The Last Adventurer

I stared blankly at the hut door in front of me. After just under eleven miles, my brain was too tired to comprehend what my eyes saw. The glass window on the hut door had a perfectly square sticker in the middle. The sticker was white, with a green border and a green diagonal slash across it. Partially covered by the slash was a green bird, with the words “Beware Kea”. I was staring at the sticker blankly, because I wasn’t sure if it was a joke, or serious, or a serious joke. My wife had no such metaphysical conundrums. She threw open the door and gratefully stomped into Mintaro Hut.

Six hours or so before, we had started our second day on the Milford Track. The morning chill had snuggled around the forest floor, confident that it would not have to rise until the sun crested the valley ridges. I had been in a groggy state of near wakefulness since the earliest tickles of pre-dawn light touched my eyes. The short bunks had given me a frustrating night of sleep. My legs had levitated eight feet above the ground from the moment I had gone vertical because I had the top bunk. My mind had been unable to interpret my floating limbs and had projected various subconscious scenarios of falling on an hourly basis. My nightmares, along with the snoring and various hut noises had made it a fitful night.

Once I saw the soft orange and pink hues of morning that playing on the surrounding mountaintops, I was easily reminded that a restless night was a small price to pay for my surroundings. Over breakfast, the group had discussed the rumor of rain. The DOC forecast clearly stated that it would rain during the day, but the sky was perfectly clear. My wife and I resolved not to wear our raingear until the sky clouded over, and that we would try and make it to Mintaro hut before the storm arrived.

We set out confidently from Clinton. The moist, fresh air cooled our bodies as we had continued along the riverbank. We glimpsed potential mountains that occasionally popped into view as giant reminders of the rugged terrain. We needed the reminders because our eyes and bodies were enveloped by the constant unstoppable green of the surrounding forest.

As we had walked, the sky appeared to be made of leaves, broad and small, supported by ancient overgrown trunks. At eye-level, variations of the color traced intricate patterns as bushes, or formed velvet paths that obscured the soil. The very letters of the word green were inadequate to convey the illuminated brilliantness of the growth that we passed around. It was as if we had ventured into a primordial time capsule where the rules of color had been rewritten.