TO THE EDGE AND BACK
30 DAYS ALONE ON STEWART ISLAND
Stewart Island 'To the edge and back'.
For over 31 days, I took on one of the hardiest and most unforgiving parts of our wild country and I did it completely solo. This journey was about opening my mind again and finding the freedom I had fallen in love with!
"As the day wore on, the wind continued to pick up and the rain became more frequent. The higher I climbed, the colder I got. My lack of food meant I became cold quickly — way quicker than normal. I carried on up towards the top of the range. It was pretty flat up there but it was completely exposed. The rain had stopped but the wind was still getting worse.
It was hard to try to stay upright walking through the knee-high scrub. One gust was so strong that it blew me off my feet. To make it worse, I was up so high that I could see a storm coming. I knew that I’d have no real way of sheltering from it. All I could do was keep moving.
Twenty minutes later, I was walking along the ridge. The only positive thing about the wind was that it had dried my clothes. That’s when the rain/hail/snow started falling — and it wasn’t just falling, it was being forced out of the skies by the gnarly wind. It was coming at me sideways. And I was cold. Really cold.