Day 1 –
“This is going to be hard until it’s not” I remind myself as I plod up the steep hill leading us out of town and towards the trailhead. “What you are doing right now,” I remind myself, “is what is going to make this better.” But my legs, being that they are legs, cannot hear me and so they rudely continue to protest, aching with a soreness earned almost a week ago on the climb to Muller hut.
Today is a recovery hike, allegedly. Seven miles and 800 feet of gain into the North Arm hut, a large shed of a building sitting along an inland bay on the Rakiura Track on Stewart Island. “This should be easier than it is” I think to myself, “I should be in better shape than I am,” I think to myself as I reminisce about last summer, about the PCT four summers ago when this distance and gain would have been the work of a couple of hours, not half a day. Or more.
I feel sad and lonely in this body of mine which has lost so much of the fitness it once had. I want to chide myself for not trying harder, for not training more in the weeks and months before we left for New Zealand. But could I have done more? Or did I do exactly what I was capable of in the moments I had to do it? I suppose neither matter much now and thoughts like these make it no easier to walk uphill under the weight of a heavy pack. And besides, I am not alone, Keith is here with me, up ahead just a little. Walking stoically under his own pack and waiting for me when I stop.
The paved road becomes a dirt road becomes a wide gentle path leading through the rainforested trees. Above and around us chime a cacauphony of the most rediculous bird calls I have ever heard: some like squealing dog toys, others whistling near-human, while others still sound like they are programming the deck of the USS Enterprise in an early episode of Star Trek. All around us is a wall of verdant green, limbs positively dripping under the weight of their summer foliage. The ground below a speckled garden with ferns exploding upwards like a thousand thousand fountains of green. It’s magical here, in its own way, far from the stark high alpine which I am usually drawn to. Down here there are no sweeping vistas, no miles-long panorama. But instead, the beauty of the small things bursting into life, a curl of a new fern or the brightest green of moss upon a tree. My lungs feel brighter and more full just for being here.
Eventually it begins to rain, because rainforest. Then it stops, because summer. And finally the hike culminates in a series of what Appalachian Trail hikers call PUDs (pointless up and downs) before at last the hut is revealed, a green window shining and reflecting between the ferns. As I strip away my rain-sodden clothes and exchange them for the dry ones in my bag I resist the urge to calculate miles and times and distances. After all, the numbers won’t help and this is just going to be hard until it isn’t.
Day 2 –
The debate with myself lasts a solid 20 minutes as I watch the gentle lap of the water push the tide in and my fellow hikers come and go along the beach. Finally, after so long, finally I pull my shirt over my head and lay back along the rocks. The mid-day sun, cooled by the ocean breeze rests its warm head against the skin of my chest and I feel at home and alive and exposed all at once—I could almost cry at the sheer volume of emotions cascading through me. In my ears Spotify’s Transcend playlist brings the music of my community close and I feel held by their songs, by the rocks against my own body.
Amid the glare of the southern sun I have been wanting, no aching to strip away my shirt like all the other boys and bare my chest to the sky. To let the sun bake down upon my scars and bronze my pallid chest. My new chest, as I have been thinking of it for more than a year. A chest free of the binds of my sex, free of the constraints of a gender that never felt truly like my own. And in this moment I feel a kind of wholeness I have never known. Not freedom, per say, for in the back of my mind I am still keeping track of everyone on this little spit of land: the old Aussies bobbing in the water, the woman with her book in the shade of the trees. Do they notice me, can they see my scars, are they thinking of me in any way at all? Because when you are trans, safety can never be assumed, and when you are like me, trans without an easily pegged gender, you are always a threat and therefore threatened by the fragile egos of the cisgender. But right now the caress of the sky upon my body, the music of my people in my ears, I let my guard down just a little and let myself be held in this one, perfect moment.
Day 3 –
“It looks like that rain is going to blow in within the next hour,” I say, before realizing that I actually have no idea what I’m talking about, never having been to Stewart Island before much less New Zealand as a whole. My knowledge of mountainous weather patterns is based exclusively in the northern hemisphere and within that an even smaller collection of mountain ranges and ecosystems. Even the simple fact that the sun arcs through the northern sky instead of the southern is throwing me so far off that I often don’t know which direction I’m facing. I donate a moment of mental energy to marvel at my limitations and smallness atop this great blue rock before pointing my muddy shoes down the trail and beginning to walk.
Today the forest feels different. Somehow more open under the gentle light of an overcast sky. More full of bark and branches than the riotous green that comes with bright sun. My hamstrings and calves still burn on the uphills, still demand that I stop and stretch more often than my ego would like. But the PUDs feel more mellow going this way, shallower climbs with short, steep descents and much of the morning is spent leapfrogging other hikers who spent the night with us at North Arm hut. Pleasantries; greetings; encouragement; round and round we go until Keith and I find ourselves alone in a long stretch between hikers. The threat of rain looms as we inch towards town. I fantasize about the small warm room that Keith and I have reserved at the hostel there. The trail pitches down and I push my legs to churn faster, to ride them forward like I used to but can no longer do. In a turn of almost but not quite perfect timing the sky opens as we hit the outskirts of town and Keith and I rush forward into the arms of a simple hostel lobby, then into our small warm room where I no longer need to push my body forward. Tomorrow is a rest day, a driving day, heading north once again and into the mountains. It would seem, that’s the only thing I know how to do.