Old Light, New Land
Hiking in New Zealand is not dissimilar to walking the Camino Real in northern Spain. With the monotony of physical exertion amidst startling scenery, it can resolve itself into a pilgrimage, which, if completed at the right stage of life, in the right state of mind, can be a transformative, uplifting and religious experience. Mine was a day-long trek to the sand fan on Cape Maria van Diemen, in search of Placostylus ambagiosus—giant land snails. Descending the cliff from the Cape Reinga carpark was more a metaphysical ascent into another, other-worldly, heavenly place, one of solitude, silence, heat and intense colour, where the snails lived a precarious hidden existence amongst the flax roots.
The pilgrimage that Richard Adams experienced was more substantial: at the age of 20 he undertook a three-week-long trek around the south-eastern corner of the North Island, from Pencarrow to Waimarama, just south of Cape Kidnappers. The hike changed the young man; he sheltered from a storm in a lonely bach at Akitio; he bedded down under night skies that were clear and glistening, with shooting stars that formed an intergalactic fireworks display; in his dreams he was visited by beings whose protection he sensed while awake. He came away from
