I’ve been going a little stir crazy at the house lately. I think it’s a mid-semester thing. I decided I needed a little nature time to relieve my restless soul. There’s a track in town that connects to another track that connects to another track with a hut where backpackers can stay for cheap. All the directions online were extremely vague and obscure. To add to the dodginess of the situation I decided to leave at 2pm for this destination which I figured was about 15 miles away. The walk went great…rugged landscape and beautiful sunset but as I expected, the trail was really poorly marked (if at all). As the last rays of sunlight disappeared on the horizon I twisted my ankle. I reckon I hobbled along in the dark for two hours or so before ending up on a dirt road in the middle of nowhere (not in a hut stoking a fire). I decided to post up under a tree and try to sleep through the night. It was pretty fun…I felt like a marine or something doing an important training exercise or something. I woke up shivering at about one in the morning, and decided to keep walking to stay warm. Now instead of feeling like a marine, I fancied myself a slave on the Underground Railroad seeking freedom and a future. Despite my idealism, these positive thoughts deteriorated as my mind aligned my situation with the hundreds of horror stories I’ve watched and read. As a misty fog obscured the light of the moon, I was fairly certain I was going to be brutally murdered by some backwoods crazy. Despite the darkness and my unfamiliarity with the area, I eventually reached a highway and started south back to Dunedin. At about 2am, a rickety rusted out car responded to my hitchhiker’s thumb. My saviour was the Kiwi version of Flea (bassist for the Red Hot Chilli Peppers). It was dark but I think he was closer to 40 than 20. I could only understand about every third word he said, but he was a great guy. He earned his money splitting time between a fishing boat and a construction job, and now he was headed back to “Dunners” to visit his little 2 year-old. As we rolled into town, he made a backhanded comment about how he was paranoid that a cop was going to stop him for his bad tire and see his weed. To make conversation, I made a backhanded query about where one could find good bud in Dunners. “Right here,” he said as he pulled his car over and proceeded to break me off a gram.