A red flag is a boy who invites you on a tramp, but then brings his gun.
Eager, oh so naive. Carrying a 13 kg pack, with new boots on.
Walking up the Makarora River to an overnight hut, crisscrossing that river seven million, billion times. The first time is fine, gravel shifting underfoot as the water sucks around your knees, but the second, third, tenth time?
Not so much.
It’s getting cold, and the pack is chafing.
‘How much further?’
‘Just around the next bend.’
Which is a lie, like something you tell a child. The hut is not around the next bend, or the one after, or any of the stupid bends of the river.
Reduced to child status, whining about tired feet, and ‘I’m cold. How much further is it?’ as it gets dark and the promised refuge of the hut does not appear.
Endless walking.
And the boy gets out his gun.
‘I thought this was a just a tramp?’
‘It is, but you know, just in case.’
Which means huddling in the cold, watching as he squints down his scope for long minutes. What does he see?
Praying he doesn’t see a deer. Selfishly, the thought of having to carry a whole deer carcass out, back down the river, is worse than the thought of some poor animal losing its life.
But finally the hut is reached, and no deer are harmed, although the boy spends the next day chasing white-tailed phantoms across the slopes as you trail miserable in his wake.
At one point, halfway across a scree slope, with the river thundering below, he leaves you behind. His bloodlust is up, and he’s scented prey.
The scree starts shifting, gravel moving, inching closer to the dragging river, and you’re stranded, frozen in place as the ground shifts under you. Waiting for death by gravel avalanche, or to be rescued by a boy with a gun.
