My job while I’m there will be to create a guidebook of local trails, day hikes, and longer treks that will attract more Western tourists.  Hiking AND writing?  It’s perfect.  When I read the job description back in September, I thought, this job was made for me! And then I thought, I’m going to make it happen.  I’ve been working three and four jobs since I got back to Utah in order to save enough money to make the trip a possibility, and it’s finally coming together.  Two years ago I spent four months hiking through the Peruvian Andes, practicing my Spanish and learning Quechua, the language of the indigenous mountain people.  I was lucky to meet many locals who helped me to trek far off the beaten tourist path and explore regions rarely visited but unparalleled in their history and wildness.  It was this experience, as well as my passion for writing, that I described to Awamaki to indicate my unique qualification for the guidebook job, and they agreed to take me on. I won’t be getting paid, but I will be a hired writer.  Being able to put the experience on my resume is going to be worth every penny.

Like most non-profits operating in the third world, Awamaki is constantly seeking donations of time, money, and supplies.  In order for me to participate in the program, I will be paying a one-time donation of $650.  This donation will cover my first month of room and board in a homestay (almost half of the funds go directly to the local family that will host me), project materials, and a donation to the guidebook project. It also covers the expenses that Awamaki incurs in hosting volunteers and running the volunteer program.

Now that I know for sure that I’ll be going, I’m reaching out.  I’m talking to my contacts at REI, and planning presentations to talk about my past experiences in Peru as well as seek donations and sponsorship for this upcoming trip.  I’m talking to the owner of Brighton Resort to request permission to hold a fund-raising bake sale and to see if Brighton would be interested in being a sponsor of the trip.  And I’m asking all of you to consider supporting me and Awamaki.  The program is currently requesting baby and kid’s clothes, prenatal vitamins, school and art supplies, used digital cameras for a community photography workshop, and a used laptop computer.  I know many of you readers are far from Salt Lake City, Utah, but if you have any of the above supplies and would be willing to mail them to me, I know that Awamaki will be exceptionally grateful, as will the local Ollantinos who receive your donations.

Thanks for reading, and thank you for your support.

Rocky was a meaty hunk of pit bull and mastiff who belonged to a fellow camper, a young man from Salt Lake who’d set up camp on the other side of the bluff.  We invited him to share our fire and our beer while Rocky and Fonzie, Jeni’s dog, frolicked and tromped around in the trees along the edge of the fire.  I excused myself from the campfire and walked between the moon shadows and juniper trees.  Sand colored bluff walls shone white in the moonlight.  Spindly towers and smooth buttes displayed patchwork quilts of light gold and dark red on the horizon.  I squatted and held my pant legs out of the way, when a loud snuffling announced that Rocky had followed me and was carefully examining the puddle I was making.  “Go on, Rocky!” I gently pushed his boulder of a head away.  After using the toilet paper, I set it aside and pulled up my pants and looked back just in time to see the white paper hanging from the dog’s mouth.  “No!”  I was incredulous.  “Drop it, drop it!  No, Rocky!”  Big orange eyes looked at me lovingly, and his brow creased with worry, but the square jaw flexed, and the small, white flag disappeared into the dog’s mouth.  He chewed once, twice, swallowed, licked his lips, and wagged happily.  “Oh, Rocky.”  The moon rose in the sky; Rocky and his owner returned to their camp, Jeni retired to the tent, and I made my bed outside.  I slept for a few hours, and woke to a loud, wet tongue in my ear.  “Rocky!”  I whispered and pushed him away.  He wagged his tail.  Perhaps he was looking for more toilet paper.  He curled up at my head, leaned against my pillow and fell into a deep, snoring sleep.  In the morning, he disappeared, leaving only a few short hairs and some red dust on my sleeping bag.

Jeni and I parked her Subaru right on the edge of the bluff and drew in the dust on the back window.  Pictures of our adventure together: waves for the Oregon coast, Crater Lake, huge trees, the mountains of eastern British Columbia, rain clouds.  Cartoonish finger drawings that reminded us of the lush, dripping, green of the Pacific Northwest.  “I love it here!”  I said, sitting in the old growth forest on the edge of the beach.  I compared Vancouver to my dry, desert city and spoke disparagingly of Utah’s lack of trees and waterways.  My lungs loved the soothing humid air; my hair and skin wallowed in the moisture.  We also drew lightning bolts and black clouds: rain.  I was excited to use my gaiters for hiking, but soon remembered how miserable it is to sleep in a wet tent, or to cook in a rainstorm, or to be damp for days on end.  A huge, bright sun filled one corner of the car’s window.  “Inti!  Gracias, gracias a ti,” we prayed in Spanish to the Incan sun god as we drove south into Montana and Wyoming, where the air dried our tent in minutes when we hung it on a fence.  Buttes, towers, mesas, and the moon filled the spaces in between, and I remembered the thing I like most about the west: open space.  I love trees, glorious, life-giving beings, but I also love being able to see the contours of the land and the expanse of the sky, and being able to sleep without a tent under the arch of the Milky Way.

I drew the last figure on the back window: a balanced scale.  Both climates stir my spirit.  Cold and hot.  Wet and dry.  Forest and desert.  Balance: I need them both; one helps me to enjoy and appreciate the other.  Nearly two years in Salt Lake City made me sick for adventure and the open road, and a month of travel with Jeni helped me see the value and allure of a settled life. Balance: enjoying and appreciating everything, everything that the world, my friends, my life, has to offer, flowing between multiple interests, commitments, communities, and locations.  So, balance is my catchword and my goal for the next year, as I return to Salt Lake City for a third winter of ski bumming.  Two goals: balance and keeping my toilet paper out of reach of hungry dogs.  Gravity and levity – there’s a balance to setting goals, too.

On the first day, it snowed uphill.  It fell down one side of the valley and the wind blew it back up the other, into my path, blinding and horizontal.  That night, camping at Laguna Salto, I lay in my tent listening to the wind.  It would begin as a low rumbling, somewhere behind the hills, and build steadily into a locomotive of rushing air and frightening sound until it was on top of me, flattening the windward side of my tent until it flapped around my ears where I lay.  I curled up in my sleeping bag and jacket, hearing the elements thrash it out, feeling small and powerless.  On the second day the sunshine coaxed me out of my down cocoon.  Peaks bright with morning light caught my eyes and stirred me into action, up the hill, across the approach to Paso Australia.  I achieved the pass but the celebratory dance was cut off abruptly as the wind slammed into me with the force of an 18-wheeler, pushing me off my feet until I sat, just below the pass, with my back and pack to the wind and my heels dug into the scree against being thrown all the way to the lake at the bottom.  The wind was spinning miniature tornadoes across the lake surface in all directions.  It was even worse at the bottom of the second pass.  I was walking across a deep glacial trough, alongside a lake.  Jagged slices of granite surrounded me on all sides.  The sky was still bright and blue above me, but I was wearing gloves and a hat and jacket, moving into the wind, gritting my teeth and screaming back at it when it blew hard enough to stop me in my tracks.  I found shelter behind a tall rock and stopped to catch my breath.  The wind was like a living thing, ripping down from the peaks, over rocks and through the thin tufts of grass growing next to the lake.  It snapped, like a plastic tarp being torn off a woodpile and shredded.  By the end of the day, I was exhausted of wind, blown raw.  Even after I’d found a sheltered campsite for the night, the sound of the breeze being dispersed among the trees made me flinch.  Why am I here, I wondered, and for a brief moment, wished I was elsewhere.  The wind scared me.

On day three, I woke with silence ringing in my ears.  Stillness greeted me as I climbed out of my tent, and I cooked breakfast outside, without needing to build a wind-break.  I walked on tip-toe the entire day, holding my breath as I summitted Monte Bettinelli in sunshine and calm air and reached the rustic hut on the shores of Lago Windhond.  Day four, the same.  Not a breath of wind to impede me.  I retraced my steps over Monte Bettinelli, marveling for the second day in a row at the panorama that lay spread before me.  To the south, the islands of Cape Horn, dark blue and misty, but visible.  Westward gleamed the white steep peaks of the Cordillera Darwin, and between here and there, the rough spine of the Dientes themselves, the soggy yellowish lowlands of Navarino, and countless lagoons and beaver ponds, sapphires in a gold setting.  Superlatives rolled through my head, but not through my heart.  For the first time in many solo hiking missions, I was not content.  Something had changed.  I’d shot myself up with my usual fix, but failed to reach the same high.  The wind had stripped away my confidence, my courage, and pressed  an acute awareness of my mortality into my skin.  Alone on the top of Monte Bettinelli, I felt no awe, no wonder or magic at the landscape.  I felt alone.  This was what I’d wanted: to be on my own at the end of the world, fighting the elements, testing myself.  And now I felt only a desire to be safely on the other side of the hills, finished, and back among people.

see the rest of my photos from the island

This blog, I sometimes feel, has become that hungry beast.

It began innocently enough – I could whip off a light, informative entry in about fifteen minutes, a half an hour if I was being thoughtful, an hour at the absolute maximum if I’d been slack in reporting on my travels.  You all read it, and wrote wonderfully encouraging comments.  Once stroked, my ego began to purr, and I started putting a bit more thought into each entry.  Themes emerged, and I got excited about organizing my updates around ideas instead of events.  Reader reviews (bless you all) were positive, and the beast began to grow.  Once informed that I had something good, I wanted it to be better.  And better.  I needed substance, depth, details!  Internet sessions became longer and more expensive, and entries came fewer and farther between.  The pressure began to build.  Weeks now pass between entries as I struggle to find the time and energy to tend to the beast which will no longer be satisfied with quick updates.  This creates both a backlog of events on which to report (with feeling and wit) and a certain sense of suspense among you all, faithful readers.  “Where are you?  What’s happening?” you ask.  I’ve begun to avoid my email account guiltily, but I can still hear the blog-beast as it paces, testing the hinges, ready to break out.

The following, therefore, is the hiss of the safety valve as it vents a jet of steam, relieving some of the pressure.  Quick and artless, but effective.  I’m letting the beast out the back for a run.  Apologies if it eats any of your kids.

So, back to the place where I fell off the track…
There was the curanto.
Then the Navimag.

Then the Parque Nacional de Los Torres del Paine, the jewel of Chilean Patagonia.  I hiked for the first three days with Angus and with Clementine, Ben, and Jerome from the Navimag, then went my own hardcore way.  I trekked for ten days in all, in the hottest, clearest weather in Patagonian history, then came back into civilization (Puerto Natales) and took the job at the erratic rock hostel.

The job at the rock led to a trip to Cabo Froward, the southernmost tip of the American mainland – visited by the Pope in the early 90s – accessible only by boat or by a two-and-a-half day hike along slippery beaches and through vicious, sucking turbal (peat bogs) and across freezing, chest-deep rivers.  There were eleven of us, all self-sufficient and keen trekkers, but despite our high spirits and determination, were turned back a half-day from our destination because of dangerously high rivers.  Instead of succumbing to disappointment, we spent an evening drying our underwear on sticks over the campfire and bonding as “Team Toasted Panties”.

Another month of work at the erratic rock followed before I could start counting down to the Circuito de Los Dientes de Navarino – the Teeth of Navarino.  It’s the southernmost trek in the world, and it’s the only thing I knew about in Patagonia before arriving.  I arrived in Puerto Williams (the tiny town you’ll recall from my last entry), made a stir as the crazy gringa, then disappeared into the wilds for eight days.  The hiking was rough, the weather rougher, and I emerged on the other side of the eight days with a whole new respect for the word “remote”.  I do have a proper update in the works with details of the trip.  It’s three-quarters written, and it’s a story I don’t want to skip.  It’ll get here…eventually.  Photos exist as well.  Stay tuned.

After the Dientes, I crossed the border into Argentina and spent two weeks between El Calafate and El Chaltén, two dusty frontier towns built up for the sole purpose of serving the tourists who descend in droves to either 1) visit the Perito Moreno glacier or 2) hike in the Parque Nacional Los Glaciares.  I did both.  I spent a week and a half in El Chaltén, a town still under construction (est. 1985), sleeping in my tent and going on day hikes, seeking out new and exciting vistas of Cerro Torre and Monte Fitzroy (the two showpieces of the park).  Winter arrived about the same time that I did, and for the last five days of my stay I was hiking and camping in the snow.  Beautiful, but I think it’s time I moved on from Patagonia.  I’ve been in South America for nearly four months, and three of them in the deep south.  Time to check out some new places.  Therefore – I’m off to Peru.  I fly from Puerto Natales to Santiago tomorrow, then get a 26-hour bus to the Chile-Peru border, then through another series of buses and towns will arrive in Cusco, Peru on the 16th or 17th.  It’s going to be epic.  When I get to Cusco, I’m going to be tired.

Hope this fills in the gaps.  In the meantime, here’s this piece of unrelated news: the film “Ice People” (documentary about life in Antarctica filmed while I was working at McMurdo) will be premiering at the 2008 San Francisco International Film Festival, April 24 to May 8.  If you’re in the Bay area, check it out!  If you’re not, but still crave a taste of the cold, you can still enjoy the trailer.

Two weeks I had, between the Teton mountains and the unique thermal and wilderness attractions of Yellowstone.  On my own, without a car, I became dependent on the kindness of strangers.  Initially, I had my doubts.  Are Americans willing to trust?  Are they capable of being open-minded and generous?  Or are hitchhikers a species extinct – killed off by the culture of suspicion and distrust that is growing steadily in our country?  Standing at trail heads with my thumb raised high, I saw confusion, shock, discomfort.  I watched the faces driving past, some looking resolutely ahead, ignoring me, others staring unabashedly, mouths open in disbelief.  What is she doing?! I never had to wait long, though, and in each case the individuals who stopped to offer me a lift were friendly, helpful, and full of concerned goodwill.  Each of them (I caught perhaps fifteen separate rides, anywhere from two miles to eighty) expressed admiration colored heavily with concern.  “You’re pretty gutsy…but jeez, girl, you gotta watch out for those weirdos!  Aren’t you worried?  Aren’t you afraid?” asked Paul the insurance investigator.  Some, like the three old friends on their way to a funeral, told me stories of when they were my age and hitched across the whole west, from national park to park.  “But people aren’t like they used to be – be careful!”  Some were hesitant.  Three thirty-something surgeons from Texas, in Jackson for a conference, told me they would never pick up a hitchhiker, normally.  Others were excited for me.  Jason, a Gulf War vet, on vacation with his seven-year-old son, wished he could be doing what I was.  “It’s so great to meet a true adventurer!  That deserves a ride.”  Some only wanted company.  The emphysemic painter from Las Vegas was almost too wrapped up in his own affairs to ask where I wanted to be dropped off before launching into his life story.  I found it interesting that those who were open-minded enough to pick me up, still maintained a sort of blanket distrust of other people – as if they were the sole safe bet in a world full of serial killers.  Are we too large, as a country?  Are we all strangers to one another, and therefore incapable of trust?  Even I, open-minded world traveler, began in a cynical state of mind.  Not that I was fearful, but that I doubted whether my fellow Americans would be willing to lend a helping hand.  I was reassured, my faith in humanity – Americans specifically – restored, recharged.  I needed help, and got it – over and over again.

Beyond the hitchhiking, there were a few notable encounters with folks interesting, generous, and fun…

There was Jan, the German cyclist, whom I talked into joining me for a spectacular day hike in the Tetons.  Hooray for someone young!  Someone my own age!

Then there was Steve, the Hollywood paparazzi photographer.  When not taking pictures of Brittney Spears shaving her head in a barber shop (oh, yes, that was him), he volunteers as the campground manager at the Mammoth Campground, which is where I met him.  He watched me set up my tent in the freezing rain (this was the evening of the morning during which I was eating oatmeal in the bathroom) before approaching me, shyly.  “I don’t want you to take this the wrong way.  I’m not trying to hit on you, but I do have a pull out couch in my RV that you’re welcome to have, if you want it…I have two daughters about your age, and, well, I’d like to know that someone would take care of them, too.”  So, for two glorious nights I had a warm, dry, soft bed and a roof over my head, and a flat screen TV with surround sound to watch movies on.  Thank you, Steve!

Still blinking sleep out of my eyes, a movement in the trees fifty feet away caught my attention. “Oh…there’s a bear!” I whispered, nonchalant only out of shock. Bob laughed, thinking my lack of excitement indicated a joke, and then choked abruptly as he looked where I was pointing. A young black bear was stalking us, slowly, cautiously, obviously drawn by the scent of our food, which hung in a tree on the other side of our camp. We lay silently, breathlessly, watching it to within twenty feet. “How close we goin’ to let it get?” Bob asked. “Not much closer than this!” I declared, and we both sat up hurriedly. “GOOD MORNING, BEAR!” I shouted, and watched it stop short to assess this new obstacle between it and its breakfast. Bob worked to keep it away by shouting and hammering his hatchet against the trees and logs. It kept its distance, but would not be deterred. It paced a half circle around the camp, sniffing our cooking gear, and even trying to walk off with Bob’s jute dish brush at one moment. Eventually it tired of the game, and lay down across a log to watch us and wait for us to pack up and leave it to sniff at our leavings.

With this exhilarating start to the morning, Bob and I climbed rapidly up the lake shore to our next camping spot, startling a bull moose and an impressively-antlered elk along the way. At Dead Horse Lake, elevation 9,000 ft, we dropped our gear and cooked up a filling breakfast of oatmeal and trail mix while admiring the view: a small, round lake, more of a pond, really, with spruce-lined shores and steep mountains surrounding it. Several large, recent rockslides spoke of the youth and instability of the peaks, but the tiny hillock where we made camp was peaceful and protected. It was, however, also home to about 3,784,331 mosquitoes. I know this because I was counting the number of times I slapped, whacked, squished and swore at the tiny, needled devils between spoonfuls of breakfast. Our repellent situation had taken a turn for the worse. The plastic bottle had broken, spilling precious, potent elixir all over my backpack. My pack, my book, my stove, my toothbrush, and my water bottle were all marvelously protected from mosquitoes, black flies, horse flies, deer flies, ticks and more. Bob and I, on the other hand, had little more than thin layers of polypropylene and wool to keep the buggers off. These two fabrics, while excellent for keeping warm and dry, put up absolutely no resistance when confronted with mosquitoes. We were covered.

We retreated to higher ground, to Lost Lake, where the elevation (10,500 ft) seemed to discourage the mossies, and spent a pleasant afternoon, miles from civilization, and that much closer to heaven. I read, took pictures, and later, growing sleepy, followed the lake to the place where it narrowed and began to flow like a tiny creek down the side of the mountain. The clear water ran across rocks and grass, and where it touched earth tiny flowers sprang to life and sucked gleefully at its sweetness. Indian paintbrush, purple-and-cream columbine, and dozens of nameless wild things in blues, whites, yellows, pinks, and purples. Bob found me later as I stretched and climbed and worked my way across a massive boulder field, rocks three times my height. “Where are you going?” he called. “To the other side!” I shouted back. “Why?” “To see what’s there!” I laughed. On the other side, I found, was a narrow green valley, and towering above it, a dark fortress of rock. Flat on the top and sheer on the sides, I was looking at a long castle rampart, booby-trapped with precariously balanced rocks and cornices of snow, just waiting for an invading army to attempt a breach. Gorgeous. I lay on my back in the stiff, prickly alpine grass, gazed out into the valley, and just breathed.

Then we had to climb back down. The sun was tending toward the western part of the sky, but several hours of daylight remained yet. As soon as we reached our makeshift camp, the mosquitoes returned. I could almost hear them laughing with glee as they dove upon us and plunged their tiny daggers through our layers of clothing and into already itching skin. Bob caught fish in the lake for dinner, and in doing so acquired enough bug bites to swell his eyes to tiny, puffy slits and his nose to a shape that Karl Malden might have recognized. I cooked potatoes in the fire, and sliced veggies and lemons to roast in butter with the fish. It was a beautiful night – campfire, sunset, fresh fish, outdoor cooking – but I barely took it in. I was rather occupied in squishing the daylights out of any buzzing thing that thought to land on me. The little bastards were relentless. Bob and I could have made up our own rhythm band with the beats we were creating, slapping and tapping and bopping and socking. All to no avail. The buggers kept coming. We stood in the campfire smoke until our eyes watered and screamed. We walked up and down, pacing the length of the campsite while we shoved the food into our faces. Still, we had to stop moving long enough to lay out our sleeping bags and wash our dishes, and the mosquitoes were so thick they formed a visible aura around us. As soon as the chores were done, we were in our sleeping bags, wrapped up and willingly foregoing fresh air in the interest of being without mosquitoes.

I fell asleep, and woke perhaps four hours later, suffocating. I poked my head out of the bag and gasped oxygen gratefully. It took me a moment to realize what was different. No mosquitoes! It was cold – perhaps forty degrees – and a full moon had risen magnificently over the lake, bright enough to illuminate the mountains around us, cold enough to have sent the mosquitoes to bed. It was a small miracle, and I gulped greedily at the air and relished the quiet. They were back by morning, and we literally sprinted out of the woods. Eight miles in four hours, barely stopping for an apple and an energy bar. Back at the Bronco, we slumped into the seats and grinned tiredly at each other. “I. Have. Never. Seen so many mosquitoes on that trail,” Bob panted. A week later, I’m still itching.

Back at the ranch, the days are darn near perfect. It’s hot – 95 in the shade today – but the house is usually 10-15 degrees cooler, and the air is dry, making the high temps far more bearable than a typical New England summer heat wave. My list of acquired skills is lengthening steadily. I learned basic plumbing: soldering pipes together to hook up an outside spigot; connecting PVC and copper to our temporary kitchen sink. We now have running water in the kitchen! I’ve disassembled old doors and learned how to create jam-extensions and casing around the old door frames, then worked on building up my arm muscles while I stripping several layers of ancient paint and finish from the doors themselves. Today I learned how to tape and mud sheet rock, and how to build a framed wooden panel to cover an access hole in the upstairs hallway. Our project for the next week will be constructing a railing for the staircase and then trimming, filling, sanding, and polyurethaning the whole lot.

Forest fires, both close and distant have obscured the horizon off and on for the last couple of weeks. Some mornings we wake to smoke in our throats and a thin gray haze floating through the valley where our house is situated. Then there were lightning storms, some with rain, some with only wicked purple clouds and brilliant white bolts. Bob and I sit on the porch and watch it all, content to be quiet observers, sometimes reading, sometimes talking, sometimes singing along to the radio. Most nights we spend at least a half an hour with the horses, grooming, playing, bribing our way into their hearts with carrots and other treats. There’s a little Arabian that I’ve named Lady – making her mine is my goal for the summer. Bob’s teaching me to gain her trust and slowly get her accustomed to a rider. First, the harness. Last night was the saddle, an ordeal that left the poor girl sweaty and edgy. We’ve got a way to go before I’ll be getting on her, but it’s something to work towards, and I love that I have the opportunity to live with and learn about the animals in this way.

It’s another windy night, and the cats are nestling closer, sharing their warmth. I love it, even though they make my eyes itchy. I’m rereading Les Miserables, the unabridged version. Soon I’ll get up and cook up some soup, or maybe I’ll just have a sandwich. Bob’s working at his shop in town, on a welding project or maybe rebuilding someone’s transmission, so for tonight it’s just me and the cats and the wind. Ahhhh yes.

See my skills!  New photos, befores and afters and inbetweeners and others just for fun.
http://community.webshots.com/user/susanm483

And now there is a soft gray cat in my lap.  Oh, the simple pleasures.

If I visualize this period of transition as a piece of music, then at this moment what I am hearing is the quiet reflective melody that follows a particularly powerful crescendo: The Hollyford Mission!  It was a ten day trip, through the remote wilds of Fiordland in the southwestern corner of the South Island.  Three days tramping along the beaten path of the Hollyford River valley with a few other hardy souls, three days living in a hut on the beach waiting for bad weather to clear, and four days of complete solitude on the hardest trail I’ve ever walked.  On day one, I hiked 30 km (18 miles – Huge.) and felt six of my ten toes and the bottom of my right heel develop large, swollen blisters.  On day three, I found myself caught out in a torrential downpour, complete with jagged bolts of lightning and crashing thunder, on the wrong side of a flooded river, and had to spend the night huddled between flax plants in a wet tent in a wet sleeping bag.  On day four, I waited for the eye of the storm, packed all of my (sopping wet) gear, crossed the river, and all but sprinted the last three kilometers to the Big Bay Hut.  Big Bay (as the name would suggest), is a large, rectangle-shaped bay on the northern coast of Fiordland.  It’s accessible only by helicopter, small fixed-wing planes, or a four day walk from the nearest road.  Remote.  Beautiful.  Even in the throes of the storm, the wild seas and gray, rocky beach were magic.  What a place to be stuck.

I waited out the weather for two and a half days, and could have easily let myself forget the outside world and simply stay.  There were three surfers stranded with me for the first day, waiting for a break in the clouds so that their airplane could land on the beach and take them home.  Before they left they introduced me to our neighbor, a hunter named Aussie Bob, who was spending a few weeks in his private hut a kilometer further down the beach.  When the surfers finally soared away, it was just Bob and me and the beach and the wind and rain.  Bob was perhaps fifty years old, a sheep-shearer, and for 17 years had been hunting the coast and hills of northern Fiordland.  I wished, repeatedly, that I had a tape recorder to capture the stories he shared.  A genuine, multi-faceted individual, a true man of the land who could gauge deer’s bloodlines from the shape of the antlers of the stags he’d killed.  He described himself as a redneck, but he was the most open-minded and accepting redneck I’ve ever met.  “Different strokes for different folks,” he’d say as he shook his head over the lifestyles of the various people he’s met in his long and varied life.  He wasn’t sure what to make of me at first: a young woman on her own in the absolute last frontier of the NZ bush, confident of my abilities yet responsible and aware of the risks of the back country and the measures needed to counter them.  I walked down the beach to his hut the first night to listen to the weather forecast on his mountain radio, and stayed to chat over a can of beer.  As he listened to my stories of Antarctica and past tramping experience, I could see his respect for my independence grow at the same time as he sought to protect me.  Bob sent me home with flour and yeast to bake bread in my hut’s camp oven, and the next afternoon showed up with fresh venison back steaks (the nicest part of the animal) wrapped in a plastic bag.  These I cooked in a curry, using the ingredients that the surfers had left behind.  Venison curry and fresh bread baked on a wood stove in a little hut on the beach in Fiordland in NZ.  I’m not sure that cuisine gets any better than that.

For two days, life took on a simplicity and a peace that I would find difficult to recapture.  In the mornings, I stoked the fire, got it roaring, with a kettle on top of the stove for tea, then ventured out to the beach to check the weather and gather more driftwood to feed the fire.  The water would be hot when I got back, and Bob would pop in and join me for a cuppa while spinning yarns about his work and his misadventures as a young, redneck Aussie visiting New Zealand for the first time.  After tea I’d have a wash at the faucet behind the hut, sweep out the sand, mix up a batch of bread dough to rise, then sit and read and watch the birds, fantails, wax-eyes and tomtits, swoop and dive outside the window.  Eventually the rain stopped and I could go for walks on the beach, taking pictures and collecting shells.  In the evenings I’d walk over to Bob’s hut to catch the weather and listen to his stories.  I’d inevitably show up barefoot (it was warm enough, and it was easier than putting on wet hiking boots), which would make Bob shake his head.  ”You’re a tough bitch, aren’t you?” he said, in a tone of deep respect and admiration.  The night before I left, three of Bob’s hunting mates arrived by fixed-wing plane, and he invited me to come over for a roast (wild boar, pumpkin, kumara).  There I sat, smack in the middle of a kiwi hunting “man’s weekend”…how did I get here?  I marveled.

The rest of the trip was along the Pyke River valley: tough going.  This was a track that sought to break me.  It had already sent blisters, lightning, wind, rain, floods.  The second half tried to turn me back with fallen trees, mud, lakes, suffocating bush, thorns, vines, roots, slips, trips, falls, cuts, and bruises.  It thrashed me good, and then dared me to keep going – and I did.  Yet my memories are tinged with a glowing sort of magic.  I saw no one.  Red deer grazed along the sides of the rivers, and stags roared terrifyingly in the bush.  A NZ falcon swooped down from its lofty perch to examine me close up.  At one side creek, I balked at the murky orange water of questionable depth and the half-submerged tree stumps that poked out ominously.  Instead of walking through it, I took a gamble on a fallen tree that conveniently bridged the 8-foot creek.  It was narrow and smooth.  Too narrow and smooth.  So much for my dry sleeping bag and my mobile phone!  The next day I walked around Lake Wilmot, a small lake made nearly impassable by windfalls – it took me four hours to cover one kilometer.  Next was the Black Swamp, where I had to leap between tiny tussock mounds to avoid the sucking, stinking mud that at one point swallowed both of my legs up to my groin.  On the last day, I walked five kilometers through Lake Alabaster (yes, I had to walk IN the lake), climbing over slippery rocks and fallen trees, staring tiredly through my raincoat hood (it was raining again) at the waterfalls pouring down the cliffs on the other side of the lake.  Like the creature from the Black Lagoon, I rose from the lake at the end of the day, trudged wetly across the beach to the hut, and stood solidly on the porch.  I turned and surveyed the length of the lake I’d just conquered, and cheered.  The Hollyford – Pyke/Big Bay Mission: DONE!!  Satisfaction supreme.

24 April, 2007

(A real time update: Kelli and I are in Taupo, in the middle of the North Island, and all is well.  More to come as the (mis)adventures continue!)

A week of sunshine followed by two weeks of pouring rain saw me doing my best to help Susan out around the Dreamhouse.  Washing windows, edging gardens, cooking meals, vacuuming, dusting, mowing lawns, hauling wood, etc.  The rain cleared for a weekend, just long enough for the whole family to travel south to Hokitika for the world-famous Wildfoods Festival.  It’s an annual event on the Coast that draws up to 30,000 visitors from both NZ and around the world and celebrates the – ahem – wilder side of West Coast cuisine.  By way of example, I present a list of the delicacies that I, personally, consumed: venison, wild mushrooms, crickets (they were in peanut butter truffles, so they tasted okay, but when I was still picking legs out of my mouth a half hour later, I had to rate the crickets as the nastiest thing of the day), snails, homemade ice cream with organic strawberries, kava (a traditional beverage from Fiji), corn on the cob, kangaroo, crocodile (tastes like chicken), elderflower champagne, worms (chopped up and served in chocolate truffles), punga (native ferns), possum, horse (that one I could have done without), and huhu grubs (fat, white wood-boring critters that taste like nuts when roasted).  It was a day for daring and for strong stomachs.  I met up with Andre and Genevieve, two of my favorite Ice people, and spent the night with them out on the beach, relishing the opportunity to enjoy their company in the real world.  More rain…I visited Geoffrey’s gold mining claim and fell on my bum in the mud.  I also got to watch the whole mining process, do a bit of panning for myself, and actually hold raw nuggets of gold in my hand.  We escaped the rain for another weekend, this time across the Alps to Christchurch to watch the Crusaders (the local professional rugby team) bash the Bulls, a team from South Africa.

All in all, I spent a refreshing, fun (if a bit wet) three and a half weeks with Geoffrey, Susan and Navare.  It was longer than I’d planned to stay, but I’d mapped out a 9-day hike through the main divide of the Southern Alps, and couldn’t attempt it til the rains quit, as it involved numerous river crossings and fairly rugged, un-marked terrain.  Just as I was beginning to think I’d have to scrap the whole thing and move on, the rains cleared, and I was off.  Nine days… The idea for the trip originated with Lumir, and it was a doozie: gorgeous river valleys, tempting tall peaks, pristine lakes, natural hot springs, and two challenging mountain passes in the very heart of the Alps.  Definitely the road less traveled by.  For the first four days I was completely alone.  There wasn’t a soul living or breathing for miles…just me.  It was an incredible, empowering experience, having to use a map and compass to find a safe route, having to problem solve and navigate and take complete responsibility for every aspect of the trip.  The first night out, I slept next to the Waiheke River in a bivouac that I constructed out of a large blue tarp and a length of rope.  I woke during the night, rolled onto my back, and stared directly up into the clear, starry sky: wow.  I waded up one river, crested the first pass (the Amuri), and spent four days wandering the river valleys of the eastern Alps.  I camped next to Lake Sumner and was almost carried away, bivouac and all, by sandflies (wicked, demon biting insects that travel in gangs of millions) but was rescued by a kind, retired schoolteacher-turned-fisherman-and-violin-maker who loaned me an extra tent for the night.  He also shared his wife’s homemade cake with me and in the morning, wouldn’t let me leave until l’d sat and had a cup of tea with him.  Love, love, love this Kiwi generosity.  On the second to last day of the trip, I stood on top of the Harpers Pass (936 meters – approx 3,000 ft.) after a long, extremely difficult morning’s climb, and felt my soul absolutely fill to bursting with triumph – I had done it!!  Nine days in the back country, completely self-sufficient, learning, growing, and loving every minute.  It was a bit anti-climatic then, when I came down from the pass and had to stay put in a hut, a mere sixteen kilometers from the end of the trip and civilization, waiting for two whole extra days because of a wicked rainstorm and flooded rivers.  Two days, alone in a hut, reading, playing solitaire, watching the rain, doing jumping jacks, stoking the fire, and staving off the stir-crazies by working on the 1,000 piece jigsaw that some kind, blessed soul had left behind.  It was a relaxing way to end the trip, if a bit boring.  Eleven days later (nine days tramping, two days sitting), I strode out of the bush and made my way back to the Dreamhouse on the hill, stinking, filthy, but revived.

So now: freshly showered, clothing laundered and hiking boots dried, I’m off.   Last night Susan and Navare and I had a farewell marshmallow roast in the gia (a Mongolian dwelling, like a yurt…yes, they’ve got a yurt as well as a boat on their property.  They’re a pretty unique family.), and this morning Navare presented me with a piece of a possum jawbone for good luck.  It’s hanging from Dr. Gonzo’s rear view mirror, along with a piece of shell that Jenny gave me before I left Methven.  Ahhh, it’s good to be on the road again.  I’ve got three weeks before Kelli gets here, and way, way too many things to try and fit into that time.  Oh well.  A full life is a good life.  I’m back to the internet cafe scene, which means less time for emails and website updates.  With any luck I’ll be in the mountains most of the time anyway.  I’m a month and a half away from the Ice, and a month and a half away from home.  I’m at the balancing point, ready to make the most of the downward journey.  Let’s go have some fun!!

A brief recap of the past weeks…
I spent six days out in the mountains with Lumir, hiking all the way up the Rakaia River, learning to route-find and cross rivers.  We had exquisitely hot weather, which he complained about and I reveled in.  I found myself to be in pretty wretched shape after six months of inactivity, but it felt wonderful to be out and about, getting sunburned and dirty, living on cous cous and porridge.  I could feel the Ice just melting off me.  We climbed a glacier and ate breakfast one morning on the top of a mountain at the head of the Rakaia valley.  Gorgeous!!  It rained our last day – the first rain I’d seen in six months – and we arrived back at Jenny’s wet, cold, tired and muddy.  I got to spend some quality time catching up with Jenny (the woman I was working for before leaving for Antarctica) and helping Lumir pack 50 kilos worth of photo equipment, clothing, and hiking gear into a 32 kilo luggage limit.  Then it was back to Christchurch…Lumir’s last night was spent on the Banks Peninsula, out on a sagging jetty.  We drank, and toasted each other, and slept curled up together in Dr. Gonzo, only to wake at 3:30 AM to make the long, foggy drive back to the city to get him to the airport on time.  It was sad to see him go…

It was odd to be in Christchurch.  Too many people, too much traffic – and too many people from the Ice.  It was odd, how we all seemed to feel this lack of interest in each other.  Suddenly we had nothing to talk about, and wanted only to move on, out of the city to where we didn’t know anybody.  I did get to catch up with Mike and Stephen, though, friends from Tekapo and the Godley, which was a very fun blast from the past.  I was quite happy to leave the city, though, this past Thursday, and head over to the West Coast, where the Jacobs have been keeping me busy with art festivals in town, badminton, and a night of fishing out at the beach under a full moon during which I managed to catch my first shark, despite initially casting my hooks onto the sand next to me…

This place (the green, lush, alive place) is the perfect antidote to the Ice.  NZ’s West Coast is my favorite.  Beaches, mountains, rain forest – the Anti-Ice.  I’m loving it.  I’m missing Lumir, and I’m still feeling a bit off balance in this warm, bright world, but every day I wake up to the sunlight streaming through the porthole next to my bed, and the chattering of cicadas in the palms outside, and I hear the ocean and I close my eyes and imagine that I’m floating…