Hiking in New Zealand helped me find myself

The idea that travel has the power to change us is nothing new, but occasionally the impact is so great that life is never the same again. Which is how I find myself, 10 years after a journey through the wilds of New Zealand, marvelling at the string of unexpected turns that have occurred since.

To be fair, the trip was a big one, a 3000-kilometre hike from the blustery northernmost cape of the North Island to Bluff at the bottom of the South Island that took a solid five months. Five months of carrying my “worldly possessions” on my back, sleeping in a tent, crossing wild mountains, forests and rivers and generally being disregarded by New Zealand’s notoriously volatile weather.

How did I, a woman in her mid-40s with a good (okay, soul-sucking) corporate job, come to embark on such an audacious journey? It was a surprise even to me, to be honest – an idea from a hiking magazine that had stuck to me like a grass burr. But when “there’s got to be more to life than this” has been rolling around your head for decades, action is required. Hiking the Te Araroa Trail seemed the most excellent idea ever.

Making it even more compelling was that I’d also been suffering from anxiety and depression: crying curled up in a ball on the bed, staring blankly at work computers and generally not functioning. And we all know that if something’s not working, we should turn it off and turn it back on again.

To flick the switch on life, that was my plan. Never mind that I lacked key criteria such as courage and finely honed back-country skills. Sure, I’d hiked Tassie’s 65-kilometre Overland Track and a string of shorter trails – I had some idea – but I definitely wanted backup.

A girlfriend agreed to join me, then pulled out on the second day. That’s when the real journey began.

Te Araroa led me along remote beaches for days, then through tangled mossy forests as beautiful as they were exhausting. I traversed a titanium-grey volcanic desert and clung to vast and steep mountain ranges (sometimes literally), fully aware that they could shake me off in an instant. In the South Island, I either clambered over the Southern Alps or meandered in awe alongside them, crossing plains quivering with tussock grass.

My socks grew crunchy with ice after three days sheltering from a snowstorm in a tin hut. I dislocated my shoulder twice.

LAURA WATERS

It took about four weeks for anxiety to lose interest in tormenting me, two months before I was giggling and singing my sentences, delirious with the lightness that comes with the sole and simple task of walking. There’s no greater joy than choosing the sound of wind in the trees over politicians squabbling on the news, of unfettered wilderness over gritty cities, of pure air over exhaust fumes. My identity was stripped. The silence. The space. Oh, the bliss.