Free Birdbrain by Johanna Sinisalo

vengeful aspect.
    —Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

NEW ZEALAND
Kepler Track
February 2007
     
     
     
     
Heidi
    The subtropical forest at the start of Kepler Track was something incredible. It was full of twittering, buzzing and the cheeping of birds. It wouldn’t have taken long to come up with several dozen chirpy new ringtones.
    Every now and then, great panoramas looking out towards Lake Te Anau opened up through the trees, all the more awe-inspiring the higher we climbed, and it was then that I began to understand Jyrki properly. Hiking itself isn’t the prize; this is the prize, these views that you can look at from places you can reach only on foot.
    Rain started falling in a thin drizzle, and we stopped at the resting place to change our clothes. A brown bird the size of a chicken came over straight away to greet us. It didn’t seem at all scared. Jyrki told me it was a weka, the New Zealand equivalent of the Siberian jay. It was a very social bird that waited for hikers to drop something nice to eat. I broke it off a few morsels of puffed rice from the top of my energy bar.
     
Jyrki
    I had said my quiet goodbyes to hotels, hostels, restaurants and tiled bathrooms.
    Back at Queen Charlotte you would have no trouble finding some sort of accommodation for the night. And after thirty sweaty kilometres what was wrong with being able to have a shower then retire to the terrace restaurant for a bowl of fruits-de-mer soup and some garlic bread? Now at Kepler it was time to move on to some tougher challenges. Or so I thought.
    I chose Kepler Track on the South Island, one of the so-called Great Walks. It was great for a number of reasons.
    For a start, according to the guidebooks it wasn’t as outrageously popular as Milford or Abel Tasman. You could ramble along Kepler Track without booking months in advance, although needless to say we had done so anyway. What’s more, you could reach the start of the track from the town of Te Anau on foot — after all, what was the point of hiking if you had to rent a car or take a taxi to get you to the start of the track?
    In addition, Te Anau seemed like a much smaller, more pleasant base for our hike than places like Queenstown which were crammed with tourists.
    At Te Anau we took care of our registration. We were given hut tickets and were told that they were binding: you had to spend the night in the cabins you had reserved. No improvisation. Not because of the weather, not for health reasons, under no circumstances whatsoever. Arrive at the wrong cabin at the wrong time and you’d get slapped with a fine on the spot.
    It makes the mind boggle.
    It was less than an hour’s walk from Te Anau to the start of Kepler Track. I almost burst out laughing when I heard that there was — wait for it — a shuttle service from the town to the start of the track. A few poxy kilometres. Taking a minibus just to be able to walk.
    According to the instruction leaflets, the first leg should take about six hours. By half past one we’d seen a sign saying it was another forty-five minutes’ walk to the Luxmoor cabin.
    I almost lost my temper. We’d completed the leg in about half the estimated time, yet we had no choice but to stop here for the night. Given that these cabins cost the same as a fairly decent hotel, you would think we would at least be given the chance to choose our own prison.
    Still, a thousand metres above sea level, when the drizzle started to turn to sleet, the idea of being able to shelter under a proper roof didn’t feel so bad, but when I saw the cabin from the inside the urge to yell welled up yet again.
    The place was filled with kitchen surfaces holding dozens of gas hobs. Just turn the knob and start cooking. There was a shower and an indoor toilet.
    A coal fireplace.
    If it hadn’t been sleeting outside, and if all this hadn’t already been paid for, I would have turned around and walked right back to Te Anau.
    Conveniences like this are only convenient