Message From Milford

New Zealand Listener, Volume 15, Issue 383, 25 October 1946, Page 5

Message From Milford

ANY of those who read Mr. Parry’s statement last week on the Milford track must have felt that now at length we are back to the ways of peace. Having Milford closed was like having Pelorus Jack dead-the loss of something so distinctively our own that to be robbed of it made us feel a little queer. Now after seven summers we are going to get back to Milford by land and see again with fresh eyes what a natural glory it is. But we are going to see something else too. It has been explained by the Minister that to have the track open for Christmas will be a race against time, that gigantic earth, rock, and ‘tree avalanches have obliterated miles of path and buried or swept away a whole series of bridges, and that it will require much labour and considerable engineering skill to restore all this damage in so short a time. So the visitor will not see Milford only. He -will see what nature does to about a third of New Zealand as soon as man turns his back on it. We are apt to think of our country as small, quiet, sunny, and comfortable except for the prevailing winds. In fact it is an extraordinarily wild country with a few tame patches. At least a quarter of it will remain for ever a wilderness of mountain and forest which we shall not conquer or, increasingly, wish to conquer. It is not a silent wilderness, but much of it noisy and savage and it will always be as it is now-a place to enter for exaltation of the spirit and to shun if our goal is gain. A year or two of enforced neglect and the Milford track almost disappears. A year or two away from the mountains and gorges and something in us disappears too. It is good to hear Mr. Parry calling us back to the wild.