I thought I had been hiking before. I even thought I had done one or two challenging hikes in my lifetime. I was mistaken. The hike on the Alex Knob trail—located in New Zealand’s Westland Tai Poutini National Park—was a real hike: three hours (round trip) of scrambling over big rocks and roots in dense jungle, or “bush” as it’s called by the locals, to reach the Rata Lookout—a little ledge part-way up the mountain with a direct view of the famous Franz Josef Glacier.
I started the hike with my pack on my back and my point-and-shoot camera dangling from my wrist, as usual. My tendency to stop every few meters to snap photos of the ultra-green canopy and the lush moss and ferns bordering the trail is the reason I was always at the back of the line on our group hikes. Within twenty minutes of setting out, the group was no longer visible on the trail ahead and the camera went permanently into my backpack as I needed both hands free for negotiating the gnarly, often steep, terrain.
I climbed up and over large, irregularly-shaped rocks, passed through narrow trenches bordered by grassy banks, and made my way up nearly-vertical tree root steps, clinging to long vines of dubious reliability to pull myself up. The path’s width varied between one and two feet, generally with a steep drop-off on one side. Don’t look too far down. Helicopters buzzed overhead, ferrying people to and from the glacier itself, including members of my tour group who’d paid extra for the experience. It was definitely a beaten path, as they say, and a far cry from the gentle mountain trail walks of my youth.
By the time I reached the lookout spot, where the rest of the group were waiting, I was smelly and my shirt was nearly drenched with sweat under my pack. All discomfort was forgotten, however, when I looked out to the massive glacier across the way. What a reward, that view!
I took it all in: blue glacier sliding down towards the valley, overcast sky above, impossibly green vegetation on all sides, tiny helicopters framed against the dark mountain. My heart danced and my head buzzed with the heady sensation of it all. Out came the camera, even as I tried to imprint the scene on my memory.
I have learned a somewhat counter-intuitive truth in my travels: Those moments in which we glimpse the full, enormous scale of the earth and our speck of space in it are also the moments of greatest assurance about our glorious significance and ability to manage this life. If I can take in the breadth and height and enormity of a mountain, if I can get up next to it and touch it and feel its heart beating in time with the rest of creation, if I can glimpse its borders and edges and limits, if I can embrace it as part of myself—if I can do all that, life and its challenges no longer feel so overwhelming.
Now, if I can only get back down this mountain….
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