It’s 7:30am and I have spent the night in Spludgeons Shelter – the entire front wall is a clear plastic sheet with a tin roof and dirt floor. There are 4 sleeping spots. The full moon shone incredibly brightly over the mountains and through the plastic wall and bathed me in light all night. My feet were sore after hours of walking in new shoes, but I’m very happy I decided to wear trail shoes and not boots.
Bathed in moonlight the following things played on my mind: I was unable to do my sleeping bag zipper up before it got dark and my incessant rustling would surely annoy my fellow hut mate. I’ve had this problem before when I was camping with Philipp. So there is a solution. For now it defeats the whole point of a sleeping bag to not zip it up.
I was pleased the moon was shining on me all night. The moon is probably very powerful and it will disappear soon, as it does.
My hut mate is from the UK and is spending 3 months inside Kahurangi NP wandering around by himself. I asked him why. He said it gave him time to think. I asked if he ever solved any of his problems. I didn’t catch his answer.
It took an incredibly long time to fix my zipper. The engineering process and thought behind this particular zipper make no sense to me. But I stayed calm and solved the problem and only said fuck twice.
There are more Weka than I’ve ever seen in this forest. I asked the UK guy why he thought the weka was so successful when the kiwi- a similar bird, was struggling. He opined that perhaps it was the place the Weka laid its eggs. As luck would have it there was a ‘wilderness’ magazine in the hut explaining that Weka lay their eggs in the grass – so surely this is not where their success lies.
After arriving at my proposed detour from the Leslie track where I’d planned to walk a route to Flannagans Hut – I noticed an old forestry department sign pointing up the hill. Someone had carved a line through the word route and chipped the word ‘horror’ into the wood. It must have taken a long time. Above the word horror someone had written the word ‘total’ in black vivid. Another person had carved a skull and crossbones. I carried along Leslie Track which undulates like an Indian step well along the river bank.
I arrived at Karamea Bend Hut – a huge modern hut that sleeps 20. Inside was one man laying on a mattress. I asked him how his day was. He replied good without looking up and went back to reading. He soon warmed to me and told me a lengthy story about how DOC spent 10 days in a helicopter in this part of the forest looking for a rare parrot. He seemed to have a strong dislike of this government department and referred to it as “those fat bastards”. I asked who had first seen the parrot to trigger this response but he didn’t know. I went swimming.
When I got back to the hut Brendon – who has a long pointy white goatee – asked if I’d seen the parrot. He offered the information that he was now living in the forest indefinitely so that he doesn’t kill the guy that his girlfriend of 28 years cheated on him with. Many of his friends died in tragic circumstances within 6 months of each other. He has anger management issues which trigger violent seizures. This helped him while he was in maximum security prison because he got to be in a medical ward where black power and mongrel mob do not regularly stab each other. He spent 2.5 years in maximum security for growing hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of weed. I was surprised. Brendon speaks of jail as a fully paid holiday where he spent the best Christmas of his life making ice cream and cheesecake. I said it seems pointless to have sent you to prison because you speak of it fondly as if you might like to go back. He agreed it was pointless but does not grow weed any more because of the mental health stresses it causes. I asked if he’d rather be in the forest than in jail. He said that’s why I’m here.
We smoked his home grown tobacco – which he has been rolling in a paper map he had torn up – and some of my weed. I gave him a bunch of rolling papers. I asked him how he became a big time weed grower. He said it gave him satisfaction when he recruited solo parents on the benefit with children that then got to go to school camp because of the weed money. He told me he treated his dealers well and they would regularly enjoy smorgasbord together. Brendon spoke fondly of his miniature pony who was his most cherished staff member. One day he was smoking a joint and the pony came over and started sniffing around, so he cupped his hands around its mouth and gave the pony a shottie. The pony fell over onto its side. Brendon was shocked but the pony got up and asked brendon for another puff on the joint. This time it didn’t fall over. From then on whenever the pony would smell a joint it would come “flying across the paddock” and by the sound of it, practically beg to carry 40kg of weed growing equipment into the forest.
Brendon seems to have reflected on his relationship during the night. It is 7am and his stories are relentless. The next hut is 5.5 hours away. I like brendon but I’ll be glad to see the back of him. I hope there’s some hot backpackers somewhere in this forest.
Josh walks south 