‘Watch out for hunters. It’s the middle of the roar,’ says Edwina.

She sounds serious. I try to calculate the likelihood of two mountain bikers being mistaken for deer. It seems improbable. But the only time I hear about hunters is in the news when they’ve accidentally shot each other.

It doesn’t have the heritage of a Moir’s Guide, or the buy local appeal of one of the many great books by Shaun Barnett or Mark Pickering, but it’s the one I started with: Lonely Planet’s Tramping in New Zealand. I was given it for a Christmas or a birthday maybe. That I don’t remember.

If you read our recent article on trying out mountain biking you might be at the stage where you want to purchase your own set of wheels. I’ve owned five bikes over the years and this is what I would do if I was buying my first one again. It’s probably not what everyone would do, but hopefully it’ll help you in some way.

A couple of months ago I entered a competition. The prize included two night’s accommodation in Franz Josef and the opportunity to spend a day with DOC staff tracking rowi or Ōkarito kiwi (Aperyx rowi) in South Ōkarito forest.

An autumn day in Greytown, a place where you really do get autumn – there were gold and russet red trees in view, a crisp coldness to the air. I propped my bicycle against a tree and a hare came dashing out, off across the grass. Otherwise there was silence, just me, at least just me above ground - this was the town cemetery.

Mountain biking, like trail running, opens up the outdoors to a new breed of appreciators. Tramping and camping aren’t for everyone. Some people also want fitness, a test of skill and some excitement mixed in with their day in the bush. That’s where mountain biking comes in.

In Owls do Cry, Janet Frame wrote about the ‘gold tickle’ of toetoe around the town rubbish dump where her characters, four children, played. How many childhoods include that golden tickle or, as it always seemed to me, that golden blaze in the green, something mysteriously decorative like a lion’s mane, a horse’s plume, standing to attention in plain old flax.

My first flood scared me. The Hook River burst its banks, ripped tar seal off the road, and oozed over the paddocks. I was eight.

When it comes to survival in the outdoors, modern technologies often aren’t much use. We need fail-safe equipment and knowledge to get us through. The techniques and advice haven’t changed much over the years, but it’s worth keep yourself up-to-date on what you need and what you need to do.

The other day I started to read H is for Hawk, last year’s winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction. It has a swag of good reviews behind it, and no doubt sits on bedside tables throughout the land. And one day, it sat in front of me as I took the train home. ‘What’s that about?’ asked the man beside me. ‘Someone training a hawk,’ I said.