sheep oblivious to the inclement weather. 

 We part at the Insect Garden filled with nettles poisonous to the touch. I continue towards the stinky sewage plant and reclaimed wetlands crowded with black swans and their goslings, swallows diving, and ducks new to me honking crankily. It’s a migratory bird oasis, this combination black sand and oyster shell beach thick with pale pink morning glories, the long grass pressed down in a field of combovers.

And it’s right there that I run into cool the-trail-will-provide Nathan and we walk and talk together on a long road walk to the airport where he’ll spend the night sleeping on a bench. The sky goes black as we part and I seek refuge at the Butterfly Creek children’s party venue just as an evil breeze presses in, lightning and absolute, full-on, no holds barred downpour. But I am totally safe with about thirty screaming children.

The rain lets up and I’m back on a narrow shoulder of road right under the incoming flight path as cars whizz past. At the Puhinui reserve, curious heifers follow me down the trail before I enter my first public toilet in New Zealand. A helpful recorded voice gives me ten minutes alone and if it’s too hard to figure the time, some jazzy Burt Bacharach counts down for me. 

It’s office parks, scruffy neighborhoods and finally the botanic gardens filled with Totara and Norfolk Pine, the rain slacking off. Susie and Sarah are waiting for me in their car to take me back to their home in Mount Eden.

On our drive, Susie tells me a tramper died today on the Tongariro Alpine crossing, a part of the trail I'll come to in another month. The contrast with slackpacking through Auckland with plenty of places to escape the elements and my hosts just a phone call away – couldn’t be more stark.

As Susie speaks, I finger my hut pass in my wallet, the one I purchased for backcountry stays as I move further south in New Zealand. On the front of the pass, there’s a safety code with solid advice: Plan your trip, Tell someone, Be aware of weather, Know your limits, Take sufficient supplies. 

The deceased wasn't a Te Araroa hiker. He did not heed any of that advice and was totally unprepared when the weather turned ugly, splitting up from his group and getting lost. 

Once we return, I take a hot shower, fill up on nutritious food and drink a beer that Sarah picked up for me especially knowing how much I crave one after walking. I feel bad for that poor hiker and for his family. He made dumb decisions for sure, but we’re all capable of making dumb decisions and it’s easy to judge clean and dry and safe. 

All I can do is take it as a reminder – a kind of warning – to try not to make any of my own dumb decisions. I make a pact with myself to stay alert as I graciously accept one more beer and enjoy the company of my lovely hosts. 

It’s Auckland in glorious sunshine. I look more like a tourist than a backpacker as I join a free walking tour and learn of a statue made in the 1960s to honor the Maori, one made by a woman – all sorts of impossible awarenesses converging. 

At Queen and Customs Streets, the signal stops all traffic and people casually pour into the street like a slow motion dance choreographed for some in choppy straight lines, others striding diagonally.

Krispy Kreme just opened a café in the Central Business District celebrates with disco blaring and free donuts for everyone in a line snaking out onto the square. 

I love Auckland’s walkability and with a visa, I am considered a temporary resident so I can enter the art museum for free housing works by Maori from Aotearoa and Moana.

I’m stopped in my tracks at a mural made by Ralph Hotere. Originally meant for the airport, it’s called Godwit, named for the long billed, long legged wader who fly 7,000 miles non-stop on their annual migrations, the ‘can do and go anywhere’ bird I saw often on my long beach walking. I try to absorb some of that bird’s pluck into my blissful hiking soul.

One hundred women build sand mounds and celebrate creation; regional artists see land as metaphor. Finally it’s a long hallway of extraordinary Maori portraits from the 1870s made by Gottfried Lindauer not from life, but from photographs. The men have rangi pahuri or full-face tattoos, that signify their mana or influence and some are in European dress with handlebar mustaches, although I find the women more powerful with tattoos around their mouths, on their lips and chin.

Up the hill at the Wintergardens I encounter a fragrant and humid world under glass. Massive pitcher plants yawn obscenely yet invitingly to unsuspecting passersby. In the shade, the temperature is mild on the verge of chilly, I sip a green drink and rest my legs. I am actually on the Te Araroa now, but my pack is only carrying my phone charger.

I head into the museum and find an extraordinary exhibit of Maori artifacts including a 25-meter long war canoe made of one totara log. Large figures look on through abalone eyes, most with their tongues stuck out at me.

And then it’s ‘Hot Words, Bold Retorts,’ a celebration of 125 years of women’s suffrage – New Zealand being the first country in the world to give women the vote, but not including any sort of equality for the sexes in the bargain. These were tough broads, one portrait prominently displays a woman from my host’s family.

Upstairs is natural history, giant wingless moa, giant ‘ponderous heavy diving’ penguins, giant ammonite fossils stagger the imagination.

I skip the curiosities of the odd, dusty collections from around the world and head back into the sunshine where the bay greets me turquoise and glistening. Up Mt. Eden the wind dries my sweat. It’s crowded, everyone tippy- tapping on their phones. A blown out volcano, there’s a huge grassy pit in front of the summit marker.

It’s only a few blocks and I’m back at Susie and Mark’s house where they tell me to make myself at home. This Kiwi Thanksgiving potluck meal is not much different from home, though it’s sliced turkey and ham rather than an entire bird, plus salads and potatoes, heaps of deserts and wine.

We gather in the living room, standing in a circle, each taking a few kernels of corn to represent our blessings. As we share our individual thoughts, the themes are similar – we’re grateful for family, for friends, and for being buoyed by the holy spirit. 

To top it off, one family friend named Mike offers up a Maori greeting especially for me as a newcomer. 

Ellen DeGeneres said, “When you take risks you learn that there will be times when you succeed and there will be times when you fail, and both are equally important.”

It’s funny writing and voicing this podcast right now as I cross the two-year anniversary of my first steps on the Te Araroa. Facebook sending me “memories” of my thru-hike preparation is mostly how I’m reminded of this fact. 

Things didn’t quite work out when I came home after finishing the Te Araroa, and it would be easy to say I made a dumb decision to risk it all just to walk a bunch of roads in the rain and visit a few museums. 

As we go around the circle sharing our joys and sorrows, I realize wouldn’t have known any of this at the time. Nor would I know that I’d be where I am today, unable to walk and awaiting two surgeries to fix my deteriorating hips. 

But that’s why I went, to walk while I could and live fully with what I had available to me. 

It’s interesting that the Maori use the term “sacred feet” to explain a visitor transforming from a stranger to family. My decision to take my feet to a new place was based on wanting to experience it first hand and to know it in as intimate a way as possible. 

I’m grateful for that decision to walk the length of an entire country. It was one of the best decisions of my life.