- As a single mum with a new mortgage and a stressful job, Victoria was getting on with life but haunted by trauma in her past.
- When her daughter was six years-old, they spent the school holidays out in the nature of New Zealand, which seemed to have a healing power for Victoria.
- One night, they met a man named Pierre who was walking a path called Te Araroa, a 3000km hiking trail that spans the length of North and South Islands
- Victoria realised if she stayed out in the wild for six months walking that same path, she could give herself the space and time she needed to begin to heal
- Read how Victoria Bruce and her daughter Emilie, seven, took off into the elements on one big adventure…
There was a knock on the door, and I opened it to reveal a tall, bearded man.
“Any bunks left for the night?” he asked in a thick French accent.
My daughter Emilie, six, and I had been spending her April 2020 school holidays on a 66km multi-day walk in Canterbury’s Lewis Pass.
We were settling in for the night in a little hut when the stranger knocked.
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“What’s your name? Where’ve you walked from? Where are you going?” Emilie asked him.
Pierre had been walking for months on a path called Te Araroa, a 3000km hiking trail that spans the length of New Zealand’s North and South Islands, from Cape Reinga to Bluff.
“I’d love to do something like that,” I said wistfully.
But I was a 36-year-old single mother with a new mortgage and a stressful job in local government.
Back home, life went on, but I was struggling inside.
I suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder.
Born in New Zealand, my parents moved my brother and me to Australia when I was two but then they separated when I was 10.
Aged 14, I was flown back to New Zealand and put into foster care.
There, I was sexually abused and neglected.
I flew back to Brisbane when I was 16, engaging in self-destructive behaviour as a way to escape the pain of my traumatic past.
When I was 21, I began a journalism degree at the University of Queensland and turned my life around.
While working as a business reporter in Myanmar, Southeast Asia, I fell pregnant, but the relationship didn’t last.
I returned to New Zealand single, and Emilie was born in April 2014.
With a good job and my beautiful daughter, I tried to forget my past, but unresolved trauma has a way of welling up inside you.
Tramping – going for long walks – was my form of therapy. When I was out in the mountains, I felt strong and confident. If I felt fear, it was because of something happening in front of me like heinous weather, rather than dread felt deep inside.
After meeting Pierre, it hit me: maybe if I stayed out in the wild, I could give myself the space and time I needed to begin to heal. I decided I needed six months.
“How would you feel about going on a big adventure with Mummy where we walk across the whole of New Zealand, like Pierre?” I asked Emilie.
“That sounds fun!” she replied, excited.
I got permission from her school, gave notice to my job and put our house up for rent, then spent the next three months preparing.
I set up a Givealittle page to fundraise for the Mental Health Foundation and Federated Mountain Clubs.
Then I bought ultralight sleeping bags, backpacks, and a GPS satellite device for emergencies.
I posted resupply boxes of dried food to settlements that I knew we’d come to along the way.
In October 2021, we were ready.
We flew to Kaitaia and got a lift to Cape Reinga where an orange trail marker pointed south.
“Here we go, Emilie!” I said, squeezing her hand.
I was carrying six days’ worth of food crammed into my 20kg pack as we picked our way down the path.
At first, we felt triumphant, setting our tent up along the beach, but soon the weather turned and on the sixth day we walked for nine long hours in the rain.
“Would you like to stop?” I asked Emilie, seven.
“No,” she replied. “I want to get to the holiday park. I want an ice-cream and a real bed.”
It was dark when we finally arrived.
“We’ve just walked Ninety Mile Beach!” Emilie said proudly to the camp receptionist. “Do you have any ice-cream left?”
Our plan had been to keep walking south, but COVID restrictions saw us fast forward 900km and fly to join the trail at Taumarunui in the central North Island.
Often the weather was bad. One night, we got to our hut like a pair of drowned rats and I was filled with doubt.
Why have I dragged my daughter out here risking hypothermia or worse? I thought. I’m a bad mother…
“I’ve got our sleeping bags all set up,” Emilie said proudly, interrupting my thoughts.
I looked up to see she’d prepared our beds and got into her pyjamas.
Feeling a deep love for my brave daughter, my doubts disappeared.
Over six months we crossed giant rivers and climbed huge mountains.
Just before we reached our destination in Invercargill, I slowed down, reluctant for our adventure to end.
“Everything has to end,” Emilie said wisely. “We can go on adventures again.”
Through a haze of tears, we finished Te Araroa.
We’ve now moved to the West Coast, and I’ve written a book called Adventures with Emilie.
Emilie and I still go tramping as often as we can.
Our 2100km walk across New Zealand taught me that life, like the weather, flows in strange and fascinating ways. The best we can do is be resilient in the face of adversity.
If I allow my feelings to flow through me, no matter how painful, that’s how I’ll heal. Like the wind they’ll eventually blow themselves out and calm will follow.
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