Cross the river before incoming rain,
That will be the primary goal for today. I am advancing another day to get ahead of the weather, so I have to get moving. This means an early start, cooking breakfast, being one of the first people to start preparations this morning in the hut. To the contrary, I am normally the last one to get out of bed, but the group of young women I am sharing Top Timaru Hut with seem to be all snoozing this morning.
My summarised trail notes for today reads: “One BIG hill, up and down”, and getting closer to it, the only word missing there was “scree”.
I have a lot of thoughts to process this morning… since one of the young ladies in the hut last night was a single-arm amputee and that made me think. Now before I say anything else, I wrote and rewrote this next section about a dozen times, trying not to be offensive to anyone in any way, shape or form, but I do have a point I would like to share and apologise if I do offend someone out there. In short, she made me feel like a bit of a crying whimp. – Wow it was crazy, the Hamster had so, so many questions it wanted to ask, and I just had to gag him, because that wouldn’t be polite. I mean what do you really say, how do you start the conversation and where do you draw the line? So I just observed, watching her ‘work’ everything out, doing everything I was doing to make dinner and get ready for the next days, like me, an 100% able-bodied person (in sometimes a quirky way). I wanted to offer to help her so many times, but withheld myself thinking, she obviously knows what she is doing, making it this far on the TA going southbound, and clearly didn’t need my help. Also, the other thing that really struck me, was for the first time I tried to comprehend the thoughts and mental challenges she (and everyone with any disability) must be facing. HUGE, here I was, dealing with the effects of having lost one person in my life… she on the other hand are reminded every single day about the loss of something much more closer to home. I just cannot compute the mental strain of that and perhaps it is a little like losing your spouse, you cannot imagine it until it happens. Nevertheless, I commend any and every single person, living with a disability… and will strive to complain a little less about my “small stuff” problems.
All this thinking and soon the elevation started to show, climbing the scree and realising that today is also the end of Otago for me and the TA. I made it to the 1700m high saddle next to Mount Martha, looking back at Otago province for the final time.
From now onwards, for a while at least, it is Canterbury and Mackenzie district to be more exact, although still on the border. Lots of open spaces, tussock and scree sloped mountains ahead. [Loving it]
I made good progress throughout the day, reaching the privately owned Tin Hut for lunch. Taking a well deserved break from the elements and grabbing fresh water.
Downhill, mostly, from here for the next 10-ish kilometres while I watch the clouds starting to roll in, signalling that rain is on the cards for tonight. I simply had to push on and cross that river, to avoid an otherwise a lengthy detour over the bridge.
Made it to the Ahuriri River, and could see the rain coming down the valley. The flow still looked pretty low, so I crossed to make camp and tent on the other side for the night.
Note to self – “Get busy living” because you are not as old, tired, fat, dumb, useless and [insert other nasty words in here] as you think you are, PLUS you have no disability.
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44.3881 – 169.7217
24 March 2024
FP-73
2 responses to “Over the Ahuriri River – Day 29.”
Arg..
Love this post on soo many levels!
From a Gurl’s prospective..
Maybe you felt like you could not offer help..
Does not matter what “state” SHE is in, I can promise you, SHE would have appreciated it “-)
Die res is nogsteeds net Magical!
Maybe next time then… lol. It seems so easy to offend people lately.