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Liv Sisson reads the mountain -Russa which is Naomi Arnold’s epic account of Walking Te Araroa.
Each fucking inch. This is the approach that some vagabonds lead to Araroa – the long distance trail that runs the length of Aotearoa New Zealand. Others are happy to hitchhike in the road sections. Some meet the highlights or just make an island. Te Araroa (TA) is over 3000 km long, starting in Cape Reinga and going through all kinds of terrain – beaches, shrub sections, forest blocks, southern Alps and Auckland CBD – before finishing in Bluff.
I walked a road section once near the Tekapo Lake. It was hot, dusty and completely exposed to the brutal sun. Totally punitive. A different section that I entered in Nelson Lakes climbed through a capricious, moss -covered bee to the edge of a suspended alpine lake that keeps the lighter known water in the world. Extremely bright.
In his new book, Northbound, award -winning writer of Nature and Science Naomi Arnold, walks through the TA. Work deadlines mean that it cannot start by January. Not wanting to run in winter to bluff, she decides to start there and walk north. This means that she will have to walk the colder months, but she can enjoy the trail and (hopefully) walk with each fucking one of a inch.
Arnold enters him directly. She is “on the trail” on page 10. I liked the short exchange between her and her husband Doug on the trail. These are just a few excerpts of dialogue, just enough to convey that both are drying out, they have given it a lot of consideration and know deeply that it will be very difficult. He’s worried, she’s worried. He shares an anxiety of “last -minute alpina failure can simply … go”. She considers her own mortality. And then leaves.
The way Arnold managed to condense nine months and 3028 kilometers on 300 pages is impressive. From the descriptions of nature, to the recapitulation of the meal and the interactions it has with other walkers – the story includes many small but perfectly formed vignettes – like this conversation with Doug – which illuminate more than the page space suggests.
There is no initial promise of transformation or personal revelation in this book – and I liked it. It is not a journey of preorder hero. But why did Arnold even wanted to undertake this huge tramp? And in a way that is not really recommended? She just needs a line to explain – “The trail was haunting me” – she came across the ta literal and metaphorically so many times that it was time for her to walk alone.
The full title of the book is “Northbound: Four Seasons of Solitude in the Araroa”. But even the part of loneliness is not forcing some general lessons from the beginning. It is not a silent blow to walk, although Arnold finds someone along the way that is doing it. As Arnold ends up being a nobo (Walker Northbound), she simply doesn’t come across many fellow walkers. Most walkers are left and ended when she is only half.
Arnold’s writing all the time in a perfect clip – I kept me entertained, wanting a little more in some places, but always at stake for what comes next. She wrote most of the book about trails, with literally 1000 voice notes and her iPad. She ends up writing a good piece while sheltering a random wool throw for several days during a “demonic storm”.
There is no retrospective with shades of pink here, and this lends the book a good sense of immediacy. You feel a lot at the moment with Arnold as she walks – he looks less like a memories book and more like a great story. And it’s a roller coaster. There are inspiring moments – an iris arc, delicate bird ice, native bird songs, Magellanic clouds and many stunning views. But there is also long cold and a lot of mud. There are primordial screams, injuries and a lot of oath. The snow started to fall before we even reached page 100.
I liked how Arnold makes the mountain -Russa real to the reader. In a moment, things are light, airy, funny – there are “Whio Ducks whistling the river below, looking exactly like the foot pump in an air mattress.” But only a few pages later, she is afraid, afraid, so “so high [she’s] Crying for a pair of Whio whistling in a solitary river at dawn. ”
The descriptions of nature throughout the book seem small jewelry. I wanted more of them, but I also appreciate that Arnold would not lean much on the beauty of the trail to take the story. I underlined his encounter with carnivorous curls – “bronze spirals of his shells shining in my light bulb light and his black oily bodies looking for, looking for a tongue.”
Food descriptions throughout the north are fun, but also a smart tool. They help you understand Arnold’s environment and mind along the way. There is excessively sour homemade fruits leather at first. Later, there are tears shed over a chicken broccoli roast and a meal consisting of short dated gomoussers, chips and raspberry jokes. So many small details, never replaced, indicate you in the world of Arnold’s walk. In the end, you are speaking the language of her walker, airy lines loaded with the tai.
While most of the walk is solo, the few friendships of trails that Arnold causes are tender, intimate and slightly silly. Like those crazy and tight friendships that come out of the summer camp – they appear out of nowhere, but they mean for a short time and then end so suddenly. Arnold’s relationships along the way – with herself, her partner, family, friends – are probably what made me think more. It is curious to consider what zoom would be like in all these, all at once, how it does.
Arnold is a fantastic narrator to travel the trail, and Northbound is a great reading for outdoor adventure search engines or readers who like set stories. Arnold’s account of TA is often delicious and always honest. It’s a window for what you could expect from leaving any walk – Muen feet, but also meaning. These moments of meaning unfold naturally: Arnold takes them to you skillfully, suggests them, and this makes the north a profoundly satisfactory reading.
North: Four Solitude Stations in Te Araroa by Naomi Arnold ($ 40, Harpercollins) can be purchased from Unity Books.
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