My outdoor journey

I was about six when I summited my first peak, with Dad, on the steep, two hundred metre hills behind our vacation cabin. We called it the trig station hike. Those hills back onto a rugged state forest park where I saw my first gorge. I remember looking down to the stream, fascinated at the depth and the ruggedness. I drew a gorge, calling it the Grand Canyon, which I soon learned was real.

I was twelve when we did the Hollyford Valley trek, an adventure for which we trained in another part of that forest park and which brought me face to face with my nemesis since infancy. Many people like tree ferns as bush and garden plants but I find them a spooky, imperious beast. For a time, I compared them with triffids. I had been known to scream blue murder at them, but we would be with other people on a commercial trek, so that option was out. My father’s an old school type, born during the Great Depression, so…I had to man up. Call it tough love, facing your fears. The Hollyford introduced me to more rugged terrain and larger ferns. On the final day, I foolishly sipped from a flooded stream and paid the price.

We upped the ante a year later with the towering, rugged mountains and valleys of the Milford Track and the panorama from the wind-blown McKinnon Pass. I remember the final day – twenty kilometres - as long and hard. My goal was to reach that finish line and relieve my sore feet. I was the first to do so.
These treks were fun and a good challenge but, for all the exposure, my fear of ferns was permanent. There was one behind the shed at our cabin which Mum had me stand in front of a few times, to no avail. I don’t like them. To continue hiking, I’d have to grit my teeth or…do something else. I gritted my teeth. It was a tightrope but I like the outdoors/wilderness and I couldn’t let tree ferns win.
In 1987 Outward Bound introduced me to “going bush”, no tracks. Until the sea scheme hit us, the bush hikes, especially Bush 1, belted us around. That was supposed to happen. They were tough assignments in the steep, bent, fractured terrain of the Richmond Range. The instructors dropped us off somewhere and left us to navigate via map and compass and sweat to the finish. On the first night of Bush 2 we summited a difficult but key peak then we dropped and slept in the wind. We were fitter and freer, we wanted the damn thing out of the inbox and off our backs and so it was. We finished that hike early. The main lesson was to hydrate. Your body is two thirds water so, if nothing else, drink. Top up, whenever you can. You don’t know what’s coming.

Following Outward Bound I joined a hiking club and my outdoor life took off. I was in the hills most weekends. I did a fit trip along the rough, snowy tops of the St Arnaud Range with hard core wiry types who averaged seventy kilos and who moved fast, whereas I was eighty odd. It was hard to keep up and, from that, I learned to pack a bit lighter. An army mate and I did the three-day Southern Crossing in 12 ½ hours. I graduated into weekend alpine courses and midnight treks in the snow, ice axes and crampons. The club had a lodge on Mt Ruapehu. We would trek up there on a Friday night for weekend instruction. From this, I climbed and crossed the Copeland Pass, Southern Alps. Alpine trekking is exciting but harder, with harsher realities.
In 1994 I joined a month long Trek America camping trip in the US. We trekked Yosemite for a day during which I suffered dehydration and a proper headache. I remember that well. It was a dumb mistake. I remedied that days later when five of us hiked the Grand Canyon - the gorge that I drew as a kid –- in a day in mid-summer. It’s a good fitness option. Properly self-contained with food and water, we started before 6am, trekked down to and along the river and back up again in forty-degree heat on a sandy track. 8 ½ hours. I was way pleased to have done it but, beyond the photos and admiration, it’s a brutal, primal place, the sun rises and sets like an assembly line and you’re on your own.

The outdoors is a fantastic place which clears your head and puts life in perspective. You’re a speck amidst rugged terrain and landscapes which don’t care about your problems and which demand focus.

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