all saints day
And on this All Saints' Day I went clambering up a stream, following wistful blazes that were all that remains of a track, and then had to stop and turn back before I reached the waterfall because the way forward was blocked by water too deep and rocks too slippery for the footwear and clothing I had on.
It was fun.
Dry Creek, it was called. It was not dry.
"Wet foot track", the sign at the start of the track said, meaning that the stream had to be crossed but there were no bridges. I managed to hop from bank to rock to rock to bank, and my feet stayed dry.
It really did not take long before I was very clearly well within Tāne Mahuta's realm. The forest made that clear.
And the track? Well, at the start it was easy and the stream was very tame, but not long after crossing the first ford it became abundantly clear that some pretty awesome geological, metereological, and hydrological had been making themselves known.
Sections of hillside had rolled down, banks were being eroded, trees had been torn out of the ground and knocked over, rocks had been shoved around, new channels had been carved out, old channels abandoned, and some channels left for the next flood to continue scouring.
Every now and then there was a low growling-howling sound from somewhere distant - logically, of course, the wind interacting with trees, hillside, gully, and that high-tension power line that swooped above; but the human mind is not rational and wonders if perhaps that sound was the forest reminding any human intruders of whose realm they had ventured into and who will always remain in charge.
And the forest, claiming and reclaiming, endlessly adapting to each change in this narrow valley. Moss and lichen slowly growing over the blazes left nailed into tree trunks hopefully marking where the track runs, or ran, or may once have been. Mature trees with root systems the envy of any engineer tasked with keeping infrastructure upright holding firmly on to their patch of hillside and cliff in defiance of the coming flood. Saplings sprouting from whatever cranny they could claim a foothold in. The whoosh-whoosh of kereru wings and the flitting of pīwakawaka.
And the track really didn't exist any more. From a short ways in it became a matter of picking your way upstream, clambering over and under, hopping from rock to bank, chuckling at the vanity of trying to mark a track with these silly little blazes nailed into tree trunks where clearly the forest did not want a track.
So, slow down, take care, move intentionally, remember that tai chi training - place foot first, shift weight second.
And then I walked out of the forest feeling quite a bit better about the world. For a short while, anyway.