In this passage from his book A Tramper's Journey, Mark Pickering describes his first tramp in New Zealand. Photo / 123rf
In this passage from his book A Tramper's Journey, Mark Pickering describes his first tramp in New Zealand. Photo / 123rf
In his new book, Across the Pass, Shaun Barnett compiles some of the best writing about hiking in New Zealand. Whether you're heading out on a hike or dreaming about good walks gone by, the stories are sure to resonate with Kiwi readers.
In this passage from his book A Tramper's Journey, Mark Pickering describes his first tramp in New Zealand, having newly arrived from England.
'Do you know where the Easy Trip is?' ...
The Wellington Tramping & Mountaineering Club (WT&MC) was the young man's choice of club in the city, with about 400 members. They proudly knew themselves as the "Tongue and Meats", apparently because when the club started up (in 1947, I believe) they shared the same initials as the "Wellington Tongue and Meat Company". I joined the club for my first-ever tramping trip in December 1974, hoping matters would go smoothly, and indeed there were some vivid and novel moments.
We were halfway up the Rimutaka Hill when the bus engine seized. Being English and sensible, and newly in the country, I thought, "Oh well, that's it, we will have to go home now." However, this obvious line of behaviour did not occur to anyone else. Instead, the driver threw his cigarette away in disgust, laconically muttered something about "getting another one", and hitched off down the hill into the gathering dusk.
I couldn't quite believe it: would he come back? The trampers on the bus started playing soccer on the road with a tin can while an hour ticked by. Friday night cars swept past us in a blaze of headlights and hurried on up the hill, and then, after two hours, a low throttled roar announced that another Runciman bus was indeed coming to our rescue. Packs were thrown into the new bus, and we were off again without a thought to the bus parked halfway up the hill.
I was bewildered by the twists and turns leading to the Mangatainoka road end (a word I couldn't get my English-trained tongue around) where packs were unloaded in what I later came to understand was a characteristic shambles of noise and shouting. Everyone seemed to know where to go except me. Torches flashed, trip leaders bellowed and different tramping parties took off in a thousand different directions. The bus roared off and suddenly I was alone, or at least it felt like it.
There was one other bloke left behind, adjusting his straps. He looked at me curiously, as if I had just come from Mars. The following conversation took place.
He adjusted another buckle interminably. I heard my first morepork. Then he showed clear and alarming signs of leaving. I had to ask the question I was dreading.
"Do you know where the Easy Trip is?"
"Nope."
He slung on his pack. He volunteered a comment.
"Lost 'em 'ave yer?"
"Yes."
Humiliated, I had to admit it. Two minutes off the bus and I'd "lost 'em". He volunteered another comment.
He nodded vaguely and I made out some torches dangling over a black void. So that's where everyone had gone! I almost panicked, and in my haste to catch up and get across my first swing bridge, at night, the borrowed pack got caught up in the wires.
At the other side, I met up with the trip leader, Ian Bunckenburg, who "wondered where I'd got to", and we plunged up a bush track to some trees where people were flinging down their sleeping bags and someone was pumping a primus like fury. I hadn't brought a sleeping mat, so I banked up my pitiful bits of clothes, huddled into my borrowed sleeping bag, and froze. The stars were cold and had no charm that night. Nobody spoke to me. I felt miserable.
We've all had hiking mishaps, for Mark Pickering, banking up bits of clothes and huddling into a borrowed sleeping bag led to a freezing night. Photo / 123rf
But the morning brought compensations – a sunny day and bacon sizzling on a primus. Two other groups of trampers disappeared and the Easy Trip that I'd signed up for took on human names and faces.
Every event that day was a first. I felt most peculiar in my shorts, nice natty corduroys, and even stranger sloshing up a river without even taking my boots and socks off. There was even an odd introspective charm about watching my first sandfly burrow happily into my skin. We sweated up to Cattle Ridge Hut and gazed at the views, then swam in the Ruamahanga River and set up camp beside it, building a huge cathedral of flame. There were stars again, friendly this time, and girls, also friendly, and sitting around an argumentative campfire was a totally unexpected form of bliss.
I got sunburn, nappy rash, and fell in love. I was sold.
Extract from Across the Pass: A Collection of New Zealand Tramping Writing selected by Shaun Barnett. Otago University Press. $45. On sale now.
