Land of the Long White Cloud
By Steve Sharp
Aotearoa is the Maori name for New Zealand, and for our first few days here it certainly lived up to its English translation, Land of the Long White Cloud. It’s a sharp reminder of the fact that unseasonal and extreme weather events are a worldwide phenomenon.
My wife is a Kiwi and so combining a winter holiday with visiting relatives and friends is a double win, and despite the time differences technology makes it easy to keep in touch with the office on Microsoft Teams almost every day.
After a family gathering in Wellington, we took the ferry to the South Island and the start of a five-day hike along The Queen Charlotte Track. Including my wife, her sister and myself, ten of us set off with a guide for two days of high-altitude soaking followed by a spectacular third day as the clouds blew away.
Amongst our group is a Californian retired lawyer with film star looks and a softly spoken voice to match. Doug Mantle is 71 but as a teenager growing up in the sixties, he developed a habit, not for the excesses of the time and place, but for climbing mountains.
He has scaled peaks all over the world from all The Munro’s in Scotland to The Matterhorn, Mt Blanc, Mt Cook and Everest. He has forgotten exactly how many and doesn’t carry a camera or log in a journal but it’s well over 2000.
I was curious to learn about his experiences of growing up in California during the Beach Boys/ Woodstock flower power era and only slightly disappointed to find that he listened to classical music and studied hard on a law degree.
But whilst those of us in Britain were heaving a sigh of relief at the end of conscription, his university campus was protesting the Vietnam War and hoping to avoid the draft.
Hitherto, full time students would not be called up but the Government needed more recruits so introduced a lottery system and Doug was given a number still embedded in his memory, 259.
As ping pong balls with a date on were drawn he waited anxiously as the numbers clicked up but stopped at 79………... “And that meant I could go on with my life!”
To him that became the life of a lawyer in Los Angeles with the express purpose of funding his addiction to altitude.
His bucket list started as a teenager, and he is still adding to it today. His zest for life and activity is infectious and although less ambitious these days he is an inspiration to the Baby Boomer generation, thankful to have “dodged the bullet.”
Today he has retired from full time business and moved to live on a Californian mountain, devoting his time entirely to exploring.
This is the view that most people see of him, leading from the front.
Steve
