The Longest Day by Matt Calman

Author:Matt Calman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Published: 2020-02-17T16:00:00+00:00

10.

SEARCHING, BUT NOT LOST

I might have returned from Cass Bay calm and centred, but I also brought back an injury. The tendons in my forearm above my wrist, which lead to the base of my thumb, had swollen into a diagonal slug-shaped lump. The pain was severe enough for me to know I wouldn’t be paddling again in the short term. I googled my symptoms and found I had probably picked up a common kayaking injury as a result of gripping my paddle too tightly. The tendons in my lower forearm had rubbed together and grown irritated with the repetitive paddle strokes.

The next morning I saw a physio at SportsMed about it. She told me it needed four to six weeks’ rest. I wondered if this might be the beginning of my Coast to Coast unravelling. First my ribs and now the wrist. It seemed like one thing after another.

For the next week I iced my arm four times a day, took the anti-inflammatories left over from my broken ribs, and wore a brace to keep my thumb and wrist still. I even smeared a toothpaste-like line of anti-inflammatory gel on my wrist and wrapped my lower arm in Glad wrap each night before going to bed. Until the pain and swelling disappeared, I would have to be satisfied with biking or running up Rāpaki. I just needed to be able to paddle for my next kayaking course in early October. If I missed that, my race would be in serious doubt.

When we moved back to Christchurch in January 2014 living near the Port Hills was a priority. I had fostered my passion for running on the hills around Wellington, around the harbour edge and the rugged South Coast near our former Miramar home, and I needed to find a new playground. The closest trail was Rāpaki Track, just two kilometres from our home in Saint Martins. The summit of the track overlooks Rāpaki, a small Māori settlement near Lyttelton on the edge of the harbour basin. It was named by Ngāi Tahu chief Te Rakiwhakaputa. They say that when naming it he placed his rāpaki (waist mat) on the ground. The settlement’s full name is Te Rāpaki o Te Rakiwhakaputa—the waist mat of Te Rakiwhakaputa.

I had been there before, when I was a teenager. Knowing I was connected to the place, that my family shared a block of steep, rocky land on the slopes above the settlement, I’d taken my Pentax KM camera and stood outside the tiny urupā (graveyard) near the marae. I had felt the tapu, the sacredness, of the place so oppressively that I’d had to leave. I didn’t take any photographs. I sensed I wasn’t supposed to be there yet. Much of my struggle has long been bound to my search for identity, my attempts to reconcile my Māori and Pākehā sides. Knowing my Māori roots, on my father’s side, connected me to something but not knowing how to express that or understand it left me feeling like an outsider.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.