Nightmare at Nichols Falls

“Okay, before we get going, one rule. No fake scaring one another.”

A picture of glowworms; image not my own

“Yeah, of course not. Definitely not,” Mary’s voice sounded thin as she uttered her agreement.

It was only 9:00 at night, but the woods was pitch black and silent except for the rumbling of a nearby waterfall. Oddly, its tempo did little to ease my mind. Mary and I were off to see the Nichols Falls glowworm cave, a wonderfully interesting natural phenomena that could only be seen at night. Squinting at the inky outlines of the forest ahead of me, I clutched my flashlight tighter, my knuckles white.

“Wait, one more thing.” I pulled my lanyard over my head, tucking it carefully into my down jacket to stifle the familiar clink of keys against my emergency hiking whistle. “If you want to turn on some music, that might be nice.”

I exhaled slowly, waiting for Mary’s music to fill the air before stepping forward into the dark. The notes echoed weakly off of the trees, sounding tinny and insubstantial in the midst of the imposing stillness of the forest.

As we made our way forwards, my flashlight highlighted the spindly, twisted branches that reached towards us like bony fingers. Shadows leapt at our feet hungrily; each time my beam dissolved one, ten more appeared. The path curved this way and that, winding deeper and deeper into the woods as we crawled slowly upwards. Suddenly, we reached a fork in the road; three paths diverged ahead of us. Before arbitrarily choosing the center path, I placed a fern on the trail we had just come from. I couldn’t imagine anything worse than choosing a route that would take us far into the woods on the way home.

“For the way back,” I said to Mary, feeling very much like Hansel and Gretel. At least we weren’t using breadcrumbs that were going to get eaten by animals. But before I felt satisfied with my impromptu marker, a perturbing thought flitted through my head: there could be a single fern lying on any one of these paths, ready to lead us astray. I plucked another fern and placed it behind the first. There. That looked more purposeful.

A sign for Nichols Falls, which we did not see on our way up and which makes me think we could have been in the completely wrong spot. Image (obviously) not my own.

We kept moving. Time seemed to stretch on an on. Another fork in the road. Another purposeful arrangement of ferns. The prospect that something else might be lurking in these woods was not a comforting possibility, and despite my best efforts, I could not shake the idea that something was out there waiting for us. Although the trek was only supposed to take seven minutes, we’d been walking for well over ten. When we reached our third fork in the road, we came abruptly to a halt.

“Didn’t we just go in a circle?” Mary’s question took the words straight out of my mouth. Our ferns were gone. Someone had moved them. 

A million and a half thoughts flooded through my head. We weren’t alone. There was probably a crazy person just a few feet away from us. What if we were going to die out here, in the prime of our lives? Or even worse, what if we were kidnapped and locked in someone’s basement for years on end? I can hardly sit still for two hours; how could I be expected to be tied up in a basement, etching the number of days of our captivity into the side of a toothbrush? I didn’t even have my toothbrush with me. The glowworm caves were seeming like a sillier idea with each passing second.

“Would you like to go back?” I could feel my heart about to fly out of my chest.

“Yes!” Mary cried enthusiastically in a tone that very much expressed my own sentiments.

“Okay, let’s go.” The words fell out of my mouth in a rush as I spun around, making a beeline back towards where we came. We passed by our other markers, not caring that in actuality, no one had touched our ferns.

When we finally turned the corner and saw our little white Nissan parked across the street, I nearly started sprinting. Once we’d slammed our car doors shut, I pressed on the gas, bolting out of there like a bat out of hell.

“We are NEVER doing that again,” I exclaimed, a complete ball of nervous energy. “I have never been so scared in my entire life!”

“I thought I was going to get murdered!” Mary declared.

“Oh my god, my parents would have killed me. We should go to Rob Roy’s. And then just crawl into Jes’ bed and try to forget this ever happened.” Normally I use any excuse to go get Rob Roy’s, but on this occasion it was actually warranted. How could I take Mary home after scaring the living crap out of her without so much as a consolatory ice cream?

Sitting in Jes’ bed a half hour later, savoring our delicious dessert, we admitted that we probably would have been fine had we kept going. However, I wasn’t willing to stake my life on the prospect that we “‘probably’ would have been fine,” and given the chance, I would never again venture into the woods of Nichols Falls without an entourage of at least eight burly men. Even if we’d made it to the caves, I would have been too freaked out to fully enjoy it anyways. Regardless, it certainly made for a good story. Or, at the very least, it made for a good excuse to get some ice cream.

 

An image of some Rob Roy’s ice cream; image not my own

Love at First Hike

View of Blueskin Bay from the trail

“Oh my gosh, guys! Look at this! No seriously, look at it! Are you looking?” We were still eight minutes away from getting dropped off at the foot of the trail that would lead us up Mount Cargill, and I already had my face pressed up against the car window. I may have been slightly enthusiastic about the views, because Megan finally pulled the car over and let me jump out to take a photo.

“No seriously guys, I think this is one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen!” I declared for maybe the one-hundredth time in the last five minutes.

“Alyssa, we haven’t even started hiking yet!” Hira and Taylor reminded me with a laugh as we all piled back into the car. No matter, I was still supremely impressed and quite certain that the views could not possibly get any more beautiful than they already were.

View of Blueskin Bay through the trees

A few short minutes into our hike, and I realized that I couldn’t have been more mistaken. Steep wooden steps led us through a mesh of ferns and crowds of leafy green shrubs. Trees arched towards each other overhead, bent in an embrace that filtered the sun into soft patches of light that speckled our path. Every few minutes, the covering of trees would thin and the vegetation would fall away just enough for us to catch glimpses of Blueskin Bay’s majestic mountains draped in silver fog.

As the trail finally subsided into a more gradual ascent towards the summit, I could feel my excitement mounting and my pace begin to quicken. Suddenly, the path forked in different directions, with the branch to the left leading towards the Organ Pipe Rocks, and the other heading towards the top of the mountain. Although it could take us four days to decide what kind of food we wanted to eat for dinner, it took us only a matter of seconds to decide that a detour to the Organ Pipes was a must. From our rocky vantage point, we were able to soak in uninterrupted views of what lay below us. Fueled by our desire to see more, we eventually pushed onwards towards the top of the mountain.

Hira and I at the Organ Pipe Rocks

When Hira and Taylor stopped for some quick photos, I fervently scurried ahead. As the path bent towards the right, I spotted a small, faded sign subtly pointing in the opposite direction towards Butters Peak. Although the path was overgrown, the openness of the rocks at the top promised another clear view of all of our surroundings.

“Hira! Taylor! I’m going up the trail to the left!” I shouted, already bushwhacking my way through to the top. A few moments later, Hira and Taylor had made their way up behind me, and we found ourselves with a 360 degree view of our surroundings. The Blueskin Bay was once again revealed to us, and the Otago Peninsula finally came into sight.

Panorama of the Otago Peninsula from Butters Peak

Standing at the top of the Peak, the wind whipping around us as we took in Dunedin in all its glory, I was hit suddenly by the full force of an emotion that I had only been catching snippets of for the past few weeks. It was what I had felt for a brief moment when I first glimpsed the snowcapped mountains towering over the fields of sheep as we zoomed along on the train. It was what I had felt as I sat around the table with my flatmates, eating tacos and laughing so hard that I lost my breath. And it was what I had felt at every gap in the trees as we scaled the mountain. But here, on Butters Peak, I finally knew what it was. It was love.

Panorama of Blueskin Bay from Butters Peak

It was the kind of love that made me feel completely content when I was home in Boston, and the kind of love that made me thrilled to return to Richmond each semester. It was the kind of love that makes someone happy despite the challenges. It was the kind of love that takes a place and makes it a home. I couldn’t claim that I would never again feel frustrated by a pad of Sticky notes that cost $8.99 rather than $2.49, or that I would never get sick of rolling out of bed when it is only 27 degrees inside, but I became certain of one thing: I will miss New Zealand when it is time for me to go. My hope is that, at the end of it all, I will look back and know that I cherished my moments here, and made the most of everything that came my way.

Standing on Butters Peak