I’m walking Te Araroa (TA) later this year. There, I’ve said it. For the first time since I fell in love with the idea seven years ago and seriously started planning for it last December.
Loosely transliterated to “The Long Pathway,” Te Araroa is a 3000 kilometre (1800 miles, if you’re that way inclined) tramping/running trail that goes through the entire length of New Zealand. From the top of the North Island, Cape Reinga, to the bottom of the South Island, Bluff, the trail snakes through iconic forests, mountains, lakes, rivers, and volcanic craters. It’s one hell of a way to travel through the country.
What I love most about the trail is not its length or its majesty. It’s the fact that this trail only exists because of the kindness and generosity of humans that owe nothing to the people who walk the trail every year.
1800 kilometres of the 3000-km trail is on public land monitored, managed, and cared for by the Department of Conservation—colloquially known as DOC, a little nod to the inimitable healing power the Department and its humans seem to have on the land.
The remaining 1200 kilometres are on private land. The Te Araroa Trust and DOC work closely with these private landowners to make sure the trail continues to live on for people who come from thousands of miles away to experience it. It’s a lot of work, negotiating with and reassuring these owners that hikers aren’t always a scourge on their land, and that the world deserves to see and appreciate Aotearoa in its entirety.
When I lived in India and Australia, I’d often see swathes of private property fenced off with stern signs that trespassers will be frowned upon and prosecuted. I hated that. I yearned for a world where roaming is a basic right and passing through is welcome—as long as you behave responsibly.
It’s a naive thought. There’s no country in the world that will allow random humans to walk onto and through other people’s property without explicit invitation.
Which is why Te Araroa is special. Anyone is allowed to walk through 1200 kilometres of private property without the fear of retribution.
However, that doesn’t mean that you can do whatever you want on that property. There are rules, written and unwritten. There are protocols, best practices, and basic human decency principles that every walker is expected to follow.
My past self would’ve raised eyebrows at this. I would’ve vehemently argued that land should not be “owned” by private individuals because it’s for everyone to appreciate and enjoy. The land-owning few enforcing rules on the rest of us seemed like a moral wrong to me—especially when the land has been around for far longer than humans.
In the last few years, however, my perspective has shifted.
I still strongly believe that we don’t own the land; the land owns us. I believe that humanity has wasted itself by conjuring rules and regulations around who owns which part of land and for how long.
But now, I also believe that people who’ve invested their life in serving and conserving the land have the right to protect it against pests, humans and otherwise.
I will never let a horse, however sweet and charismatic, into my garden patch of broad beans. It’ll destroy the integrity of the land. I have a responsibility to my broadies and that means keeping out anything that might harm the life of the land.
Everyone who cares for land in the same way has the same responsibility. As soon as I realised that, I understood that this what native land titles were all about—not to carve up land for use and abuse but to treat the land with the respect and grace it deserves. First Nations people embody this. I’ve never heard an Indigenous person talk about land ownership as an entitlement. They talk about it as a responsibility and an honour to stand guard.
Australians have a habit of starting every event and gathering with an acknowledgement to Country. It goes something like this: “We acknowledge the [name of native tribe] people, the original custodians of the lands that we’re meeting on today.” Australia didn’t respect the Original Custodians or the Country in its long, brutal, and bloody Colonial history. Even today, native land title is a heated topic in parliaments and dinner tables across the country. Despite that irony, the script reflects something meaningful. We so often unthinkingly utter those words, like a chore almost—but they show the true depth of native land rights.
The land always owns us—not the other way round. But there has also always existed a group of custodians who take on the heavy burden of nurturing the land, and living on the land long after the passers by are gone. So they should have a say in whether and how rest of us can walk through the land.
So when I say Te Araroa is special, it’s because these people—both native title holders and those who bought property under the modern ways of life—have come to agree to share their homes and back yards with the rest of the world. With no expectation other than we leave it as we find it.
Photos of The Escarpment Track, a 10km trail in Wellington, NZ. This trail forms a part of Te Araroa.
The Chaos Within 