Holiday Reflections on Northbound and High Heels and Gumboots

Books for open hearted adventurers

I’ve just got back from a roady to the Abel Tasman. Destination Awaroa. Turning off the hustling state Highway 1 past Amberley and heading north, taking the empty central route through Te Wai Pounamu, on the wettest Easter weekend I can remember. Like every road trip in Aotearoa it felt as though we wove back and forth through time, spending moments sharing past versions of ourselves as milestones flew by.

The enchantment of those Weka Pass rocks as kids. Turning in again past Hanmer and climbing along the glorious Waiau Uwha awa valley.

Past the DOC carpark on the pass. Oh - the wild horses steaming in the frost on the St James! Right at the junction with the Maruia; winding along into Motueka. Joyful river swims - jumping from the rocks. Out to Kaiteriteri, past apple orchards laden with red fruit. And finally onto a boat from Marahau which proceeded to collect more desperate drenched trampers than it dropped off.

And always, something fresh marks every trip. This time, I felt I travelled with and towards two new book friends; having just finished reading the memoirs of two women who now call Te Tau Ihu, Nelson home.

Driving that so familiar route I was now imagining the Te Araroa walkers who might be up there, to our right, crossing Waiau pass or Travers Saddle; holed up against the wild wet at Blue Lake hut; or maybe pushing on against deadlines imposed by food rations or booked onward travel. Adventurers made vividly real to me after reading Naomi Arnold’s epic North Bound through-walk memoir.

Naomi would make an excellent road trip companion. Her memoir entertains in colour, pungent with details. We are honoured to mutely witness the (sometimes grim) glory of Aotearoa through her eyes as she holds herself accountable to the near impossible standard of “Every F***ing Inch”. Inspired and occasionally baffled by her obstinate, hapless grit in the light of the endless privations and crippling loneliness of her experience on the trail.

Her descriptions of all the people of the trail have the ring of truth lightly handled. Often funny but rich in respect and empathy. Her own transformation is subtle as the trail challenges and changes her. It isn’t just an “I knocked it off”, thing. But I’m not certain I could characterise what it IS fairly. And, TBH, the Naomi that sets out already seemed totally kick-arse to me. I liked her straight away, and became only fonder as she makes her dogged, dangerous, delightful way north, blister by blister.

So, the version of her we witness driven with a near hysteria to her limits by the time she stands at Cape Reinga, winds whipping through her, seems a bit of a wraith. Not quite broken, maybe, but hollowed out by her experience. Somehow though, we know there is more to it. She has fought with everything she has to give herself this, and what she has become as a consequence is not quite clear, but it is DEFINITELY mighty. There is a new, grounded, opened up quality we can hear seared into her character as she narrates her recovery and reflections in the epilogue.

That’s the Naomi who travelled with me anyway, and I busily recommended her story to everyone I met. Starting up conversations with a fresh determination to connect which I attributed to her influence. Not everyone wants to walk Te Araroa, but I guarantee that everyone with ambition and soul will find inspiration in this adventure.

We had friends in Awaroa we were going to visit who had just built a new home, and I was excited to see them, but also to be travelling towards a region and community brought freshly alive for me recently as I read Rebecca Hayter’s, High Heels and Gumboots. This is another memoir about a mission lived through: in this case an account of the seven years Rebecca spent proving to herself that lifestyle farming on her own was something she could learn from scratch starting in her mid 50’s, and learn to love.

Awaroa, where my friends were living their version of this dream, isn’t exactly Hayter’s Paton’s Rock. But it shares a boundary and some of it’s character. Plus, our friends “back to the land” beautiful dream seemed a part of the same cultural yearning that made Rebecca’s book so relatable.

I’m about the same age now that Rebecca was when she upsticked from her corporate gig in Auckland to create a coastal lifestyle dream for herself just out of Takaka on a farmlet she names Oceanspirit. I too am reinventing myself after an early retirement from corporate life. No doubt all those parallels enhanced the pleasure I took from the book.

However I challenge any reader not to be taken with Rebecca’s frank vulnerability, plucky can-do but slightly haphazard enthusiasm and good-natured humility. The book is full of humorous and deeply moving stories about animals and vehicles; weather and tools; the quality of land and trees and wetlands. All marvellously well-written and engaging. And Rebecca is both entertaining and generous sharing what she discovers in herself and in the eclectic but inclusive Golden Bay community along the way.

Some of the same sometimes whacky, widely diverse, but always generous and dependable community spirit was now embracing our friends in their venture to establish a new base in Awaroa. The tractors, boats, tasks, and learning curve that were absorbing them as they settled into their new home all seemed very familiar having just finished Rebecca’s book.

Visiting them, I felt an even greater respect for her tackling it on her own.

I believe she documents all the rich rewards, frustrations and routine drudgery of the lifestyle-farming “dream” down to a tee. This is a book that will satisfy the romantics and the prosaic alike in its portrait. Again, I busily recommended it to everyone I encountered, confident of its wide appeal, and grateful for this easy connection to offer.

The book is dedicated to her mother who served as rural GP for the Takaka community for 50 years, often at the expense of her availability as a mother. Its a tribute based on a new peace and respect she finds towards her mum; a gift from her time embedded at Paton’s Rock gaining an appreciation of the realities of rural community life and the demands on rural general practitioners. It is cool insight, which Hayter offers to help foster much needed mutual, rural/urban understanding across our motu. Kia ora!

Books that make you look closer and love places you know even more deeply are a treasure. When they also challenge you to stay ready for and open to be changed by life’s adventures, well, they start to feel like friends.

Catch our upcoming interviews with Rebecca Hayter and Naomi on our

Bookenz podcast