Environment – Hut happy

New Zealand’s tramping network hosts nearly a thousand huts, including bivvies and shelters, the largest number in the world. They’re maintained by the Department of Conservation, often with the help of the Federated Mountain Clubs, the Backcountry Trust and Deerstalkers Associations.

They are often modest, quirky, with views to die for (just don’t die getting there!). Many originally sheltered miners, musterers, hunters and NZ Forest Service workers. They’re made of everything from local unhewn logs and caves to prefabricated buildings. They offer refuge, respite, and even rescue.

They’re meeting places for strangers, communion and common ground. Their names are evocative, as well as prosaic – Lost Stream, Moonlight and Roses, Bottom Misery, Fishtail, Thor, Ghost Lake, Goat Creek, Dumpling Hut, Doughboy, (no freeze dried meals on offer then?) Sparrowhawk Bivvy, Big Hellfire, Iron Whare, and so on.

I recently walked into the Kaimai Ranges and the small Daly’s Clearing Hut. Named for its original gum diggers, it’s now bright blue after a restoration partnership with Dulux NZ. We shared fireside fellowship with families taking kids on their first overnight hut hike, runners traversing the 85km North-South track in one sprint, local young men just enjoying nature, law students who’d never heard of climate change, and a Filipino migrant mum and her 20-something son who were tramping together in a bonding ‘exercise’, united in grief with the loss of their husband/dad, whose ashes and photo they carried.

We toasted marshmallows around the fire, talked about plant biology and taxonomy, Nate Hagens, The Great Simplification and the carbon pulse using up more energy, faster than the Earth can sustain. We shared kai, political views, and tolerated each other’s snoring, with the help of earplugs.

The next day we walked past old kauri mills and through gorges, across swing bridges to the Waitawheta hut. We passed a scout troop from our neighbourhood. We met a Kiwi pilot who lives in Dubai, back visiting his elderly dad. We quickly locked on to mutual concern for the planet and talked for two hours. We were pleasantly surprised when a friend of ours arrived. Night fell early and we watched Starlink overhead. The hut accommodates 36, but that night it slept just six. In the morning I ditched partner Stephen and instead walked out with our friend via a different track in a spontaneous adventure extension.

Sometimes we’ve been driven to sleep in the kitchen or the tent by snorers or mossies. Other times we’ve had spacious huts all to ourselves. We’ve been kept awake by kaka and kiwi. We’ve kayaked to some, walked in the rain to others, been bogged down in mud. No matter how basic, after carrying a pack in, often up steep hills (mountains) to get there, huts feel like luxury.

Backcountry huts are a special part of kiwi culture. This weekend we’re heading out again, carrying our food, kit and firewood, to sleep in huts in the hills. We’ll be hut happy once again.