Shelter from the Storm: dream team, genesis and impact

Sam Demas, September 5, 2018

(Note: this is part of the larger work New Zealand Huts: Notes towards a Country Study)

{Photo above by John Rhodes, courtesy Shaun Barnett}

Shelter from the Storm: the story of New Zealand’s backcountry huts deeply influenced my understanding of huts and how they are — in addition to shelter — both evolving cultural reflections of the terrain and the society in which they exist, and also manifestations of human relationship to nature.  I was so excited when I first read the book that I wrote an extended review in hopes of increasing sales/readership in the USA.  While traveling in New Zealand I learned how profoundly the book has shifted Kiwi perceptions of huts as a treasured elements of culture and history.  As an offshoot of talking with the authors and the publisher I pieced together a little bit about the genesis of the book and its publishing history.  Talking with trampers all over New Zealand I heard repeatedly about how the book has shifted perceptions and the national conversations about huts.  I am now even more impressed by the book and am moved to share my deepened enthusiasm.

The full impact of this book has likely only begun to play out.  It is a classic.  While I am clearly not the best person to write about its publishing history, what follows is the germ of a story I really want to tell to my hut friends in the USA.  So, I am moved to jot here some threads about the publishing history of this book, musings about its impact in New Zealand, and some personal notions about the future of huts.

Note: Sure, I’m a hut nut, but I write here as someone  interested in the creative process, and particularly in mechanisms for broad social “ideation”  to accelerate the “long cherished goal of a world where people respect and care for nature” (in sensu Eric W Sanderson, Joseph Walston, John G Robinson; From Bottleneck to Breakthrough: Urbanization and the Future of Biodiversity Conservation, BioScience, Volume 68, Issue 6, 1 June 2018, Pages 412 – 426,  https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biy039).  These musings are a quick stab at conveying how this book has precipitated valuable ideation in New Zealand in relation to huts.  It is offered in an attempt to inspire more of my fellow Americans to read the book and to ponder what roles huts and trails might play in ideation about humans and nature in the U.S.

[These notes are based on my interviews with many folks in New Zealand and on my reading.  In particular I have drawn heavily from Shelter from the Storm and Tramping a New Zealand History, and am deeply grateful to the authors. ]

Notes on the genesis of the “Dream Team” and the book they published

Following is a bare outline of how this book came to be; I trust the authors will set me right on any misunderstandings, and hope that someday they will tell the story (or perhaps already have?)

In the process of collaborating on Classic Tramps in New Zealand, Rob Brown and Shaun Barnett realized they had amassed alot of hut photos, and began to wonder what they might do with them.  Meanwhile, they got to know Geoff Spearpoint because, well, everyone knows him, he is great fun to tramp with, and he is a legendary older guy who likes interacting with young people.  One day Rob was looking Geoff’s photos and realized Geoff had photographed every hut he visited.  With a collective a treasure trove of hut photos, the threesome began to cook up a collaboration.  On a 2010 tramp in the Tauraruas the idea came together: they identified a set of themes that ran through the story of huts, and that also told important parts of the history of the nation.  They imagined a book that explicated these themes and included  many loving portraits — combining elegant writing on their history with beautiful architectural photographs — of huts exemplifying each theme, e.g. pastoral huts, mining huts, club huts, huts for tourism and climbing, huts as monuments, science huts, and the huts built by government agencies for conservation purposes (usually for  culling of invasive species).

They approached Robbie Burton of Craig Potton Publishing.  He liked the idea immediately and encouraged them to go for it; but he couldn’t commit to publish without going through the standard vetting process.  The “common wisdom” in the publishing community and, surprisingly, within his publishing house was that it was too risky a venture.  The trend in the NZ publishing world was away from large format books and serious historical treatments.  He was told the potential audience was too small and topic too esoteric.  It simply wouldn’t sell many copies.  In short, he met resistance everywhere he turned.

Meanwhile Geoff, Rob and Shaun plunged ahead. They dug deeply in libraries and archives, interviewed many old timers along with current trampers, government officials, and tramping club folks.  People opened up to them with deep affection for the topic.  The authors knew they were on to something.  And, despite the scholarly rigor and detail, they made the writing accessible.  In the end Robbie followed his instinct, deciding that he book needed to be published.  The topic was so central to Kiwi history identity that for him the risk was worth taking.

Looking back, Burton sees it as a highlight of his publishing career.  The book was a smashing success.  Robbie quipped to me that Geoff, Rob and Shaun were his Dream Team.  They have traits in common: all are very experienced writers and well-known photographers, they are open-minded and easy to talk with, and each has a distinctive artistic bent.  They are hard core trampers and outdoorsmen.  They know just about everyone in the knowledge domain.  And they are excited about history and by the work of piecing together this history.  Importantly, they brought a set of complementary skills and strengths to the project: Geoff has major mana (influence/authority) in the tramping community and seems to be  something of a philosophical guiding spirit on the team; Rob is a superb photographer, and really into policy, process, and advocacy; and Shaun is a superb writer and editor, well organized and really into doing the historical research.  Fittingly, some of their key discussions about the book took place in huts.

Geoff laughed when I told him Robbie called them his Dream Team, and commented that Robbie himself was a member of the team.  It turns out Robbie is a highly skilled, self-taught book designer.  He designed the book himself, lavishing loving care on the presentation of this lush set of portraits and deep historical context.

A side note: When Robbie and his friends were doing the traverse of Southern Alps they encountered a memorable sign at the old Welcome Flats Hut with a famous quote from Bob Dylan: “Come in, she said, and I’ll give you shelter from the storm”.  I wonder what role that particular instance of the song lyric had in the selection of the book title?  It turns out Rob Brown, a big Dylan fan, came up with the title.

Impacts of the book

My knowledge of the full impact of the book is limited, but personal.  I was struck by how often when I was tramping for three months in 2018 — by which time the book was in its fourth printing — Kiwis knew about the book and would bring it up.  Frequently they mentioned giving it to tramping friends and relatives as a gift.  Many folks confessed that they hadn’t read the whole book, but that they loved perusing it and selecting huts they wanted to visit next.  Most people said they simply hadn’t realized what a treasure their hut system is and how it evolved.

Its not an exaggeration to say that the book seemed to inspire a kind of societal epiphany, showing Kiwis what they had and what it meant.  It brought context and nuance at scale to “recreational infrastructure” long taken for granted.  DoC contributed to the publication.  Two former Prime Ministers, Brian Dobbie of DoC, and the FMC President wrote forewords.  Journalists noted with pride that huts are something make New Zealand special.

The 2012 publication date coincided with the beginnings of a breakthrough in DoC’s continuing struggle to figure out how to maintain lesser used huts.  The book, along with attendant talks and publicity, encouraged the rising tide of voluntary hut maintenance initiatives.  Trampers began to think of huts as collective assets and not simply as DoC infrastructure and responsibility.  Kiwi’s noted with interest passages in the book pointing out hut restoration needs, inspiring local action.  For example, John Taylor, DoC ranger in Golden Bay and leader in hut restoration techniques,  picked up on a statement in the book that what might be last intact Forest Service-era tent camp in New Zealand, located in the Cobb Valley, was in need of restoration.  He contacted Shaun for details, and in 2014 the Golden Bay DoC staff built a replica of this  dilapidated tent camp (I stayed there at Shaun’s urging on a tramp to Cobb Valley historic huts!) and in 2016 DoC staff worked with the Golden Bay Tramping Club to construct a replica, the Soper Shelter, in the Stanley Valley.

As I tramped the islands it seemed to me that the book had played a role in spreading the mantra I heard again and again from Kiwis: “if we don’t take care of our huts we’ll lose them”.  In essence, what I heard repeatedly — from average citizens to DoC rangers and administrators — is that the conversation was clearly shifting from versions of “its DoC’s job and it’s recreational infrastructure” to “it’s our job and it’s cultural heritage”.  The development of the Outdoor Recreation Consortium and its successor the Backcountry Trust were outgrowths of this citizen impulse to partnership and direct involvement.

I could go on, but you get the picture: this book really made a difference.

Implications for future understanding of huts

“No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.”  

— Albert Einstein

It seems clear that Shelter from the Storm raised the level of awareness and discourse around huts and their place in New Zealand culture.  While the long term future of huts in New Zealand is unknowable, changes in the world’s largest hut system make for an interesting thought experiment in speculating about the potential roles of huts in civilizational ideation around evolving the relationship of humans to nature.

New Zealand’s hut system is unique not only in its size, but also in that it is collectively owned (i.e. operated by a government entity for the public good), and in that a large share of the huts were built for other purposes, either for environmental conservation (e.g. invasive species eradication or scientific study) or resource extraction (e.g. agriculture, mining and roads).

Today the purpose of the DoC hut system is largely recreational. What are some possible roles of huts for future generations?  The answer may lie partly in their historical origins and partly in new directions.  Following is some preliminary speculation.

Huts as educational infrastructure is not presently an organized feature or use of the system, though it certainly does occur in many ways.  Perhaps there is potential for more explicit environmental education in and around huts?  Or for inter-generational transmission of backcountry skills?  Or perhaps huts can effect even greater cooperation among hunters and trampers in helping to steward the conservation estate?

Mick Abbott has suggested that parts of the Kiwi hut system might be used to serve a range of hands-on conservation stewardship aims.  Perhaps NZ huts will evolve over several generations into a 21st century version of the conservation infrastructure from which they grew.  And, hand in hand, perhaps they will play a more intentional role in environmental education.

In talking about issues such as the former policy of removing most road-end huts, and the current move to re-engage tramping clubs with hut maintenance/restoration, more than a few knowledgeable Kiwi’s noted that “we have come full circle” on these issues.  And the wheel will doubtless continue to turn…..

Turning to the USA where huts are in their infancy, a European colleague opined “we can’t wait to see what American’s do with huts in the 21st century.”  Thats the question that animates my research. Rather than huts as only recreational infrastructure, a worthy end in itself, my preferred futures for huts in USA is also as:

a. small but powerful agents in accelerated ideation towards redefining our relationship with nature, i.e. cultivating an ethos of biophilia, and,

b. as lookouts, base camps and training grounds in protecting and restoring vast nature preserves that we will increasingly set aside to ensure biodiversity for future generations.

What I find fascinating about this moment in New Zealand is that a nation is seriously re-considering how it manages its huts, and thinking hard about who and what they are for.  Further, that the ongoing  discussion, debate, experimentation and policy development around huts (over the past three decades) was quickened in part by a book-instigated national epiphany that these primitive structures have larger meanings.  This leads right to the broader question of whether in future, huts might play additional roles?  It is tempting for someone like me to exaggerate the significance of this shift in the conversation around Kiwi huts.  But I am quite impressed that by taking an historical perspective on huts — something most Kiwis  had affection for but largely took for granted — Shelter from the Storm contributed significantly to a national shift in consciousness around one small but powerful element of the environment: the primitive hut, the “taproot of human habitation”.

Bravo to the Dream Team!