When you’re still glowing from the trip of a lifetime in South Westland just a few days ago you don’t really need to go tramping. But if Ann is away and the Tararuas are fine and Nigel calls from mid Waiohine and says he and Graham are going up to Aokaparangi you might just have a look at the forecast and pack and head for Putara. And when the cloud clears at Herepai in the evening and the full moon is right there behind the cabbage tree in front of the hut, you might think, this wasn’t such a bad idea was it?
And the next afternoon when everything has clagged in again and you’re somewhere between West Peak and Arete, you might think, well if nothing else this is good navigation practice. When you drop off the ridge in 30m visibility saying to yourself I reckon Arete Biv must be down here somewhere, and the biv appears out of the mist right ahead, you might think, I did that pretty well didn’t I. But after you’ve put your pack inside and you’re wanting a brew and you can’t remember where the tarn is because you’ve never stayed here you might walk ten minutes in the obvious direction finding nothing, and you might think, a dry night at Arete Biv won’t be that much fun. Unless you happen to bump into the tarn on the way back, in which case you might think, great – but now where’s that darned bivv?
And at 2am when you wake for a pee and the cloud has cleared and there is Bannister right out the door in the moonlight you might think, WOW, and try a bulb exposure. In the morning when it’s better still and the whole Wairarapa is under cloud but right here on Arete is the pink first glow of breathless day, you might pull your boots on in a hurry without socks and expose a whole film before breakfast and think, this is my sixteenth roll this year and it’s only March, is this becoming an expensive hobby or what?
And when you’ve cruised down past Te Matawai and you still have a couple of nights’ food in your pack and you find a marker on a tree saying Otaki River, you might think this’ll do me. Paddling down the infant Otaki, you might say to yourself, why didn’t I come this way ever before? And camped beside the stream with a carefully contoured hip hole underneath, as you nod off you might think, when a chap has a Thermarest and a little tent and his boots for a pillow in a place like this, there isn’t too much else he could ask for, anyway not anything I can think of right now!
In the morning when it’s fine you might be disappointed because you hoped for cloud to diffuse the light in the bush, but you might go on down the river anyway and still find so many reasons to use your camera and tripod that when you reach Waitaewaewae the day is used up, even though Merv Rogers’ guide book said it should take four hours. And when you look in the hut window and see Nigel and Graham whom you thought were at Carkeek or points east, and a couple of others as well, you realise some of them might have a car at the Forks. And next day after you’ve photographed the old log hauler in the Waitatapia which you missed last time because you’d run out of film, and these two girls catch you at the Forks having gone a whole lot faster, you might think, I had a pretty good time anyway.
Well you might think something like that.