Northbound: Four seasons of solitude on Te Araroa

This book made me want to pack up and start walking the Te Araroa trail now, and at the same time made me never want to start.

When I was young and foolish I spent a lot of my holiday time hitch-hiking around New Zealand. I sometimes travelled with a friend and sometimes solo. I was carefree about hiking as a solo female and gave little thought to the worries this caused my family who had to cope with the occasional postcard or phone call as contact.

Technology has moved on and people travelling in the wilds now can have their progress monitored constantly by Google Maps and a red dot can show followers the traveller's location. This was no doubt a comfort to journalist Naomi Arnold's family when she decided to walk the length of New Zealand on the Te Araroa Trail, going northwards from Bluff and against the flow of mainly southbound hikers.

Arnold had been obsessed by the trail since she read founder Geoff Chapple's book many years earlier. Finally she got to fulfil her dream, starting from Bluff in the far south in December 2023.

Over the next nine months Arnold hiked northwards, over flat lands and rocky mountains, through tussock plains and forests drenched in mud. She walked under a blistering sun and through freezing cold, pouring rain, roaring winds and terrifying thunderstorms. She lost her way frequently (often hiking through the night) but was steered back to the trail by her calm and patient husband on the other end of the phone, directing her to navigate by the constellations. She had moments of elation and others of total despair. She injured herself often but kept on going with the help of plasters and paracetamol and the occasional visit to a doctor. She slept in huts, sometimes in the open and occasionally in a real bed provided by one of the 'trail angels' along the way, who supply food, beds, showers and moral support to exhausted hikers. She makes it to Cape Reinga.

Her account of the trip (written mostly while in progress) is a riveting story of a woman's battle against unforgiving terrain and her own uncertainties. The writing is descriptive, often poetic, sometimes funny, and illuminates a singular obsession.

Grateful that I will never have to undertake such a trip, I highly recommend this book as a way to experience vicariously an extraordinary journey.