They are back in the UK now and waking up to reality. It’s been lovely seeing them but sad watching them trying to adjust
He’s taking some comfort in writing.
It’s a long intro to the walk.
I thought I’d share it (mebe a bit long and poignant for a message board):
Nerves form the most peculiar of emotions.
Sometimes played out as an anxious shivering, an inability to sit still, vibrating yourself into a submissive tiredness. A vine wrapping itself around a wall.
Other times it grasps you and holds you down, a reclusiveness, bile returning itself as you begin to open your mouth, forcing you to keep quiet. A beleaguered awkwardness.
And everyone knows what to say don’t they?
“Oh don’t worry you’re not nervous, you’re just excited.” Oh am I? Well goody gumdrops for me.
“Oh, nervous are you? Don’t worry, it’ll all be okay.” Will it? Fantastic, clearly you’re an expert on my mental breakdown, can’t wait to hear all about what you think of me.
But as my **** lifted from the toilet seat for the 3rd time that morning, it was safe to say that no well wishing individual could talk me down from the nerves that were facing me that morning.
Like a man, staring into a black hole.
Knowing full well that the significance of taking a first step into the abyss was simply irretrievable, that there was no turning back.
And whilst our bags remained packed, within the safety of our B&B, we knew we could still.
Because today.
Today my partner and I will take our first steps along Te Araroa. A hiking trail that begins at Cape Reinga and traverses the length of the North and South island of New Zealand, ending in Bluff, a whopping 3026km later.
That is, for those who are unable to speak in distances, like I am, is approximately 6 million pizzas, lined out to walk across.
Luckily, the terrain was not that of sticky cheese, and soggy tomato sauce, but as we would come to find out, that might have been preferable when compared to the New Zealand tramping terrain.
The question, why, reverberates around the toilet cubicle, as I sit down for the 4th time that day, squeezing, hopefully, my base weight down. You have to carry everything you know?
Why are we doing this to ourselves?
Our comfortable metropolitan London life being uprooted to be replaced by a life among the trees.
And I have to keep reminding myself.
Repeating it.
“Because we were miserable. Because we were miserable.”
Because we were.
Our jobs had taken over, a lockdown on our happiness playing out alongside the global pandemic.
Two try hard, people pleasers sat next to each other, on the same desk, in the same room, on the same day, working in the same industry, until we would roll from our chairs to bed, or, if it was the weekend, to the pub; a brave smile trying to hide the presence of our weary, tired eyes.
But really, we find ourselves in a B&B in Kaitaia, waiting for our taxi to take us to the starting point, because both of us truly believe that there has to be something more.
There has to be more than the brick built safety.
More than the same people in the same places drinking the same drinks, culminating in the same habitual weed smoking that closes off the evening forcefully.
That, truly, there has to be more.
And no longer.
Absolutely no longer.
Were we going to wait for it to find us.
Wishing I could be content as I reach for the toilet paper, I replay the day before.
The day before's mantra of just relax before the big day was wasted as bags were weighed (with a base weight of 10kg for all you nosey ultra lighters), plans were divulged and pizzas were eaten. For one must carb themselves up before a journey such as this.
But as the taxi arrives outside the nerves hit their precipice. Nerves like a background jazz band; the brass hitting their crescendo formidably, my heart rate keeping the time, metronomically flying along with the seeming chaos my brain was bringing.
We can still turn back.
Bags are in the car.
We can still quit now.
Nods to the B&B owner, wishes of good luck.
We can run, now and never have to quit.
The door is opened, in you get.
Run, you can quit.
Seatbelts on.
It’s too late.
You’ve got to do it now.
The taxi should have been an omen as we begin the journey from Kaitaia, a place we would be hopefully walking back through in 5 days time, winding our way to Cape Reinga. Greg, our chauffeur to the climactic peak of my sickening worry, began to talk.
And if a word more severe for talk existed, I would use it. Because his talk was like a rapper in full flow, words spitting out of him like never ending rain dropping from the clouds.
Which was ironic as with every seeming mention of the improvement of the weather, of lackadaisical, sadistic proclamations of a break in the rain, the rain would contradict him, forcing itself down even harder.
“Stop, please Greg, stop talking about the rain, you’re making it worse!!” My mind irrationally screamed, as he seemed to revel in demonstrating his ability to wield the weather to his fanciful desires.
But as his brags of avocados in the north of New Zealand began to hum into the background, the thoughts that nerves had kept at bay, like a moat around a fragile castle, had been broken.
“What if you can’t do this?”
“What if this was all for nothing?”
“Imagine how embarrassing it would be if you got injured one day into this!!”
“Loser, you don’t even like walking that much, you’re going to fail!”
A dancing circlet adorning my freshly shaved crown, mocking me as the rain pathetically falacises itself into my being.
The landscape beamed a beauty, rustically sitting within the grey dullness of the rain. Of stern rocks keeping tabs on the passengers being brought to attempt to scour their land. A swaying trees in the wind, sturdily waving us past, a light seeming ease to their movements, mocking almost, knowing too that we are in for a tough ride. A seeming trip back in time as roads were not made to be shared, as we ploughed ahead to the edge of the world.
“Of course no one else is going this way, this is F***ing stupid.” My mind concedes solemnly rubbing my arms as if predicting what the rain will feel like on my skin.
The car, and thus, the noise of Greg stops.
Awkwardly.
As.
We’re here.
We’ve made it.
To.
Kilometre 1.
Of.
Well.
Many.
Many kilometres.
I wish to sit in the car forever.
Hide within the boot to be dragged back to the safety of a town.
Maybe tomorrow I’d have the courage to go again.
But knowing that I might have to stomach another conversation with a man who can seemingly wield the weather, I felt it was time to just do this thing.
And as waterproofs were added.
Covers were thrown on.
We said our goodbyes, and with a reluctant grit in our teeth, our newly purchased hiking boots took their first, emphatic steps towards Bluff.
Just 3026km to go.
