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Slogging through epic mud in the New Zealand bush, the Blissful Hiker learns about plunging straight through difficult passages, never making assumptions and always looking for the beauty around her. 

In this episode:

1. On only day 5, the Blissful Hiker cheats and allows her friend of a friend of a friend Peter to drive her past the road walk section. 
2. She enters real New Zealand bush, the Raetea Forest, which begins easily, but then plunges her straight into epic mud.
3. She hears the R2D2 squawk song of a Tui for the first time 
4. She gets lost for a moment, but soon finds a wide grassy part of the trail to set her tent.
5. She learns about plunging straight through difficult passages, never making assumptions and always looking for the beauty around her. 

MUSIC: Impresiones de la Puna by Alberto Ginastera as played by Alison Young, flute and Vicki Seldon, piano
available on iTunes

Does it count if cheating wasn’t my idea? Peter wonders if I’d “betray the mission” by having him drive me to the next town because the Te Araroa Trust had to divert the trail due to Kauri dieback. 

The Ninety Mile Beach felt deserted, remote and lonely, and it’s not an understatement to say I feel culture shock pulling into the massive parking lot of an equally massive box store called Pak’nSav to pick up a few items for the coming days. 

We bump and lurch up the Takahue Saddle Road to the Mangamuka Route. The air is cool and fresh, the smell so different now – sweetly pungent, earthy and moist. 

But then he points to my left, to a tiny opening in the thick foliage. That’s the way? In there? It’s a trail about a meter wide aggressively cutting up the mountain now; straight up. 
The mud is thick and sticky, wet and slippery. Roots crisscross the path and I learn quickly not to try and balance on them as a means to avoid the mud, because they’re worse than the mud, greasy and unstable. 

Irene and I are quiet in our thoughts and then she says, “A tui!” I hear a few bell-like sounds amidst clicks, cackles, creaks, groans and wheezes more like R2D2 than any bird I’d ever heard. I learn later tuis can sound like two birds because of their bifurcated sound-producing organ called a syrinx.  

The afternoon gives way and the light begins to change, warming to a deep orange the tall Rimu covered in Dr. Seussian epicytes and long, black tendrilly, supplejack. A wooden sign points to Makene Road one way and TA SOBO (or southbound) the other with the encouraging words, “Only 2,850 kilometers to go!”

What about this day, I think. What has it taught me? To just plow through the tough stuff and not care if you get dirty. To never assume and to look and listen for all the beauty around you, even if you’re tired and uncertain you’ll find a flat place to camp. 

That’s the wonder of hiking, that you really, truly have to let go – of expectations, of being hard on yourself, of having to do things in the right way because sometimes the day just gets away from you and you have to improvise. 

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