A walk between two Wednesdays

At 6pm on the 7th of October, a Wednesday, Rose and I stood atop Cape Reinga — the northern most point of New Zealand’s north island and the most spiritually significant place in Aotearoa — looking at the solitary pohutukawa tree whose roots carry the spirits of deceased Maori to the underworld (Te Hinenui o te Po) on their journey to Hawaiiki-A-Nui, their ancestral land.

Shortly after 6pm on the 17th of February, a Wednesday, six friends arrived in Bluff — nominally the southern most point of New Zealand’s south island. The moment had been more than four months in the making, though the moment itself was perhaps ever so slightly anti-climactic, like a good book: its end not a triumph but almost a moment of mourning. That sign at the end of the country marked the passage of something monumental into mere memory — but what exquisite memories they will be.