When it is the middle of the night and you are lying in your sleeping bag in a tent and it is cold and drizzly outside and you hear someone get up for a pee and then you realise they aren’t peeing, they’re lighting a primus because they don’t realise it is still the middle of the night – when all this happens, you know a metaphor is in the wind.
And a bit later when it becomes clear that the billy is boiling, and that the billy-boiler is Andrew who is leading the trip, and that Andrew is saying here’s your hot water, that’s all you’re getting, you realise this is a metaphor all right. It’s a metaphor for premature birth into a cold, uncaring world.
This is what was going on for John in the dark beside the Waimak River at the beginning of Andrew’s Three Pass trip. That he had set himself up for five days of having his tea intake controlled by Andrew was a serious worry for John. He’d heard whispers of Andrew’s non-tea-drinking habit and his lack of sympathy towards tea-drinkers. Moreover, he’d heard of Andrew’s tendency to rise when others are part way through their night’s rest, and his inclination to leave within ten minutes of waking.
How can a fellow absorb enough tea in ten minutes?
Knowing it was a long shot, John offered to carry Andrew’s stove. But Andrew was wise to this. No way would he relinquish his stove to a tea drinker. John now recognised another metaphor: that in tramping, as in Life, some people have all the power and others do what they are told.
At least Harry was on the trip. Harry and John disagree about a lot of things; but they agree on one thing, which is the importance of tea.
John set off in front to look keen, but soon he came to a fork in the track. John then let Stuart go in front to be responsible in case not everybody followed. Ex-chief guides, like elder statesmen, are better equipped to take on Life’s burden of choice.
The mist and drizzle began to lift. People took photographs of mountains and river and wisps of sunlit cloud, and disported themselves in the sunshine like children, innocent of the travail that lay ahead.
A very long way up the valley, Andrew appeared. He looked stern. We had not waited for him, said Andrew. We had taken the wrong track. Andrew had taken the right track, he said, and had therefore overtaken us. This too was like Life, which is full of stern people telling us what we have done wrong.
Harry understood all this, for he knows a great deal about Life. The metaphor was not lost on him. However, Harry had done something much worse than taking the wrong track. He had made a serious error of judgement in relation to the entire trip.
Harry’s mistake was that he had come at all.
Harry could see how the trip was developing, metaphorically speaking; and he knew that if his own life was anything to go by, any trip based on a metaphor of it was bound to be an abject failure. Harry told us so, lugubriously. That in itself was a metaphor for another aspect of Life, which is that that everybody is good at something. Harry is good at saying things lugubriously.
Anyway, Harry’s right boot was falling apart. In Life, things are not always as they seem; and so it was with the boot. Harry had bought a pair of second hand boots. He didn’t know (but was now discovering) that the sole of the right boot was attached with wallpaper paste.
This boot had seemed very good in the shop.
Harry knew he should turn back. However, he used the spiky thing on Stuart’s Swiss Army knife, and John’s billy hook, and a piece of nylon cord, and a few lightly muffled oaths and an element of fatalism; and he fixed his boot and carried on.
At the foot of Harman Pass, Ramon’s ankle got dicky and he turned back. Ramon’s role in the trip was to provide a metaphor for early bereavement. Our family of eight became one of seven. This would have made us sad, were it not that we now had more to eat.
On Harman Pass, where we camped, Andrew boiled the billy. John thought, as he drank his tea: Perhaps Andrew is showing some promise as a leader after all.
For dessert, Grant made chocolate mousse with marshmallows. Chocolate mousse with marshmallows is special indeed. In Life, one sometimes finds metaphorical marshmallows in otherwise ordinary things. It’s like when the woman we’ve been married to for thirty-four years says she loves us, or when the sole of a second-hand boot remains attached (Harry’s left boot was a metaphorical marshmallow). And so for a few blessed minutes we all became marshmallow-finders; and Life with our spoons and bowls was worth living, up there in the mist and cold on Harman Pass. We thought it right to look after Ramon’s share of the metaphor, for such a powerful metaphor should not go to waste.
Mist and cold? Harry said lugubriously: The rest of the trip is going to be like this. John said: Not at all, you can tell from the way the Easter moon is shining that tomorrow the sun will shine too.
However, Life’s pessimists (especially if they are Harry) are generally right.
John now complained of cold legs, and asked Harry if he could borrow his longjohns. John’s longjohns were at home, with a lot of other gear which John had forgotten because he had had only one day to pack for the trip, while everybody else had had at least half an hour. At this very moment, Harry noticed his own legs were cold too, and he put on his longjohns. Then he put on his fleecy trousers on top so John would not see the longjohns and get jealous.
This was a kind gesture on Harry’s part.
To be even kinder to John, who was now in the early stages of hypothermia and might otherwise have forgotten what warmth is, Harry gave John regular reports on the warmth of his (Harry’s) legs. It’s kindness like this that helps a fellow to get through a cold night on Harman Pass.
The keas also had noticed the Easter moon. Now, there is a saying in Life (even in kea Life) that things should be done according to the book. The set text for keas is Beak of the Moon. All keas who live around Harman Pass have read it. Beak of the Moon says that keas should stay awake all night when there is a full moon, and get active with their beaks. It says they should look out for tramping parties, especially parties with Andrew and Stuart and Grant and Jenny and Simon and Harry and John in them, and wait till the trampers are just nodding off to catch up on some of the sleep they would have had the night before if Andrew hadn’t woken them up in the middle of it. The book says that just at the nodding-off moment, good keas should peck at the edge of the tent nearest to the nodder-off’s head. They should do this repeatedly and with much squawking. The keas will know if they are doing it properly, the book says, if trampers shine torches out of their tents and shout obscenities at the keas and tell them loudly to go away and peck Harry’s tent (which other keas are pecking anyway) instead. Then the keas should hop away to a safe distance and look sideways in kea-fashion at the torch-shiners and obscenity-shouters, and wait till they snuggle up again and start nodding off. And then good keas should …..
The keas on Harman pass did it properly. They had read the book.
In the morning we caught glimpses of Whitehorn Pass, through partings of low cloud and flocks of jubilant, insomniac keas. Similarly in Life, an occasional moment of insight pierces the uncertainty and desperation and lugubriousness which plague the human condition; and one knows with a rare clarity which way to go.
After Andrew. Andrew led us up towards Whitehorn Pass. Below the pass, a heap of old snow and ice blocked the valley. It had fallen away at the front, and the river flowed out of a cave underneath. Andrew tried cutting steps up one side. Others tried climbing scree and rock on the other side. Then someone looked in the cave, and saw that we could walk under the ice. We did, and looked up through magic white shafts to the grey sky, and popped out further up with no more obstacles between us and the pass.
Life’s obstacles may seem insuperable too, but keep trying and you will find a way under them, even if it involves getting your feet wet. It takes a leader like Andrew to show people these things. (John was beginning to respect Andrew, because he had been allowed more tea at breakfast, and its effects had not yet worn off).
So we got over Whitehorn Pass and down to Park Morpeth hut, which was full, and camped. We were going to camp on Browning Pass, but rain was beginning and Browning Pass looked scungy and we were worried that the Browning Pass keas might have borrowed a copy of Beak of the Moon from the Harman Pass keas. So, although it was only 2.30 pm, we camped, along with twenty-five other people who had come over Browning Pass in the rain and looked fit and determined and very wet indeed.
Early camping is not normally allowed on Fit trips, said Andrew.
This remark of Andrew’s set us thinking. Nobody said anything, but in the tents that night it was going through our minds that perhaps the destiny of this trip was becoming something less than we had imagined. Here we were on a Fit five day trip at Arthurs Pass with three Chief Guides on it, the sort of trip where one might reasonably expect to traverse twenty or thirty kilometres of the Main Divide of the Southern Alps non-stop with a good deal of ice climbing thrown in, preferably in thunder and lightning; but instead we were camping beside a hut in a valley in the rain. There was even a toilet.
It was the sort of uneasy feeling you have when you’ve grown up confidently expecting to become President of the United States, as most normal people do, and you’ve arrived at middle age and found you aren’t even the Prime Minister of New Zealand yet; and worse, the person who is Prime Minister of New Zealand is younger than you are. You’ve failed to keep your rendezvous with destiny. We had that sort of feeling.
Mature people realise that non-Presidential disappointment can be damaging to their mental health, and they divert to more achievable goals. The maturest people on this trip were Harry and John. Harry and John lay in bed in the morning in their tent outside Park Morpeth hut, listening to the rain. They moved about a bit in their sleeping bags and banged the sides of the tent so Andrew would think they were getting up. Then they turned their minds to a more achievable (and drier) goal. This was to retreat down the Wilberforce into Canterbury, where it would be sunny.
I think that’s what we should do, said John.
So do I. But I don’t think we’ll persuade Andrew, said Harry lugubriously.
Harry was right, of course. Harry knew Andrew’s spirit to be made of high tensile stainless steel, or maybe titanium, or carbon fibre. Whatever it was made of, Andrew’s spirit could not be deterred by the mere thought of cold, wet misery on the West Coast. Andrew belongs to a generation which has not experienced much coldness, wetness and misery, and treats them as challenges to be sought and conquered, and gets out of bed early to do exactly that.
For all we know, Andrew may soon be President of the United States.
Before long we were on Browning Pass. We could tell we were there, because we were now right in among coldness, wetness and misery exactly the same as we had seen from below.
Normally on a Three Pass trip you go over Browning Pass and soon you arrive at Harman hut, which is warm, dry, and cosy. John thought we could be at Harman hut in time for morning smoko, and spend the rest of the day in our sleeping bags drinking tea. However, he knew better than to say so. Andrew turned resolutely towards Mount Harman, towering invisibly in the grey pall above, and started to climb. We followed.
It got colder. It began to snow. We climbed, looking for all the world like an expedition on K2 or Everest that is determined to go on whatever the cost in human life. When the altimeters said 1835 metres, we rounded a shoulder in the ridge. Below, we could just make out through the mist a snowy basin that looked as if it might lead to Popes Pass. We used the compass and took a bit of a punt and started to descend.
Andrew was happy. This is what is supposed to happen on Fit trips, he thought: climbing a mountain with packs on while it is snowing and not being sure where you are and using a compass and an altimeter to find your way. For an hour or so, the destiny of Andrew’s trip, which had seemed in danger of becoming Medium, had taken a turn for the better. This would be something to tell Allen Higgins on the bus back to Christchurch, thought Andrew. The Mediums would not have been to 1835 metres in a snow storm.
Even John was feeling better. For John, Andrew’s trip was becoming a metaphor for the triumph of the human spirit over peril and uncertainty. They had survived the jaws of freezing hell, and had survived, and now things could only get better. John hadn’t even been frightened. That’s what tramping with three Chief Guides does for a fellow.
John thought: I am grateful to Andrew for making me climb Mt Harman in the freezing snow. Andrew knew best all along.
Perhaps his leader understood this; because at lunch time, among the boulders in the headwaters of Julia Creek, Andrew did a remarkable and most uncharacteristic thing.
John had said when they stopped, in the casual way that a fellow does when he knows the hard part of the day is over and there isn’t far to go it and it’s a long time since breakfast and the stove is in the trip leader’s pack and the trip leader happens to be within earshot – John had said: Maybe we’ve got time to get the stove out and boil the billy. To John’s astonishment, Andrew got out his stove and boiled the billy.
Andrew is fast realising his leadership potential, thought John.
Andrew drank no tea. He stood by with his mug of cold creek water, watching the tea-drinking behaviour of John and Harry and Stuart and Jenny and Simon and Grant. Andrew is not as other men.
We looked back the way we had come. On the way down Julia Creek to the lunch place, Stuart and Jenny had been in front. They had followed the creek into a narrow rocky place, and had come back and said: Another way might be better. It could now be seen that Stuart and Jenny’s first way would have brought us very rapidly down a hundred foot waterfall, causing us to miss our cup of tea.
Harry looked at the drizzle and the mist, and felt the cold and wet seeping in through his nylon parka which he had only just bought (in 1983), and gazed forlornly at the dry bivvy rock a hundred metres away which we were not using because Fit trampers do not need shelter, and he thought of all the coldness and wetness that was still ahead. Then he thought of his warm dry flat in Wellington.
Harry wished he had not come.
He now said lugubriously: This is my last trip. I shall not go tramping again. I am retiring from tramping.
However, nobody believed him. Harry had retired before, and had come tramping again, many times.
It was not far to Julia hut. However, West Coast valleys have scrub in them, and Julia Creek is a West Coast valley. We spent a long afternoon getting tangled in the scrub. This included a great deal of scrub we could easily have missed by carrying on down the creek itself if we had not believed John when he said: It’s time to go into the scrub.
But fighting the scrub made John feel that this was Real Tramping; and with a cup of tea and lunch inside him he enjoyed it, in a perverse sort of way.
Harry did not enjoy the scrub. But Harry was not in the mood to enjoy anything. All he wanted to do was to stop tramping and go back to Wellington and be lugubrious.
By the time we got to Julia Hut it was full of the same trampers who had filled Park-Morpeth hut the night before. They had come down Mary Creek (which has a track through its scrub), and had got to the hut before us. One might reasonably have expected them to have collected firewood and lit the stove and then camped outside in the rain, leaving the hut ready for us; but they did not.
Readers with any experience of Life will know what this was a metaphor for.
Near Julia Hut are hot pools. Real fair dinkum Fit trampers would have ignored these. They would have snatched a muesli bar and a gulp of cold water and carried on in the dark, back into the rain and scrub and up to the precipitous tops where it was still snowing. But we lay in the hot pools. Those whose intention it was never to go tramping again lay in them far, far into the night.
In the morning Andrew said: Everybody has to be out of the hot pools by 10 am so we can start walking down the Taipo.
Some of us now thought Andrew must have given up on this being a Fit trip; but Andrew said: No, the Taipo was part of my plan all along. I always intended, if conditions proved unsuitable for perilous and hair-raising adventures on the Main Divide, to go down the Taipo. Even Fit trampers sometimes have to walk in valleys, said Andrew.
This made us feel that we were being ever so slightly admonished for our lack of judgement; but we didn’t mind, because we were allowed to go down the valley.
So we walked down the dripping Taipo, which was part of the planned trip. Just once, a faint yellow smudge appeared fleetingly through the cloud, and we knew that different weather is possible on the West Coast. However, Harry had told us what to expect.
We came to Mid Taipo Hut, and had lunch, and Andrew boiled the billy again without so much as a hint from John.
The flats in the lower valley had cow pats on them. Not only should Fit trampers not drink tea at lunch time, thought Andrew; they should not go in places with cow pats. The cow pats were a metaphor for the way |Andrew was feeling: depressed.
John needed somewhere to stay when they got back to Wellington. As Harry’s heart was already in Wellington, and Harry lives near the railway station, John said: Harry, can I stay at your place? A little piece of floor where I can unroll my Thermarest would be enough. Please, Harry?
Harry said: Just at the moment my place is very untidy. If you were desperate John and if your Thermarest was deflated and rolled up, I might be able to find a bit of free floor space large enough to stand it on end. However, I would probably have to move all the piles of books, papers, magazines, clothes, unwashed dishes, miscellaneous tramping gear, antique vinyl LPs, bike tools, camera gear, arts festival brochures and programmes, maps, posters, unpaid bills, supermarket receipts, bags of fruit and veges, boxes, boots, shoes, etcetera, out of the way first. Then we could possibly stand your rolled up Thermarest on end in a corner somewhere. But I wouldn’t count on it if I were you. My place is very untidy just at the moment, said Harry lugubriously.
Oh, said John.
John badly wanted to stay at Harry’s place. The trouble was, whenever he asked he seemed to strike one of those rare moments when Harry’s place was untidy.
Harry sensed John’s disappointment and said: Never mind John. At the end of my street are some pine trees on a hill. You can bivvy under the trees if you like. I don’t guarantee that it will be flat though.
But John was beginning to feel lugubrious himself. He really wanted to stay in Harry’s flat, and he had hoped this would be the time. Pine trees would be not nearly so interesting.
We tramped on down the Taipo in the cold drizzle, and whizzed across the river in a cage. Andrew worked the handle furiously like a grinder in the America’s Cup and got everybody across. He forgot about the cow pats and cups of tea, and cheered up mightily while he had something hard to do. It was good for Andrew, working that handle so hard.
We walked down the last gloomy flats to Seven Mile hut. Suddenly the sun, which was low and far out above the sea, shot golden rays under the cloud and right up the valley, painting the flats and the bush and the snow with magic and filling our hearts with hope for the Kelly Tops tomorrow, so that people who weren’t Harry were glad they were still trampers and not retiring just yet.
Harry said: We don’t have to go over the Kelly tops, we can just carry on down here and pretty soon we’ll come to the road.
But the rest of us wanted to go over the Kelly Tops on our last day. It was as though, at this late stage, we were finally accessing a desire to be Fit.
Seven Mile hut was old and dilapidated, and had no water supply; but Harry soon figured that water could be got on the other side of a swamp two hundred yards away. When we needed water to make Harry’s cup of tea, he told us exactly where to get it.
It was John’s and Harry’s turn to do dinner. In the airport on the way down, Harry had said he had forgotten the dessert, and we believed him. But he was tricking. Harry now gave us chocolate sponge and fruit salad and real cream in cartons, and everyone said what a fine tramper Harry was, and how they wished he wasn’t retiring; and John thought wouldn’t it be nice to have a dessert like this in Harry’s flat when they got back to Wellington, just John and Harry being friends and sitting by Harry’s fire and following up with a cup of tea.
But Harry was adamant about the floor space situation. Otherwise John would be most welcome, he said. Then Grant said: You can stay at my place, John. Harry seemed more relaxed after that.
In the night the stars shone.
The morning was full of promise for the Kelly Tops. However, as we were about to leave, Harry’s boot came apart the same as before, as if to say: I am retiring too, I don’t want to go over the Kelly Tops.
The trouble was, Harry’s boot had a terminal condition. That boot was the ultimate metaphor for Life. But Harry used the spiky thing on Stuart’s Swiss Army knife and John’s billy hook and more nylon cord and a lot of oaths that were hardly muffled at all; and he resurrected his boot.
Then we went over the Kelly Tops, on a track all the way, and had lunch and a brew in the sunshine and spread the tents out to dry with views right out to the sea and back into the mountains the way we had come. And after that we went down to Otira. The town was in the shadow of the mountains, and the cold seeped into our bones; but our hearts were light. Especially Harry’s heart, because the walk up the road to the Otira pub was his last bit of tramping for ever and ever and ever Amen.
We (unless we were Harry) now thought Andrew’s trip had been excellent; and when the Mediums and Easies got on the bus, we started to tell them about it.
Andrew frowned. Fit trampers should not fraternise with Medium and Easy trampers, he said. Proper conduct for Fit trampers after a trip is to answer questions with Yes or No. They should say nothing more than: We completed the trip. Fit trampers at the end of a Fit trip should show no emotion, said Andrew. They should look as serious as All Blacks who have just scored tries.
On the bus, Harry said goodbye to the Mediums and Easies. I won’t see you again, he said. Well, I might possibly bump into you at the movies or around town, but I definitely won’t see you on trips or at Club nights. I have retired from tramping. I shall give away most of my gear.
Allen Higgins heard this, and said: I’ll take your pack, Harry. All right, said Harry. This made John sad, because he fancied Harry’s pack. Harry saw this, and said: John, you can have my ice axe.
When we got to Wellington airport, John picked up Harry’s ice axe from the luggage conveyor. He held it out to Harry, wondering if Harry would take it.
He did.
Coda (by Harry Smith)
At Queens Birthday weekend the Fit trip with Andrew, Stuart etc went to the Red Hills and the Richmond Range and another trip went kayaking at Abel Tasman, but I chose to stay at home because I had retired, and also because the weather is ALWAYS bad at Queens Birthday weekend. On the Saturday and Sunday the weather in Wellington was abysmal with howling winds and torrential rain, and as I lay in bed with the house shuddering in the gales I couldn’t help thinking with a certain smug satisfaction of all those poor suckers grovelling around in the Red Hills or fighting huge swells in their kayaks at Abel Tasman; but unfortunately when I arrived back at work on Tuesday morning I got a deluge of emails informing me that the weather had been fine in the Red Hills with a coating of fresh snow on the tops, and that conditions had been perfect at Abel Tasman with smooth flat seas!