Nothing beats the New Zealand bush. The writer Ashleigh Young once tweeted: “Sometimes NZ writers say ‘the forest’ instead of ‘the bush’ (and they definitely mean ‘the bush’) because they are nervous about saying ‘the bush’. Bring back the bush. If everyone does it, we will be fine.”
So here I am, proclaiming, “I love the bush!” Perhaps this is my opinion as an outdoor enthusiast and bisexual, but “bush” is the more accurate descriptor for the native flora of Aotearoa. Our bush is dense and scratchy, inured to the trample of boots. Our bush is thick and lush all year round, as few native plant species are deciduous. Our bush is not some wan forest: it is wild and overgrown, it does not encourage easy passage.
As my family were neither middle class nor Pākehā (white European), I didn’t venture into the bush until I was an adult. It’s now been 10 years since my first foray into the bush but I’ll never forget that first experience.
A friend, who grew up with the bush, convinced me to come on a two-day tramp. I had no idea what I was getting into. Surely a tramp was just a long walk. How difficult could a walk in the bush possibly be? I lacked outdoor gear but my friend sorted me with her spares, save for tramping boots as our feet were not the same size. “Maybe I’ll get into tramping,” I decided, buying the cheapest pair of boots I could find.
The route was up Avalanche Peak, the only poled summit in Arthur’s Pass, a national park famous for its bush of silver, red and mountain tawhai (beech) trees.
I did not appreciate the bush on the way up. Instead, I cursed the 1,100m ascent that left my lungs burning and back saturated with sweat. I envied my friend’s fitness that allowed her to walk ahead and find features of the bush to show me: the peat floor carpeted with prickly shield fern, the sponge moss and lace lichen, and the understorey of snow totara, bearing edible cashew apple-shaped berries.
I thought the uphill would be the hardest part but then I discovered what happens once you leave the bush. Past the bushline, the tall trees were replaced by stout, hardy shrubs. Some people refer to this as alpine scrub but I think you could equally call it alpine bush.
This alpine bush featured plants I had never seen before, like the Mount Cook lily, with bristly white petals and leaves as tough as leather. This bush was patchy and uneven to walk on, and somehow I was as slow on the flat as I was uphill.
Soon, the alpine bush too disappeared, and the only vegetation was the moss and lichen that grew on the rock and shingle we crunched underfoot. My friend pointed out a fan of broken rock, ranging from palm-sized to head-sized, that dropped down into an open plain.
We had to get down that scree slope to get to our accommodation for the night. There’s an art to running down scree slopes, which my friend demonstrated, where one “surfs” along the surface of the debris. She pulled away like a motor boat from a jetty, generating a clattering wave of cascading rock, leaving me to tread cautiously in her wake. I tried to replicate her movements but I fell repeatedly until I gave up. I sat on my bum and thought back to earlier in the day. I never fell in the bush.
The bush was sheltered, the bush was safe. I wished I was back in the bush. I ended up bum-shuffling my way down the slope, tearing up the seat of my cotton shorts in the process.
Thankfully that first trip didn’t put me off tramping and since then I’ve visited bush all around the country. There’s the bush of Kahurangi national park, which looks blue from a distance, and the goblin forests of Taranaki, named for the gnarled trees and the mosses that hang off them. I can now enjoy the cool, crisp air of the bush around me and look forward to where it may take me.
Rose Lu is a writer, software developer and cable car owner from Wellington. Her essay collection All Who Live on Islands is out now
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