[pct-l] Trail Magic

[Scott Williams]

Trail magic, from established angels like the Saufleys or Dinsmores, God I
miss Andrea already, or from folks who don’t even know they’re angels, has
always be a total delight to me. Heck, I’ll take all the help I can get on
any trail I hike. This summer on the Te Araroa in New Zealand, it has been
no different from in the States. The Kiwis are some of the friendliest and
most giving people I’ve ever encountered, European background and Maori.

On a weeklong kayak paddle of the Whanganui River, all part of the TA,
Coyote and I realized we’d left our hiking poles with our backpacks at the
kayak rental company, forgetting that we needed them to pitch our little
cuben tents. As the sand flies will eat you alive if you cowboy camp, we
needed shelter at the Department of Conservation huts along the way.

On the fourth evening we went past the hut we could have stayed in so as to
make more miles down river. When we all got hungry, we pulled up on a
beach, and made our way up to a small village above the bank. As we
approached the buildings we could hear some pretty good American Oldies
blasting out over the river and had no idea what we were in for.  We had in
fact walked into an in progress, Maori, 40th birthday party, a three day
affair. People were dancing and drinking and feasting on venison shot the
day before by the birthday boy, whose mother, rather inebriated herself,
happened to have a few small cabins we could rent for $20 a night. After
she settled us in, we were all invited to come and join the festivities.

Holy smokes what a feast!  All the beer we could drink, venison and salads
we could eat, and we were made to feel like we were part of the extended
Maori family we’d dropped in on. What lovely people!  We learned to head
greet properly, and did so with many partyers, admired some of the most
beautiful body tattoos we’d ever seen, and danced way past hiker midnight.
The only downside was that we all pass out not long after the sun goes down
and that party raged till the next day, so we didn’t get the best night’s
rest. But that was a small price to pay for such cross cultural, and
genuine, hospitality.

That’s just one bit of magic from this hike, but there’s been so many on
every hike. I don’t look for magic, but I sure cherish it when it happens.

Shroomer

On Mon, Mar 12, 30 Heisei at 1:50 PM Jeffrey Olson <jjolson58 at gmail.com>
wrote:

> When I hiked in 2005, I met three guys who'd just graduated from
> college.  They started at Stevens Pass and ended at Whitney.  I'd put a
> whole bunch of Bear Valley Pemmican bars in my resupply boxes and wasn't
> eating all of them in between resupplies, so I put them in hiker boxes.
> After three or four weeks, they told me they waited for me to put the
> bars I hadn't eaten in the hiker boxes and then immediately grabbed
> them.  I was a kind of trail angel...
>
> Jeff
>
>
> On 3/11/2018 6:44 PM, Karl Jorgensen wrote:
> > I hiked the trail in 2006, and the first trail magic I encountered was
> just
> > before Werner Springs.   It was in the morning, and as I walked along,
> > there was a fellow coming towards me, and just before we reached each
> > other, he reached into a bag that he was carrying and pulled out an
> orange
> > and handed it toward me and ask, would you like an orange.  I think that
> > was the best orange that I have ever eaten.
> >
> > jorgy. 2006
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