For my birthday this year, my wife went above and beyond.  

I didn’t want a product. I didn’t want a thing. For the last year of my thirties, I asked for an experience. And a couple of months before the big day, I casually dropped it into conversation.  

“How would you feel,” I asked. 

“If for my birthday this year, you took on all of the family duties for a bit... So I can duck off for a couple of nights in the bush?”  

I’ll admit to a bias —I’ve spent more time in that any other— but I reckon the Kahurangi might be our best National Park. Although Fiordland National Park obviously boasts the majesty of Milford, Doubtful, and Dusky Sounds, and Abel Tasman has the golden sand beaches, between the nikau groves meeting the Tasman and the true sub-alpine, I reckon nothing can rival the Kahurangi in terms of sheer variety of landscapes.   

I was reminded of that diversity this week, when, for my birthday escape, I joined my brother and brother-in-law and drove up the Wangapeka River enroute to climb Mt Owen. 

We started at the Blue Creek resurgence, where beautiful, perfect, clear water pours from the vast underground caves. Not too far away (as the crow flies) is the Pearse Resurgence, where cave divers recently set an extraordinary and terrifying record, diving 245m deep into the earth.   

Like so many beautiful spots in the South Island, the Kahurangi had a gold rush. Unfortunately for the hardy souls who braved the Wangapeka River in the 1860s, the quantities of gold recovered were ultimately modest at best. The older I get, the more I marvel at the ridiculous, old, gold works, the huge bits of rusted iron machinery that once upon a time took were hauled up the least-hospitable valleys, only to be abandoned and left to be slowly consumed by the bush.   

We climbed straight up. It was too steep for chatter and we soon fell into the rhythm of the bush. The crunch of our boots, the gasping, heavy breath, the birdsong. So much birdsong. Again, the older I get, the more I appreciate it. There were countless bellbirds, robins, piwakawaka, and my new favourite cutie of all the New Zealand natives: tomtits. We paused for a moment for a handful of pick-n-mix, and two tiny, sweet little rifleman came and perched on a twig right next to us.   

We climbed above the bushline and then down into another valley, up an old creekbed to the tidy DOC hut. It was pretty busy and we still had legs, so we kept climbing, up another hour to a couple of tarns, where we pitched our tents for the night. We were surrounded by three mighty limestone mountains, a little plateau with spongey earth and tussock. Mother Nature’s colosseum. We dropped a couple of beers into the tarns to cool them off as we pitched our flies and cooked dinner.    

We were at 1500m. Hardly Everest, but high enough for the temperature to drop fast. One minute your clothes are rotting with sweat, the next you’re double socking. We slept in puffer jackets and polyprops. Without any clouds or light pollution, the sky was so pure and bright. I had to pull a beanie over my eyes to try and doze off. Is it even tramping if you have a good night’s sleep? 

In the morning we left our camp and started climbing before sunrise. From the little plateau, we worked up through the huge glaciated marble karst that builds to the mountain summit. You can see why these landscapes were chosen by the location scouts as Lord of the Rings country. Mind your step. Skip the crevasse. Up, up, up.  

The views from the top were awesome. Not just ‘awesome’ as in good, but awesome in the true sense of inspiring awe. We could see incredible ranges on all sides, clouds sitting deep in the valleys below. In one, cloud spilled over the lip of an alpine ridge and down the otherside, like water tipping from a glass. Several times we all just stopped. How often in life are you ever in a time and place where we can’t see or hear any sign of human civilisation?  

I’m impossible to buy for but for my birthday this year, my wife nailed it. I walked out with burning quads and a couple of blisters, so content, so full of gratitude.   

And to think these landscapes are there for all of us. That it’s our home. What a gift, indeed.