Empyrean

Glenorchy, New Zealand
Routeburn Flats
Lake Mackenzie
Routeburn Flats
Glenorchy

December 14-15, 2020
December 15-16
December 16-18
December 18-19
December 19-20

Backdrop

Riding could only take me so far.

As I mentioned before, motorcycle riding is mentally demanding as it requires a deep level of attention to each and every second of the moment. Trekking is different, in some ways the opposite of riding - since all one is required to do is walk, an activity most people are accustomed to doing without actively thinking about it, the mind inexorably unwinds and takes a back seat to its own incessant musings as it is steadily immersed in the prodigious merger painted by forest, mountain, and sky. I needed to find a more primeval, less ego-centric mindset, one that I had lost during the previous year; in fact, I think I had been straying away from it for the past 5 years.

I chose to trek the Routeburn, a 32-kilometer track through the Southern Alps of New Zealand. The Routeburn has a reputation for unforgettable scenery. However, at only 32 kilometers in length it can be covered in a single day, and I felt that I needed to spend more than a day absorbed by the wilderness. I could try to walk slowly, but even at half-pace this could only stretch it out by an extra day. Thus, I decided to start and end the trek in Glenorchy, which would provide an extra 27 kilometers of distance to the start of the Routeburn track, and then decided to do the whole thing twice, which would nearly quadruple the total walking distance and gift me with 5 days and 4 nights in the wilderness.

Spending several days in the back of beyond automatically forces a person to temporarily ablate their connection with the numberless sources of entertainment, media, and communicative technology that riddle our world. Since I do not watch television, stay abreast of news gossip, or surf social media, my connection with entertainment and media was already pleasingly feeble. However, I had not been able to abandon the incessant barrage of emails, texts, and phone calls, all of I required to function efficiently at work, and I fervently anticipated the breaking of those links, if only for a handful of days. Yet I still needed to take it even further if I was to induce a more primal mindset on this journey. Thus, I opted to conduct a 5-day fast during the trek, sustaining myself with only water and a small plastic bag of salted almonds so as to maintain minimum water and salt requirements. I would strip life down to the bare essentials, to devote myself to what mattered.

The answer to that vexatious question.

An Extended Journey

On arriving in Glenorchy, a modest settlement of about 360 permanent residents, I sojourned for a night at Camp Glenorchy Eco Retreat. Sitting behind the front desk was Daniel, a cheerful, pensive fellow originally from Brazil, but who had been living in New Zealand for 6 years and had no intention of returning to his homeland. Daniel showed me around the camp, which had been designed to function as a self-sustaining, ecosystem-complimenting set of "living buildings." The camp generated its own solar energy, and it collected and treated its own rainwater and waste.
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I prepared the items I would bring on the trek, with the only space-occupying ones being a sleeping bag, a tent, wet and cold weather clothes, water bottles, and the aforementioned salted almonds. Everything fit comfortably into my small backpack, which is all I tend to bring on any journey, regardless of duration. The light weight keeps me unencumbered and lets me move swiftly, if I need to.

I rose early, awakening to the salutatory streaks of crimson light emanating from a transcendent sunrise, whose early morning solace lay transiently concealed by the colossal ridgeline adjacent to the camp. I got up slowly, enjoying the leisurely pace, and departed just prior to noon. Given my southerly latitude, the sun would not set until nearly 10 pm, and so I had plenty of daylight; there was no rush.

Much of the first day was devoted to promenading the 27 kilometers lying between Glenorchy and the start of the Routeburn track. It was a fine day. The walking was easy, given that the first half of the road was tarmac, yet even though the ground below was mere roadway, the scenery above was emphatically radiant. I saw many distant peaks, a presage of things to come, and knew that although I might be able to climb some of those peaks, I could never climb all of them; a person can do anything they want in life, but not everything. The wind, ever-rebellious, rejoiced in its ability to swing the long rows of poplar trees to-and-fro, and the noise it made in doing so gently deconstructed my doubts. An unruly gang of cows halted in their grazing to stare at me, then collectively ambled alongside me, stopping when I stopped, moving when I moved, and continued to do so until a spoilsport fence barred us from continuing the game. A farmer drove by in a tractor; unlike the cows, he seemed perplexed by my presence.

Since I was walking down the side of a road, I was also passed by the occasional car. I found the drivers of the cars to be somewhat odd, peering straight ahead from within their self-contained metal box, trying to get from Point A to Point B in the hopes of "going somewhere." But what is the point in going somewhere if one remains detached from the grandeur skipped over by the expedition itself? It is not at Point A or B that the true experience is to be had, but in everything that lies between those two points.

​Then again, many of the people in those passing cars probably wondered why the heck anyone would walk down a perfectly good road designed for vehicles. 

Mid-way, the tarmac gave way to gravel, and it was at this point that I pulled over for a brief rest under the inviting shade of a tree. The rest morphed into sleep - I had not realized the extent of my fatigue, not just that arising from the particular day, but from the course of the entire year. I woke up an hour later to resume my walk, which remained uneventful until my arrival at the Routeburn track.

I paused for a short interlude at the shelter near the start of the track, and was about to get things underway when a distinguished-looking fellow bearing a name-tag that said "Elder Jones" pulled up in his car; despite the title, he could not have been more than 20 years of age. We conversed, and I learned much about him, for Elder Jones was well-spoken and did most of the talking, whereas I adopted my more preferred role of questioner and listener. Elder Jones was originally from the United States, but had lived in New Zealand for several years, and he was a Mormon (the term "Elder" refers to the lowest office that can be held within their priesthood, the highest being "Apostle"). He had a day off from his duties and was out for a drive, during which he had clearly been ruminating on his future. We discussed the possibilities that life might offer him, in some detail. Following our discourse I turned to leave, and it was at that moment that he finally asked me a question:

He said, "What did you say your name was again?"

I smiled, shook his hand, and said, "I'm Matthew."

On that note I started the Routeburn trail, which escorted the Dart River as it airily meandered through a voluminous thicket of trees. Owing to the fact that it was now late in the day, there were virtually no other people on the track. I was dazzled by the glittering shimmers of light running down the leaves of the the trees, and buoyed by the effervescent melodies sung by the feathered inhabitants of the forest. After an hour, the bird songs faded away, and I halted my trek to take in an equally magnificent sound, that of blessed silence, which was rejuvenating.

Shortly afterwards, I arrived at my campsite for the night, the Routeburn Flats, which was situated at the base of a valley ringed by a sierra of unearthy cliffs. The dying daylight echoed off the mountains at varying angles and I bore witness as the earth's penumbra drew its curtain over mother nature. I chatted briefly with a French couple, Benoit and Justine, as they were preparing dinner, but seeing as I had no need for sustenance I prepared my tent and went to sleep well before dark.

I slumbered for 14 hours, waking only once, in the middle of the night, to the sacred lure of the starlit sky. I saw the constellation Orion, and attempted to focus on the Orion Nebula, which is located in Orion's sword. I think I saw it, though it was difficult to be sure given the bleary state of my vision and the tiny dot of light that marked the Orion Nebula. In reality, the nebula is 24 light-years across - so vast, so gargantuan, so super-colossal that words are not up to the task of describing its dimensions. And yet here I was, trying to see it with a single, bleary-eyed glance - one individual amongst nearly 8 billion people on Earth, a modest planet orbiting the sun, which is but one of 400 billion stars in the Milky Way Galaxy, which is but one of 2 trillion galaxies in the known universe.

​Even though riding a motorcycle teaches a person to be a captain in life, to find and follow their purpose rather than drift along like an extra in the essential movie that is one's life, trekking teaches us that we are still but dust, and we should not ascribe to our actions any excessive degree of self-importance. The former concept is distinctly western, the latter more typically eastern; however, these concepts are not mutually exclusive, indeed they are synergistic and complementary. Perhaps Mahatma Gandhi summarized it best when he said, "Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it.”

Following my longest sleep of the year, I packed my items and set forth down the trail. The weather was now overcast, but the visibility was still good. The morning's path involved a windy ascent through a seasoned forest, after which it transitioned into a narrow track running sideways along the slopes of the mountains. The path provided striking views of Lake Harris, a lonely lake nestled amongst jagged bluffs. I met several other trekkers along the way, people with names like Tom, Pat, Manvir, and Zeta, all from New Zealand, all bearing smiles shining through the fatigue induced by their own journeys.

I encountered a rustic emergency shelter at mid-day. As soon as I arrived at the shelter, a shadowy, amorphous mist set in that refused to release its hold on the track for the remainder of the day. I was disappointed, for just past the shelter lay a side-trail called the Conical Hill track, which consisted of a steep jaunt up the apex of a nearby ridge and portended a promise of unparalleled vistas. Scanning upwards, I could see nothing but fog, so if I was trekking primarily to obtain splendid views, there really was no good reason to make that climb. And yet, was I here - in this place, at this time - merely to obtain a nice view, or was there more to it? The most important discussions you will ever have in life are the ones you have with yourself, and an internal parley ensued, until eventually I concluded that even without the inspiring scenery, the trek was still worth doing - I would trek for the trek itself.

Resolute, I surmounted Conical Hill, seeing only one other stoic fellow on the way down who confirmed that there were no views to be had from the summit. I pressed on through the mist, all the way up to the solitary pinnacle, where I spent an undefined period of time dozing in the clouds while buffeted by errant flurries, a terse layover that was, strangely, uncomfortable and revitalizing both.

I descended, and after an ephemeral rest in the shelter, returned to the main track, which maintained its sideways traversal along the slopes of the mountains. As I wandered along, minding my own business, I was accosted by a curious kea, a type of large parrot native to New Zealand, who bounced onto the path in front of me and didn't appear to give a damn about my presence, allowing me to get very close before he or she bounced off the track again. This one amusing spectacle aside, the fog and clouds were simply too thick for me to witness anything else across the valley, and my imagination thoughtlessly taunted me, summoning visions of peaks that could easily have provided a setting for Valhalla, yet I again reminded myself that I was trekking for the trek itself, not the views; they were just a bonus.

With that said, at one point late in the day, the clouds rescinded their grip and parted, just for a moment, to reveal to me what lay across the valley. It was enough, I was thankful.

That evening, the trail dipped down the mountainside into the belly of the valley and I found myself at my campsite for the night, Lake Mackenzie. I experienced another much-needed, exuberantly-long sleep, waking up once again to the pied-piper lull of the stars, but there were none to be seen that night. Where and when the heavens choose to reveal themselves is not up to me.

I awoke to a morning marked by a single epoch of good weather, during which the sun nudged its way through the clouds, allowing me to appreciate a collage of mountain, lake, light, and mist. I packed my things and set forth down the trail again. Try as it might, the sun was unable to peek its way through the veil of vapour blanketing the skies for the rest of that morning; it remained temporarily defeated, and the views of any prospective peaks remained hidden to me. It did not matter. After several more hours of trekking, I reached the placid shores of Lake Howden, and perhaps an hour later, I exited the Routeburn track.

Although it was the end of the trail and I had just walked about 63 kilometers including side-trails, I was only half-way through my trek. I stopped for 20 minutes, turned around, and returned to the trail. I felt unexpectedly light of heart, and I wondered whether repeating the trek in its opposite direction would culminate in a similar experience - or would it somehow be different?

The answer arose soon enough. Several hours into the return trek, the sun declared itself in force, scattering the cloudy denizens that had held dominion over the land, and it was then that it revealed itself to me, that most majestic, exalted mountain of the trek, the pinnacle of pinnacles...Empyrean. I looked on in awe, and immediately proceeded to capture the vision with my mobile phone, which was also my surrogate camera, and yet at that moment, the battery chose to die. Frustrated, I turned on my music player and put on my headphones so that I could listen to music while appreciating the vision, and in like fashion, several minutes into the music, that battery also died.

I sat for a time, mulling over a sensible rendition of this situation, while Empyrean continued to shift in and out of visibility in front of me, fading behind wispy shrouds of mist one moment, basking in the sun's radiance the next, and after a period of reflection realized that Empyrean was not there for my convenience, to be captured on film or experienced while distracted by music. No, Empyrean would only reveal itself to the tune of a higher power, one that I could not predict or capture, and my sole responsibility was simply to maximize my ability to witness the unveiling, which I did by repeating the trek in the opposite direction, for had I not done so, I would never have experienced the grandeur of that mountain.

To trek for the process itself, with no expectation attached to obtaining a view, that was the proper mindset. I missed out on many potential panoramas along the way, but by repeating the track I had already covered in a different way, Empyrean chose to reveal itself in a single moment at a place and time of its choosing...not mine. And at last, I understood the answer to that vexatious question. I would conduct the trial for the process itself, with no expectations attached to the outcome, and if I missed something, or things were not turning out as I anticipated, then by repeating what I thought I had already covered in a different way, something might choose to reveal itself, at a place and time of its choosing...not mine.

The foray back I will not relay, nor do I have any photos to show of it. I trekked for the trek, which mutated into vigorous winds, deluges of rain, and poignant discussions with people with names like Sierra, Chris, Graham, and Reuben, all from New Zealand.

I returned to Camp Glenorchy Eco Retreat having trekked 124 kilometers in 5 days, fasted. The fast had gone well, and I felt calm, focused, and primed, achieving a state of mind that had eluded me for several years. Once again, Daniel greeted me at the front desk. He asked how it went, and I mentioned the constant flux of the ever-changing weather patterns and their impact on the trek. He nodded sagely and said, "That's the mountain."

The mountain...not me.

Starting out in Glenorchy, sun sparkling.

Distant peaks, a presage of things to come.

The wind rejoices amongst the poplar trees.

This gang of cows keeps me company.

A perplexed farmer.

Start of the Routeburn track.

Crossing over the Dart River.

Shimmers of light stream down the trees.

A place of blessed silence.

A prodigious merger of forest, mountain, and sky.

Dying daylight at the Routeburn Flats.

Sunset afterglow.

A windy ascent through a seasoned forest.

Parting view of the Routeburn Flats from up high.

It is now overcast, but the visibility is still good.

Puffs of mist hover over Lake Harris.

A lonely lake nestled amongst jagged bluffs.

No views to be found anywhere on Conical Hill.

Thick fog blankets the mountainside.

A curious kea.

The clouds rescind their grip, just for a moment.

Lake Mackenzie, but the hut's not for me.

A collage of mountain, lake, light, and mist.

The placid shores of Lake Howden.

End of the Routeburn track...now, time to do it again.