INTO THE WILD

Trail notes: There’s a river crossing on a rock chute just above a 4-metre waterfall … the water is flowing fast down the chute and if you lose footing, you go over the waterfall.

THE morning is cold. Isabel and Liam are still asleep. I pull on a down jacket and wander barely 100 metres from the hut to find a hidden tarn. All is quiet and still, the tarn’s surface a mirror reflecting the dark forest crowding the water’s edge. The pale trunks of dead trees poke like ghostly fingers from the watery depths. A thin blanket of mist hovers above the lake, heavy and silent in the windless air.

is what I’m here for, these moments of stillness