ENCOUNTER

Limited Edition of 8
 
Mount Ngauruhoe
 
An encounter along Mount Ngauruhoe I’ll never forget.
 
After several hours of hiking across the harsh volcanic terrain, I finally reached one of the exposed ridge lines overlooking Mount Ngauruhoe. This section of the track was part of the Tongariro alpine crossing, which takes anywhere from six to eight hours to complete, and by the time I arrived there, my surroundings felt completely untamed - silent, windswept, and impossibly remote.
 
Then, out of nowhere, a lone gull emerged from the clouds.
 
It swooped low across the ridge before climbing into the clouds again, circling high above the volcano as if it had appeared solely to watch me. What made the moment so strange was the complete absence of life around. In a place this isolated, seeing any bird at all felt unusual - but a single gull, alone against the storm-grey sky, felt almost unnatural.
 
For several minutes, I stood and watched it.
 
Each time I continued along the ridge, the bird would dive closer, cutting through the wind with sharp, deliberate movements before retreating back into the clouds. The longer it circled, the stronger the feeling became that this wasn’t random behaviour. It felt like a warning.
A message.
 
And somehow, deep down, I knew exactly what it was telling me: leave.
 
So I listened.
 
The moment I started descending from the ridge, the bird’s behaviour changed completely. It stopped circling overhead, gave one final pass, and disappeared into the clouds as suddenly as it had arrived.
 
Minutes later, the skies erupted into chaos.
 
Without warning, we were swallowed by one of the most violent hailstorms I’ve ever experienced. Ice and wind tore across the exposed slopes with brutal force, reducing visibility. For the next hour, we pushed through the storm, battered by freezing hail as the volcanic landscape disappeared beneath a wall of white.
 
Eventually, the weather broke, and we managed to make our way out of the park.
But years later, that encounter still lingers in my mind.
 
I still think about the lone gull that appeared from nowhere, circled above the volcano, and vanished the instant we left the ridge - and I still wonder what might have happened if I’d ignored the warning and stayed where I was.