43 trips around the sun 🌄

Entry #71 on birthdays and cool weekends on the land

Entry #71

We all spent the weekend at Tangahoe for my birthday. Some of you may have heard me talk about this place, or seen my 2020 PechaKucha talk on our first trip in there.

It’s a very special block of land and we are incredibly lucky to visit it and spend time with Dave, the owner.

This time, we took the jet boat in, not the helicopter. I still love this photo from the 2020 trip, showing the chopper fly away back to the hangar in Raetihi. When it left us and the noise faded, I remember the exhilaration of knowing ‘this is it’ and that we were committed to the trip with no ability to change plans.

This trip, Ruapehu was completely hidden from view and we travelled in when the Whanganui river was flowing 7m higher than normal because of all the rain. A completely new adventure with big packs, lots of rain gear and a steep walk up a very muddy ‘track’ to the lodge.

Did we look at the forecast and cancel? No, the Howies did not. We said to ourselves ‘if the jet boat operator is happy to take us in, we’re happy to go in’.

We went for two nights and three massive days. And it was unbelievably awesome.

I could write about Tangahoe for a year. I could write about Dave for 10 years. Everything about the land and the people fascinates me. It’s very hard for me to explain how a city girl, living in a city still, can feel so at home in a place like Tangahoe. A place that is nothing like my home, where nothing works like it does in my home, where safety nets just don’t exist and being a specialist is a not at all useful.

Maybe it’s the 180 degree flip from ‘normal’ life that is so appealing, maybe if I stayed for a month I’d start to hate it. That could be true, but I’d like to test the theory one day, just to be sure.

So now I am 43 and I got to celebrate that milestone walking up and down hills with my nearest and dearest. Lucky doesn’t even come close to how that felt.

That is all for today. As always, I look forward to hearing what you heard, saw and felt when reading this.

With love,

Michelle xx

ps. the chat thread is up and running! Come over and join us there if you want to keep the conversation going after each Friday Flow post comes out.