The Last Adventurer

Since I was completely gassed, I looked over at my wife to see if she had any motivational words to keep me going. Unfortunately, she also looked completely exhausted. Without saying anything, we both sat down. Under the endless boughs, we sat and talked about how tired we were. Eventually, we got up, and resumed moving at a sleepwalker’s pace past Mile Thirty. We rumbled past Mile Thirty-One at a slow crawl. Five steps into mile Thirty-Two, we crankily ascended and descended a mild series of humps. As we went up and over each rise, my wife listed the various defects of the section of trail, and eloquently discussed Mile Thirty-Two’s elaborate plan to “get” us.

Her conspiracy theory about the trail might have seemed absurd a day before, and absolutely ludicrous at the beginning. But, at that moment in time, absolutely and totally tired, it really felt like Mile Thirty-Two was really out to take us out with the gun of fatigue and the bullets of exhaustion. At mile Thirty-Three, the trail sloped gently down, and each step was in slow motion. Inch by inch, we approached the buildings at Mile Thirty-Three and one half at Sandfly point. Glacially, we arrived at the final mile marker, and forced our faces to smile for the camera, while billions of sandflies soared towards our warm bodies.

After the photos, we entered the “waiting room” of the trail to avoid the bugs. Gradually, the rest of the group straggled in, and joined us on the wooden benches, looking out past the windows at the swarm of bugs struggling to enter the room. Not a word was spoken between anyone in the group. Everyone sat around the room, staring at invisible spaces with their fifty mile blank looks. At some point, the boat arrived, and all of us managed to make a zombie-ish dash for the decks through the bugs. As the boat motored out onto the sound, the real rain began to fall heavily again.

At the dock, everyone disembarked with wan smiles and locked leg muscles. A group photo was taken, hands were shaken. It seemed fitting to say something to the other members in the group, but no one could find the words to describe the sense of camaraderie and awe that we had experienced over the last days as first strangers but now friends. The exultation and exhilaration of having completed something larger than our individual selves was written on everyone’s face, and tempered with the absolute bone crushing tiredness of exertion. Minutes passed, the goodbyes ended, and the group disbanded, heading back off to the four corners of the earth, back to warm beds, civilization, and dry shoes. On the bus with completely fogged windows back to Te Anau, I had my answer. It was the walk of a lifetime. I had not been changed into a tree, but the magic of the place had forever written itself into my soul.