Blog : OUTBACK COUNTRY LIFE

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7/22/2008 3:39 am

OUTBACK COUNTRY LIFE

As a i was raised in the seventh day adventist church and although to me their beliefs are very much RELIGION BASED, and mine godly based, i found myself at the age of 16 when i left home, also turning my back on them as well,An act that my mother has never forgiven me for sinse, and 6 years ago shut me completely out of the family.But i fear i am getting away from the point of this story, and thats not good. MY father was a very knowledgeable man and in the evenings i would spend hours asking him about god and the universe,angels and what they looked like, and their purpose.I had a hunger to know about god as far back as the age of 8 years old and that hunger has never faded,,infact it has gotten deeper as i have got older. My favourite subject has always been angels and my fascination for them was to be sparked even more in the october of 1983 in a snow storm at 5000. But the story starts back earlier that year in the month of june, we had had two dumpimns of snow in the space of 3 weeks where the snow had reached at sea level. I used to go backpacking in the nountains with 3 other of my friends, alan,steve and bruce, the mountains at the back of where i lived had taken a real pounding from the snow storms and was looking quite white. It was the weekend in between the two snow storms that we decided we would go hiking in an area of the kaweka mountains called middle hill,,,there was a bush hut there that was a part of the forest service back country huts.Middle hill hut sits in a little hollow that forms a small gorge that cuts into the base of the mountain range and only gets the winter sun for about 2 hours per day,,,,so everything turns to permafrost untill summer. Alan is quite a tall chap,,all of 6 foot and back then weighed 13 stone , all lean weight,,so we used to load him up like a pack and then just piont him in the direction where we were going,that wekend was quite entertaining really,,at each hut they provide an intentions book for trampers to enter where they are planning to go in the park,,just incase they are late or lost,it was 2pm when we arrived there and the snow was about 8 inches deep and was by that stage had had a week of frosts over it so was quite solid by that stage,,,you could feel the chill coming off the ground
The first thing we did was gather fire wood to stock the wood bin as nighta there can drop to -30 degrees,,at that temoerature it is even difficult to get a match to burn and the steek on the wood stove even sweats out moisture.
Alan was a hard man,,in those conditions wore steel capped boots

.at those temperatures i usually like to take a small hip flask of rum to add to my coffee,,it stops ice bergs forming in the blood stream.
There is no electricity in them huts,,,you light up the hut with either candles,gass or just the light fromthe fire. The next morning we were up early and exploring,,,then alan came out with the hut book and showed us an entry from a hunter that was up there about 21 days before and had shot a stag in that area , and had left the hind legs hanging on a tree for anybody who wanted them,and just 20 minutes up the track. So off we went in search of them. So that morning for breakfast we sat down to vennison steaks fried in butter and the onions that we took up with us, Now this may sound crood but the reason why i take onions is the efect they have on the bowell,,,thats right,,,flatulent gass.food cooked over a fire can bind you up so the onions keep things working,,,the unpleasant part is when you open up your sleeping bag in the morning

but i wont go there.yOU MAY ASK WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH Angels,,,its coming up...it was steve who came up with the idea of a week long from a place called Vennison tops and follow the western ridge to join the main range and then across the tops to a place called Kaweka J. then down the spur to meet our pickup,,,namely bruce.So we set about making plans to do the treck in the following october of that same year,,we needed to get winter over with first.