Finally, after two days of travel—broken by one night of debauchery—Chester and I wind our way up to the crest of the hills above Golden Bay. Through the dripping rain forest to stop in the sky, the Toyota Corolla skidding over gravel. And the sun shines down on the shoreline.
Here we are: after three hours of sleep in the car, after a nap on the ferry and a split second decision to stay on the northern end of the island rather than wind our way south, after a blazing ride east under the red-hot glare of the sun, after a stop in the town of Nelson, a jog along city streets in search of climbing gear, after a direction faux pas remedied just in the nick of time, turn north and drive, after a clutch-rattling climb into the mountains baring outsiders from the heart of the parks: Golden Bay: Kahurangi and Abel Tasmin.
And here we are: “Would you like a tuna sandwich?” “Yes, please. And one for yourself?”
Fine dining in a gravel parking lot with the heavens open above us, and paradise spread wide below. Isn’t that how it always goes? And go.
Down Highway 60: steep cutbacks descending, falling in zig-zags down to the valley. One hundred kilometers an hour and rising, and the flat land never felt so good. At least to the wheezing Toyota Corolla, the breaks burning black in the wheel wells.
Zoom Zoom between the rails of one way bridges, the right-of-way marked by red arrows on the roadside. Zoom Zoom through pasture land that runs up the hillsides, sheep perched precariously on the slopes high above us. Zoom Zoom down the tarmac to the town of Takaka, and we have arrived.
The climbers’ campsite “The Hangdog” is closed due to renovations. “Gutted.” But we hear about a free campsite via an acquaintance of Chester’s named Pete. Pete hanging out in a field beside the “The Hangdog,” down from Christchurch on a week-long holiday. The campsite is located 25 kilometers back up the Cob Valley—back the way we came. So off we go, retracing out tire tracks and ready for sleep.
Pete mentions that sand flies are prevalent at the campsite, but fails to relate to us the epidemic proportions that would be waiting for us on the other side of the car door.
Swarms of biting no-see-‘ems buzzing.
Up from the ground, everywhere at once,
A plague upon every exposed bit of skin.
Slap at your ankles. The dance of the dunce.
From annoyed to angry to writhing to “FUCK!”
Dive for the car and shut yourself in,
But they’re falling like rain on the windows outside,
And you know that the tent will not set itself up.
So you put on some sox and you pull fast your hood,
And step out to the blood-sucking black-crawling storm.
Not to be dramatic… “Bravery! Bravery!" This is our cry…but really, there were heaps of them.
Around nine o’clock each night—when darkness finally settles into the tree tops—the sand flies retreat to their stagnant pools, to their shallow eddies on the banks of the river to scheme about blood-sucking plans for the morrow. And at long last we can relax beside the fire.
We stayed at the campsite from Thursday through Sunday—kickin’ it in the afterhours with a troop of climbing bums. There was the aforementioned Pete: the walking-talking guidebook from Christchurch with big plans for the summer and bigger plans for life. There was George (pronounced Hor-Hay): the father figure and technique specialist, hailing from Spain with a P.H.D. in climbing physiology and built like a tempered plate of steel. There was a couple whose names I never caught, and who retired early to their shared tent on the nightly. And of course there was the guy from Zimbabwe who had a broken collar bone and a soft way of speaking, who may or may not have introduced himself as “Scooter.” I never could quite understand him because of: 1) his whispering, 2) the fire-smoke foiling any attempt at lip-reading, and 3) the fact that I was at all times half-delirious from the bites of the sand fly.
Those first three days we spent like this:
- Jump out of the tent and sprint to the car, hopping over patches of knee-high wet grass and hoping that your feet were moving faster than the flies
- Speed down the highway and swerve into the Paynes Ford parking Lot with the sun just beginning to halo the hills
- Scarf down peanut butter banana sandwiches and head for the double track dusty road, the walking path leading to climbing
- Choose a sidetrack through the tall-grass. Into the bush and up the hillside, each one leading to a different limestone crag. (To date we’ve hit the Slave Wall, the Carnage Wall, the Tenuite Wall, The Creese Wall, the Red Wall, the Globe Wall, the Rat Trap Wall, and the Stone Symposium Wall) Hard work, and always more to do.
- Pick a climb. Harness up. Tie in. And enter into the vertical world.
Black and white streaked limestone, as featured as a pimpled teenager’s face:
Pull down on the pockets,
Smear a toe on the nose,
Throw your hand toward a tic,
If it’s there, then it goes.
There are heel hooks in sockets,
There is bridging through gaps,
And if the pump’s burning bright,
Throw a top-rope. Run laps.
That’s enough. Sport lingo has never made much sense to someone who doesn’t participate in the sport. And it never will. It is a coded message meant only for those in the know. A brotherhood or sisterhood of chitter-chatter between stone-cold look-a-likes. While those looking in from the outside world are usually wondering, “Why don’t those two Rock Jocks just get it over with: whip out their wieners and rub them together?” Or, if you substituted the term “Soft-ball-Sandies” for “Rock Jocks,” you might be questioning “cooters” rather than “wieners.”
It’s all relative, right? And it can be applied to almost any sport at all. Call down your rock climbers and kayakers, your ballerinas and baseball players, call down your luge lackeys and bobsledders, your high jumpers and pole vaulters:
Round them up in a square full of jocks of all sorts,
And before the day’s done: segregation by sport.
For they each speak in tongue, native only to those
Who can move the same way, who can strike the same pose,
And now this digression has widened so loose that I’m starting to sound like a mad Dr. Seuss. So Stop. Once again: that’s enough.
In the afternoons it gets too hot to climb, so Chester and I have wasted the days away at the swimming hole or down at Tata Beach. We’ve hiked into the rain forest—the sun hanging low over Kahurangi National Forest—the greens jumping out in the golden time as if to bite the eyes—dark-dense and as vibrant as sound. Can you hear the colors shining?
We moved from the fly-infested campsite to a backwoods bum-basin, its existence “known only to a few,” according to the mystic man in the orange swim trunks who happened to be climbing on the route next to us a few days ago. He drew a map on the back of our climbing guide, complete with arrows, bridges, side streets, and creeks. Quite the cartographer, this shirtless enigma.
Down dirt roads and into the tall grass. Cut back behind the bushes and stash the car. Teeter-totter over the round-rock pathway of a dry river bed, and slump into the clearing beneath a circle of sky.
Thus far Chester and I are yet to see a soul. We have built a fire ring with smooth stones from the riverbed, fixed seats around the ring, amassed a huge pile of firewood, and pitched the tent beneath a flowering bush. The secret solace of a woodland haunt. Though our routine remains basically the same, we no longer have to worry about the dreaded sand fly.
It has been drizzling off and on since we moved to the new campsite but the tent has held true. A nylon roof stretched taut over our heads during the dark hours. Safety from the elements.
It has been drizzling, but dry rock is abundant. Climb on, climb on. Acrobats on the rock, swinging and snagging, levitating upwards—always upwards—to the tower-tops. Monkey men on the limestone, looking for love from above, hoping for a high in the patterns cycling through.
Sing to the blue. Sing to the blue.
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