On 22 February 2024, I began walking the length of Te Waipounamu, the South Island of Aotearoa New Zealand. I followed Te Araroa, a trail extending almost 1,400 kilometres from Meretoto (Ship Cove) in the Marlborough Sounds to Bluff, the southernmost town on mainland New Zealand.

As I walked south into autumn, the cooling weather and rising waterways meant fewer hikers on the trail, and the huts, often empty, offered the peace and solitude I had set out to find.

My intention was to walk as an act of knowing: to meet and be met by the island I had come to call home. In preparing for the journey, I resolved to face personal fears and the logistical, physical and psychological challenges of solo, long-distance through-hiking.

From the first hour of the walk until the final day, I cut the seed-bearing flower heads from thistles growing along the trail. It was not planned but became an intuitive act of conservation. Thistles are invasive plants in New Zealand, and removing their flower heads prevents seeds from dispersing into the surrounding landscape. A single flower head can contain around 200 seeds, while a mature plant may produce thousands more. Carried by the wind on fine, feather-like hairs, the seeds travel across the landscape and waterways, where they settle, germinate and spread again.