Down river, part 1

Three days ago we'd put the kayaks on the banks for the first time. Luckily for us (Annabelle, Pat and myself) Oz had done this before which made him the most responsible out of all of us.

"So has anyone else ever done this before?" he ventured.

We all shook our heads. Nope. The river surged by.

"I've got a phobia of water" said Pat.
"I'm a crap swimmer" I chipped in.
Annabelle reserved an ominous silence for her own hopes and fears.

I kind of imagined what went through Oz's head, and proceeded to laugh my ass off. This had all the signs of a real epic. Bring it on.

Oz did a cracking job of teaching us how to capsize which was a big deal because apparently there was a gorge section ahead. None of us really liked airing thoughts on what the gorge section might be like, it was important to maintain optimism at this stage. The first practice of "falling out" I got my boot trapped in the boat and nearly got swept down the river. The second time I came up under the kayak and it was... well... embarrassing. And a bit worrying really. Everyone else did fine. Pat was particularly smooth at it, which was good, coz he'd be doing a lot of that later on.

The gleam in ranger's eye

A smile, a twinkle in the eye, the sharing of a secret. Information usually reserved for the locals, released only after achieving mutual respect. She told me where it was and how to get there. She smiled the smile of someone who knows I going to have a good experience, but knows I couldn't possibly imagine how good. "You don't have to thank me" she said, "I'm just the messenger". I pretty much run out of the Mt Cook visitor centre, my pack airborne behind me.

Bye Oz

Its been four fantastic months on and off the road travelling with Oz. He's an outstanding bloke - I don't know many people who share the same views on going with the flow, and our experiences have rubbed us deep into the fabric of New Zealand. It's been a privilege to have set off into the unknown with him.

Now, we both have specific things to do in our last days in NZ so this is goodbye for a while. Him the tramping hippie, me the hippie tramper.

I watch as he pads off with guitar slung over his back, melting into the crowd. I hope he finds what he wants in Takaka, I smile as I know he will. The lucky bastard gets to work in one of the nicest kitchens on the planet and experience a community in one of the most beautiful hippie capitals in the world.

As for me, it's just one thing... the Dusky track. I jump on a local bus and get the hell out of Christchurch city centre.

The pancake and the stone

I am one of the throng visiting the "pancake rocks". Punakaki is famous for its "pancake rocks". Its "pancake rocks" bring in thousands of tourists every year. I look at them. It's true, they do look like pancakes made out of rock. Lots of them stacked on top of each other, like the ones I had in a diner in New York, but without the maple syrup.

But are these the only rocks on the coast? I think not. It's amazing how everyone, including myself, has descended on this bit of coast when there are literally thousands of miles of incredible natural elements to be seen. The reason we are here in Punakai of course is because some smart person gave these rocks a name. We all know what a pancake is so we can relate to this natural phenomenon. And now Punakai makes a lot of money.

It made me think. I think we give things labels primarily for survival, and later philosophy. Words speed up our ability to function in the physical world. If someone ran at you with a spear, questioning the nature of the spear wouldn't be much consolation while it's poking out the other side of your torso. If we spent all day analysing what is meant by a chair we'd probably never get round to sitting on it. So things get labels, or words, to speed up our comprehension of reality. Words provide generic meanings, and getting specific about a single entity can take up books of words. Nothing new there.

Two months later I scrabble up a mountain and put my foot on a stone about 30cm across. Everything about me stops. I put the pack down and look at the stone. At first glance there is nothing amazing about this stone. I have trodden over a million stones in my life, but there's something very strange about this one. I feel a huge connection with it, which is crazy because it is just a rock. I have no vocabulary to explain anything about the connection, other than it makes me stop for five minutes questioning whether there is something special about this stone or I'm just loosing my mind. The connection I have makes it the most incredible rock I have ever witnessed in my life.

If I hadn't "felt" it, I wouldn't have noticed it. This thought makes me look up and around. At this point in time I don't have words for anything else I can see. Maybe crude ones like mountains, glaciers, forest... some general features I can see even have pet names given to them by explorers. But all of a sudden I am hit by the things that don't have a specific name. Which is pretty much everything. And everything looks back, and laughs at my traditional thought process. Every other individual "rock" is insulted by my limited vocabulary, as is every individual "tree" and every individual "cloud". I am paralysed with wonder and cannot move for several minutes.

Hut of huts

I sit in the doorway of Sefton bivvy - this hut echoes every definition I ever had of 'idyllic'. I'm so high up that I am looking down at a chopper flying up the Mount Cook valley. It took 4 hours of off-track scrambling to get here, and on arrival I immediately got on the radio and changed my plan of intentions with the DOC to stay here for not one, but three days.

I have the place to myself. There is everything I need here. No beds, just a floor space 2m x 3m, a water butt, a candle and a glacier 100 meters away. I hadn't even planned on coming here... as with most trip highlights.

The days are bathed in beautifully warm sunlight. In the dark the temperature lingers at 4°C and I lie on every bit of insulation I can find. Last night I crept out of the hut to go for a piss, only to see the valley below carpeted entirely in cloud, the tops licking at the base of the hut. The moon illuminated the vista, giving the impression that I was standing at the edge of an ethereal lake. Or was I dreaming?

The fear

Panic pushes my mind into a spin and I start running. Uphill. With a 20 kg pack on. After 3 hours of continuous off-track climbing. At an altitude of 1400m.


STOP! Idiot, stop. I force myself to stand still and assess. I listen to my heart which is banging like a machine gun. Jesus, if I keep this up I’ll have a coronary in a minute. I wait until my heart stops trying to break my rib cage open and try to assess what the hell is going on. Above is a gnarly cliff hiding the horizon with no obvious route, 800m below is the Mt Cook valley which looks like it wants to eat me and I'm on an exposed ridge. The end is nowhere in sight and I have 60 minutes before it gets dark. I need mental control NOW. Panic had stemmed from shock, shock had stemmed from fear, fear had come from a bad situation. And as my good friend AK would say, you should never push a bad situation.

I'd arrived at the trail head earlier that day. There had been just enough time to research the route, throw my excess kit into a bush and hit the trek. I'd got rough directions to Sefton bivvy hut, but as it was all off-track the going had been tough hands and knees stuff. I'd missed a good line on the way up and paid the price with a difficult traverse. To make matters worse, after finishing the traverse and coming out onto the main ridge I saw what I had previously thought was the hut. But now I could see it wasn't the hut. It was a big boulder that looked like a hut, but it definitely was not a hut. Hence the moment.

And now time is running out. Apart from having nowhere to bivvy down on the harsh slope it feels so exposed that the smallest cloud could pick me up and blow me into the chasm.

I was impressed at my STOP. It was the right thing to do. I had controlled my mind, reigned in my grip on reality. Now I can rationalise. I figure if this fairly worn line is going uphill it MUST go to the hut. Or at least to a point where I can see it. I'll just keep plodding on, keep the BPM down, chill Winston.

Forty-five minutes later I crest another ridge and there, in all its sunset splendour, lies Sefton Bivvy hut. Its location is so totally spectacular, and my relief is so great, that I scream and punch the air. "YOU F**KING BEAUTY!!!!" just about sums it up. Epic over, I grin all the way up the last section, and make the last radio call with enough time to cook lentils.

Glaciers alive!

I'd seen glaciers from a distance before.

"Oh you've got to go and see the glacier up close, it's so stunning!" everyone had said.

Really? I mean honestly, aren't they just persistent swathes of snow? Which bit are you getting excited about exactly? Conversationally, I didn't get it. So when I was in Mt Cook a few weeks ago I thought I'd go up to a glacier. To see if I could get it.

The noises took me by surprise. It would talk, using a massive vocabulary for the short time I was there. The occasional groans during the nights, as you'd expect from any sleeping giant, were on the same bassy frequencies as thunder. As the sun warmed it in the morning it made the kind of noises you'd expect from any mottled blue brute getting out of bed. Hours of silence would be punctuated with scrapes, grinds, gushes of melt water, crashes, cracks, collapses, slips, rockfall. I could never see exactly where they came from of course - each noise was "from inside" and without warning, which only added to the prowess of the phenomenon. Its formidable aura prompted me to read my book on a well protected spot, but I kept it within arm's reach and occasionally patted it.

On the last sunset I did naked yoga on it, assuming crampons don't count as clothes. As I tried to connect my mind to it for the first time I immediately felt an enormous sense of pity. It was dying. As are we, but somehow because it's bigger and defenceless, it's much sadder. The longer I sat there, the more I realised that it's not just stunning, it's alive. This made me realise a lot about our misperceptions of the label "life". I think a lot of us are in the wrong paradigm, but that's another blog post.

I spent three days up there. I have just finished the descent and now I sit in a field in the valley watching a stupefying sunset over Mount Cook. There is not a cloud in the sky and Cook is shrouded in glaciers similar to mine, all melting. No one around me speaks. We all get it.

Boiling point

I was fifteen, or thereabouts, when our physics teacher explained how the boiling point of water drops the higher you go. I imagined taking a stove up to the top of a mountain to boil water would be quite exciting. But, as I sat there in on an uncomfortable wooden stool, dressed in a ridiculous uniform with the rest of my life ahead of me, it never occurred to me that the experience might also be beautiful. This was what I could see above the boiling lentils... click to enlarge.

The perfect hitch

The sun wanes on a dusty highway. My boots lead me and my pack towards the plains. I parallel a commuting exodus out of the Christchurch metropolis, my thumb high in the air, my back to the mechanical fish.

A black car swings off the road and stops in front of me. It's a Toyota Celica, my teen-dream car... the nineties model, with more curves than Jessica Rabbit and a custom spoiler which could send us all Back to the Future.

Cars like this don't normally stop for hobos like me. I jog up to the window, confused. I do the usual scan over the driver seat for alcohol and weapons... but all is squeaky.

"Need a ride?" he says.
"Er, yeah! Thanks... where you headed?" I ask.
"Wherever you like mate, I'm just going for a drive."

I kind of hesitate, am I dreaming?

"Sweet! How does Mount Cook sound?"
"Cool, I never been there before."
"Me neither..." I grin, "Let's do it!"

I trade stories for cigarettes and bubble gum. We pull away and I navigate him up the ranges, bass pumping out of his 1.2 kW sound system, blowing bubbles all the way. At the end of a three hour ride he drops me off at two perfect hammock trees and gives me his hi-viz jacket, which in a week or so will save my ass.

"What's you name" I'd asked at the beginning.
"FREEDOM" he'd said.

True.

A theory of relativity

S'been a while. Maybe just because the extraordinary experiences have become the norm. Life being amazing and all, can have a lot to do with change. I have noticed that it's usually only the second differential of cumulative experience - that is the rate of change of change - which drives me to write. It's almost like it's the twists and turns of the flux remind me I'm alive. And for one without a memory, reminders need to be pounced on before they slip away. So here's some more...

Lumination

It is the closing ceremony. Sunset has given way to night.

In the centre, a huge fire. A glowing ring of organisers close around the flames, some holding hands. Around this circle gather maybe 600 who have shared six days high up in the mountains. I am priveleged to be one of them.

The drums stop. Thanks are given to the round of organisers, this moment is about appreciation for them. They had believed in something so strongly that they had been compelled to make this festival happen and we look on at them with abject respect.

A wise lady begins speaking for us all to hear. It is one of those speeches which should have been recorded and replayed for the good of mankind. As she draws to the end a man from the circle interrupts to argue a point, but he is shouted down by the group. We 600 are captivated and moved by her every word and want to hear the final message: simply, if we do not like the world as we see it then we can change it.

After the speech is finished the man who interrupted earlier attempts to take the stage again and continues to argue his point. There is no message in his argument, no points, just sheer negativity. The entire circle becomes aware that if something isn't done quickly the incredible vibe of appreciation around the fire will be swallowed by the mind of somebody who's completely out of touch - someone who's missed the entire point of the festival.

From the jaws of despair comes perfection. The 600 spontaneously break out into a collective Om. As each and every individual generates a hum the accoustic energy is deafening and swallows up the piercing negativity, replacing it with a magnificent taurus of energy. It resonates a mile high towards the stars.

After a spectacular minute the vibration subsides and a single voice the crys out "WE LOOOOOVE YOOOOOOUUUUU!!!". The entire circle erupts into cheers and whoops and applause for those in front of us who, through the power of belief, had changed most of all of our worlds for the past six days and beyond. The hairs on the back of my neck stand up, a truely awesome moment.

We, that is myself, Oz, Annabelle, Nadine, Darius and Tramper the tiger, are all completely blown away. As the moment subsides a voice shouts out from the back "It's all working out exactly as it should - everything's going perfectly!!!".

Amist the shouts and crys of joy fromt he crowd we all realise that it kind of is.

Christmas Fish

I roll up my trousers and walk barefoot into the sandy ripples. Ahead, Ozzie floats our small rowing boat out into the mountain lake. His figure, together with oars and boat, cut a stunning silhouette into an ochred rainbow of dawn colours. It is Christmas day and we must hunt for our dinner.

Water laps at the bow as we coast stealthily along the river bank. Oz drags the line behind us as I paddle as quietly as humanly possible – the ocassional, rhythmic grind of metal from the rollocks emanates into the lake. It ruins our cover, but every 10 minutes or so we are greeted with the spashing sound of a fish on the water, so tantilisingly close.

Half way around the lake we drift into a bay and back in time, to the Jurassic. The beginnings of a new sun pick up an ethereal mist which wanders as a pink demon over the clear glass. Dead wooden limbs stretch petrified out of the water and claw their points at the air. A big fish swims beneath the boat.

We catch nothing.

----

I wake to feel the sun chewing off my skin. I shrug myself upright to see Oz passed out on the middle bench of the boat. The hull knocks against a bank I haven't met before... the breeze has blown us to the other side of the lake. The sun beats hard. I have a fish hook buried painfully into the sole of my foot. We'd stayed up all night before pushing out, and I feel destroyed. My face seems to drip from my skull.

 

I try to wake Oz. He doesn't want to move. No catch, no food, no energy and a huge distance to row home. I don't blame him. We are low. But we must get back. Agonisingly, I poke him again.

We row. Forever.

At long last we arrive back at our camp, I hop through the shallows as Oz drags the boat up the sand and we collapse back into our hammocks. Our sentences are of single words only. Through midday and early afternoon, sleep does not come, the heat does not relent. Sand bugs hound my ear drums. I begin to feel at a loss. We have failed. Reality turns brittle and chaotic. What am I doing again? Why am I here facing this wall? It consumes me, the realisation that we are incapable of surviving on our skills is horrible. I try desperately to staunch the loops of worry that accelerate through my mind, try desperately to cling to context. I admit to myself that I look forward to going home, right now that thought is a solace. But four months seems an eternity.

I am consoled with a memory – this is exactly why I am here: to meet this reality face to face.

I cannot lie here thinking any more, worrying, but I am so exhausted it's the only thing I, Edward Sells, am able to do. I have tried to sleep and cannot. I need reality back, I need a plan. I reach for my watch and strap it to my wrist. I have not worn it for a few days, and the digits on its face offer a grip on time. Relativity returns. I swing my legs to ground – they feel like sacks of potatoes - and mutter a mantra to myself so I do not forget: hydrate... hydrate... hydrate... I fumble for a cup and some salt sachets and neck a litre. I blow weakly on the fire to boil another billy can with two tea bags and the rest of the sugar, pouring myself another half of tea. I fix Oz the same, and nag him to down the lot. I hate it, it's hard, he's waking-grumpy and I hate forcing it, but we need to rescue this Christmas.

The ingredients stimulate my head and I reach for my music and the axe. Using the ipod is a defeat, but now I've admitted it, my moral needs a repair job and I take comfort in familiar tunes from technologies far far away. Oz cranks himself out of the hammock. “Kraak and Smaak”'s funky house beats pulse through my earphones as I hack up a limb for the fire, and I force myself to dance. Energy flows through my fingers again, and there is work to be done. We can still do it. This Christmas ain't dead yet.

----

In retrospect this was the best Christmas ever*. Curiosity was satiated. I got to see the ragged edge I've been looking for. Now I've been and met it face to face I can get on with avoiding it. I never want to go back there again. The whole point of survival seems to be to establish hope – we sew up the holes of despair by completely integrating with the resources around us, through tools and skills. Oz and I are integrated in fire, shelter and water, but not food. Without all four things we can never be truly wild. Christmas's lesson to us was that hunting is not a dream you can just go out and immediately realise. It is not an easy gift. It takes years of practice and awareness. But unfortunately it is the most expensive of the four things, burning a huge amount of calories and time. And when we return with an empty catch, it has been devastating to our mental states.

I now think the best we get out of this trip will be the skill to sustain food - that'll be all the big gaps sewn up. I hope Father Christmas brings us hunting lessons.

-----
* this post is only about the hard fish, I could write a book on all the good stuff that happened ;-)

Website updated

www.edandozinnz.exofire.net

Camp Christmas

Took 3 days to build from scratch, what a corker...



... and how could I forget the bar?

Walking out

We walk out of the bush. The jungle canopy falls behind our heads, as if taking off a hood - a blue sky stretches out above us and over a grassy green vista rolling beneath: the Bay of Plenty. It's a panorama of rolling valleys tumbling down to a distant beach crescent and then the big blue sea.

Our first kit test is done. We feel fit and alive. I laugh at the noises of the birds, especially the one which sounds like a donkey and a mechanic having a fight.

We were only in there for a miniscule 7 days but we learnt a whole load about protein deficiency and discovered that we need better hunting tools. Most importantly we've finally immersed ourselves in the NZ bush, and completely loved it. We walk away in the knowledge that we had a huge amount to learn before going full time.

15 km later we walk onto a Backpackers clean carpet in full kit. There's synchronized head-turning from the clean crowd watching the telly, bit longer than usual, before their retinas are velcro'd back to the screen. We sweat at the desk, slog through the obligatory tour of the hostel and the stupid fucking forms. We throw packs on sprung bunk beds and fly to the shower. Rivules of precious grease swil down the white ceramic floor and disappear down the plug hole. Hot water from a tap is one of the most brilliant outcomes of science and we sing loud enough for the whole hostel to hear. James Brown himself would have got down.

It is lovely, really nice, but I can't help thinking “I don't need it”. The comfort of the showers and the beds that is - everybody needs James Brown.

Everybody also needs protein, so we get our dry clothes on and walk barefoot through the town. A kid in his car leans out and shouts “Bwoy!” at me, low and aggressive. It felt like he was after trouble. I don't normally get into fights, but he'd picked a bad time, I'm still tuned into survival mode and this is a threat. One more time and I'll spin round and go for him, get the first one in before he can pull any moves, use the car door if I have to. I immediately check myself in surprise – I guess seven days without meat and scraping by really sharpens your instincts. I find out later that “bwoy's” a standard guesture, he was probably only trying to shift some weed.

We walk away down the pavement. I find a $20 floating in the breeze and stash it as I would an unearthed worm for bait, quickly getting it into the pocket before it wriggles away.

Darkness begins to fall. The town is the same as any other, nature tempered by tarmac under our feet. The street lights flick on in a predictable manner just like any other. Street lights coax traffic along just like any other. People don't talk to each other. What's there to say? Same old city crap, different day.

Outside the supermarket Ozzie and I sit on the grass swigging bottles of coke, instinctively looking across at the bush – the huge range now on the horizon. Our new sky puts down a wonderful sunset over the Kaimai crest as if a final gesture of goodbye.

We go eat steak.

[As I write this post Ozzie is doubled over the toilet puking his guts out. Poor chap. But this is unrelated - I am weeks behind.]

Catabolism

Hayes... Poles... Get some

Goodbye Gran

It is dark and windy and cold. The rain lashes down against my face and the waves bounce over my knees and splash over my waist. I face the sea, cigarette in one hand, half bottle of wine in the other. Both dangle in the wash, my hands numbed as each wave passes.

Gran passed away a couple of days ago. I didn't know. I just spoke to Dad, he told me. I remember times at the beach in Portsmouth, a tiered beach of large pebbles and model villages. And a weekend I spent with her, when she explained the holy ghost to me and how all that fitted in. We talk over the wind.

As fresh water runs to salt, mother nature continues to lap at my knees. I am one half of my father and I feel more for him than anyone else on the planet. I wish I was with him.

Arrival into Daley's clearing

Arrival at hut

Suffering from dehydration I slump to the floor. I reach for the water and suck the last drops and watch the world spin. It took us 7 hours it to make it to “Daley's clearing hut”, marked in the centre of this vast bush and our bodies have taken another beating. The dense rain forest was beautiful, every glance up through the canopy greeted with shreds of blue sky cutting through high palm into the cool undergrowth. Below we sweat along the contours on a narrow track, battling over and under huge fallen trees, river crossings and treacherously slippy roots. We see no one.

A slip or a fall is immediately punished by the 30kgs, and the geometry of the packs makes traversing an obstacles tough. Vines claw at our backs, snagging at every twist and decimating our pace. The walking poles I bought in Auckland regularly save my skin, keeping balance and pulling me up sharp river beds. But I am bouyed by the knowledge that the more we eat the lighter our loads become, and I can feel sinews knitting a new frame.

The cheese shack

The cheese shack

It took a day to get here. Last night we arrived and strung our hammocks in between the beams of an open shelter in deep jungle. We slept for 12 hours. It is now our rest day in the shelter. Keeping the fire going to purify water and cook is an all day job, continually adjusting the jenga pile to dry sodden wood.

There is no such thing as standing dead wood here, humidity is so high that dead wood rots on arrival. This morning I punched my fist through a tree. It can't have been more than a few weeks dead. Everything here has a hollow pith meaning rot comes from the inside too, it's like they were designed to decompose. We make do with what little we can, and our hard work is rewarded with good hot meals.

Last night a possom stole our cheese, so tonight I've made a trap using the remains and the axe poised to take it out. Tomorrow we make a push for a hut a few km away, perhaps with fur. It's $100 per kilo here.

Moral is excellent.