No Obligation

There is a reason thru-hikers talk about a trail family. Your in with a bunch of other people who have all decided to do this crazy thing. You hike together, you walk and eat together and achieve the same goals. But then I wondered, does trail family only live on the trail?

On the 21st October 2016, I started my hike. Just me and Luke with our backpacks (and about half a dozen other hikers dotted a few miles in front or a few miles back) on the long slog that is the beautiful 90 Mile Beach. A year to that day, I had four friends visit me at my home in Bristol -Friends I had made on the Te Araroa and friends that will forever be some of my closest.

It took me all of three days to realise that the greatest wonder of my hike would be the people I met along the way. Whether that meant the lady who stopped her car on the highway from Whanganui to Bulls and handed us an orange each, or the couple that opened up their house and fed us wine and home-cooked stew, or just another hiker with the same damp socks and sweaty shirt. Each and every person came to us as themselves; no obligation to like one another, no obligation to stay in touch or take us in, and we went to them as us; not the filtered, socialised people we are in our 'civvies' at home.

When the date was set for my four friends to visit, I wondered whether things would be the same. Out of our hiking boots, would we have anything in common?

The first to arrive was Renee. Our Australian gem with more punch than any woman I've ever met. We spent the majority of our time on the trail side by side; sharing washing-up duties, splitting dorms, cheering at each other on mountain tops. She made our trail another kind of magic; not about where we were and what we were doing but about who we were with too. Saying goodbye the first time was like losing a limb - our first and longest lasting trail friend going to hike in the US was something we didn't want to miss - who would bail us out when our credit card packed in if not her!

Second was Benjamin (who if my mum had her way, would still be here!) Ben, also known as 'legs,' didn't come into our story until mid-South island. We passed him in the Nelson Lakes National Park where he hiked alone with Hamilton playing in his ears. It wasn't until a week or so later that we, coincidentally, met him in Hamilton hut over a communal game of Cards against Humanity. I am in ore of his unfailing optimism.

Eleri, I fellow Englishman but current resident of Australia, just so happened to also be home for the week and so popped by for a day visit. Eleri, another of Hamilton's extreme fanatics, began her trail on the same day as Luke and I. She too was another of the many women hiking alone and soon enough proved her point in wanting to do something big by herself. She shot ahead after a lazy day in Tidesong B and B where Luke and I decided to stay put with Renee for another zero and we followed her in the trail books from there on. We may not have hiked a large part of the trail together, but she certainly left her mark in my trail stories.

Last, but by no means least, was Brian; the American. My lovely Brian who swung me around like a child when he saw me, first crossed our path in Palmerston North. He was holding still for a week to help with animal trapping in the area and didn't catch us again until a little later on the trail. Brian has a mind like no other I know, clever, analytical, and oh so honest - I fell in love with his competitive enthusiasm to Code Names (a board game he later donated to Luke and I) and will forever crave his company to spice up the bland days.

All six of us together after an hour in a trampolining park was almost disastrous - from jokes I can't repeat to stories only we could follow, we laughed the whole evening. We met as adults from different parts of the world with no obligation to ever see each other again - we met again because, for that very reason, we'd formed a friendship that will exist in any part of the world. The question now is, where will we meet next?