Saturday Morning With Jack Tame

As I turned on my phone for the first time in three days, it lit up with text messages from my wife.  A photo. A tiny baby. Trussed up in a cotton wrap like a fresh, fleshy burrito with a little woolen hat for good measure.  “Congratulations,” she said.  “You’re a dad.”  I knew she was joking. I’m not denying there was an element of risk in going tramping through the backcountry of the Kahurangi National Park with a wife who was 32-weeks pregnant. I just knew that if she had had the baby while I was dragging myself up a distant ridgetop, her first words to me when I emerged from the bush would not have been ‘Congratulations!’  Solitude in the bush —the uncontactableness— is a big part of the attraction for me. I love the physical challenge of tramping. I love the birds, the piwakawaka flitting about when you're under the canopy, and the kea squawking over the valleys. I love how humbling it is, how insignificant you feel, when you stand on top of a mountain ridge and are confronted wi