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And Down and DownI am never tired of the ability of moss to transform objects in ways that grab the human imagination. This stump also has another small tree growing out of the top of it.
I mentioned on Day 1 the work of DOC in keeping the path clear of fallen trees. The sawn off stumps fronting the path are then a pallette for all kinds of fungi, often quite spectacular in their effects.
Sometimes the intensity of the green is almost overwhelming - 2.5m banks covered in moss, tree trunks covered in moss. a track covered in moss and a 450 mm track cut into it by boots.
The routines are becoming established now. We take advantage of some recently chainsawed slices of fallen tree to dig into the chocolate and dried fruit again. The bush is now coming more to resemble the Auckland bush I am familiar with, but just that much more "in your face" with its vigour and intensity of colour. I'm possibly also reacting to the hard time of it some of the vegetation was having on the last stages of the Saxon to Mackay leg.
On the last stages of this leg, the landscape is much steeper, and falls away below to the Heaphy River, which we can already hear, and ocasionally see when a largish slip has opened up a gash in the bush. Most of these I am fine with, but there are moments when the track is narrower than usual and my fear of heights is triggered. I do lots of practise on areas that are screened by plenty of bush, and when I get to the ones that aren't I cope pretty well. The track has killed, but it has killed those who have ignored safety warnings, not those with a fear of heights.
Pungas begin to appear in profusion below us. There is a high mist of cloud and otherwise a brilliantly sunny day around us when the track opens up a little from time to time. We are now descending quite rapidly, but there's still a way to go if that last glimpse of the Heaphy was anything to go by. Cameras fail miserably to capture depth and scale on this walk. Here and there we walk past small coal seams, and a piece or two of this "rock that burns" finds it's way into our packs.
Distant objects tend to fade into milky mist whereas the eye makes some kind of accommodation. That's where we'll be tomorrow night - if the suspense doesn't kill me.....
In the centre of the picture you can just make out the white stone bed of the Heaphy.
We're down under the pungas now and if anything the landscape just here is getting steeper still. It's not the kind of country where you'd want to be going 50m off the track to answer a call of nature as recommended in the DOC environmental care literature. The conditions must have been appalling, but the historian noted simply that Mackay returned later that year with a team of men to bench the original track, and establish a pack route.
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