From the Psychotic to the Sublime

The Lake Waikaremoana Track

Day 5, Page 3: Waiharuru to Hopuruahine Landing

I'm beginning to feel that slight sense of anticlimax that sometimes arrives near the end of a longish walk. I have grown habituated to walking — as Bill Bryson says, in A Walk In The Woods, "That's what we DO!" — and a slight apprehension accompanies an impending "change" of lifestyle.

I'm also just a bit jaded. How many ferny banks have I taken photographs of. More than you'll see on these pages, thats certain enough. Even a a whole bank full of a fern named after one of my favourite botanists, Allan Cunningham, fails to excite me.

Still, it's nice work if you can get it, I tell myself, as another perspective on the lake arrives.

Cutty grass, and a very lush flowerhead.

and back into the bush again.

Is it that the track is a little scruffy or is my slight melancholy - God, that sounds pretentious - colouring my choice of detail to focus on.

Nope. It was scruffy. And this is beautiful.

The golden light returns to cheer one.

I just don't want it to end. I wonder if there are trout as close in as this. (The answer is yes. That is what spinning is about. Standing on the shore and casting your line out and retrieving it, not with a fly, but with a shiny metal "bait" that ripples through the water. You use quite a different rod and reel than you would if you were fly fishing.

Several deep breaths later....

Whopps. Nothing like reality to bring you back to it.

We head in and away from the lake for a little.

Up we go.

I call this a water fern. I must check that naming.

The light is intensely bright now. The camera turns these trees into silhouettes. I am still learning to "see like a camera."

You can see we're up a bit now, and still getting these lovely flashes of lake as we round a corner.

I can feel myself slowing down again, feet dragging just a little.

making the most of the views the last day has to offer.