By Elliot
Yesterday was spent wandering around Auckland, picking up some last minute supplies and scouting out potential camping meal options at the grocery store.
We found ourselves at an outdoor gear store to pick up pack liners, cooking gas and some dehydrated meals. The girl who worked there asked us if we were doing the TA. When we answered yes, she said that she did it last year and it’s so amazing. That we would love it, and when I expressed nervousness she said it would be fine.
My immediate thought when she mentioned she’d done the trail was: here stands someone who is both physically and emotionally stronger than me. This girl is a superhuman, who’d walked thousands of kilometres through all kinds of forbidding weather and remained excited by the prospect of other people doing the same. How does she know that it will be fine for me? I’m not exactly from hardy stock. I’ve already started kvetching and haven’t even begun the trail.
There are two kinds of trail walkers: efi and non-efi, efi standing for Every Fucking Inch. Most people start as efi hikers but eventually reality sets in and people hike their own hike. Only a hardcore few remain. I was never an efi hiker, and the more time goes by that I haven’t started, the fewer the inches I seem to plan to walk. The section of trail for the first day of has been eroded by rain. Will I walk that section on road instead? Of course not! My start will be where the second day’s section of trail begins. 5km of roadside walking next to a highway? I think I’ll hitchhike that section. The approximately 1000km from Auckland to Wellington? Seems like it will be repetitive: maybe there are some sections to skip.
Luckily, we start walking on Monday. Any more time than that and I might find myself calling the trail done without walking a single inch.
Despite all my meshugaas, I am genuinely excited to start walking the trail, meeting fellow thru-hikers and seeing New Zealand.