Notes on Womanhood by Sarah Jane Barnett

Author:Sarah Jane Barnett
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Otago University Press
Published: 2022-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Six

The crossing

My friend Leslie and I walk the Tongariro Crossing. The nineteen-kilometre track traces a saddle between the volcanic peaks of Ngāuruhoe and Tongariro in central Te Ika-a-Māui, circles the broad-domed summit of Tongariro and then zigzags down its northern slope. Ngāuruhoe and Tongariro rest beside Mt Ruapehu, the three mountains forming the southern limit of the Pacific Ring of Fire – a circlet of volcanoes that extends through the Solomon Islands, the Philippines, Japan, the eastern sea border of Russia and along the west coast of the Americas.

The Tongariro Crossing is one of the most popular walks in Aotearoa, but I’m still nervous. Every year people die on the mountain. Usually they become lost after venturing off the track, especially when the weather turns and cloud rolls across the plateau. The name Tongariro means ‘taken by the cold southerly wind’, and even on the sunniest day the chill wind can cut through clothing and down to skin.

We leave early on Waitangi Day and drive up the Kāpiti Coast. The road is nearly empty and the beach settlements that hug the shore are still asleep in the silvery morning. After a few hours we reach the cheerful towns of Foxton and Bulls, and turn inland. Lush green farmland glides past the window. We’re taking advantage of the public holiday to spend a long weekend away. Leslie drives us in her station wagon, our tramping packs wedged together in the boot. In the back are two empty child booster seats.

I met Leslie at a party before either of us had children. At the time she taught high-school English, and our conversation was easy and immediate. She’ s a smart, sweet-faced blonde American who met an Aotearoa man in Mexico and eventually moved to Te Whanganui-a-Tara. Years after the party, she and that man bought a two-storey house down the road from me. We each had our first child around the same time, and we both joined the same local mothers’ group. We’ d sit and talk in each other’ s lounges, our babies gurgling. Leslie and I occasionally walked the hills of our neighbourhood. We talked about politics (her relatives voted for Trump and mine for Brexit), about mental health and poetry and the status a woman loses when she stays home with her children. Eventually, when our children were old enough to leave for a few days, we started to walk in the mountains.

Mid-afternoon we arrive in Ohakune and pull up to the cabin where we’ll spend two nights. The shingled wood structure has silvered with age. Inside we find mismatched furniture, wooden beams and a tiny pot-bellied stove. Hundreds of visitors have carved their names into the kitchen table, right down to the chipboard. ‘Let’ s take a look around,’ I say. We crunch back down the gravel drive and out to the middle of the road. Ohakune is a small rural town so there’ s little traffic. ‘Fingers crossed for good weather tomorrow,’ Leslie says. I pull my jacket tight around my shoulders.

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