It turns out that moments of profound despair and self-doubt don’t come at the beginning when you’re just starting out,
but rather when you’ve given everything to get near the finish line, yet somehow can’t seem to reach it.
—–
By the third consecutive day of trekking through snow-covered forest, I still hadn’t figured out how to move efficiently through the snow. Even as I quickened my pace, I kept slipping backward on uphill sections, taking three steps forward only to slide two back. My feet were soaked through with snow melt and mud, frozen and numb.
But I pushed ahead with anticipation, because according to the Te Araroa Trail documentation, from the summit I’d be able to see the trail’s endpoint—the first time in over five months that I’d lay eyes on the destination I’d been seeking all this way.
For me, it meant everything.
—–
By now, I was already running behind schedule. After finally leaving the tree-covered forest section, the grassy slopes ahead to the summit looked open and clear, with gentler gradients.
Just as I was relieved that the route should be clearer from here on, raindrops suddenly started falling from above—then quickly became a downpour. Wind gusted and rain pelted my body, and without the shelter of the trees, I could only accept it all.
Meanwhile, fog rolled in around me, and I could barely make out the orange marker poles a hundred meters ahead. I tried to pull out my phone to check my location, but my soaked screen and trembling fingers made even this simple task impossible.
With feet soaked, frozen, and numb, dragging a body battered by rain and wind, I pressed forward alone through the wilderness, unable to orient myself. Just me—one small body standing on this vast land—exposed to all the wild atmospheric changes around me.
I didn’t know if I’d even make it to the summit, but in this weather, I definitely wouldn’t see the view I’d been anticipating—the end of Te Araroa. I even wondered if I’d make it down alive. My body was gradually losing heat, my feet were going numb, and more than once I thought about pressing the GPS rescue button I carried with me.
“Should I turn back?”
But I was so close to the finish line. All I wanted was to see what lay ahead of me, to walk those final stretches properly. I’d already come so far. Why couldn’t I just finish this?
At that moment, I felt like I’d earned the Monopoly title of “Saddest Sob Story of the Month.” This was enough. What kind of joke was the universe playing on me?
I shouted and cursed at the sky, hurling every profanity I could think of in both Mandarin and English—not that anyone was around to hear it anyway.
Enormous loneliness enveloped me.
I questioned why I’d left at all, throwing myself into this unknown wilderness instead of staying sheltered in comfort. Six months could have been spent doing anything else. Why burden my shoulders with a dozen kilos and wander like an ascetic?
Massive waves of negativity buried me.
But there were no answers.
—–
The radio tower marking the summit finally appeared in my sight, and a thought suddenly struck me: “If there’s someone working at that tower, I’m not going any further. I’m hiking back down with them!”
Just then, the rain and wind eased, then stopped entirely. The view around me became clearer and clearer. A hole tore open in the dark clouds to my right, revealing a sliver of blue sky, then quickly covered again, then blue sky appeared once more.
I turned to look back the way I’d come, and in the valley that had been completely obscured, the town where I’d started that morning suddenly appeared.
When I finally reached the summit and looked to the other side of the mountain, tears welled up in my eyes. The view I’d been longing for was suddenly clear and open, and far in the distance, I saw the endpoint for the first time.
And you know what? There really was a car parked outside the tower. But by then, my spirits were soaring. All I wanted was to reach the finish line on my own two feet. So I smiled, walked past the car and tower, and continued down the trail toward the mountain lodge.
—–
It was as if the universe had played a cruel joke on me—throwing me into desolation, facing despair with no answers, only to dramatically gift me a moment of clarity. It played out like a movie scene, yet it happened in my final four days before completing the Te Araroa Trail 3,000-kilometer trek.
And it perfectly captured everything I’d felt over those five months—it reminded me why I never gave up: that sweetness that comes after breaking through despair.
—–
(Journal entry from May 23, 2017)
📍 Te Araroa Trail | New Zealand 3,000-Kilometer Trekking Journal| Back to Complete Series Index
