I burrow deeper into my sleeping bag and wrap it around my head to create a pocket of warm air. Dawn is still far away but I know I am awake for the duration. We are high in the mountains and the air is cold. When light finally comes, I strip down and replace my merino warms with my hiking clothes, still damp with yesterday’s sweat, and emerge from the tent to a sloped world of frost on grandfather tussocks. I look around the panorama of remote, windswept alpine peaks that epitomize the rugged essence of the South Island, and I am awed that we have hiked across the entire range. The 64 kilometre section between Arrowhead and Wanaka includes the Motatapu Track which is listed (by the mutant bionic people) as “hard tramping”. But this is our last hurrah on the TA and we want to finish hard and strong (with jelly legs). Gord has a healthy respect for heights and the three vertical 1300 meter ascents and descents, combined with narrow trails on ridgelines that drop off on both sides has pushed him to his limit. This is the high country at its most raw and at some points we are moving forward on all fours. He says it is spectacular and terrifying and if it was any harder I might as well go ahead and push him off the edge.

We take down the tent, eat a breakfast of muesli and start walking. Immediately we go up. The last five days have been tough and our muscles quiver with fatigue, but I happily settle back into the rhythm of walking. My sore bits have mostly sorted themselves out. The sound of my poles clicking on the hard earth is soothing to me. The world sometimes spins too quickly for me and I need a long, isolating walk to recalibrate. When I am untethered from civilization, I feel my place in a world where I often feel misplaced.

We have tramped over 1000 kilometres and feel a heady pride. It’s not always easy, for many different reasons, and this trip is no exception. But it’s always an adventure!

Shortly we will fly to Fiji for our last two weeks before returning home. Now that we have been informed of the news, we realize that we won’t be returning to the same world that we left. It’s hard to take in after the timeless serenity of the mountains. We will self quarantine if that is what is appropriate. Next post from Fiji.