At the picnic table near the junction of the Tawa and Te Apiti tracks it was partly cloudy and almost calm. Cicadas were stridulating all along the Tawa track, which I’d chosen so I could walk the loop anticlockwise for a change and, besides, an annoying pain deep inside my left knee had persuaded me to choose the easier direction, ‘easier’ meaning very slightly longer but significantly less steep. The irritating pain eventually subsided, as I’d expected.
My first sight of the car park as I drove up depressed me:
too many vehicles. I imagined the track swarming with people, with families, with
yelling kids excited at being able to bash things with sticks and complain
about whether they were there yet and wanting to know how much further and
going quiet and sullen when they saw me approaching. I expected to have no more than a few
minutes of solitude before meeting yet another person, or a sweating couple, or
some old people inching along with walking poles and cheerfulness and I’d have
to be cheerful and smiling too and say hello.
My misanthropy — or, rather, my expectation of being
misanthropic — was unwarranted. I’d forgotten that if you happen to be walking
in the same direction as most of the crowd, and at a roughly similar pace, you
might not see anyone for long(ish) periods. In fact, it turned out even better.
I met an elderly man (why is it so much more respectful to call someone elderly
rather than old?) who was coming towards me on his way back to the carpark; he
was so lost in his slow, poles-assisted
plod up the final ascent that he almost walked into me — ‘Sorry!’ he said and I
said, ‘No worries!’ cheerfully, both of us smiling, and I resisted the urge to
say something like it was good to see him out enjoying the track because I was
worried it would sound patronising (it would have). No one else until Tom’s
Lookout: a young couple with daypacks and heavy lumpish Nalgene water bottles
like high-tech caveman clubs were sitting on the seat and we exchanged hellos
as I passed by. The only others I met during the half-hour walk to the table
were three older (not yet elderly but getting there) people who’d just finished
a selfie when I came up the track around a bend and into view. One looked
disconcertingly like Shane
Jones but he stepped aside and waved me through with a smile and I mentally
forgave him for looking like Shane Jones
(which of course was no fault of his — that is, no fault of the man who looked
like Shane
Jones — and I felt mean for having instantly been wary of him. I was glad
he’d given me the opportunity to revise my opinion).
Then there was no one the whole time I was brewing and
drinking Lapsang Souchong at the picnic table and scribbling in the notebook,
at least not until a tanned, shirtless, glistening man with spiky greying hair
walked past going up the main track. We nodded acknowledgment of each other
through the shrubbery.
A few more people passed by, some plodding, a couple jogging.
A middle-aged couple came up the Tawa track.
‘There’s another table just the other side of Whātonga,’ I
called out.
He turned and said something which I took to be either
thanks or maybe explaining why they wouldn’t be stopping but he spoke so fast
in his gentle Irish accent that I couldn’t catch what exactly he was saying,
but his intonation and gestures were reassuring and happy and I felt better about
not being thought of as the monopoliser of the lovely spot.
My misanthropy had by then mostly dissipated, although it
almost returned when a short, bulbous man shuffled up and began talking to me
in a voice possibly audible at the carpark.
‘Having a drink of tea?’ he yelled, and I nodded.
‘That looks like a good camera!’ he said.
I told him it did its job if I did mine, but he didn’t seem
to understand.
‘Doing your journalling?’ he yelled, and I nodded again.
‘What do you write about?’
But before I could say ‘whatever comes to mind’ he was
making suggestions: ‘The birds! The people you meet on the track!’
“Whatever comes to mind,’ I managed to reply, hoping I
didn’t sound unfriendly. I smiled, just in case.
He was OK, though, and seemed genuinely interested in the
people he met (he’d just come from explaining to the Irish couple how Whātonga
had been vandalised then eventually fixed, and about aspects of the
earthquake-proofing of the new bridge), and I was another person to be
genuinely interested in. Also, I think he enjoyed the sight of someone enjoying
what had, until he’d turned up, been some quiet time, and I found it hard not
to appreciate his enthusiasm although I was getting desperate for him to move
on. Which he did: he wished me a good day and shuffled on down the Tawa track,
poking his walking pole at the ground in front of him like a one-feelered bug
probing for morsels. The white noise of cicadas returned, punctuated
occasionally by the notes of a tūī and the soft, high-pitched chattering of a
pīwakawaka.
I had a chook in the fridge at home, waiting to be roasted,
and I needed to get it into the oven. Responsibilities can be a pain sometimes
but I still had plenty of time and roasting a chook hardly tests one’s
organisational abilities or cooking skills. I finished the tea, packed away the
pens, notebook, and stove and set off back to the car. When I turned the
ignition on and the dashboard lit up, I saw the temperature was registering
twenty-nine degrees[1]. I felt a twinge of empathy for the chook I was about to
roast.
Notes:
1. Ngahere: forest, the bush. Here's the pronunciation.
2. That's 29° Celsius (84° Fahrenheit)
Photos (click to enlarge them):
1. Tūī in the ngahere on the Te Apiti track
2. The lovely spot back in August 2024
3. Pīwakawaka. This was on the No. 1 Line track, a little further north of the Te Apiti track.
Photos and original text © 2026 Pete McGregor
