Liv Sisson reads the roller coaster that is Naomi Arnold’s epic account of walking Te Araroa.

Every fucking inch. That’s the approach some trampers take to Te Araroa – the long distance hiking track that runs the length of Aotearoa New Zealand. Others are happy to hitchhike the road sections. Some stick to the highlights or just do one island. Te Araroa (TA) is over 3000 km long, beginning at Cape Reinga and passing through all manner of terrain – beaches, bush sections, forestry blocks, the Southern Alps and Auckland’s CBD – before ending at Bluff.  

I walked a TA road section once near Lake Tekapo. It was hot, dusty and completely exposed to the brutal sun. Totally punishing. A different section I walked in Nelson Lakes climbed through whimsical, moss-covered beech stands to the edge of a suspended alpine lake that holds the clearest known water in the world. Extremely sparkly. 

In her new book, Northbound, award-winning nature and science writer Naomi Arnold walks the TA. Work deadlines mean she can’t start it until January. Not wanting to race winter to Bluff, she decides instead to start there and walk north. This means she’ll have to walk through the colder months but will be able to enjoy the trail and (hopefully) walk every fucking inch of it. 

Arnold gets straight into it. She is “on trail” by page 10. I enjoyed the short exchange between her and husband Doug at the trailhead. It’s only a few snippets of dialogue, just enough to convey that they are both wigging out, have given this undertaking a lot of consideration and are keenly aware it is going to be very hard. He’s worried, she’s worried. He shares some last minute “Alpine Fault could just … go” anxiety. She considers her own mortality. And then sets off.

The way Arnold has managed to condense nine months and 3028 kilometres into bang-on 300 pages is impressive throughout. From the nature descriptions, to the meal recaps and interactions she has with other walkers – the story includes many small but perfectly formed vignettes – like that chat with Doug – that illuminate more than their page space would suggest. 

There’s no upfront promise of personal transformation or revelation in this book – and I liked that. It’s not a pre-ordained hero’s journey. But why did Arnold even want to undertake this massive tramp? And in a way that is not really recommended? She only needs one line to explain – “The trail was haunting me” – she’d come across the TA literally and metaphorically so many times it was just time for her to walk it herself. 

The book’s full title is “Northbound: Four seasons of solitude on the Te Araroa”. But even the solitude part isn’t forcing some overarching lesson from the start. It’s not a silent walk stunt, although Arnold does meet someone along the way who is kind of doing that. Because Arnold ends up being a NOBO (northbound walker) she just doesn’t come across that many fellow walkers. Most walkers are SOBO and have finished up when she’s only half way through.

Arnold’s writing throughout moves at a perfect clip – it kept me entertained, wanting a little more in some places, but always on the line for whatever came next. She wrote most of the book on trail, with literally 1000 voice notes and her iPad. She ends up writing a good chunk while sheltering in a random woolshed for multiple days during a “demonic windstorm”. 

There’s no rose-tinted retrospect here, and this lends the book a nice feeling of immediacy. You feel very in the moment with Arnold as she walks – it reads less like a memoir and more just like a great story. And it is a roller coaster. There are awe inspiring moments – a rainbow, delicate hoar frost, native bird song, Magellanic clouds and many stunning vistas. But there’s also a lot of cold and a lot of mud. There are primal screams, injuries and a lot of swearing. Snow has begun to fall before we even reach page 100.

I enjoyed how Arnold makes the roller coaster real for the reader. In one moment things are light, airy, funny – there are “whio ducks whistling far down the river below, sounding exactly like the foot pump on an air mattress”. But just a few pages later she’s scared, afraid, then “so high [she’s] crying over a pair of whio whistling in a lonely river at dawn.” 

The nature descriptions throughout the book feel like little gems. I wanted more of them but also appreciate that Arnold didn’t lean too heavily on the beauty of the trail to carry the story. I underlined her encounter with carnivorous snails – “Bronze whorls of their shells glinting in my lamplight and their oily muscular black bodies searching, searching like a tongue.”

Food descriptions throughout Northbound are entertaining but also a clever tool. They help you understand Arnold’s environment and mind along the way. There’s overly tart homemade fruit leather at the start. Later there are tears shed over a chicken broccoli bake and a meal that consists of short dated gummy worms, hot chips and raspberry Coke. So many little details, never overwritten, indite you into the world of Arnold’s walk. By the end you’re speaking her hiker language, breezing through lines laden with TA lingo.

While most of the walk is solo, the few trail friendships Arnold does strike up are tender, intimate and a little bit silly. Like those crazy tight friendships that come out of summer camp – they spring from nothing, mean the most for a short time, then end just as suddenly. Arnold’s relationships along the way – with herself, her partner, family, friends – are probably what got me thinking most. It’s curious to consider what it would be like to zoom out on all of those, all at once, like she does. 

Arnold is a fantastic narrator to journey with up the trail, and Northbound is a great read for outdoor adventure seekers or readers who like stories set outdoors. Arnold’s account of the TA is often delightful and always honest. It’s a window into what you could expect to get out of any thru hike – munted feet, but also meaning. These moments of meaning unfurl naturally: Arnold leads them to you deftly, suggests them, and this makes Northbound a deeply satisfying read.

Northbound: Four seasons of solitude on Te Araroa by Naomi Arnold ($40, HarperCollins) can be purchased from Unity Books.