Tramping Te Araroa

By Sam Brakeley

Sam Brakeley hiked the New Zealand's South Island from tip to tail along Te Araroa, The Long Pathway. Sam had recently found himself suddenly alone after the end of a ten-year relationship - an end he had mostly himself to blame for - and he was trying to figure out who exactly he was and just what came next. So he did w

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wild Dog Press
• Release date: Jun 2, 2023
• ISBN: 9781088112724

Book preview

Tramping Te Araroa

A Journey Through New Zealand

with Captain Cook

By

Sam Brakeley

Copyright © 2023 by Sam Brakeley

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

FIRST EDITION

Requests for permission to reprint or reuse material from this work should be sent to: Permissions Sarah Leamy/Wild Dog Press, PO Box 836, Cerrillos, NM87010

Cover Photo: © Sam Brakeley

Cover Design by Jess Brakeley LeClair, Adventure Awaits ME

www.adventureawaitsme.com

ISBN: 978-1-0881-1264-9

ISBN 978-1-0881-1272-4

For Dad

ALSO BY SAM BRAKELEY

Skiing with Henry Knox

In the Wake of America’s Hannibal

In the Wake of the White Devil

"Fools think that Knowledge can only

be got from books & men."

I might have been a comfortably situated old foggy, a tooth in a wheel of a Mercantile Machine, with just sufficient thinking powers to gabble on the topics of the day.

-  Charles Douglas, New Zealand explorer

Contents

Introduction: Proceed to the Southward 1

Chapter One: Not Goblins Like Māori Goblins 19

Chapter Two: One of the Most Beautiful Pieces of Scenery 34

Chapter Three: Much Rubbing of Noses 50

Chapter Four: Nothing Except Good Wishes 68

Chapter Five: We Built A Pyrmid 85

Chapter Six: A Much Greater Object in View 99

Chapter Seven: They Lik’d It When They Were Taught It 114

Chapter Eight: The Extacy of Moments Like These 132

Chapter Nine: No Other Sauce Than a Good Appetite 149

Chapter Ten: Forgotten and Undefinable Bliss 170

Chapter Eleven: The Glorious Days 187

Chapter Twelve: Beginning to Sigh for Roast Beef 202

Chapter Thirteen: Nothing to be Seen but the Sumits 211

Conclusion: There is a Brighter Day Tomorrow 224

Notes 244

Acknowledgements

Any book owes its existence to far more people than just the listed author. I’ll do my best to say my thanks to all of them but if I’ve missed you, I apologize.

Thanks first and foremost to my parents, Hap and Sue. They helped me to get not only to New Zealand – no easy task when traveling from Vermont – but also to where I am in life today. Though we all can say ‘I wouldn’t be here without my parents,’ here, it is true both literally and metaphorically as well. Thank you.

Friends Rachel, Erica, Ben, as well as Sue read some early drafts of this book, helping to think through everything from comma placement to larger edits, problem areas and the thesis as a whole. Your time and energy are very much appreciated and this book is all the better for your thoughts and reflections. Thank you all.

Thanks to my editor and publisher Sarah Leamy whose thoughtful feedback and careful eye kept me from rambling on too much. Like many writers, I have my share of ‘word ticks’ – phrases that I return to too many times. Sarah’s careful eye saved me from myself in more than one instance. Thanks to you too.

Thanks to all the Kiwis who helped me on my journey. Many of you are recognized in the book, but there are many others who remain nameless. New Zealand is a culture of kind, caring and thoughtful individuals, and it showed in almost every interaction I had. It was a wonderful place to visit, to heal in and to grow to know a little. I hope to visit again someday.

Finally, and most importantly, thank you to my wife, Kate. It was after this trip that we began our own journey, the one that got us to where we are now. Though I may have begun to heal on this New Zealand trip, my true return to strength took place only afterwards, under the selfless care of your kindness, empathy and love. I was damaged goods, fearful of risking it all again. You took me as I was and nursed me back to emotional full strength. You’re amazing. Truly amazing. And I love you. With all my heart.

Author’s Note

This project combines two very different stories – mine from the 21st century and Captain James Cook’s from the 18th. Our journeys, though separated by centuries, overlap geographically (although sometimes loosely – New Zealand is a big place after all) and it made sense to combine the two narratives into one. I discover that Cook offers other guidance as well, and I find some lessons worth learning (or re-learning) in his words and actions as he navigates the sometimes-fraught waters of his relationship with the Māori, New Zealand’s native people.

Throughout the telling of Cook’s story, I have made liberal use of quotations from a variety of primary sources. As any reader of 18th century history knows, journalists and memoirists of the time were far more creative in their spelling than we are today. I have opted to preserve as much as possible their unique sense of the English language and have chosen not to over-populate their words with [sic]. Anything misspelled within quotations can be understood to have been the original author’s mistake and not mine.

As always, I am in debt to the numerous historians who have written about Cook and his explorations before me. I encourage interested readers to explore my Notes section for further reading.

And finally, while every effort has been made to ensure factual accuracy, it is possible that an error has been made. If so, it is no one’s fault but mine. Please forgive it.

Te Araroa

Introduction: Proceed to the Southward

I whose ambition leads me not only farther than any other man has been before me, but as far as I think it possible for man to go. ¹ – Captain Cook while searching for Terra Australis Incognita

I’m alone. For the first time in a long time. I look around me at the odds and ends of my failed relationship, grasping at the debris of happy memories that threaten to flood me, trying to find something to steady myself. It’s not there. My bones feel cold. Collapsing back into the couch, I hear the motor start up outside, the steady sound of the engine as she backs up into the turnaround, the crunch of the gravel as she twists the wheel to turn out, and the slow acceleration as she pulls forward, out into the driveway, and out of my life.

We’d been together for ten years. Most of them were happy. And then it began to slip away from us. From a life moved in tandem we skidded into two lives moving in unison. Then to two lives moving apart. And then, suddenly, now, simply two lives.

Sitting on that couch in May, we looked at each other through tear-smeared eyes. They dripped down my cheeks, her cheeks, hung from my chin. I didn’t brush them away. I didn’t have the power.

I think it’s over, she said.

I didn’t say anything.

The tears keep dripping. I watch them from above, hovering in the air somewhere near the ceiling, dispassionately observing the end of what might have been a life together. The body below me is just a body. I can’t inhabit it. Not now.

The trip to New Zealand is not short. It passes like the scenes in an old stereoscope, tinted with sepia and warped plastic, and interrupted by the sharp clicks as I flip through to the next one.

Trying to doze in the early-morning hours on the bus to the airport, I can smell the man next to me. His body odor is mixed with hints of gin and pork. He snuffles in his sleep, shifting with sharp jerks as he tries to find a comfortable position amidst the seat’s sharp plastic ridges. He won’t be successful. I’ve tried every position already.

My first flight is from Boston to San Francisco. The flight attendant is a man who appears to have played left guard for the San Francisco Forty-Niners. He treats us like widgets on an assembly line, to be dealt with mechanically, without emotion or human interest.

The captain comes on the intercom, warning us about turbulence. Twice. Three times. It never comes. He orders the attendants to sit down and buckle up. Turbulence imminent he warns. But the flight proceeds smoothly. With the attendants seated, I don’t get my free drink. I resent the captain.

I wait at the airport bar in California during my layover. There are two men next to me. They’ve been in and out of the airport for three days, trying to get to Indiana. Their flight keeps getting delayed, and then canceled. They laugh. They don’t care. It’s a business trip and they’re getting paid to drink the bourbons they continue to down with relish. As we sit, the Flight Status monitor updates. Their most recent flight is canceled again. They seem disappointed when, in response to a call to their boss, they’re informed to head home. The bartender bids them good-bye by name.

Around me is a group of retirees, heading for a cruise. They chatter away inanely as they try to find places for their bags. They’re pale and overweight. They have weak knees. Their skin is bad. I picture them in sun hats and caked with zinc cream, drinking the all-inclusive margaritas by the pool on the top deck.

The one next to me falls asleep. He snores gently as he sprawls, a great moldering potato just beginning to melt outside the confines of its crate. He starts to pour across the armrest, invading my territory. I prod him until he reconstitutes himself back into his allotted space. The snores remain uninterrupted.

The approach is turbulent. The landing is rough. The stewardesses warn us that items have definitely shifted during the landing. The captain says nothing. I resent him.

As we exit the airplane, I can smell myself. Bourbon and airport food. Like my erstwhile bus mate, from what feels like centuries ago.

I emerge from the plane, ducking to avoid hitting my six-four frame on the doorway. Waiting in line at Customs, I catch the eye of the agent in front of me. He’s asked the Asian man now at the desk if he has any food. The man holds up a granola bar, a mute appeal that it won’t be confiscated. The agent just barely covers a smirk as he waves the man through. Then he and I make eye contact. He immediately breaks into a broad grin and shakes his head.

But he nabs me. Do you have any camping gear? he asks. I do – it’s all I have – and he takes it and passes it to another woman. When she unrolls it, she looks with distaste at some dried-up leaves that emerge from its folds. I didn’t clean it well after my last foray into the woods. Then she takes it away to run it through a machine of some sort. Looking for…what? At this point, I’m not sure.

I’m directed down a corridor and through some doors to wait by another small door in a plain cement wall. It looks like the door to a dumbwaiter. Five minutes go by. Then ten. Finally, the door opens vertically and the man within slides my tent out to me in a plastic bin. Standing at the take-out window of a short-order cheeseburger stand, I instead get a long-order tent. I have to spread it out on the floor in the bustling terminal to roll it back up, feeling self-conscious as I do so.

Tottering along, I pick up speed through the terminal. I need air. Fresh air. Dodging children towing miniature suitcases that I can’t help but suspect are mostly empty and beeping golf carts ferrying elderly travelers this way and that, I finally emerge. I’d left New England amidst single-digit temperatures, gray skies and roadside snow banks grown gray with dirt and sludge. I rejoin the open air in sixty-degree temperatures and bright sunshine. Blinking, I let out a sigh of relief. I’m in New Zealand. I’ve escaped.

I’ve brought a companion with me: Captain James Cook. One of the most accomplished and well-traveled explorers that this planet has ever seen. He circumnavigated the planet. Twice. And then some. And while he wasn’t the first European to find New Zealand, he was the first to set foot on its shores. The first to meet its inhabitants. The first to taste its waters.

You might not guess it if you’d met him. He was plain both in address and appearance, wrote the surgeon who joined him for one of his three voyages of exploration. He had a small head. Large eyebrows. Only his eyes gave him away. They were well set, quick and piercing, wrote another.² That and his height. At 6’4" myself, I’ve always instinctively liked other tall men. Cook crested six feet easily. In the 1700s, that meant he was practically a giant, perhaps kin to Pigafetta and Magellan’s ten-foot Patagonian giants of lore.

But Patagonian-born he was not. Instead, he entered this world in Yorkshire, England, the second of James and Grace Cook’s eight children, good people themselves and of very average height. Cook wouldn’t get to Patagonia until 1769. He was forty-one by that point. And on his way to New Zealand. Though he didn’t know it.

I was running from the ruins of a life imagined. Cook was searching for one. Terra Australis Incognita – the unknown land of the south. And while European voyageurs had begun to fill in the blank spots on the map, there still remained much to be done. Mostly in the antipodes – the polar opposite of England, France, Spain, the Netherlands and the other great sea-faring nations. Literally as far as one could go from Europe on earth. Australia had been spotted (and named New Holland). New Zealand (Staten Landt) sniffed at. Could they be part of something bigger? No one knew.

Ptolemy thought so. With Europe, Asia and Africa all inhabiting the northern hemisphere, he posited that there must be a continent to the south. And it had to be large. Otherwise, earth would be asymmetrical. Unstable. It might tumble off into space. Some unknown continent to the south must counter-balance the planet. Terra Australis Incognita.

Imagination took over from there. It was a paradise, filled with all the known joys of earth and more than one unknown pleasure as well. It was filled with gold, with spices, with the most beautiful women and populated by a heretofore unmet civilized nation. It was heaven on earth. Respected cartographer Alexander Dalrymple was so sure of its existence that he thought it exactly 5,323 miles wide with a population of fifty million.³ But he’d never been there.

Perhaps not. Maybe it was populated by cannibals, by giants, by people with one eye. Or one foot. Or three. Or more. Sea monsters guarded its shores. And whirlpools that could swallow a ship whole. Only one thing was sure. Nobody in Europe would know for sure until somebody found it. Enter Captain James Cook.

Who took a roundabout way of getting there. He was ye son of a day labourer,⁴ who started life as a farm laborer himself. Before becoming an assistant to a grocer. He had little formal education, if any. But somehow during his childhood he fell in love with the ocean. And at seventeen he left the career of a land-based grocer forever. He would go to sea. And he never looked back.

Even then, fame and fortune were far from assured. He spent his first three years as an apprentice to a coal merchant. And then the ensuing six working his way up the coal ranks. Coal dust would have been his eternal companion. His small head perpetually blackened. His bushy eyebrows too. All six-plus feet of his frame, tarnished in soot and coal.

But it was worth it. For he got the education he sorely needed, the one he’d missed as a child. Not only would he have expanded the basics - the three ‘Rs of reading, writing and ‘rithmetic - but also the the trade, mystery and occupation of the mariner.⁵ Cook learned about shipboard life, the art of navigation, of surveying, of leadership. He learned the way of the sea.

And at a fortuitous time too. The Age of Discovery had passed but Europe was experiencing the Age of Enlightenment. Science and reason now trumped superstition and fantasy. Navigational, cartographical and surveying techniques all were immensely improved. Preeminent was a reliance on one’s own senses and observations. On what one could touch, taste, see for oneself. For a practical boy come of age in a school of hard knocks, this was an easy philosophy to embrace.

Perhaps tired of the coal dust, he joined the navy. There was more opportunity for advancement, though he would have to start over as an able-bodied seaman. At 27 he was old for the spot. But advancement didn’t take him long. Soon he was a master’s mate. Then a boatswain. Then master. He charted much of the mouth of the Saint Lawrence River, essential information for Wolfe’s assault on Quebec City during the French & Indian War. Then the coasts of Nova Scotia and Newfoundland. I think him well qualified for the Work he performed, wrote his commander, and for greater Undertakings of the same kind. It wouldn’t be long before just such an undertaking found him.⁶

Enlightenment Age England was embodied by the Royal Society, or more formally, the Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge. A body of scientists and their financiers devoted to the earth sciences, natural history and astronomy, their president, the 14th Earl of Morton, successfully lobbied King George to finance a series of observations of the Transit of Venus when the planet would cross the sun in 1769. From measurements taken around the world of this event, the distance of the sun from earth and Venus might be measured. Not only did they hope to map earth, but the solar system as well. King George III agreed, and, when the first choice for the leader of the expedition to the South Pacific to take these measurements didn’t pan out, Cook was selected in his place.

Joseph Banks would go with him. Banks was a respected botanist and a member of the Royal Society. How many people…very dissimilar to us in appearance, manners, customs, ideas, religion, marveled one member dreaming of the posited unknown lands. How many animals, fossils and metals. There are doubtless, in all fields, countless of species of which we have not even a notion.⁷ Banks’ job, and that of his growing team, would be to document everything the expedition might find. He was also rich and expected to pay his own way. The expedition would cost him thousands of pounds.

Cook wasn’t only to support the effort to observe the Transit, however. He also received Additional Instructions contained in [an] inclosed Sealed Packet. These ‘secret’ orders told Cook to continue past Tahiti – the recently discovered series of islands from which the Transit was to be observed – and Whereas there is reason to imagine that a Continent or Land of great extent, may be found… You are to proceed to the southward in order to make discovery of the Continent abovementioned.⁸ While I was fleeing a paradise irreparably lost, Cook was looking for one. Terra Australis Incognita.

I told my father that afternoon. Called him on the phone. Somehow giving voice to it made it realer. Brought me back into my body. At least just a little bit.

He was surprised. You mean like really broken up? Like for good?

I assured him that that’s just what I meant. Pausing, then realizing that that perhaps wasn’t the best thing to say, Dad asked if I was okay. If he could do anything. He told me that everything will be fine.

That night I laid awake. I took deep, shuddering breaths. I didn’t feel fine.

I wasted those years, she’d told me. It drove the breath from my body. A woman so focused on her career, on her life, that she saw nothing but a needless detour in a relationship gone sour. As though the accumulated time was simply a figure to be tallied in an accountant’s spreadsheet. In red. I stared at her, agape, unsure if I’d heard her correctly. I had.

My hands hurt. I tried not to let them touch anything. It was hard to do in a bed in blankets and sheets. But I concentrated on moving them as little as possible. I was scared. But, amidst the demons and poltergeists that now began to threaten the corridors of the future, I finally drifted off to sleep.

The first day I spend in Auckland, on the North Island. It’s a city, like any other – high-rises, cars, noise and pollution – and yet, different. More…New Zealand-ey. To begin with, it’s filled with Kiwis – native New Zealanders. Their accents wash over me as I navigate the streets towards my lodging for the night, taking in everything new around me. Unfamiliar trees dot the parks. Birds croon exotic songs. And volcanos pierce the skyline.

Arriving mid-morning, I drop my backpack off at the hostel. It’s at the top of five flights of stairs. The cement walls on either side shed leaves of dried paint. An oddly shaped and colored splotch of some long-ago spill mars the landing on the third floor. A faint smell of urine pervades the entire staircase. The light is dim. It’s not hard to picture a murder. Somehow, I find pleasure in the image. It adds to the drama.

But the blue door at the top opens into bright, albeit shabby, lobby and lounge. Bean bag chairs dot the floor. The receptionist cheerfully greets me, thrilled to show me around and introduce me to the rest of the staff. It must be her fiftieth time doing this today. After doing it seventy times yesterday. And the day before that. It doesn’t show.

In the mirror of the bathroom, I study myself. My shoulders sag in weariness. My eyes mimic the posture, ornamented by fiery streaks of red from the corners. Sitting on the toilet I struggle with a bowel movement. Travel always clogs me up. While I wait resignedly, I half-heartedly try to imagine the physics that resulted in the fist-sized hole in the wall. There’s not enough room in here to land a punch. The walls are too close. I can barely turn around. It can’t be done I decide. Yet there it is. How?

Eventually, I give up on both fronts and return to the street. I spend hours walking around, tramping the pavement. Just observing, getting a feel for the inner beat of this new place. I buy a croissant in one place, a beer in another. I grab a sandwich from a street vendor.

I find a farmer’s market. My stomach leads me there. Looking over the scene, I’m surprised by how much it resembles one I might find at home. I shouldn’t be. Farmers the world over are the same, struggling with the weather, the soil, with money, with their crops. Why shouldn’t their markets be too?

All is hustle and bustle. People crowd booths, angling for fresh vegetables or baked goods. I watch one woman hold up handmade earrings to her ears. Those look nice, I think. She disagrees and returns them to the vendor.

Then I spot a lonely booth, with a young, anxious, hopeful woman behind the table. No one pays any attention to her as they flit to and fro in front of her sign. She’s selling crepes. I like crepes.

Approaching, I see my path register in her eyes and her hang-dog look morphs quickly into a beaming smile. I order a chocolate coconut crepe and as she cooks it for me, her smile never fully disappears. It tugs at the corners of her mouth, livens the depths of her eyes and creases her cheeks. Finally finished, she sprinkles powdered sugar on top with a flourish. Then she hands me my treat, hesitantly, nervously. She’s desperately hopeful that I’ll like it. I do. But as I move off, her smile is again adorned with a little desperation as she awaits her next potential customer. I want to hug her, tell her that I know she’s new at this but that she’s doing great. I don’t.

In the evening I sit on the porch of the hostel beneath strings of Christmas lights hung this way and that. They wave gently as the soft sounds of the city bubble up to our height. Five young women are nearby, spread across a circle of chairs and couches.

They have seven beers between them. They each drink one. Then they split the remaining two. I watch with interest as they navigate the math involved. Using the variously sized glasses and containers that are available from the hostel adds an extra layer of complexity. But they finally manage successfully.

Are we going to keep on drinking? asks one to her four companions. She’s trying to sound like a party-er, but I have trouble taking her at her word as she sips her 2/5 beer. It sounds like she’s just reciting lines out of the playbook.

I don’t care, she quickly hedges, not wanting to expose herself to mockery. I mean, I’ll keep drinking if you want but I’m okay if we don’t. She trails off lamely, having immediately bled all authority from her attempt to assert leadership over the group.

The others waver, noncommittal. Nobody’s sure whether they want to keep drinking or not.

Ten minutes later she repeats herself. She’s down to 1/5 beer now. Decisions must be made. And yet they’re not. No one takes the lead. As they bat the idea around, they move heads, make gestures, speak words, sentences even, and yet say nothing.

Finally, sheer inertia takes over and they wander off to bed. I’m left alone with the night sky. A horn honks and the lights shimmer. Even the stars themselves seem to dance in the sounds of the New Zealand night.

The next morning, I woke at the usual time. Five. And when the sun finally did rise, it seemed to offer some consolation. It was a new day. But my hands still hurt. Or rather, they felt too much. I held them away from my sides, rigidly, all morning.

I considered calling her. Emailing. Texting. Something. I didn’t.

I changed the oil of my truck. I cleaned the toilet. I bought groceries. And I didn’t pay attention to any of it. It was a Sunday. And it all passed amidst a haze of memories and sadness. I spent most of the day outside my body again. Simply watching myself. After the errands, as I pulled into the driveway, I found