Getting clear
Parish Robbins came from California. Creases formed on his brow as he looked intently down by his feet. Nylon billowed around his wiry frame. He stood on the ice scoured slabs above Black Lake, expounding on the likely age of the lichen surrounding him.
Taking into account temperature, sunshine hours and the nutrients available from the rock, one could estimate the age of lichen by measuring the diameter of the lichen rings, which grew outwards, dying from the centre.
‘Oh, that would be about, let's say, 1500 years old,' he said, his well rounded Californian vowels sounding uncannily authoritative.
The scene had become like a National Geographic television special. I felt at a loss. Was it the accent, or did he know what he was talking about? I think I felt like he wasn't supposed to understand this place. He wasn't from round here. But these were things he knew, and when you're standing out in the wind on a smooth plate of gabbro hundreds of millions of years old how much different is San Diego from Invercargill anyway?
In any case, it was the girl from Dunedin who remarked, ‘It’s like a giant crystal!’ as she achieved a moment of New Age insight into the geological structure of her immediate universe.
The wind hurried the mist over the iron-hard rock slabs and through the short tussock and alpine herbs, leaving drops of condensation forming on their leaves.
Through the mist a hazy figure appeared. Soon it became a fit muscular woman with an enormous pack. She was striding towards us. There was a round of ‘Gidday, how's it goin', where ya goin', where've ya been?'
Forthright was the word: ‘I'm from the Southland Tramping Club. I've just brought these two over from Lake Adelaide. This trip – it's the best two day tramp in the country.'
I suggested it was a shame the weather was cloudy. Not a problem, she assured me. Her two companions, one just moved to Invercargill, the other a Japanese exchange student, now trotted down out of the mist looking wide eyed, as though it would take several days to digest the fullness of their wild weekend in New Zealand's remote southwest corner. They continued down into the Gertrude Valley to where a tongue-tip of silver beech forest reaches up and licks the upper valley floor: Homer Hut and the Milford road.
Parish Robbins headed up to the Gertrude Saddle. There, when it is clear, you suddenly look out into space over a 1500 metre precipice. Above are the pinnacles and clear snow peaks of the Darran Mountains. Glacier-ground ridges lead the eye away down to the sinous fiord of Milford Sound, hemmed in by dark bush covered precipices, and out to the Tasman Sea. Perhaps there was westerly cloud pouring into the fiord from the ocean, bringing the next cold front.
Could be those novice trampers were lucky to be enclosed in the mist. From Gertrude Saddle their route climbs up above the huge exposure to the Barrier Knob snowfield. It's the space beneath you, rather than the difficulty, that makes the fear rise up. You get used to it: the first time I walked to Lake Adelaide I met New Zealand climbing legend Murray Judge just below the snowfield. Murray has done more climbing in the Darran Mountains than probably anyone else, ever. As stones rocketed down around us and everyone tried to crawl up into small balls on the ledge, Murray stood still and looked surprised.
‘It's not usually like this,' he said.
Perhaps not, but it is an alpine adventure. One January after a fierce southwest storm I came over Barrier Knob wearing tramping boots, no crampons and only one ice axe between two of us. Kicking steps in the hard snow with the drop below was a gruelling exercise in meditative focus on the Buddhist tenet that life is in large part suffering. My right big toenail fell off three months later.
Leaving Parish to enjoy the view as a brief southwest change began to clear the skies, I wandered back down into the valley. Lying on my back on the moss, the chilly draughts of maritime air coast over the mountain tops overhead.
I wondered about this feeling of deep, cool, transparent power that envelopes the southwest of New Zealand. Eventually I realised that it's the air. An El Nino summer like this one past accentuates the cool mass of crystal clear air that spins around the bottom of the globe, vast and powerful and unknown, embracing the uninhabited southern ocean, stroking the southern tip of the South Island.
– Something resembling this story first appeared in Wilderness magazine in an issue from 1997.