I'd been hiking all day, but had begun this 6 kilometer stretch of "trail" at 4:30 pm with a snack of Cadbury Caramello bar slathered in creamy peanut butter. I sat at the boundary of Hunua Regional Park, a beautiful park easily accessible to Auckland with heaps of mountain bike trails, looking at a sign that read something like this: "You have reached the park boundary. There is no trail beyond this point. We are not responsible for you. You'd better bring water, maps, and a form of communication so we can locate your body later." I'm paraphrasing, but that was the gist of it. I was entering a thick section of what the Kiwis insist on calling forest, or bush, that in all actuality must be jungle where no trail had ever existed and yet was the route the Te Araroa was leading me to. This was not a problem as the route had been marked with the sometimes present orange triangles nailed to trees along the way. I shouldered my pack and headed into the dark green.
I'll say this: at no point was I nervous about getting lost. While there was no trail per say, I was also not the first thru-hiker to come through and there were plenty of triangles to follow. The terrain, on the otherhand, was as challenging as any I'd come across thus far. Straight up, muddy, roots, vines, razor fronds, steep down, and logs to crawl over were my path across this high ridge, but it also wound in winding S's not going in a straight line for even 15 feet. It was slow going and as I was traveling alone and I was hyper-aware of the perils of even one careless step turning into a sprained ankle or worse. (Sometimes the "what ifs" and "that was closes" scare the crap out of me.) It was also the end of the day and I was already tired so needless to say the going was slow. Almost embarrassingly so, but I persisted.
Near the end of the 6 km an actual trail emerged and I slapped one foot in front of the other as I doggedly made my way down to a paddock that I knew was below me. I had not stopped moving forward in 2.5 hours, I was slack jawed, and I was exhausted from concentration. Finally, below I saw the very first patch of flat ground that I'd seen in about 12 kilometers and I menatally claimed it as my own, no matter what. The thick forest/jungle gave way to an open view of lush, green paddock with 30 or 40 cows contentedly eating dinner. I reached the level ground and came to an abrupt stop. At last I could stop. Before dropping my pack, resting my feet, or eating some food I just looked out across the paddock at the cows and listened. No sounds of footsteps or labored breathing filling my head, my aural senses picked up the distinct accoustic cadence of grass being ripped from the earth. Times 40. I just stood there and listened to the simple sound of grass ripping. Inexplicably, a huge smile came across my face. I don't know, it just made me happy that no matter my tiny struggle, effort, or focus, life, for these cows and for everyone else on the planet, carried on as usual. It was somehow reassuring. The cows kept eating but casually made their way across the paddock to the fence that separated us and grazed as close as they could to me while I set up my camp, cleaned up, and prepared to die in a pile for the night. It was nice to have their company.
Fast forward to the next evening when I had completed about 33 kms of walking and it was time to find a place to camp. I'd been walking through private farm land for a while and had been told that past the next fence would be a fine place to camp, right along the Waikato River. Great. I trudged the one kilometer it took to get past the barrier, carefully crawled over the electric fence and started looking for my campsite. "Boy," I thought to myself, "there sure is a lot of cow shit around here!" It took several minutes to find a feces-free bit of grass and I popped my tent up nice and taut. I turned my back to my tent for a brief minute to enjoy my view of the Waikato River and when I turned around there was a single cow about 8 feet away from me. Where did you come from? And then I looked up at the tiny hill behind my camp: dozens of cows looking down on me. Now, I'm not afraid of cows, trust me, but when they are curious and outnumber you, even the dumbest of 1,200-pound beasts are intimidating. I picked up my hiking poles and started the showdown.
I clacked my sticks together in the direction of the brave interloper but she merely blinked and balked. I lunged forward and clacked and shouted, "Heeyaw! Heeyaw!" She startled and looked ready to run. Then she made to walk closer. "Heeyaw! Go on, GIT!" The other cows, still chewing cud, curiously looked to their leader to see how they should behave. A few more clicks of the sticks, cowboy shouts, and feints and the cow turned away and headed up the hill. Satisfied with my brave outwitting of this cow, I grabbed my camera and walked the 35 feet to the river's edge to take a picture of the beautiful evening light behind some clouds. Only a few seconds passed by but by the time I turned around to walk back to my tent all of the cows were down off the hill grazing all around my portable abode and about 8 of them were in a semi-circle around my collapsable casa LICKING the rainfly. My victory was extremely short-lived. Now I'm just screaming "HeeYaw! GO ON GIT!" in every direction at any bovine beast that would pay attention. Some were timid and easily scared and others were unshakable. I spent the next several minutes whooping and hollering in a grassy, poop-filled meadow herding cows away from where I sincerely wanted to lay down and go to sleep. In a series of small stampedes they finally cleared the area. Deep down I knew I should pull up camp and move out of their paddock, but, you know, my tent was up already. I simply didn't have the gumption to relocate. So I got into my sleeping bag, stashed my hiking sticks nearby, and took a sleeping pill. (It's very unfair that despite hiking 30-35 kilometers per day my insomnia still occasionally gets the best of me....as if the inane, asinine thoughts that ramble through my head while I'm walking deserve more consciousness. Argh.)
Predictably, sometime in the middle of the night I was awoken from a deep slumber by the aforementioned sound of grass being pulled from the earth, an occasional snort, and a chorus of boorish farts. These sounds were close and coming from 360 degrees around me, my sleep-addled brain registered before my exhausted body could even move. The cows were upon me. I laid still and contemplated my options. Would they start licking my tent again? Would they nibble at it? I tentatively reached my hand out of my sleeping bag, flicked the side of my tent, and loudly said in a stern voice, "Hey!!" (no pun intended). A small scurry of thundering hooves as the cows got the hell away from the mysterious talking tent. But there were more cows. I waited for the next batch to come close to my tent and I began to wonder if the cows would instinctively avoid my tent or was there a chance they might actually trample me. I could see the headline: Woman Trampled By Cows In Freak Midnight Paddock Massacre. There's really no glory in going out that way. I shifted in my sleeping bag and the loud, squeaky noise that emanates from my first generation NeoAir (sleeping pad) every single time I move (ugh, don't get me started...) finally came in handy and scared away the next batch of cows without me even trying. Once again untrampled, I waited for the next group to wander through my domain. I realized how ridiculous this was: me in my tent, unseeing of my foes, and scaring them with a mere shift of my body on a squeaky air mattress. Ridiculous, yet genius. This cycle happened about four times until I heard no more snuffing, shuffling of hooves, or grass being pulled. I'd won. I'd vanquished my foes to the outlying lands to be bullied no more by the....zzzzzzzzzzZZZZzzzzzZZZZzzzzz.
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| Cows. Behind a fence. Where they belong.... |
Later that day, after the midnight stand down--or lay down as the case may be--I was pitted 60 to one against another herd of heifers. I had to cross their paddock along the trail and they were not the nervous Nelly's that I've oft come across...these cows were quite curious indeed and circling me from all angles. Only my previous night's experience and sheer bravery got me through unscathed.
I tell you what...there is no lack of adventure along the trail. No lack of adventure for those willing to see it....
