WorldNomads Scholarship

It was on the Routeburn Track that I first met Tane.

I knew who he was, of course. I’d grown up learning about Tane Mahuta, god of the forest and birds - son of Rangi and Papa, sky father and earth mother. Maori mythology had been our Hans Christian Andersen and Tane was my favourite. He was rooted yet he could fly; he was always growing. But it was his strength I admired most. Tane, separator of heaven and earth.

**Then the mighty Tane Mahuta lay on his back and dug his shoulders deep into his mother's body. With his legs, Tane pushed against his father and, with all the strength he could summon, attempted to let light into the world.**

And so I met Tane on a track in the southern alps. Along the way I walked with Papa (earth) through the wild tussock flats of Greenstone Valley that exploded like a party-popper from the end of a forest trail. I met Rangi (sky) at Harris Saddle peak where, at 4200ft, he sent snow. I got to know Tane in the trees that lined the river that lead my way, in the wispy moss that hung from branches like an old man’s beard, in the call of the birds.

It was Tane’s strength I called upon towards the end of that first day, when I had to will myself to keep walking. I became so focused on reaching the hut that I didn’t notice the birds had stopped singing.

The hut ranger’s name was Evan. A meek man of few words, it was clear he was here for the place not the people. The lines etched on his forehead like wooden carvings reminded me of tree rings, each one revealing something about his history.

That evening he stood up in front of us and told us to listen.

“What do you hear?”

“Nothing,” someone called out after an awkward silence. “That’s the point of being in the middle of nowhere, right?”

Evan’s brows crumpled, the lines on his forehead creasing like cake batter.

He told us how stoats were killing the birds and stealing their eggs. How the bird population had declined, almost disappeared. He told us about his personal project to set traps along the track; how he wanted to bring the birds back. In his eyes I didn’t see the pale, soft-spoken man with a receding hairline. I saw Tane.

The silence slipped over us like a bell jar that night. We tried to fill it with conversation and card games and clanging cutlery as we washed our dinner dishes. The sun (Ra) melted slowly until its orange stain was swallowed by an inky southern sky. The stars emerged like pin pricks in a black backdrop, letting light in from another world.