
Photo by Sean Fennessy
11-year-old Angus also goes by “Kidbot.”
Photo by Sean Fennessy
A father and his autistic son, Kidbot, head to the South Island and hit the trail to find out if nature’s beauty can crack the 11-year-old’s shell.
Looking up at the morning sky above the Routeburn Track—one of the great hiking trails in New Zealand, which is to say one of the great hiking trails anywhere—I saw a drab green parrot flapping hard against a light breeze. It was a kea, the only parrot in the world that reaches this sort of mountain country, a place of rock faces, snow fields, and tussock grass far above the dark beech forests in the valleys below. As I watched the chunky, squawking sack of feathers above me, I realized something: Kea flight is hard work. A lot of effort without much thrust, a lot of noise for not much progress.
My 11-year-old son, Angus—he likes to call himself “Kidbot”—missed the whole kea encounter. Instead of looking at the sky or the mountains or anything else in this corner of Mount Aspiring National Park on the southwest edge of the South Island, he was pacing back and forth inside the lodge, bouncing his racquetball and chanting to himself in a near trance. Whether he’s at home in Billings, Montana, or on a mountain trail 8,000 miles away, he likes to bounce and chant for a couple of hours each day. When he really gets rolling, he sounds like he’s possessed by a 1980s freestyle hip-hop beat-boxer who, in turn, is possessed by a big-band scat singer, and they’re both crammed inside one autistic boy.
I entered the lodge, a wilderness oasis with hot showers, private rooms, and professional cooks. It was just uphill from the hut where budget-minded backpackers have to, perish the thought, cook their own meals and sleep in barracks. “Hey, buddy,” I said. “Time to grab your pack and get going.” That’s not a direct quote, though, because I had to cough between a few of the words. Starting my second day in New Zealand, I had been battling a self-diagnosed case of “walking pneumonia” that was building to a full gallop. My appetite and energy had vanished, leaving me with a mild fever, body aches, and deep, deflating coughs. I said to Angus, “You’re killing this hike. We have one day left. Let’s keep it up.” “OK, Dad,” he said in his usual flat, mechanical voice, adding: “Da-da-nun-nun-dun.”
We didn’t look or sound like a pair of mountain warriors. A middle-aged, gray-haired coughing machine and his loose-limbed, beat-boxing Kidbot companion. Angus is a smart kid who struggles with basic concepts such as spelling and multiplication, a screen addict who can spend an afternoon editing cartoons for YouTube but can’t hold eye contact for more than a few seconds or sit still at his school desk, a self-described wimp who had been asked—forced, really—to take an epic hike with his dad. We had already covered 17 miles and now had six left to go. Amazingly, we had reached the lodge before any of the other hikers in our group. Amazing because, in a way, we had to go farther than any of them.Breakthrough or breakdown? We’d know in 23 miles.
ADVERTISEMENT
But New Zealand did rewire my brain. When I got back home, I had recurring dreams about mountains and green pastures, beaches and rivers. (On bad nights, I dreamt about that pool. And I didn’t always have my long pants.) In my waking hours, I made plans to return to New Zealand to settle some unfinished business, to really experience the country without the stress of trying, and failing, to fit in. I wanted to catch a big New Zealand trout. I wanted to cruise through the famous fjords. And, above all, I vowed to some day tackle one of the South Island’s world-famous hiking trails. The Milford Track. The Hollyford Track. And, of course, the Routeburn, the most mountainous of them all. The images gathered in my head: soaring waterfalls, dense native bush, clear streams, vertical peaks. And me in the middle of it, wide-eyed and winded.
In my vision, I was fit, young, and hiking solo. But now, on the first day of the trek, I found myself rolling up to the Routeburn trailhead in a bus with my son, three guides, and 27 other hikers, all of them already tired of listening to me cough. Hoping to make the journey a little less stressful, I had signed us up with Ultimate Hikes, a company that guides walks on all of the famous South Island tracks. We’d stay in their primo lodges, and we wouldn’t have to pack cooking supplies or any food except snacks and sandwiches for the trail. Most of all, we’d have guides Gina, Rob, and Dickon around to tend to blisters, provide regular doses of encouragement, and make sure we didn’t get lost or left behind. I sized them up at our first meeting in Queenstown and figured that, yes, each was capable of carrying a sobbing 11-year-old a fair distance. Gina especially. If it came to that.
We all milled around at the trailhead, stretching our legs and loosening up after the three-hour ride from Queenstown. It was early March, the last gasps of summer in this part of the world, and a light mist was turning into a sprinkle. The group included travelers from New Zealand, Israel, Australia, England, and the United States. One of the walkers used to live just a few blocks away from my house in Montana. Almost without exception, they were all serious trekkers, the kind of people who could exchange stories about Kilimanjaro or Aconcagua.
Kidbot, who didn’t have a lot of hiking stories but would happily talk about his new Sonic Shuffle video game, even if nobody asked, grabbed his trekking poles, stood for a couple of photos, and started walking down the trail, an Under Armour shirt peeking out from his rain jacket and a stuffed Smurf in his backpack. The great Routeburn experiment had begun. Breakthrough or breakdown? We’d know in 23 miles.
We were so high above the river, trees, and meadows that walking almost felt like flight.
As we walked, we could hear the chimes of bellbirds and the high-pitched call of a rifleman—a fluttery bird about the size of a ping-pong ball—but the forest was largely silent. This place, like the rest of New Zealand, was ruled by birds until mammals started arriving about 1,000 years ago. The kiwis and keas and lots of other native birds didn’t know how to deal with hairy creatures equipped with teeth. Because of these intruders, many New Zealand forests are now unnaturally quiet. But there’s hope. We passed box-shaped traps along the trail, part of a widespread effort by the Department of Conservation and Air New Zealand to clear the forest of predators and restore native birds—valuable creatures that are too clumsy and naive to get by on their own.
ADVERTISEMENT
Kidbot was beat-boxing to himself when we reached a series of clearings six miles down the trail. But happy noises don’t always last, and a soft whine crept in. “Dad, my back is tired,” he said. OK, I thought, here comes the drama. But instead of melting down, he simply took off his pack, set it on the ground, and kept on walking. I picked up the pack and carried it in one hand. It held his Smurf, a change of clothes, and not much else. He may have felt a little lighter, but he was essentially carrying the same load.
“Hey, Dad,” he said. “Guess what song I’m tapping out.” As he walked, the metal poles hit the rocks like drumsticks. I was thinking “We Will Rock You” by Queen. But I’m rarely right about such things. “It’s the theme song for Sonic Adventure 2,” he said.
After a mile or so of slow downhill over a bunch of big, staircase rocks—Kidbot concentrated on every step, just like he does on real stairs at home—we reached the Lake Mackenzie Lodge, our stopping point for the night. The main building has a dining area, a bar stocked with New Zealand beers and wines, huge windows looking out at the clouds, and a mingling area with chairs and couches for tired hikers. A covered outdoor walkway led to our rooms and, more important, the showers. I quickly hopped in and breathed steam into my aching lungs while Kidbot bounced his ball. We had walked more than eight miles in less than six hours. And he was still in a bouncing mood.He stood there, leaning on his trekking poles like he’d been conquering mountains his whole life.
When morning broke on our second day on the Routeburn, we were suddenly surrounded by mountains that had been lost in the clouds the day before. Patches of snow above us glowed in the sunshine, and the day felt full of promise. After a breakfast of cold cereal and hot scrambled eggs, Kidbot and I stood in front of the lodge, thinking about where we had been and where we still had to go. “Dad, look at the sky over there,” Kidbot said, pointing at a low fog bank. “Yeah?” I said. “It looks like a renderization error. Like there’s a blank spot that the computer forgot to fill in.” “Huh?” I said.
Kidbot put on his pack, apparently having forgotten that I could carry it for him, and we started a slow, zigzag climb through the beech forest above blue-green Lake Mackenzie. The trees thinned as we moved higher, leaving space for grass, ferns, and New Zealand edelweiss. After two miles, we reached Ocean Peak Corner, a rocky ledge where the trail takes a sharp turn to the other side of the mountain, opening up new views of the Darran Mountains and the Hollyford Valley. Kidbot and I sat down for a water break with Gina, our guide that day. Gina—an outdoor education specialist who plays rugby and runs marathons in her spare time—told us that on a clear day you could see the Tasman Sea from here. I felt I could already see plenty. Kidbot got up and started walking without his pack. Gina, who has run the Routeburn in less than five hours, had that thing strapped to her back in no time.
For the next three miles, we traversed a mountainside garden of grass, rocks, and native shrubs. Ragged bits of clouds stuck to the slopes both above and below us, but the air was calm and comfortable. Kidbot moved with the extra spring of someone no longer carrying a pack. As we walked, I stared down into the Hollyford Valley on our left. We were so high above the river, trees, and meadows that walking almost felt like flight. Slow, deliberate flight.
Sign up for the Daily Wander newsletter for expert travel inspiration and tips
Please enter a valid email address.
Read our privacy policy