Stewart Island, the Raikura Track, and Friends

When I walked out of the rain forest and the mud and stepped on to the paved road headed to the port town of Oban, I was done. I had completed my eighth and final over land Great Walk, the Raikura Track. It is still hard to process the fact that I have walked all eight of the actual Great Walk tramping tracks, with just the Wanganui river journey left to complete my goal.

Although the Raikura track may not have been the most visually appealing of the great walks, the people I met along the track made it one of the most pleasurable. There was a Kiwi couple from the Auckland area with a distinct love for their country and a passion for tramping, for each other and just life in general. Another young Kiwi couple from the coromandel area of the North Island, very much in-love and also aware of how fortunate they were to be from this amazing place. There was also a young, curious and wonderful Israli lad who had already traveled through India after leaving the army, and who's perspective on his Arab neighbors was enlightening and refreshing to hear. As we walked through the mud and out of the forest, he told me that he also spoke fluent Arabic and that he wished all of his friends would do the same. "If we all learned to communicate their would be less mistrust and misunderstanding." He said. This had not been my experience with many of the Isralis that I had met along the way, and it was evident that this was a fairly remarkable and open-minded young man. Then finally there was Robert, the American. He may well have been one of the funniest guys that I have met along the way. He was an unemployed school teacher, mid to early thirties, who buys old bikes, fixes them up and re-sells them. He meandered in to the DOC hut as evening was turning in to night, and had just walked some twenty five plus kilometers to get there. He had some of the funniest stories yet such as drinking to much wine one night in the Australian outback and forgetting where he left his pack. He finally passed out, got eaten alive by Mosquitos and later found the pack with two park rangers who had been quite concerned about where the owner was. Much like myself, he had also experienced a ride with a one legged man while hitch hiking. While traveling across the outback in Australia, an old man with a long white beard had picked him up. The man had just lost his leg and was self medicating with a large quantity of pain pills. I believe the reader can imagine the rest.

In just over two months, including several day walks around Wellington and Nelson, I have walked solo across some of the most stunning and awe inspiring places on this planet. I have transversed the vast volcanic lunar landscape of the Tongariro Northern circuit, the beautiful, exhausting and magical forests of Lake Waikaremoana, the golden bays of the Abel Tasman coastal track, the wide open and stormy tussock downs of the Heaphy track, all three of the majestic and stunning alpine tracks the Milford, Routeburn and Keppler and finally the mud pits and rain forest of Raikura on Stewart Island. If I add in the walks along the Belmont Regional Park near Wellington and the day walks of the Whispering falls track and Coastal Ridgeway loop near Nelson, I have walked approximately 437.8 kilometers so far.

When I started this insane quest months ago I thought it was simply about landscapes, physical challenges and achieving a goal. Although these aspects are all part of the whole story, it has increasingly become about the people I've met and the overwhelming importance of the actual journey. It is about the support of my best friend Bobbi, it is about my three amazing and talented kids, it is about the last words my mom said to me before she died, it is about understanding what my friend Eric felt like when he was out there on his own and it is about sitting in the nursing home and looking back and going "yup....I stepped out of the safety zone and I really did that and it was completely amazing.