Onward and Forward (to something new)!

The bottom line: After much consideration, Emily and I have decided to get off of the Te Araroa trail.

But it’s complicated. It’s like a ball of string… if I pull on one part and explain some facet, there’s still a lot of other strings to be pulled and no single one of them is more important than the other. Any thought that you may have has most likely been discussed ad nauseum by us both in favor and against. (If there’s one thing we have a lot of out here, it’s time to communicate!)

We think, though, that it can kind of be over simplified by saying: 

We feel great about our time on the trail. Like, really great. Our experiences here will be warmly remembered and discussed for decades and we’re so glad that we made time in our lives to have this adventure together. And now we feel satisfied with our accomplishments in working together through all of the challenges. We are just… ready to move on. The South Island would be a wonderful experience. It’s just that we are ready to do other things more than we are ready to spend another two months hiking. Of course, part of us will always wonder “what if”. 

We struggled with this decision for weeks leading up to the end of the north island. We went back and forth, back and forth. Then, about a week or so before the end, we decided to make Wellington our finish line. Even then, when we were spending time with friends or on a day off, we would think of all of the good times and think… maybe… However, when we started walking again for hours on hours each day we would remember why we felt that we were ready to try new things.

Another post will talk about the trail in detail and so on, in case anyone is interested in details. For now, we think it’s important to say that the best part of the trail is the people in it and around it. Our fellow hikers are the only ones who truly understand what we’ve experienced. Their international perspectives on the trail, culture, and life have been endlessly fascinating and often laugh out loud funny. Christmas Eve with our hiker friends will long be one of our favorite holiday memories, for instance. And then you have the amazing, incredible, angels on earth that are the people of New Zealand who went way out of their way to help complete strangers. From the Sturdges in the Northland forests to John and Sally outside of Levin, people completely changed bad situations to wonderful events and enabled us to reach further than we could have on our own. We are very grateful to all of them and hope we can pay it forward in some way.

We are not quite done with New Zealand, though. We are meeting a friend for a 10 day adventure, including doing some of the south island Te Araroa track and the Tongariro Crossing we missed. After he heads back home, we are headed down to the fiordlands to do a three day kayaking trip plus a couple more days of day hikes. And then, finally, a couple of days around Auckland. We should be back home sometime around early to mid February (about a month from now.)

Now, onward and forward!