I was eleven. The trail was cold and the wind was the kind that gets inside your jacket no matter what you do. We were walking part of the Tongariro Crossing, my dad and me, and the volcanic path kept shifting underfoot, each step a small negotiation.
He was the kindest person I've known. He made the whole thing into a game. Silly jokes into the wind. Off-key singing that made me laugh until my legs forgot they were tired. He pointed out rocks sculpted into faces and plants clinging to impossible ledges as though they were old friends he was introducing me to. To my eleven-year-old self, he was pure magic.
I didn't know then what was behind the brightness. He was carrying something none of us fully understood. I know now that the warmth he gave so freely was real, it wasn't performance, but there was a shadow underneath it I was too young to see.
It was the early eighties, back when bathing at Ketetahi was still allowed, and halfway through the walk, exhausted and chilled to the bone, we stumbled on the hot springs.
Steam rising from frozen, mineral-stained earth. Sulphur sharp in the air, an acquired taste, but worth it for the warmth. He looked at me with cheeks flushed pink and a grin as wide as the sky and said: "Now Charlie. This is what makes the whole hike absolutely worth it."
We slipped into the naturally heated water. The contrast, from the biting wind to that enveloping warmth, was so immediate and so total that I giggled uncontrollably. The kind of giggle that has relief in it.
For those few minutes, it was just us. Father and daughter. Suspended in heat that felt like a promise.
I think about that morning constantly now.
Every time I step into the sauna, the warmth wrapping around, the shoulders finally dropping, the breath slowing into something easier, I feel a thread connecting back to that volcanic hillside. The same primal thing. Heat as shelter. Heat as belonging. Heat as the thing that waits for you at the other side of the hard climb.
He planted that seed without knowing it. A budding understanding that the raw elements, fire's heat, cold's bite, water's embrace, can mend things that words can't reach.
I wish I could have given him this. The practice, the ritual, the daily proof that the hard stuff can be sweated out and breathed through.
Instead I carry it forward for both of us.
My wool hat goes on. The mat goes down. The water hits the stones and the steam rises, just like it did at Ketetahi.
Some things you know in your bones before you understand them in words.
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