Strange Encounters on the Te Araroa Trail
In my eyes, this American is a madman—and I mean that as a compliment.
We were fighting our way through Raetea Forest, the second muddy forest, until evening. We’d pitched our tent and decided to spend the night in the forest and continue the next day, thinking we’d have the place to ourselves, when he suddenly appeared!
When he saw us, his first words were: ‘This is way too hard to walk!’ But that day he’d already walked 40 kilometers, powering through 1.5 muddy forests in one go—something that took us two days to complete.
Then he set down his modest backpack, strung up a hammock between the trees as his open-air tent, and pulled out a guitar (yes, a thru-hiker actually carrying a guitar!) and started playing songs for us.
He’d already completed six long-distance hikes, most of them in the US, before coming to this Te Araroa Trail in New Zealand. A 90-mile coastal section that takes most people four or five days? He finished it in two. His pace was somewhere between a brisk walk and a run, yet he still managed to stop for photos and soak in the views. His pack was simple but magical—tent and hammock, not just the guitar but also an inflatable kayak.
The next morning, he played a few more songs for us—jazz, soft music—opening our day with melodies before hitting the trail again, moving fast as ever, leaving us in awe.
(Reflections from 2016/12/4)
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