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| live journal open February 2005 |
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| There are times when being a bloke lost in the bush can be a pleasurable experience. This wasn’t one of them.
Up at the ridiculous hour of 3am today – going bush with Allen and this time taking the packhorses. Loaded the gear, caught and boxed our horses (once I found them in the dark, thankfully loaded without fuss), and on the road by four exactly. We chatted almost continually as we drove, which is unusual for Allen at this time of day. Mostly about the life and crimes of various mates, which doesn’t interest me all that much, but I listen anyway. It passed quickly enough, and was still dark as we unboxed & tacked up our horses. The language barrier causes me problems again – Kiwi’s call a horse trailer a float, I call it a box. Surely a float would be found on a boat? Mouse eyes me uneasily as I contemplate backing the box into the nearby lake to see if it does, float. But then, I’d have to admit; a ‘box’ isn’t really a very honest description either. What kind of person named these trailed twin axle horse transportation utility trailers? No logic. Whilst wrestling with these important thoughts I tacked up Mouse with his Western saddle and various strange attachments, which I mostly got wrong. As the faintest of light in the distant clouds signals the onset of dawn, we trek off for camp deep into the Purorea Forest. Mouse knows his job, and wants to be in front. Allen, leading, also wants to be in front. He moves at something between a walk & fast trot, which makes for a bumpy ride with backpack and rifles slung around my neck. Take into account the darkness, very narrow bush track often with sheer drops, fallen trees and the ever-present over-hanging ‘bush lawyer’ – you’ve got yourself a proper fun-ride. The growing light begun to reveal more; I was thrilled to ford a sizeable river. I’ve always wanted to do that on horseback. We began to ascend what turned out to be a long long climb to camp. Mouse moved steadily along, knocking me out of the saddle several times as he passed under low branches. Clearly, adhering to the horse code part IV23.4 – “as long as I can pass under that branch, it’s up to him to stay aboard”. The track grew steeper, and we had to work them hard to keep moving on the soft peaty soil. I could feel Mouse’s big heart pumping hard beneath me, and I worried that we were pushing too hard – but soon we arrived at camp, a small clearing no more than ten metres square. We dealt with the horses, quickly got our gear together and were ready to hunt by 7am. Allen said we’d split up, which suites me. He explained (as best he could when surrounded in dense bush) that we were on the face of a long ridge. He’d take off behind camp, me the other direction. We’d meet up around lunch to set up camp properly and get some sleep before the evening hunt. What could go wrong? Taking a compass bearing & noting time, I followed my plan to head out from camp about two hours in a straight line along the top of the ridge, then drop down and hunt my way back to camp into the wind. It couldn’t fail. Toward the end of my two-hour outward walk, I began to find quite a bit of deer sign on a spur, which led over into another huge valley. For fear of getting out of my depth and lost, I stuck with the plan and begun to work my way down this face and back along toward camp. My compass was behaving, and I could feel the gentle breeze on my face – a sure sign the plan is going swimmingly. |
| I altered course a lot to follow various deer tracks and to avoid the thicker bits of “shit” (technical Kiwi term for thick cover). Time went by, as it tends to, with no real contact with my four-legged friends – and I was beginning to question my position. I was sure of my plan, and my compass was still in agreement on this. Now two hours overdue for camp I faced the dilemma of seeing through the plan to the bitter end, or altering course and heading for the river. It didn’t make sense – walk two hours one way, turn around and it should be more-or-less two hours back, right? So why the hell am I four hours along and not there yet? Had I over-shot? But how could I miss our deep horse tracks up the face we’d made on the way in? Because I hadn’t left this face, I had to cross these tracks we’d made – it couldn’t fail, I thought.
The battle of mind over machine raged on – I was beginning to loose faith in my compass. After all, it was only a cheapo one, and more to the point many parts of New Zealand have “area’s of magnetic anomaly” – places where a compass can do crazy things. Eventually, I put the thing away and followed a small creek steeply down hill. Ray Mear’s would be choking on his Witchetty grubs. All creeks lead to bigger creeks, right? Bigger creeks, lead to rivers, no? And we’d crossed the river on the way in, what could be easier? Compass was fighting in protest as this creek led me in an entirely opposite direction, dropping hundreds of metres. Damn it I’d made a decision, and I was sticking to it. I thought about my pending night under the starts, ill-equipped and scantily clad. I thought about Allen eating all the steaks at camp and drinking my bourbon. And the wages he owed me. I thought about my family, who clearly I’d never see again. What would they say, when they found my rotting carcass, about my favourite spider man underpants? I could smell it, before I could see it. A big billy Goat came into view, and we both froze. And here happened one of my more memorable interactions with a member of the fury animal kingdom. No more than five metres from me, we stared each other out, his menacing horns at the ready. There was a moment between us, a mutual understanding that doesn’t need a common language. If he could use my language, he’d have said “even though you have that there rifle pointed at me, I’m staring you out like this because really, you are in far more shit than I am. You may have a gun, but I’ve got a fury coat and I’m not lost – unlike you, who is about to die a horrible cold death somewhere in the bush”. I accepted this, and we went our separate ways. Dusk was drawing close, and I finally hit the river. I couldn’t follow it from the bank because of the guts (yep, another kiwi term – ‘guts ‘is the worst kind of ‘shit’ [see earlier explanation] to be in, found in the very bottom of a valley and always avoided). I had no choice but to take off the boots and wade upstream. Feels good to be moving and in the open now, even if I am still lost. Nothing around me looked familiar as I searched in vain for sign of our earlier crossing point with the horses. It’s getting dark, and I decide to go for another fifteen minutes before giving up and looking for a spot to sleep in and to get a fire on the go. Foolishly, I’d left my canteen at camp, and hadn’t had a drink now for nearly twelve hours, and so couldn’t resist a sip from the crystal clear water in which I stood. Hmmm, salty, very salty. |
| Twenty metres upstream – the bloated rotting carcass of a long dead goat bobbing right there in the middle. “One of those days” I said aloud, and pushed ahead. Soon after, my fortunes changed. I noticed a rough logging track up above the river. It meant I could climb out of the cold river and cover the ground much more quickly. Two hundred metres on, I finally cross our hoof tracks. At that point, two rifle shots ring out a long way away – either Allen has got himself dinner, or he’s fired to help me find my way. Could have done with that a while ago!
From here, following the hoof marks, it took me just under two hours to reach camp in the darkness. Allen had by this time decided to lead a horse down the face to scout around for me – so I met him half way up and got a lift back on Mouse. Good old Mouse! Allen, now surely disappointed at the thought of still having to pay my wages, seemed totally un-fazed by my brush with the bush. We ate peppered venison steaks, and drank the bourbon, which I had smuggled in hidden on Mouse’s saddle. I shared a tent with Allen, and thankfully he kept his hands to himself. It’s the first time I’ve camped with horses, and I have to say it’s quite a unique way to drift off – with the endless sound of Mouse munching away and snorting right there in my ears. A note in my defence The following day, I hunted across the valley and was in a position to get a kind of aerial view of the face I’d been on. It’s like this. I’d done my two-hour outward walk from camp along the very top of the face, on a ridge. Dropping down as I did, the face kind of fanned out into an endless series of gullies, the further down you go, the deeper these become. And the whole face was actually on a slight bend. All this means I had a whole lot more ground to cover on the return walk to allow for all the up and down bits. So here’s the lesson for all of us – trust the bloody compass! My plan was spot on, if I’d stuck with it I would have been very late back, but I would have got back. It couldn’t fail. |
| notes from my diary/March 2002/lost in the bush |