In my late 50s, I discovered long-distance hiking – and woke up to a new life infused with the rhythms of nature.

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It began innocuously, just before my 54th birthday. A calendar picture of the Emerald Lakes in Tongariro National Park, above my desk, daring me to eyeball their green depths. There is one way to get there, on foot.

I prefer to hike rather than tramp, a more common word used for wilderness walking in Aotearoa. As a mid 1980s single mother on a welfare benefit, slur names like ‘tramp’ were regularly aimed at me. To hike feels more invigorating.

I didn’t grow up in an outdoors family. My father’s idea of a hike was avoiding a tumble into a ditch on his nightly drunken walk home from the pub while singing Freddy Fender’s ‘Wasted Days and Wasted Nights’. I’m also from a generation of women who were not encouraged to walk alone in the wilderness.

I’ve never been a sporty person. I forged notes to avoid PE at high school and scoped the cross country track the weekend before the event, working out a shortcut through a farm that let me to merge with the front group of runners just ahead of the finish line.

As an adult, I did the minimum amount of exercise recommended by the Heart Foundation. I live to eat the top layer of the food pyramid.

The chain reaction that altered my life trajectory was kicked off on my birthday morning seven years ago, at the Mangatepopo car park, the trail head of the Tongariro Alpine Crossing. At least 2000 other people were walking that day – ‘alone in the great outdoors’ wasn’t quite the vibe of my first hiking experience.

Having heeded safety advice, I was laden with borrowed warm and waterproof clothing, hiking poles, and plenty of food and water. Others wore sandals, jandals, even pyjamas. Some carried an umbrella instead of a raincoat, their minimal possessions stuffed into plastic bags.

I had never walked 20km, especially on this kind of terrain. It took me three hours longer to do the crossing than DOC’s estimated seven-hour timeframe; my family sat waiting and worried for me at Ketetahi car park on the other side.

I ambled; took loads of photos, especially of the red crater; ate my lunch while staring into the emerald lakes; then delicately made my way down the scree slope. Numerous steps and stops later, I finished. I was exhausted. I was elated.

I also felt like I’d done enough hiking to last me the rest of my life.

I couldn’t fathom why anyone would risk getting lost or offed by hypothermia; why they’d choose to carry a heavy backpack, sleep in a possibly mouse-infested hut next to snoring, unwashed strangers; why they’d voluntarily use a smelly fly-ridden long-drop toilet while being stared down by crazed possums.

A few months later, a friend mentioned a company that ran multi-day guided hikes in the South Island with comfortable lodges, gourmet meals and the requirement to carry only a small day pack.

I needed an adventure to combat menopausal existentialism, so I signed up to walk both the Milford and Routeburn tracks.

While the perks of a guided trip are enjoyable, it was the confidence I gained in my physical ability to walk long distances on an uneven track that was the biggest return on my investment.

I learned how to manage sudden changes in the weather and the importance of wearing the right gear.  The enthusiastic guides answered my numerous inane questions and gave me solitude when I needed it. Walking alone over the Harris Saddle on the Routeburn track was one of the best landscape experiences of my life.

It dawned on me there were hundreds of hiking tracks to explore in Aotearoa. As I walked toward Routeburn Flats my brain was downloading a nature-infused update to my life plan. While I had travelled this land multiple times by car, mainly sticking to sealed roads, I had only skimmed the surface of its natural beauty. It was time to explore its breadths, on foot.

From my veranda at home, I have a clear view of the Tararua Ranges. From my roof, I can see also the Ruahine Ranges. Prior to my epiphany, they were a two-dimensional background that framed an urban lifestyle focused on raising children, work, fashion and fun.

None of my family or friends showed any interest in joining me in my nature-based obsession. My boyfriend prefers life indoors, but he built a miniature 3D model of a mountain and taught me how to read a topography map, initially as illegible as a doctor’s prescription.

I spread out the large paper topo maps on the table and studied the tracks like I once traced the subway lines of New York, London and Tokyo, searching for beginnings and endings and the journeys I could take between them.

I have learned a new language. I can read the contours of the land. I follow rivers to trace their source. I can converse with birds.

The local topo maps revealed tracks and huts in places that women my age do not usually go to. I intend to visit them all.

The gear requirements for my new adventures were overwhelming, the initial outlay eyewatering. Lightweight and good quality were non-negotiables. I needed a pack, personal locator beacon, sleeping bag, cooking and eating equipment, weatherproof and warm clothes, and a new pair of boots. I wanted a tent, a portable espresso maker, and sleep earbuds to block out the hut snorers.

The Wahine Tramping and Hiking NZ Facebook page is a treasure trove of information for women starting out on outdoor adventures, where the newcomers can learn from those with years of outdoor experience. Even naive questions are answered with warmth and support.

I put a call out on the page for women in their 50s in the Manawatu area who wanted to venture beyond the main track line, and that’s how I met Naomi and Melissa. Over the last couple of years we have walked our way through an expanding list of tracks within a two-hour drive of our homes. The central to lower North Island is our adventure playground.

Women in their 50s are going through major life changes. As well as navigating menopause, it’s when we create a fresh vision of how we want to live our remaining active years. It’s a chance to challenge ourselves within an ever-changing landscape, both natural and societal.

At 60, I am learning to know my body in a way I should have done years ago. I am listening to what nutrition it needs to keep moving efficiently. As a counsellor, I thought I was already fluent in body language. But feelings and emotions are different than nutritional needs. Understanding how your body performs, or doesn’t, when it needs food and rest – all while walking long distances with a heavy pack – is a whole new skill set.

Last year, after a 3am start and a four hour climb up a mountain to view a sunrise that didn’t show up, I was finished with hiking forever. That was, until a kind person gave me a boiled egg and I suddenly had the energy to enjoy the trip back down the mountain – just as the clouds parted.

I have learned to always wear merino underwear. If cotton underwear gets wet and it’s zero degrees, your butt will freeze. Always pack super-strength pain killers. I fell a couple of metres while climbing a vertical bank, injuring my shoulder and badly bruising one side of my body. Voltaren lessened the pain so I could walk three hours back to the car.

I have fallen face first into mud a few times and slid multiple times onto my back. I have ripped my shorts down the middle and had moments of panic when I have wandered off-track, losing sight of the orange markers.

I walked the Kepler and Rakiura tracks with an Achilles injury that took seven frustrating months to fully heal.

I have discovered that, when walking long distances, even difficult moments get a narrative rewrite and become stories about overcoming adversity, and that the joy and euphoria of hiking is ever-lasting.

I am no longer attracted to overseas destinations. My relationship with Aotearoa has changed; I feel an intimate connection to the whenua. I walk past lizard-shaped rocks, see ancestral faces shaped in cliff faces and thickets of ferns. I feel a sense of belonging in the mountains and forests, and I swim in streams and rivers even in the winter.

I am tuned into a flow of energy that moves at a different rhythm than the usual sequences of Western society; it always feel jarring to step back into my regular daily life.

Last week, with two fine days forecast for the Tararua Ranges, I hiked for six hours, crossing narrow one-person swing bridges, climbing 400 metres through mud-filled tree root steps at one kilometre per hour. I navigated an equally muddy ridge line and  slowly descended to camp alone next to a pale green clear river. I swam multiple times; in the evening the sky performed an iridescent light show.

At midnight, enveloped by the stars, it occurred to me that I had walked into a magical alternate version of reality – one that has always been here, but was patiently waiting for me to wake up and notice it.

This summer I am clocking up the kilometres. In early December I walked the Old Ghost Road, my longest solo walk at 85km over five days. Aside from evening rendezvous at the huts, I barely saw anyone on the trail.

Next week I am off to the Heaphy track, then the Hump Ridge on my 61st birthday, followed by Round the Mountain track (Mt Ruapehu) in late February.

After all, who knows how many active years I have left? I’m inspired by people many years older who pass me on the trails walking at a brisk pace. As a late adopter of this hiking life, I’ve got a lot of catching up to do.